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diff --git a/17943-h/17943-h.htm b/17943-h/17943-h.htm new file mode 100644 index 0000000..9d12b16 --- /dev/null +++ b/17943-h/17943-h.htm @@ -0,0 +1,2774 @@ +<!DOCTYPE html + PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" + "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> +<html> +<head> +<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=US-ASCII" /> +<title>The Observations of Henry</title> + <style type="text/css"> +/*<![CDATA[ XML blockout */ +<!-- + P { margin-top: .75em; + margin-bottom: .75em; + } + H1, H2 { + text-align: center; + margin-top: 2em; + margin-bottom: 2em; + } + H3, H4 { + text-align: left; + margin-top: 1em; + margin-bottom: 1em; + } + BODY{margin-left: 10%; + margin-right: 10%; + } + .blkquot {margin-left: 4em; margin-right: 4em;} /* block indent */ + + .smcap {font-variant: small-caps;} + + .pagenum {position: absolute; + left: 92%; + font-size: smaller; + text-align: right; + color: gray;} + + // --> + /* XML end ]]>*/ + </style> +</head> +<body> +<h2> +<a href="#startoftext">The Observations of Henry, by Jerome K. Jerome</a> +</h2> +<pre> +The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Observations of Henry, by Jerome K. Jerome + + +This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with +almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or +re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included +with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org + + + + + +Title: The Observations of Henry + + +Author: Jerome K. Jerome + + + +Release Date: March 7, 2006 [eBook #17943] + +Language: English + +Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII) + + +***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OBSERVATIONS OF HENRY*** +</pre> +<p><a name="startoftext"></a></p> +<p>Transcribed from the 1901 J. W. Arrowsmith edition by David Price, +email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk</p> +<h1>THE OBSERVATIONS OF HENRY</h1> +<p>BY<br /> +JEROME K. JEROME</p> +<p><span class="smcap">author of</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">“three men in a boat,” “diary +of a pilgrimage,” “three men on the bummel,” etc.</span></p> +<p><span class="smcap">bristol</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">J. W. Arrowsmith, Quay Street</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">london</span><br /> +<span class="smcap">Simpkin, Marshall, Hamilton, Kent and Company Limited</span><br /> +1901</p> +<h2><!-- page 9--><a name="page9"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 9</span>THE +GHOST OF THE MARCHIONESS OF APPLEFORD.</h2> +<p>This is the story, among others, of Henry the waiter—or, as +he now prefers to call himself, Henri—told to me in the long dining-room +of the Riffel Alp Hotel, where I once stayed for a melancholy week “between +seasons,” sharing the echoing emptiness of the place with two +maiden ladies, who talked all day to one another in frightened whispers. +Henry’s construction I have discarded for its amateurishness; +his method being generally to commence a story at the end, and then, +working backwards to the beginning, wind up with the middle. But +<!-- page 10--><a name="page10"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 10</span>in +all other respects I have endeavoured to retain his method, which was +individual; and this, I think, is the story as he would have told it +to me himself, had he told it in this order:</p> +<p>My first place—well to be honest, it was a coffee shop in the +Mile End Road—I’m not ashamed of it. We all have our +beginnings. Young “Kipper,” as we called him—he +had no name of his own, not that he knew of anyhow, and that seemed +to fit him down to the ground—had fixed his pitch just outside, +between our door and the music hall at the corner; and sometimes, when +I might happen to have a bit on, I’d get a paper from him, and +pay him for it, when the governor was not about, with a mug of coffee, +and odds and ends that <!-- page 11--><a name="page11"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 11</span>the +other customers had left on their plates—an arrangement that suited +both of us. He was just about as sharp as they make boys, even +in the Mile End Road, which is saying a good deal; and now and then, +spying around among the right sort, and keeping his ears open, he would +put me up to a good thing, and I would tip him a bob or a tanner as +the case might be. He was the sort that gets on—you know.</p> +<p>One day in he walks, for all the world as if the show belonged to +him, with a young imp of a girl on his arm, and down they sits at one +of the tables.</p> +<p>“Garsong,” he calls out, “what’s the menoo +to-day?”</p> +<p>“The menoo to-day,” I says, “is that you get outside +’fore I clip you over the ear, and that you take that back and +put <!-- page 12--><a name="page12"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 12</span>it +where you found it;” meaning o’ course, the kid.</p> +<p>She was a pretty little thing, even then, in spite of the dirt, with +those eyes like saucers, and red hair. It used to be called “carrots” +in those days. Now all the swells have taken it up—or as +near as they can get to it—and it’s auburn.</p> +<p>“’Enery,” he replied to me, without so much as +turning a hair, “I’m afraid you’re forgetting your +position. When I’m on the kerb shouting ‘Speshul!’ +and you comes to me with yer ’a’penny in yer ’and, +you’re master an’ I’m man. When I comes into +your shop to order refreshments, and to pay for ’em, I’m +boss. Savey? You can bring me a rasher and two eggs, and +see that they’re this season’s. The lidy will have +a full-sized haddick and a cocoa.”</p> +<p><!-- page 13--><a name="page13"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 13</span>Well, +there was justice in what he said. He always did have sense, and +I took his order. You don’t often see anybody put it away +like that girl did. I took it she hadn’t had a square meal +for many a long day. She polished off a ninepenny haddick, skin +and all, and after that she had two penny rashers, with six slices of +bread and butter—“doorsteps,” as we used to call them—and +two half pints of cocoa, which is a meal in itself the way we used to +make it. “Kipper” must have had a bit of luck that +day. He couldn’t have urged her on more had it been a free +feed.</p> +<p>“’Ave an egg,” he suggested, the moment the rashers +had disappeared. “One of these eggs will just about finish +yer.”</p> +<p>“I don’t really think as I can,” says she, after +considering like.</p> +<p><!-- page 14--><a name="page14"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 14</span>“Well, +you know your own strength,” he answers. “Perhaps +you’re best without it. Speshully if yer not used to ’igh +living.”</p> +<p>I was glad to see them finish, ’cause I was beginning to get +a bit nervous about the coin, but he paid up right enough, and giv me +a ha’penny for myself.</p> +<p>That was the first time I ever waited upon those two, but it wasn’t +to be the last by many a long chalk, as you’ll see. He often +used to bring her in after that. Who she was and what she was +he didn’t know, and she didn’t know, so there was a pair +of them. She’d run away from an old woman down Limehouse +way, who used to beat her. That was all she could tell him. +He got her a lodging with an old woman, who had an attic in the same +<!-- page 15--><a name="page15"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 15</span>house +where he slept—when it would run to that—taught her to yell +“Speshul!” and found a corner for her. There ain’t +room for boys and girls in the Mile-End Road. They’re either +kids down there or they’re grown-ups. “Kipper” +and “Carrots”—as we named her—looked upon themselves +as sweethearts, though he couldn’t have been more than fifteen, +and she barely twelve; and that he was regular gone on her anyone could +see with half an eye. Not that he was soft about it—that +wasn’t his style. He kept her in order, and she had just +to mind, which I guess was a good thing for her, and when she wanted +it he’d use his hand on her, and make no bones about it. +That’s the way among that class. They up and give the old +woman a friendly clump, just as you or me would swear at <!-- page 16--><a name="page16"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 16</span>the +missus, or fling a boot-jack at her. They don’t mean anything +more.</p> +<p>I left the coffee shop later on for a place in the city, and saw +nothing more of them for five years. When I did it was at a restaurant +in Oxford Street—one of those amatoor shows run by a lot of women, +who know nothing about the business, and spend the whole day gossiping +and flirting—“love-shops,” I call ’em. +There was a yellow-haired lady manageress who never heard you when you +spoke to her, ’cause she was always trying to hear what some seedy +old fool would be whispering to her across the counter. Then there +were waitresses, and their notion of waiting was to spend an hour talking +to a twopenny cup of coffee, and to look haughty and insulted whenever +anybody as really wanted something ventured to ask for it. <!-- page 17--><a name="page17"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 17</span>A +frizzle-haired cashier used to make love all day out of her pigeon-hole +with the two box-office boys from the Oxford Music Hall, who took it +turn and turn about. Sometimes she’d leave off to take a +customer’s money, and sometimes she wouldn’t. I’ve +been to some rummy places in my time; and a waiter ain’t the blind +owl as he’s supposed to be. But never in my life have I +seen so much love-making, not all at once, as used to go on in that +place. It was a dismal, gloomy sort of hole, and spoony couples +seemed to scent it out by instinct, and would spend hours there over +a pot of tea and assorted pastry. “Idyllic,” some +folks would have thought it: I used to get the fair dismals watching +it. There was one girl—a weird-looking creature, with red +eyes and long thin hands, that <!-- page 18--><a name="page18"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 18</span>gave +you the creeps to look at. She’d come in regular with her +young man, a pale-faced nervous sort of chap, at three o’clock +every afternoon. Theirs was the funniest love-making I ever saw. +She’d pinch him under the table, and run pins into him, and he’d +sit with his eyes glued on her as if she’d been a steaming dish +of steak and onions and he a starving beggar the other side of the window. +A strange story that was—as I came to learn it later on. +I’ll tell you that, one day.</p> +<p>I’d been engaged for the “heavy work,” but as the +heaviest order I ever heard given there was for a cold ham and chicken, +which I had to slip out for to the nearest cook-shop, I must have been +chiefly useful from an ornamental point of view.</p> +<p><!-- page 19--><a name="page19"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 19</span>I’d +been there about a fortnight, and was feeling pretty sick of it, when +in walked young “Kipper.” I didn’t know him +at first, he’d changed so. He was swinging a silver-mounted +crutch stick, which was the kind that was fashionable just then, and +was dressed in a showy check suit and a white hat. But the thing +that struck me most was his gloves. I suppose I hadn’t improved +quite so much myself, for he knew me in a moment, and held out his hand.</p> +<p>“What, ’Enery!” he says, “you’ve moved +on, then!”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I says, shaking hands with him, “and I could +move on again from this shop without feeling sad. But you’ve +got on a bit?” I says.</p> +<p>“So-so,” he says, “I’m a journalist.”</p> +<p>“Oh,” I says, “what sort?” for I’d +<!-- page 20--><a name="page20"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 20</span>seen +a good many of that lot during six months I’d spent at a house +in Fleet Street, and their get-up hadn’t sumptuousness about it, +so to speak. “Kipper’s” rig-out must have totted +up to a tidy little sum. He had a diamond pin in his tie that +must have cost somebody fifty quid, if not him.</p> +<p>“Well,” he answers, “I don’t wind out the +confidential advice to old Beaky, and that sort of thing. I do +the tips, yer know. ‘Cap’n Kit,’ that’s +my name.”</p> +<p>“What, the Captain Kit?” I says. O’ course +I’d heard of him.</p> +<p>“Be’old!” he says.</p> +<p>“Oh, it’s easy enough,” he goes on. “Some +of ’em’s bound to come out right, and when one does, you +take it from me, our paper mentions the fact. And when it is a +wrong ’un—well, a man <!-- page 21--><a name="page21"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 21</span>can’t +always be shouting about himself, can ’e?”</p> +<p>He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone, +and we got to chatting about old times.</p> +<p>“How’s Carrots?” I asked.</p> +<p>“Miss Caroline Trevelyan,” he answered, “is doing +well.”</p> +<p>“Oh,” I says, “you’ve found out her fam’ly +name, then?”</p> +<p>“We’ve found out one or two things about that lidy,” +he replies. “D’yer remember ’er dancing?”</p> +<p>“I have seen her flinging her petticoats about outside the +shop, when the copper wasn’t by, if that’s what you mean,” +I says.</p> +<p>“That’s what I mean,” he answers. “That’s +all the rage now, ‘skirt-dancing’ they calls it. She’s +a-coming out at the <!-- page 22--><a name="page22"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 22</span>Oxford +to-morrow. It’s ’er I’m waiting for. She’s +a-coming on, I tell you she is,” he says.</p> +<p>“Shouldn’t wonder,” says I; “that was her +disposition.”</p> +<p>“And there’s another thing we’ve found out about +’er,” he says. He leant over the table, and whispered +it, as if he was afraid that anybody else might hear: “she’s +got a voice.”</p> +<p>“Yes,” I says, “some women have.”</p> +<p>“Ah,” he says, “but ’er voice is the sort +of voice yer want to listen to.”</p> +<p>“Oh,” I says, “that’s its speciality, is +it?”</p> +<p>“That’s it, sonny,” he replies.</p> +<p>She came in a little later. I’d a’ known her anywhere +for her eyes, and her red hair, in spite of her being that clean you +might have eaten your dinner out of her <!-- page 23--><a name="page23"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 23</span>hand. +And as for her clothes! Well, I’ve mixed a good deal with +the toffs in my time, and I’ve seen duchesses dressed more showily +and maybe more expensively, but her clothes seemed to be just a framework +to show her up. She was a beauty, you can take it from me; and +it’s not to be wondered that the La-De-Das were round her when +they did see her, like flies round an open jam tart.</p> +<p>Before three months were up she was the rage of London—leastways +of the music-hall part of it—with her portrait in all the shop +windows, and interviews with her in half the newspapers. It seems +she was the daughter of an officer who had died in India when she was +a baby, and the niece of a bishop somewhere in Australia. He was +dead too. There didn’t seem to be any of her ancestry <!-- page 24--><a name="page24"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 24</span>as +wasn’t dead, but they had all been swells. She had been +educated privately, she had, by a relative; and had early displayed +an aptitude for dancing, though her friends at first had much opposed +her going upon the stage. There was a lot more of it—you +know the sort of thing. Of course, she was a connection of one +of our best known judges—they all are—and she merely acted +in order to support a grandmother, or an invalid sister, I forget which. +A wonderful talent for swallowing, these newspaper chaps has, some of +’em!</p> +<p>“Kipper” never touched a penny of her money, but if he +had been her agent at twenty-five per cent. he couldn’t have worked +harder, and he just kept up the hum about her, till if you didn’t +want to hear anything more about Caroline Trevelyan, your only chance +would have <!-- page 25--><a name="page25"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 25</span>been +to lie in bed, and never look at a newspaper. It was Caroline +Trevelyan at Home, Caroline Trevelyan at Brighton, Caroline Trevelyan +and the Shah of Persia, Caroline Trevelyan and the Old Apple-woman. +When it wasn’t Caroline Trevelyan herself it would be Caroline +Trevelyan’s dog as would be doing something out of the common, +getting himself lost or summoned or drowned—it didn’t matter +much what.</p> +<p>I moved from Oxford Street to the new “Horseshoe” that +year—it had just been rebuilt—and there I saw a good deal +of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. +Young “Kipper”—or the “Captain” as everybody +called him—gave out that he was her half-brother.</p> +<p>“I’ad to be some sort of a relation, you <!-- page 26--><a name="page26"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 26</span>see,” +he explained to me. “I’d a’ been ’er brother +out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness +wasn’t strong enough. Our styles o’ beauty ain’t +similar.” They certainly wasn’t.</p> +<p>“Why don’t you marry her?” I says, “and have +done with it?”</p> +<p>He looked thoughtful at that. “I did think of it,” +he says, “and I know, jolly well, that if I ’ad suggested +it ’fore she’d found herself, she’d have agreed, but +it don’t seem quite fair now.”</p> +<p>“How d’ye mean fair?” I says.</p> +<p>“Well, not fair to ’er,” he says. “I’ve +got on all right, in a small way; but she—well, she can just ’ave +’er pick of the nobs. There’s one on ’em as +I’ve made inquiries about. ’E’ll be a dook, +if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow <!-- page 27--><a name="page27"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 27</span>’e’ll +be a markis, and ’e means the straight thing—no errer. +It ain’t fair for me to stand in ’er way.”</p> +<p>“Well,” I says, “you know your own business, but +it seems to me she wouldn’t have much way to stand in if it hadn’t +been for you.”</p> +<p>“Oh, that’s all right,” he says. “I’m +fond enough of the gell, but I shan’t clamour for a tombstone +with wiolets, even if she ain’t ever Mrs. Capt’n Kit. +Business is business; and I ain’t going to queer ’er pitch +for ’er.”</p> +<p>I’ve often wondered what she’d a’ said, if he’d +up and put the case to her plain, for she was a good sort; but, naturally +enough, her head was a bit swelled, and she’d read so much rot +about herself in the papers that she’d got at last to half believe +some of it. The thought of her <!-- page 28--><a name="page28"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 28</span>connection +with the well-known judge seemed to hamper her at times, and she wasn’t +quite so chummy with “Kipper” as used to be the case in +the Mile-End Road days, and he wasn’t the sort as is slow to see +a thing.</p> +<p>One day when he was having lunch by himself, and I was waiting on +him, he says, raising his glass to his lips, “Well, ’Enery, +here’s luck to yer! I won’t be seeing you agen for +some time.”</p> +<p>“Oh,” I says. “What’s up now?”</p> +<p>“I am,” he says, “or rather my time is. I’m +off to Africa.”</p> +<p>“Oh,” I says, “and what about—”</p> +<p>“That’s all right,” he interrupts. “I’ve +fixed up that—a treat. Truth, that’s why I’m +going.”</p> +<p>I thought at first he meant she was going with him.</p> +<p><!-- page 29--><a name="page29"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 29</span>“No,” +he says, “she’s going to be the Duchess of Ridingshire with +the kind consent o’ the kid I spoke about. If not, she’ll +be the Marchioness of Appleford. ’E’s doing the square +thing. There’s going to be a quiet marriage to-morrow at +the Registry Office, and then I’m off.”</p> +<p>“What need for you to go?” I says.</p> +<p>“No need,” he says; “it’s a fancy o’ +mine. You see, me gone, there’s nothing to ’amper +’er—nothing to interfere with ’er settling down as +a quiet, respectable toff. With a ’alf-brother, who’s +always got to be spry with some fake about ’is lineage and ’is +ancestral estates, and who drops ’is ‘h’s,’ +complications are sooner or later bound to a-rise. Me out of it—everything’s +simple. Savey?”</p> +<p>Well, that’s just how it happened. Of course, there was +a big row when the <!-- page 30--><a name="page30"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 30</span>family +heard of it, and a smart lawyer was put up to try and undo the thing. +No expense was spared, you bet; but it was all no go. Nothing +could be found out against her. She just sat tight and said nothing. +So the thing had to stand. They went and lived quietly in the +country and abroad for a year or two, and then folks forgot a bit, and +they came back to London. I often used to see her name in print, +and then the papers always said as how she was charming and graceful +and beautiful, so I suppose the family had made up its mind to get used +to her.</p> +<p>One evening in she comes to the Savoy. My wife put me up to +getting that job, and a good job it is, mind you, when you know your +way about. I’d never have had the cheek to try for it, if +it hadn’t <!-- page 31--><a name="page31"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 31</span>been +for the missis. She’s a clever one—she is. I +did a good day’s work when I married her.</p> +<p>“You shave off that moustache of yours—it ain’t +an ornament,” she says to me, “and chance it. Don’t +get attempting the lingo. Keep to the broken English, and put +in a shrug or two. You can manage that all right.”</p> +<p>I followed her tip. Of course the manager saw through me, but +I got in a “Oui, monsieur” now and again, and they, being +short handed at the time, could not afford to be strict, I suppose. +Anyhow I got took on, and there I stopped for the whole season, and +that was the making of me.</p> +<p>Well, as I was saying, in she comes to the supper rooms, and toffy +enough she looked in her diamonds and furs, and as <!-- page 32--><a name="page32"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 32</span>for +haughtiness there wasn’t a born Marchioness she couldn’t +have given points to. She comes straight up to my table and sits +down. Her husband was with her, but he didn’t seem to have +much to say, except to repeat her orders. Of course I looked as +if I’d never set eyes on her before in all my life, though all +the time she was a-pecking at the mayonnaise and a-sipping at the Giessler, +I was thinking of the coffee-shop and of the ninepenny haddick and the +pint of cocoa.</p> +<p>“Go and fetch my cloak,” she says to him after a while. +“I am cold.”</p> +<p>And up he gets and goes out.</p> +<p>She never moved her head, and spoke as though she was merely giving +me some order, and I stands behind her chair, respectful like, and answers +according to the same tip,</p> +<p><!-- page 33--><a name="page33"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 33</span>“Ever +hear from ‘Kipper’?” she says to me.</p> +<p>“I have had one or two letters from him, your ladyship,” +I answers.</p> +<p>“Oh, stow that,” she says. “I am sick of +‘your ladyship.’ Talk English; I don’t hear +much of it. How’s he getting on?”</p> +<p>“Seems to be doing himself well,” I says. “He’s +started an hotel, and is regular raking it in, he tells me.”</p> +<p>“Wish I was behind the bar with him!” says she.</p> +<p>“Why, don’t it work then?” I asks.</p> +<p>“It’s just like a funeral with the corpse left out,” +says she. “Serves me jolly well right for being a fool!”</p> +<p>The Marquis, he comes back with her cloak at that moment, and I says: +“Certainement, madame,” and gets clear.</p> +<p>I often used to see her there, and when <!-- page 34--><a name="page34"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 34</span>a +chance occurred she would talk to me. It seemed to be a relief +to her to use her own tongue, but it made me nervous at times for fear +someone would hear her.</p> +<p>Then one day I got a letter from “Kipper” to say he was +over for a holiday and was stopping at Morley’s, and asking me +to look him up.</p> +<p>He had not changed much except to get a bit fatter and more prosperous-looking. +Of course, we talked about her ladyship, and I told him what she said.</p> +<p>“Rum things, women,” he says; “never know their +own minds.”</p> +<p>“Oh, they know them all right when they get there,” I +says. “How could she tell what being a Marchioness was like +till she’d tried it?”</p> +<p>“Pity,” he says, musing like. “I reckoned +it the very thing she’d tumble <!-- page 35--><a name="page35"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 35</span>to. +I only come over to get a sight of ’er, and to satisfy myself +as she was getting along all right. Seems I’d better a’ +stopped away.”</p> +<p>“You ain’t ever thought of marrying yourself?” +I asks.</p> +<p>“Yes, I have,” he says. “It’s slow +for a man over thirty with no wife and kids to bustle him, you take +it from me, and I ain’t the talent for the Don Juan fake.”</p> +<p>“You’re like me,” I says, “a day’s +work, and then a pipe by your own fireside with your slippers on. +That’s my swarry. You’ll find someone as will suit +you before long.”</p> +<p>“No I shan’t,” says he. “I’ve +come across a few as might, if it ’adn’t been for ’er. +It’s like the toffs as come out our way. They’ve been +brought up on ‘ris <!-- page 36--><a name="page36"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 36</span>de +veau à la financier,’ and sich like, and it just spoils +’em for the bacon and greens.”</p> +<p>I give her the office the next time I see her, and they met accidental +like in Kensington Gardens early one morning. What they said to +one another I don’t know, for he sailed that same evening, and, +it being the end of the season, I didn’t see her ladyship again +for a long while.</p> +<p>When I did it was at the Hôtel Bristol in Paris, and she was +in widow’s weeds, the Marquis having died eight months before. +He never dropped into that dukedom, the kid turning out healthier than +was expected, and hanging on; so she was still only a Marchioness, and +her fortune, though tidy, was nothing very big—not as that class +reckons. By luck <!-- page 37--><a name="page37"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 37</span>I +was told off to wait on her, she having asked for someone as could speak +English. She seemed glad to see me and to talk to me.</p> +<p>“Well,” I says, “I suppose you’ll be bossing +that bar in Capetown now before long?”</p> +<p>“Talk sense,” she answers. “How can the Marchioness +of Appleford marry a hotel keeper?”</p> +<p>“Why not,” I says, “if she fancies him? What’s +the good of being a Marchioness if you can’t do what you like?”</p> +<p>“That’s just it,” she snaps out; “you can’t. +It would not be doing the straight thing by the family. No,” +she says, “I’ve spent their money, and I’m spending +it now. They don’t love me, but they shan’t say as +I have disgraced <!-- page 38--><a name="page38"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 38</span>them. +They’ve got their feelings same as I’ve got mine.”</p> +<p>“Why not chuck the money?” I says. “They’ll +be glad enough to get it back,” they being a poor lot, as I heard +her say.</p> +<p>“How can I?” she says. “It’s a life +interest. As long as I live I’ve got to have it, and as +long as I live I’ve got to remain the Marchioness of Appleford.”</p> +<p>She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. +“As long as I live,” she says, talking to herself.</p> +<p>“By Jove!” she says, starting up “why not?”</p> +<p>“Why not what?” I says.</p> +<p>“Nothing,” she answers. “Get me an African +telegraph form, and be quick about it!”</p> +<p>I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter +then and there; <!-- page 39--><a name="page39"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 39</span>and, +that done, she sat down and finished her dinner.</p> +<p>She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to keep +my own place.</p> +<p>In the morning she got an answer that seemed to excite her, and that +afternoon she left; and the next I heard of her was a paragraph in the +newspaper, headed—“Death of the Marchioness of Appleford. +Sad accident.” It seemed she had gone for a row on one of +the Italian lakes with no one but a boatman. A squall had come +on, and the boat had capsized. The boatman had swum ashore, but +he had been unable to save his passenger, and her body had never been +recovered. The paper reminded its readers that she had formerly +been the celebrated tragic actress, Caroline Trevelyan, daughter of +the well-known Indian judge of that name.</p> +<p><!-- page 40--><a name="page40"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 40</span>It +gave me the blues for a day or two—that bit of news. I had +known her from a baby as you might say, and had taken an interest in +her. You can call it silly, but hotels and restaurants seemed +to me less interesting now there was no chance of ever seeing her come +into one again.</p> +<p>I went from Paris to one of the smaller hotels in Venice. The +missis thought I’d do well to pick up a bit of Italian, and perhaps +she fancied Venice for herself. That’s one of the advantages +of our profession. You can go about. It was a second-rate +sort of place, and one evening, just before lighting-up time, I had +the salle-à-manger all to myself, and had just taken up a paper +when I hears the door open, and I turns round.</p> +<p>I saw “her” coming down the room. <!-- page 41--><a name="page41"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 41</span>There +was no mistaking her. She wasn’t that sort.</p> +<p>I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me, +and then I says:</p> +<p>“Carrots!” I says, in a whisper like. That was +the name that come to me.</p> +<p>“‘Carrots’ it is,” she says, and down she +sits just opposite to me, and then she laughs.</p> +<p>I could not speak, I could not move, I was that took aback, and the +more frightened I looked the more she laughed till “Kipper” +comes into the room. There was nothing ghostly about him. +I never see a man look more as if he had backed the winner.</p> +<p>“Why, it’s ’Enery,” he says; and he gives +me a slap on the back, as knocks the life into me again.</p> +<p>“I heard you was dead,” I says, still <!-- page 42--><a name="page42"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 42</span>staring +at her. “I read it in the paper—‘death of the +Marchioness of Appleford.’”</p> +<p>“That’s all right,” she says. “The +Marchioness of Appleford is as dead as a door-nail, and a good job too. +Mrs. Captain Kit’s my name, née ‘Carrots.’”</p> +<p>“You said as ’ow I’d find someone to suit me ’fore +long,” says “Kipper” to me, “and, by Jove! you +were right; I ’ave. I was waiting till I found something +equal to her ladyship, and I’d ’ave ’ad to wait a +long time, I’m thinking, if I ’adn’t come across this +one ’ere”; and he tucks her up under his arm just as I remember +his doing that day he first brought her into the coffee-shop, and Lord, +what a long time ago that was!</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. +I have, at his <!-- page 43--><a name="page43"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 43</span>request, +substituted artificial names for real ones. For Henry tells me +that at Capetown Captain Kit’s First-class Family and Commercial +Hotel still runs, and that the landlady is still a beautiful woman with +fine eyes and red hair, who might almost be taken for a duchess—until +she opens her mouth, when her accent is found to be still slightly reminiscent +of the Mile-End Road.</p> +<h2><!-- page 47--><a name="page47"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 47</span>THE +USES AND ABUSES OF JOSEPH.</h2> +<p>“It is just the same with what you may call the human joints,” +observed Henry. He was in one of his philosophic moods that evening. +“It all depends upon the cooking. I never see a youngster +hanging up in the refrigerator, as one may put it, but I says to myself: +‘Now I wonder what the cook is going to make of you! Will +you be minced and devilled and fricasseed till you are all sauce and +no meat? Will you be hammered tender and grilled over a slow fire +till you are a blessing to mankind? Or will you be spoilt in the +boiling, and come out a stringy rag, an <!-- page 48--><a name="page48"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 48</span>immediate +curse, and a permanent injury to those who have got to swallow you?’</p> +<p>“There was a youngster I knew in my old coffee-shop days,” +continued Henry, “that in the end came to be eaten by cannibals. +At least, so the newspapers said. Speaking for myself, I never +believed the report: he wasn’t that sort. If anybody was +eaten, it was more likely the cannibal. But that is neither here +nor there. What I am thinking of is what happened before he and +the cannibals ever got nigh to one another. He was fourteen when +I first set eyes on him—Mile End fourteen, that is; which is the +same, I take it, as City eighteen and West End five-and-twenty—and +he was smart for his age into the bargain: a trifle too smart as a matter +of fact. He always came into the shop at the same time—half-past +two; he <!-- page 49--><a name="page49"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 49</span>always +sat in the seat next the window; and three days out of six, he would +order the same dinner: a fourpenny beef-steak pudding—we called +it beef-steak, and, for all practical purposes, it was beef-steak—a +penny plate of potatoes, and a penny slice of roly-poly pudding—‘chest +expander’ was the name our customers gave it—to follow. +That showed sense, I always thought, that dinner alone; a more satisfying +menu, at the price, I defy any human being to work out. He always +had a book with him, and he generally read during his meal; which is +not a bad plan if you don’t want to think too much about what +you are eating. There was a seedy chap, I remember, used to dine +at a cheap restaurant where I once served, just off the Euston Road. +He would stick a book up in front of him—Eppy something or <!-- page 50--><a name="page50"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 50</span>other—and +read the whole time. Our four-course shilling table d’hôte +with Eppy, he would say, was a banquet fit for a prince; without Eppy +he was of opinion that a policeman wouldn’t touch it. But +he was one of those men that report things for the newspapers, and was +given to exaggeration.</p> +<p>“A coffee-shop becomes a bit of a desert towards three o’clock; +and, after a while, young Tidelman, for that was his name, got to putting +down his book and chatting to me. His father was dead; which, +judging from what he told me about the old man, must have been a bit +of luck for everybody; and his mother, it turned out, had come from +my own village in Suffolk; and that constituted a sort of bond between +us, seeing I had known all her people pretty intimately. He was +earning good <!-- page 51--><a name="page51"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 51</span>money +at a dairy, where his work was scouring milk-cans; and his Christian +name—which was the only thing Christian about him, and that, somehow +or another, didn’t seem to fit him—was Joseph.</p> +<p>“One afternoon he came into the shop looking as if he had lost +a shilling and found sixpence, as the saying is; and instead of drinking +water as usual, sent the girl out for a pint of ale. The moment +it came he drank off half of it at a gulp, and then sat staring out +of the window.</p> +<p>“‘What’s up?’ I says. ‘Got the +shove?’</p> +<p>“‘Yes,’ he answers; ‘but, as it happens, +it’s a shove up. I’ve been taken off the yard and +put on the walk, with a rise of two bob a week.’ Then he +took another pull at the beer and looked more savage than ever.</p> +<p><!-- page 52--><a name="page52"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 52</span>“‘Well,’ +I says, ‘that ain’t the sort of thing to be humpy about.’</p> +<p>“‘Yes it is,’ he snaps back; ‘it means that +if I don’t take precious good care I’ll drift into being +a blooming milkman, spending my life yelling “Milk ahoi!” +and spooning smutty-faced servant-gals across area railings.’</p> +<p>“‘Oh!’ I says, ‘and what may you prefer to +spoon—duchesses?’</p> +<p>“‘Yes,’ he answers sulky-like; ‘duchesses +are right enough—some of ’em.’</p> +<p>“‘So are servant-gals,’ I says, ‘some of +’em. Your hat’s feeling a bit small for you this morning, +ain’t it?’</p> +<p>“‘Hat’s all right,’ says he; ‘it’s +the world as I’m complaining of—beastly place; there’s +nothing to do in it.’</p> +<p>“‘Oh!’ I says; ‘some of us find there’s +a bit too much.’ I’d been up since five <!-- page 53--><a name="page53"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 53</span>that +morning myself; and his own work, which was scouring milk-cans for twelve +hours a day, didn’t strike me as suggesting a life of leisured +ease.</p> +<p>“‘I don’t mean that,’ he says. ‘I +mean things worth doing.’</p> +<p>“‘Well, what do you want to do,’ I says, ‘that +this world ain’t big enough for?’</p> +<p>“‘It ain’t the size of it,’ he says; ‘it’s +the dulness of it. Things used to be different in the old days.’</p> +<p>“‘How do you know?’ I says.</p> +<p>“‘You can read about it,’ he answers.</p> +<p>“‘Oh,’ I says, ‘and what do they know about +it—these gents that sit down and write about it for their living! +You show me a book cracking up the old times, writ by a chap as lived +in ’em, and I’ll believe you. Till then I’ll +stick to my opinion <!-- page 54--><a name="page54"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 54</span>that +the old days were much the same as these days, and maybe a trifle worse.’</p> +<p>“‘From a Sunday School point of view, perhaps yes,’ +says he; ‘but there’s no gainsaying—’</p> +<p>“‘No what?’ I says.</p> +<p>“‘No gainsaying,’ repeats he; ‘it’s +a common word in literatoor.’</p> +<p>“‘Maybe,’ says I, ‘but this happens to be +“The Blue Posts Coffee House,” established in the year 1863. +We will use modern English here, if you don’t mind.’ +One had to take him down like that at times. He was the sort of +boy as would talk poetry to you if you weren’t firm with him.</p> +<p>“‘Well then, there’s no denying the fact,’ +says he, ‘if you prefer it that way, that in the old days there +was more opportunity for adventure.’</p> +<p><!-- page 55--><a name="page55"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 55</span>“‘What +about Australia?’ says I.</p> +<p>“‘Australia!’ retorts he; ‘what would I do +there? Be a shepherd, like you see in the picture, wear ribbons, +and play the flute?’</p> +<p>“‘There’s not much of that sort of shepherding +over there,’ says I, ‘unless I’ve been deceived; but +if Australia ain’t sufficiently uncivilised for you, what about +Africa?’</p> +<p>“‘What’s the good of Africa?’ replies he; +‘you don’t read advertisements in the “Clerkenwell +News”: “Young men wanted as explorers.” I’d +drift into a barber’s shop at Cape Town more likely than anything +else.’</p> +<p>“‘What about the gold diggings?’ I suggests. +I like to see a youngster with the spirit of adventure in him. +It shows grit as a rule.</p> +<p><!-- page 56--><a name="page56"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 56</span>“‘Played +out,’ says he. ‘You are employed by a company, wages +ten dollars a week, and a pension for your old age. Everything’s +played out,’ he continues. ‘Men ain’t wanted +nowadays. There’s only room for clerks, and intelligent +artisans, and shopboys.’</p> +<p>“‘Go for a soldier,’ says I; ‘there’s +excitement for you.’</p> +<p>“‘That would have been all right,’ says he, ‘in +the days when there was real fighting.’</p> +<p>“‘There’s a good bit of it going about nowadays,’ +I says. ‘We are generally at it, on and off, between shouting +about the blessings of peace.’</p> +<p>“‘Not the sort of fighting I mean,’ replies he; +‘I want to do something myself, not be one of a row.’</p> +<p>“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I give you up. You’ve +<!-- page 57--><a name="page57"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 57</span>dropped +into the wrong world it seems to me. We don’t seem able +to cater for you here.’</p> +<p>“‘I’ve come a bit too late,’ he answers; +‘that’s the mistake I’ve made. Two hundred years +ago there were lots of things a fellow might have done.’</p> +<p>“‘Yes, I know what’s in your mind,’ I says: +‘pirates.’</p> +<p>“‘Yes, pirates would be all right,’ says he; ‘they +got plenty of sea-air and exercise, and didn’t need to join a +blooming funeral club.’</p> +<p>“‘You’ve got ideas above your station,’ I +says. ‘You work hard, and one day you’ll have a milk-shop +of your own, and be walking out with a pretty housemaid on your arm, +feeling as if you were the Prince of Wales himself.’</p> +<p>“‘Stow it!’ he says; ‘it makes me <!-- page 58--><a name="page58"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 58</span>shiver +for fear it might come true. I’m not cut out for a respectable +cove, and I won’t be one neither, if I can help it!’</p> +<p>“‘What do you mean to be, then?’ I says; ‘we’ve +all got to be something, until we’re stiff ’uns.’</p> +<p>“‘Well,’ he says, quite cool-like, ‘I think +I shall be a burglar.’</p> +<p>“I dropped into the seat opposite and stared at him. +If any other lad had said it I should have known it was only foolishness, +but he was just the sort to mean it.</p> +<p>“‘It’s the only calling I can think of,’ +says he, ‘that has got any element of excitement left in it.’</p> +<p>“‘You call seven years at Portland “excitement,” +do you?’ says I, thinking of the argument most likely to tell +upon him.</p> +<p>“‘What’s the difference,’ answers he, <!-- page 59--><a name="page59"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 59</span>‘between +Portland and the ordinary labouring man’s life, except that at +Portland you never need fear being out of work?’ He was +a rare one to argue. ‘Besides,’ says he, ‘it’s +only the fools as gets copped. Look at that diamond robbery in +Bond Street, two years ago. Fifty thousand pounds’ worth +of jewels stolen, and never a clue to this day! Look at the Dublin +Bank robbery,’ says he, his eyes all alight, and his face flushed +like a girl’s. ‘Three thousand pounds in golden sovereigns +walked away with in broad daylight, and never so much as the flick of +a coat-tail seen. Those are the sort of men I’m thinking +of, not the bricklayer out of work, who smashes a window and gets ten +years for breaking open a cheesemonger’s till with nine and fourpence +ha’penny in it.’</p> +<p><!-- page 60--><a name="page60"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 60</span>“‘Yes,’ +says I, ‘and are you forgetting the chap who was nabbed at Birmingham +only last week? He wasn’t exactly an amatoor. How +long do think he’ll get?’</p> +<p>“‘A man like that deserves what he gets,’ answers +he; ‘couldn’t hit a police-man at six yards.’</p> +<p>“‘You bloodthirsty young scoundrel,’ I says; ‘do +you mean you wouldn’t stick at murder?’</p> +<p>“‘It’s all in the game,’ says he, not in +the least put out. ‘I take my risks, he takes his. +It’s no more murder than soldiering is.’</p> +<p>“‘It’s taking a human creature’s life,’ +I says.</p> +<p>“‘Well,’ he says, ‘what of it? There’s +plenty more where he comes from.’</p> +<p>“I tried reasoning with him from time to time, but he wasn’t +a sort of boy to <!-- page 61--><a name="page61"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 61</span>be +moved from a purpose. His mother was the only argument that had +any weight with him. I believe so long as she had lived he would +have kept straight; that was the only soft spot in him. But unfortunately +she died a couple of years later, and then I lost sight of Joe altogether. +I made enquiries, but no one could tell me anything. He had just +disappeared, that’s all.</p> +<p>“One afternoon, four years later, I was sitting in the coffee-room +of a City restaurant where I was working, reading the account of a clever +robbery committed the day before. The thief, described as a well-dressed +young man of gentlemanly appearance, wearing a short black beard and +moustache, had walked into a branch of the London and Westminster Bank +during the dinner-hour, when only the <!-- page 62--><a name="page62"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 62</span>manager +and one clerk were there. He had gone straight through to the +manager’s room at the back of the bank, taken the key from the +inside of the door, and before the man could get round his desk had +locked him in. The clerk, with a knife to his throat, had then +been persuaded to empty all the loose cash in the bank, amounting in +gold and notes to nearly five hundred pounds, into a bag which the thief +had thoughtfully brought with him. After which, both of them—for +the thief seems to have been of a sociable disposition—got into +a cab which was waiting outside, and drove away. They drove straight +to the City: the clerk, with a knife pricking the back of his neck all +the time, finding it, no doubt, a tiresome ride. In the middle +of Threadneedle Street, the gentlemanly young man suddenly stopped <!-- page 63--><a name="page63"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 63</span>the +cab and got out, leaving the clerk to pay the cabman.</p> +<p>“Somehow or other, the story brought back Joseph to my mind. +I seemed to see him as that well-dressed gentlemanly young man; and, +raising my eyes from the paper, there he stood before me. He had +scarcely changed at all since I last saw him, except that he had grown +better looking, and seemed more cheerful. He nodded to me as though +we had parted the day before, and ordered a chop and a small hock. +I spread a fresh serviette for him, and asked him if he cared to see +the paper.</p> +<p>“‘Anything interesting in it, Henry?’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘Rather a daring robbery committed on the Westminster +Bank yesterday,’ I answers.</p> +<p><!-- page 64--><a name="page64"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 64</span>“‘Oh, +ah! I did see something about that,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘The thief was described as a well-dressed young man +of gentlemanly appearance, wearing a black beard and moustache,’ +says I.</p> +<p>“He laughs pleasantly.</p> +<p>“‘That will make it awkward for nice young men with black +beards and moustaches,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘Yes,’ I says. ‘Fortunately for you +and me, we’re clean shaved.’</p> +<p>“I felt as certain he was the man as though I’d seen +him do it.</p> +<p>“He gives me a sharp glance, but I was busy with the cruets, +and he had to make what he chose out of it.</p> +<p>“‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘as you say, it was a +daring robbery. But the man seems to have got away all right.’</p> +<p><!-- page 65--><a name="page65"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 65</span>“I +could see he was dying to talk to somebody about it.</p> +<p>“‘He’s all right to-day,’ says I; ‘but +the police ain’t the fools they’re reckoned. I’ve +noticed they generally get there in the end.’</p> +<p>“‘There’s some very intelligent men among them,’ +says he: ‘no question of it. I shouldn’t be surprised +if they had a clue!’</p> +<p>“‘No,’ I says, ‘no more should I; though +no doubt he’s telling himself there never was such a clever thief.’</p> +<p>“‘Well, we shall see,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘That’s about it,’ says I.</p> +<p>“We talked a bit about old acquaintances and other things, +and then, having finished, he handed me a sovereign and rose to go.</p> +<p>“‘Wait a minute,’ I says, ‘your bill <!-- page 66--><a name="page66"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 66</span>comes +to three-and-eight. Say fourpence for the waiter; that leaves +sixteen shillings change, which I’ll ask you to put in your pocket.’</p> +<p>“‘As you will,’ he says, laughing, though I could +see he didn’t like it.</p> +<p>“‘And one other thing,’ says I. ‘We’ve +been sort of pals, and it’s not my business to talk unless I’m +spoken to. But I’m a married man,’ I says, ‘and +I don’t consider you the sort worth getting into trouble for. +If I never see you, I know nothing about you. Understand?’</p> +<p>“He took my tip, and I didn’t see him again at that restaurant. +I kept my eye on the paper, but the Westminster Bank thief was never +discovered, and success, no doubt, gave him confidence. Anyhow, +I read of two or three burglaries that winter which I unhesitatingly +put down <!-- page 67--><a name="page67"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 67</span>to +Mr. Joseph—I suppose there’s style in housebreaking, as +in other things—and early the next spring an exciting bit of business +occurred, which I knew to be his work by the description of the man.</p> +<p>“He had broken into a big country house during the servants’ +supper-hour, and had stuffed his pockets with jewels. One of the +guests, a young officer, coming upstairs, interrupted him just as he +had finished. Joseph threatened the man with his revolver; but +this time it was not a nervous young clerk he had to deal with. +The man sprang at him, and a desperate struggle followed, with the result +that in the end the officer was left with a bullet in his leg, while +Joseph jumped clean through the window, and fell thirty feet. +Cut and bleeding, if not broken, he would <!-- page 68--><a name="page68"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 68</span>never +have got away but that, fortunately for him, a tradesman’s cart +happened to be standing at the servants’ entrance. Joe was +in it, and off like a flash of greased lightning. How he managed +to escape, with all the country in an uproar, I can’t tell you; +but he did it. The horse and cart, when found sixteen miles off, +were neither worth much.</p> +<p>“That, it seems, sobered him down for a bit, and nobody heard +any more of him till nine months later, when he walked into the Monico, +where I was then working, and held out his hand to me as bold as brass.</p> +<p>“‘It’s all right,’ says he, ‘it’s +the hand of an honest man.’</p> +<p>“‘It’s come into your possession very recently +then,’ says I.</p> +<p>“He was dressed in a black frock-coat <!-- page 69--><a name="page69"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 69</span>and +wore whiskers. If I hadn’t known him, I should have put +him down for a parson out of work.</p> +<p>“He laughs. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ +he says.</p> +<p>“‘Not here,’ I answers, ‘because I’m +too busy; but if you like to meet me this evening, and you’re +talking straight—’</p> +<p>“‘Straight as a bullet,’ says he. ‘Come +and have a bit of dinner with me at the Craven; it’s quiet there, +and we can talk. I’ve been looking for you for the last +week.’</p> +<p>“Well, I met him; and he told me. It was the old story: +a gal was at the bottom of it. He had broken into a small house +at Hampstead. He was on the floor, packing up the silver, when +the door opens, and he sees a gal standing there. <!-- page 70--><a name="page70"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 70</span>She +held a candle in one hand and a revolver in the other.</p> +<p>“‘Put your hands up above your head,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘I looked at the revolver,’ said Joe, telling +me; ‘it was about eighteen inches off my nose; and then I looked +at the gal. There’s lots of ’em will threaten to blow +your brains out for you, but you’ve only got to look at ’em +to know they won’t.</p> +<p>“‘They are thinking of the coroner’s inquest, and +wondering how the judge will sum up. She met my eyes, and I held +up my hands. If I hadn’t I wouldn’t have been here.</p> +<p>“‘Now you go in front,’ says she to Joe, and he +went. She laid her candle down in the hall and unbolted the front +door.</p> +<p><!-- page 71--><a name="page71"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 71</span>“‘What +are you going to do?’ says Joe, ‘call the police? +Because if so, my dear, I’ll take my chance of that revolver being +loaded and of your pulling the trigger in time. It will be a more +dignified ending.’</p> +<p>“‘No,’ says she, ‘I had a brother that got +seven years for forgery. I don’t want to think of another +face like his when he came out. I’m going to see you outside +my master’s house, and that’s all I care about.’</p> +<p>“She went down the garden-path with him, and opened the gate.</p> +<p>“‘You turn round,’ says she, ‘before you +reach the bottom of the lane and I give the alarm.’ And +Joe went straight, and didn’t look behind him.</p> +<p>“Well, it was a rum beginning to a courtship, but the end was +rummer. The girl <!-- page 72--><a name="page72"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 72</span>was +willing to marry him if he would turn honest. Joe wanted to turn +honest, but didn’t know how.</p> +<p>“‘It’s no use fixing me down, my dear, to any quiet, +respectable calling,’ says Joe to the gal, ‘because, even +if the police would let me alone, I wouldn’t be able to stop there. +I’d break out, sooner or later, try as I might.’</p> +<p>“The girl went to her master, who seems to have been an odd +sort of a cove, and told him the whole story. The old gent said +he’d see Joe, and Joe called on him.</p> +<p>“‘What’s your religion?’ says the old gent +to Joe.</p> +<p>“‘I’m not particular, sir; I’ll leave it +to you,’ says Joe.</p> +<p>“‘Good!’ says the old gent. ‘You’re +no fanatic. What are your principles?’</p> +<p><!-- page 73--><a name="page73"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 73</span>“At +first Joe didn’t think he’d got any, but, the old gent leading, +he found to his surprise as he had.</p> +<p>“‘I believe,’ says Joe, ‘in doing a job thoroughly.’</p> +<p>“‘What your hand finds to do, you believe in doing with +all your might, eh?’ says the old gent.</p> +<p>“‘That’s it, sir,’ says Joe. ‘That’s +what I’ve always tried to do.’</p> +<p>“‘Anything else?’ asks the old gent.</p> +<p>“‘Yes; stick to your pals,’ said Joe.</p> +<p>“‘Through thick and thin,’ suggests the old gent.</p> +<p>“‘To the blooming end,’ agrees Joe.</p> +<p>“‘That’s right,’ says the old gent. +‘Faithful unto death. And you really want to turn over a +new leaf—to put your wits and your energy and your courage to +good use instead of bad?’</p> +<p><!-- page 74--><a name="page74"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 74</span>“‘That’s +the idea,’ says Joe.</p> +<p>“The old gent murmurs something to himself about a stone which +the builders wouldn’t have at any price; and then he turns and +puts it straight:</p> +<p>“‘If you undertake the work,’ says he, ‘you’ll +go through with it without faltering—you’ll devote your +life to it?’</p> +<p>“‘If I undertake the job, I’ll do that,’ +says Joe. ‘What may it be?’</p> +<p>“‘To go to Africa,’ says the old gent, ‘as +a missionary.’</p> +<p>“Joe sits down and stares at the old gent, and the old gent +looks him back.</p> +<p>“‘It’s a dangerous station,’ says the old +gent. ‘Two of our people have lost their lives there. +It wants a man there—a man who will do something besides preach, +who will save these poor people we have gathered together there <!-- page 75--><a name="page75"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 75</span>from +being scattered and lost, who will be their champion, their protector, +their friend.’</p> +<p>“In the end, Joe took on the job, and went out with his wife. +A better missionary that Society never had and never wanted. I +read one of his early reports home; and if the others were anything +like it his life must have been exciting enough, even for him. +His station was a small island of civilisation, as one may say, in the +middle of a sea of savages. Before he had been there a month the +place had been attacked twice. On the first occasion Joe’s +‘flock’ had crowded into the Mission House, and commenced +to pray, that having been the plan of defence adopted by his predecessor. +Joe cut the prayer short, and preached to them from the text, ‘Heaven +<!-- page 76--><a name="page76"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 76</span>helps +them as helps themselves’; after which he proceeded to deal out +axes and old rifles. In his report he mentioned that he had taken +a hand himself, merely as an example to the flock; I bet he had never +enjoyed an evening more in all his life. The second fight began, +as usual, round the Mission, but seems to have ended two miles off. +In less than six months he had rebuilt the school-house, organised a +police force, converted all that was left of one tribe, and started +a tin church. He added (but I don’t think they read that +part of his report aloud) that law and order was going to be respected, +and life and property secure in his district so long as he had a bullet +left.</p> +<p>“Later on the Society sent him still further inland, to open +up a fresh station; <!-- page 77--><a name="page77"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 77</span>and +there it was that, according to the newspapers, the cannibals got hold +of him and ate him. As I said, personally I don’t believe +it. One of these days he’ll turn up, sound and whole; he +is that sort.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 81--><a name="page81"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 81</span>THE +SURPRISE OF MR. MILBERRY.</h2> +<p>“It’s not the sort of thing to tell ’em,” +remarked Henry, as, with his napkin over his arm, he leant against one +of the pillars of the verandah, and sipped the glass of Burgundy I had +poured out for him; “and they wouldn’t believe it if you +did tell ’em, not one of ’em. But it’s the truth, +for all that. Without the clothes they couldn’t do it.”</p> +<p>“Who wouldn’t believe what?” I asked. He +had a curious habit, had Henry, of commenting aloud upon his own unspoken +thoughts, thereby bestowing upon his conversation much of the quality +of the double <!-- page 82--><a name="page82"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 82</span>acrostic. +We had been discussing the question whether sardines served their purpose +better as a hors d’œuvre or as a savoury; and I found myself +wondering for the moment why sardines, above all other fish, should +be of an unbelieving nature; while endeavouring to picture to myself +the costume best adapted to display the somewhat difficult figure of +a sardine. Henry put down his glass, and came to my rescue with +the necessary explanation.</p> +<p>“Why, women—that they can tell one baby from another, +without its clothes. I’ve got a sister, a monthly nurse, +and she will tell you for a fact, if you care to ask her, that up to +three months of age there isn’t really any difference between +’em. You can tell a girl from a boy and a Christian child +from a black heathen, <!-- page 83--><a name="page83"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 83</span>perhaps; +but to fancy you can put your finger on an unclothed infant and say: +‘That’s a Smith, or that’s a Jones,’ as the +case may be—why, it’s sheer nonsense. Take the things +off ’em, and shake them up in a blanket, and I’ll bet you +what you like that which is which you’d never be able to tell +again so long as you lived.”</p> +<p>I agreed with Henry, so far as my own personal powers of discrimination +might be concerned, but I suggested that to Mrs. Jones or Mrs. Smith +there would surely occur some means of identification.</p> +<p>“So they’d tell you themselves, no doubt,” replied +Henry; “and of course, I am not thinking of cases where the child +might have a mole or a squint, as might come in useful. But take +’em in general, kids are as much alike as sardines of the same +age would be. Anyhow, I knew a <!-- page 84--><a name="page84"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 84</span>case +where a fool of a young nurse mixed up two children at an hotel, and +to this day neither of those women is sure that she’s got her +own.”</p> +<p>“Do you mean,” I said, “there was no possible means +of distinguishing?”</p> +<p>“There wasn’t a flea-bite to go by,” answered Henry. +“They had the same bumps, the same pimples, the same scratches; +they were the same age to within three days; they weighed the same to +an ounce; and they measured the same to an inch. One father was +tall and fair, and the other was short and dark. The tall, fair +man had a dark, short wife; and the short, dark man had married a tall, +fair woman. For a week they changed those kids to and fro a dozen +times a day, and cried and quarrelled over them. Each woman felt +sure she was the mother of the <!-- page 85--><a name="page85"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 85</span>one +that was crowing at the moment, and when it yelled she was positive +it was no child of hers. They thought they would trust to the +instinct of the children. Neither child, so long as it wasn’t +hungry, appeared to care a curse for anybody; and when it was hungry +it always wanted the mother that the other kid had got. They decided, +in the end, to leave it to time. It’s three years ago now, +and possibly enough some likeness to the parents will develop that will +settle the question. All I say is, up to three months old you +can’t tell ’em, I don’t care who says you can.”</p> +<p>He paused, and appeared to be absorbed in contemplation of the distant +Matterhorn, then clad in its rosy robe of evening. There was a +vein of poetry in Henry, not uncommon among cooks and waiters. +<!-- page 86--><a name="page86"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 86</span>The +perpetual atmosphere of hot food I am inclined to think favourable to +the growth of the softer emotions. One of the most sentimental +men I ever knew kept a ham-and-beef shop just off the Farringdon Road. +In the early morning he could be shrewd and business-like, but when +hovering with a knife and fork above the mingled steam of bubbling sausages +and hissing peas-pudding, any whimpering tramp with any impossible tale +of woe could impose upon him easily.</p> +<p>“But the rummiest go I ever recollect in connection with a +baby,” continued Henry after a while, his gaze still fixed upon +the distant snow-crowned peaks, “happened to me at Warwick in +the Jubilee year. I’ll never forget that.”</p> +<p>“Is it a proper story,” I asked, “a story fit for +me to hear?”</p> +<p><!-- page 87--><a name="page87"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 87</span>On +consideration, Henry saw no harm in it, and told it to me accordingly.</p> +<p>* * * * *</p> +<p>He came by the ’bus that meets the 4.52. He’d a +handbag and a sort of hamper: it looked to me like a linen-basket. +He wouldn’t let the Boots touch the hamper, but carried it up +into his bedroom himself. He carried it in front of him by the +handles, and grazed his knuckles at every second step. He slipped +going round the bend of the stairs, and knocked his head a rattling +good thump against the balustrade; but he never let go that hamper—only +swore and plunged on. I could see he was nervous and excited, +but one gets used to nervous and excited people in hotels. Whether +a man’s running away from a thing, or running after a thing, he +stops at a hotel on his way; and <!-- page 88--><a name="page88"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 88</span>so +long as he looks as if he could pay his bill one doesn’t trouble +much about him. But this man interested me: he was so uncommonly +young and innocent-looking. Besides, it was a dull hole of a place +after the sort of jobs I’d been used to; and when you’ve +been doing nothing for three months but waiting on commercial gents +as are having an exceptionally bad season, and spoony couples with guide-books, +you get a bit depressed, and welcome any incident, however slight, that +promises to be out of the common.</p> +<p>I followed him up into his room, and asked him if I could do anything +for him. He flopped the hamper on the bed with a sigh of relief, +took off his hat, wiped his head with his handkerchief, and then turned +to answer me.</p> +<p>“Are you a married man?” says he.</p> +<p><!-- page 89--><a name="page89"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 89</span>It +was an odd question to put to a waiter, but coming from a gent there +was nothing to be alarmed about.</p> +<p>“Well, not exactly,” I says—I was only engaged +at that time, and that not to my wife, if you understand what I mean—“but +I know a good deal about it,” I says, “and if it’s +a matter of advice—”</p> +<p>“It isn’t that,” he answers, interrupting me; “but +I don’t want you to laugh at me. I thought if you were a +married man you would be able to understand the thing better. +Have you got an intelligent woman in the house?”</p> +<p>“We’ve got women,” I says. “As to their +intelligence, that’s a matter of opinion; they’re the average +sort of women. Shall I call the chambermaid?”</p> +<p>“Ah, do,” he says. “Wait a minute,” +he says; “we’ll open it first.”</p> +<p><!-- page 90--><a name="page90"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 90</span>He +began to fumble with the cord, then he suddenly lets go and begins to +chuckle to himself.</p> +<p>“No,” he says, “you open it. Open it carefully; +it will surprise you.”</p> +<p>I don’t take much stock in surprises myself. My experience +is that they’re mostly unpleasant.</p> +<p>“What’s in it?” I says.</p> +<p>“You’ll see if you open it,” he says: “it +won’t hurt you.” And off he goes again, chuckling +to himself.</p> +<p>“Well,” I says to myself, “I hope you’re +a harmless specimen.” Then an idea struck me, and I stopped +with the knot in my fingers.</p> +<p>“It ain’t a corpse,” I says, “is it?”</p> +<p>He turned as white as the sheet on the bed, and clutched the mantlepiece. +“Good God! don’t suggest such a thing,” he <!-- page 91--><a name="page91"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 91</span>says; +“I never thought of that. Open it quickly.”</p> +<p>“I’d rather you came and opened it yourself, sir,” +I says. I was beginning not to half like the business.</p> +<p>“I can’t,” he says, “after that suggestion +of yours—you’ve put me all in a tremble. Open it quick, +man; tell me it’s all right.”</p> +<p>Well, my own curiosity helped me. I cut the cord, threw open +the lid, and looked in. He kept his eyes turned away, as if he +were frightened to look for himself.</p> +<p>“Is it all right?” he says. “Is it alive?”</p> +<p>“It’s about as alive,” I says, “as anybody’ll +ever want it to be, I should say.”</p> +<p>“Is it breathing all right?” he says.</p> +<p>“If you can’t hear it breathing,” I says, “I’m +afraid you’re deaf.”</p> +<p>You might have heard its breathing outside <!-- page 92--><a name="page92"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 92</span>in +the street. He listened, and even he was satisfied.</p> +<p>“Thank Heaven!” he says, and down he plumped in the easy-chair +by the fireplace. “You know, I never thought of that,” +he goes on. “He’s been shut up in that basket for +over an hour, and if by any chance he’d managed to get his head +entangled in the clothes—I’ll never do such a fool’s +trick again!”</p> +<p>“You’re fond of it?” I says.</p> +<p>He looked round at me. “Fond of it,” he repeats. +“Why, I’m his father.” And then he begins to +laugh again.</p> +<p>“Oh!” I says. “Then I presume I have the +pleasure of addressing Mr. Coster King?”</p> +<p>“Coster King?” he answers in surprise. “My +name’s Milberry.”</p> +<p>I says: “The father of this child, according <!-- page 93--><a name="page93"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 93</span>to +the label inside the cover, is Coster King out of Starlight, his mother +being Jenny Deans out of Darby the Devil.”</p> +<p>He looks at me in a nervous fashion, and puts the chair between us. +It was evidently his turn to think as how I was mad. Satisfying +himself, I suppose, that at all events I wasn’t dangerous, he +crept closer till he could get a look inside the basket. I never +heard a man give such an unearthly yell in all my life. He stood +on one side of the bed and I on the other. The dog, awakened by +the noise, sat up and grinned, first at one of us and then at the other. +I took it to be a bull-pup of about nine months old, and a fine specimen +for its age.</p> +<p>“My child!” he shrieks, with his eyes starting out of +his head, “That thing <!-- page 94--><a name="page94"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 94</span>isn’t +my child. What’s happened? Am I going mad?”</p> +<p>“You’re on that way,” I says, and so he was. +“Calm yourself,” I says; “what did you expect to see?”</p> +<p>“My child,” he shrieks again; “my only child—my +baby!”</p> +<p>“Do you mean a real child?” I says, “a human child?” +Some folks have such a silly way of talking about their dogs—you +never can tell.</p> +<p>“Of course I do,” he says; “the prettiest child +you ever saw in all your life, just thirteen weeks old on Sunday. +He cut his first tooth yesterday.”</p> +<p>The sight of the dog’s face seemed to madden him. He +flung himself upon the basket, and would, I believe, have strangled +the poor beast if I hadn’t interposed between them.</p> +<p><!-- page 95--><a name="page95"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 95</span>“’Tain’t +the dog’s fault,” I says; “I daresay he’s as +sick about the whole business as you are. He’s lost, too. +Somebody’s been having a lark with you. They’ve took +your baby out and put this in—that is, if there ever was a baby +there.”</p> +<p>“What do you mean?” he says.</p> +<p>“Well, sir,” I says, “if you’ll excuse me, +gentlemen in their sober senses don’t take their babies about +in dog-baskets. Where do you come from?”</p> +<p>“From Banbury,” he says; “I’m well known +in Banbury.”</p> +<p>“I can quite believe it,” I says; “you’re +the sort of young man that would be known anywhere.”</p> +<p>“I’m Mr. Milberry,” he says, “the grocer, +in the High Street.”</p> +<p>“Then what are you doing here with this dog?” I says.</p> +<p><!-- page 96--><a name="page96"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 96</span>“Don’t +irritate me,” he answers. “I tell you I don’t +know myself. My wife’s stopping here at Warwick, nursing +her mother, and in every letter she’s written home for the last +fortnight she’s said, ‘Oh, how I do long to see Eric! +If only I could see Eric for a moment!’”</p> +<p>“A very motherly sentiment,” I says, “which does +her credit.”</p> +<p>“So this afternoon,” continues he, “it being early-closing +day, I thought I’d bring the child here, so that she might see +it, and see that it was all right. She can’t leave her mother +for more than about an hour, and I can’t go up to the house, because +the old lady doesn’t like me, and I excite her. I wish to +wait here, and Milly—that’s my wife—was to come to +me when she could get away. I meant this to be a surprise to her.”</p> +<p><!-- page 97--><a name="page97"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 97</span>“And +I guess,” I says, “it will be the biggest one you have ever +given her.”</p> +<p>“Don’t try to be funny about it,” he says; “I’m +not altogether myself, and I may do you an injury.”</p> +<p>He was right. It wasn’t a subject for joking, though +it had its humorous side.</p> +<p>“But why,” I says, “put it in a dog-basket?”</p> +<p>“It isn’t a dog-basket,” he answers irritably; +“it’s a picnic hamper. At the last moment I found +I hadn’t got the face to carry the child in my arms: I thought +of what the street-boys would call out after me. He’s a +rare one to sleep, and I thought if I made him comfortable in that he +couldn’t hurt, just for so short a journey. I took it in +the carriage with me, and carried it on my knees; I haven’t let +it out of my hands a blessed moment. <!-- page 98--><a name="page98"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 98</span>It’s +witchcraft, that’s what it is. I shall believe in the devil +after this.”</p> +<p>“Don’t be ridiculous,” I says, “there’s +some explanation; it only wants finding. You are sure this is +the identical hamper you packed the child in?”</p> +<p>He was calmer now. He leant over and examined it carefully. +“It looks like it,” he says; “but I can’t swear +to it.”</p> +<p>“You tell me,” I says, “you never let it go out +of your hands. Now think.”</p> +<p>“No,” he says, “it’s been on my knees all +the time.”</p> +<p>“But that’s nonsense,” I says; “unless you +packed the dog yourself in mistake for your baby. Now think it +over quietly. I’m not your wife, I’m only trying to +help you. I shan’t say anything even if you did take your +eyes off the thing for a minute.”</p> +<p>He thought again, and a light broke over <!-- page 99--><a name="page99"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 99</span>his +face. “By Jove!” he says, “you’re right. +I did put it down for a moment on the platform at Banbury while I bought +a ‘Tit-Bits.’”</p> +<p>“There you are,” I says; “now you’re talking +sense. And wait a minute; isn’t to-morrow the first day +of the Birmingham Dog Show?”</p> +<p>“I believe you’re right,” he says.</p> +<p>“Now we’re getting warm,” I says. “By +a coincidence this dog was being taken to Birmingham, packed in a hamper +exactly similar to the one you put your baby in. You’ve +got this man’s bull-pup, he’s got your baby; and I wouldn’t +like to say off-hand at this moment which of you’s feeling the +madder. As likely as not, he thinks you’ve done it on purpose.”</p> +<p>He leant his head against the bed-post and groaned. “Milly +may be here at any <!-- page 100--><a name="page100"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 100</span>moment,” +says he, “and I’ll have to tell her the baby’s been +sent by mistake to a Dog Show! I daresn’t do it,” +he says, “I daresn’t do it.”</p> +<p>“Go on to Birmingham,” I says, “and try and find +it. You can catch the quarter to six and be back here before eight.”</p> +<p>“Come with me,” he says; “you’re a good man, +come with me. I ain’t fit to go by myself.”</p> +<p>He was right; he’d have got run over outside the door, the +state he was in then.</p> +<p>“Well,” I says, “if the guv’nor don’t +object—”</p> +<p>“Oh! he won’t, he can’t,” cries the young +fellow, wringing his hands. “Tell him it’s a matter +of a life’s happiness. Tell him—”</p> +<p>“I’ll tell him it’s a matter of half <!-- page 101--><a name="page101"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 101</span>sovereign +extra on to the bill,” I says. “That’ll more +likely do the trick.”</p> +<p>And so it did, with the result that in another twenty minutes me +and young Milberry and the bull-pup in its hamper were in a third-class +carriage on our way to Birmingham. Then the difficulties of the +chase began to occur to me. Suppose by luck I was right; suppose +the pup was booked for the Birmingham Dog Show; and suppose by a bit +more luck a gent with a hamper answering description had been noticed +getting out of the 5.13 train; then where were we? We might have +to interview every cabman in the town. As likely as not, by the +time we did find the kid, it wouldn’t be worth the trouble of +unpacking. Still, it wasn’t my cue to blab my thoughts. +The father, poor fellow, was feeling, I take it, just about as bad as +<!-- page 102--><a name="page102"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 102</span>he +wanted to feel. My business was to put hope into him; so when +he asked me for about the twentieth time if I thought as he would ever +see his child alive again, I snapped him up shortish.</p> +<p>“Don’t you fret yourself about that,” I says. +“You’ll see a good deal of that child before you’ve +done with it. Babies ain’t the sort of things as gets lost +easily. It’s only on the stage that folks ever have any +particular use for other people’s children. I’ve known +some bad characters in my time, but I’d have trusted the worst +of ’em with a wagon-load of other people’s kids. Don’t +you flatter yourself you’re going to lose it! Whoever’s +got it, you take it from me, his idea is to do the honest thing, and +never rest till he’s succeeded in returning it to the rightful +owner.”</p> +<p><!-- page 103--><a name="page103"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 103</span>Well, +my talking like that cheered him, and when we reached Birmingham he +was easier. We tackled the station-master, and he tackled all +the porters who could have been about the platform when the 5.13 came +in. All of ’em agreed that no gent got out of that train +carrying a hamper. The station-master was a family man himself, +and when we explained the case to him he sympathised and telegraphed +to Banbury. The booking-clerk at Banbury remembered only three +gents booking by that particular train. One had been Mr. Jessop, +the corn-chandler; the second was a stranger, who had booked to Wolverhampton; +and the third had been young Milberry himself. The business began +to look hopeless, when one of Smith’s newsboys, who was hanging +around, struck in:</p> +<p><!-- page 104--><a name="page104"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 104</span>“I +see an old lady,” says he, “hovering about outside the station, +and a-hailing cabs, and she had a hamper with her as was as like that +one there as two peas.”</p> +<p>I thought young Milberry would have fallen upon the boy’s neck +and kissed him. With the boy to help us, we started among the +cabmen. Old ladies with dog-baskets ain’t so difficult to +trace. She had gone to a small second-rate hotel in the Aston +Road. I heard all particulars from the chambermaid, and the old +girl seems to have had as bad a time in her way as my gent had in his. +They couldn’t get the hamper into the cab, it had to go on the +top. The old lady was very worried, as it was raining at the time, +and she made the cabman cover it with his apron. Getting it off +the cab they dropped the whole <!-- page 105--><a name="page105"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 105</span>thing +in the road; that woke the child up, and it began to cry.</p> +<p>“Good Lord, Ma’am! what is it?” asks the chambermaid, +“a baby?”</p> +<p>“Yes, my dear, it’s my baby,” answers the old lady, +who seems to have been a cheerful sort of old soul—leastways, +she was cheerful up to then. “Poor dear, I hope they haven’t +hurt him.”</p> +<p>The old lady had ordered a room with a fire in it. The Boots +took the hamper up, and laid it on the hearthrug. The old lady +said she and the chambermaid would see to it, and turned him out. +By this time, according to the girl’s account, it was roaring +like a steam-siren.</p> +<p>“Pretty dear!” says the old lady, fumbling with the cord, +“don’t cry; mother’s opening it as fast as she can.” +Then she turns to the chambermaid—“If <!-- page 106--><a name="page106"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 106</span>you +open my bag,” says she, “you will find a bottle of milk +and some dog-biscuits.”</p> +<p>“Dog-biscuits!” says the chambermaid.</p> +<p>“Yes,” says the old lady, laughing, “my baby loves +dog-biscuits.”</p> +<p>The girl opened the bag, and there, sure enough, was a bottle of +milk and half a dozen Spratt’s biscuits. She had her back +to the old lady, when she heard a sort of a groan and a thud as made +her turn round. The old lady was lying stretched dead on the hearthrug—so +the chambermaid thought. The kid was sitting up in the hamper +yelling the roof off. In her excitement, not knowing what she +was doing, she handed it a biscuit, which it snatched at greedily and +began sucking.</p> +<p>Then she set to work to slap the old lady back to life again. +In about a minute the <!-- page 107--><a name="page107"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 107</span>poor +old soul opened her eyes and looked round. The baby was quiet +now, gnawing the dog-biscuit. The old lady looked at the child, +then turned and hid her face against the chambermaid’s bosom.</p> +<p>“What is it?” she says, speaking in an awed voice. +“The thing in the hamper?”</p> +<p>“It’s a baby, Ma’am,” says the maid.</p> +<p>“You’re sure it ain’t a dog?” says the old +lady. “Look again.”</p> +<p>The girl began to feel nervous, and to wish that she wasn’t +alone with the old lady.</p> +<p>“I ain’t likely to mistake a dog for a baby, Ma’am,” +says the girl. “It’s a child—a human infant.”</p> +<p>The old lady began to cry softly. “It’s a judgment +on me,” she says. “I used to talk to that dog as if +it had been a Christian, and now this thing has happened as a punishment.”</p> +<p><!-- page 108--><a name="page108"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 108</span>“What’s +happened?” says the chambermaid, who was naturally enough growing +more and more curious.</p> +<p>“I don’t know,” says the old lady, sitting up on +the floor. “If this isn’t a dream, and if I ain’t +mad, I started from my home at Farthinghoe, two hours ago, with a one-year-old +bulldog packed in that hamper. You saw me open it; you see what’s +inside it now.”</p> +<p>“But bulldogs,” says the chambermaid, “ain’t +changed into babies by magic.”</p> +<p>“I don’t know how it’s done,” says the old +lady, “and I don’t see that it matters. I know I started +with a bulldog, and somehow or other it’s got turned into that.”</p> +<p>“Somebody’s put it there,” says the chambermaid; +“somebody as wanted to get rid of a child. They’ve +took your dog out and put that in its place.”</p> +<p><!-- page 109--><a name="page109"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 109</span>“They +must have been precious smart,” says the old lady; “the +hamper hasn’t been out of my sight for more than five minutes, +when I went into the refreshment-room at Banbury for a cup of tea.”</p> +<p>“That’s when they did it,” says the chambermaid, +“and a clever trick it was.”</p> +<p>The old lady suddenly grasped her position, and jumped up from the +floor. “And a nice thing for me,” she says. +“An unmarried woman in a scandal-mongering village! This +is awful!”</p> +<p>“It’s a fine-looking child,” says the chambermaid.</p> +<p>“Would you like it?” says the old lady.</p> +<p>The chambermaid said she wouldn’t. The old lady sat down +and tried to think, and the more she thought the worse she felt. +The chambermaid was positive that if we hadn’t come when we did +the poor <!-- page 110--><a name="page110"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 110</span>creature +would have gone mad. When the Boots appeared at the door to say +there was a gent and a bulldog downstairs enquiring after a baby, she +flung her arms round the man’s neck and hugged him.</p> +<p>We just caught the train to Warwick, and by luck got back to the +hotel ten minutes before the mother turned up. Young Milberry +carried the child in his arms all the way. He said I could have +the hamper for myself, and gave me half-a-sovereign extra on the understanding +that I kept my mouth shut, which I did.</p> +<p>I don’t think he ever told the child’s mother what had +happened—leastways, if he wasn’t a fool right through, he +didn’t.</p> +<h2><!-- page 113--><a name="page113"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 113</span>THE +PROBATION OF JAMES WRENCH.</h2> +<p>“There are two sorts of men as gets hen-pecked,” remarked +Henry—I forgot how the subject had originated, but we had been +discussing the merits of Henry VIII., considered as a father and a husband,—“the +sort as likes it and the sort as don’t, and I wouldn’t be +too cocksure that the sort as does isn’t on the whole in the majority.</p> +<p>“You see,” continued Henry argumentatively, “it +gives, as it were, a kind of interest to life which nowadays, with everything +going smoothly, and no chance of a row anywhere except in your own <!-- page 114--><a name="page114"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 114</span>house, +is apt to become a bit monotonous. There was a chap I got to know +pretty well one winter when I was working in Dresden at the Europäischer +Hof: a quiet, meek little man he was, a journeyman butcher by trade; +and his wife was a dressmaker, a Schneiderin, as they call them over +there, and ran a fairly big business in the Praguer Strasse. I’ve +always been told that German husbands are the worst going, treating +their wives like slaves, or, at the best, as mere upper servants. +But my experience is that human nature don’t alter so much according +to distance from London as we fancy it does, and that husbands have +their troubles same as wives all the world over. Anyhow, I’ve +come across a German husband or two as didn’t carry about with +him any sign of the slave driver such as you might notice, at all events +not in his own house; and I <!-- page 115--><a name="page115"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 115</span>know +for a fact that Meister Anton, which was the name of the chap I’m +telling you about, couldn’t have been much worse off, not even +if he’d been an Englishman born and bred. There were no +children to occupy her mind, so she just devoted herself to him and +the work-girls, and made things hum, as they say in America, for all +of them. As for the girls, they got away at six in the evening, +and not many of them stopped more than the first month. But the +old man, not being able to give notice, had to put up with an average +of eighteen hours a day of it. And even when, as was sometimes +the case, he managed to get away for an hour or two in the evening for +a quiet talk with a few of us over a glass of beer, he could never be +quite happy, thinking of what was accumulating for him at home. +Of course <!-- page 116--><a name="page116"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 116</span>everybody +as knew him knew of his troubles—for a scolding wife ain’t +the sort of thing as can be hid under a bushel,—and was sorry +for him, he being as amiable and good-tempered a fellow as ever lived, +and most of us spent our time with him advising him for his good. +Some of the more ardent would give him recipes for managing her, but +they, being generally speaking bachelors, their suggestions lacked practicability, +as you might say. One man bored his life out persuading him to +try a bucket of cold water. He was one of those cold-water enthusiasts, +this fellow; took it himself for everything, and always went to a hydropathic +establishment for his holidays. Rumour had it that Meister Anton +really did try this experiment on one unfortunate occasion—worried +into it, I suppose, by the other chap’s persistency. <!-- page 117--><a name="page117"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 117</span>Anyhow, +we didn’t see him again for a week, he being confined to his bed +with a chill on the liver. And the next suggestion made to him +he rejected quite huffily, explaining that he had no intention of putting +any fresh ideas into his wife’s head.</p> +<p>“She wasn’t a bad woman, mind you—merely given +to fits of temper. At times she could be quite pleasant: but when +she wasn’t life with her must have been exciting. He had +stood it for about seven years; and then one day, without a word of +warning to anyone, he went away and left her. As she was quite +able to keep herself, this seemed to be the best arrangement possible, +and everybody wondered why he had never thought of it before, I did +not see him again for nine months, until I ran against him by pure chance +on <!-- page 118--><a name="page118"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 118</span>the +Köln platform, where I was waiting for a train to Paris. +He told me they had made up all their differences by correspondence, +and that he was then on his way back to her. He seemed quite cheerful +and expectant.</p> +<p>“‘Do you think she’s really reformed?’ I +says. ‘Do you think nine months is long enough to have taught +her a lesson?’ I didn’t want to damp him, but personally +I have never known but one case of a woman being cured of nagging, and +that being brought about by a fall from a third-story window, resulting +in what the doctors called permanent paralysis of the vocal organs, +can hardly be taken as a precedent.</p> +<p>“‘No,’ he answers, ‘nor nine years. +But it’s been long enough to teach me a lesson.’</p> +<p><!-- page 119--><a name="page119"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 119</span>“‘You +know me,’ he goes on. ‘I ain’t a quarrelsome +sort of chap. If nobody says a word to me, I never says a word +to anybody; and it’s been like that ever since I left her, day +in and day out, all just the same. Up in the morning, do your +bit of work, drink your glass of beer, and to bed in the evening; nothing +to excite you, nothing to rouse you. Why, it’s a mere animal +existence.’</p> +<p>“He was a rum sort of chap, always thought things out from +his own point of view as it were.”</p> +<p>“Yes, a curious case,” I remarked to Henry; “not +the sort of story to put about, however. It might give women the +idea that nagging is attractive, and encourage them to try it upon husbands +who do not care for that kind of excitement.”</p> +<p><!-- page 120--><a name="page120"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 120</span>“Not +much fear of that,” replied Henry. “The nagging woman +is born, as they say, not made; and she’ll nag like the roses +bloom, not because she wants to, but because she can’t help it. +And a woman to whom it don’t come natural will never be any real +good at it, try as she may. And as for the men, why we’ll +just go on selecting wives according to the old rule, so that you never +know what you’ve got till it’s too late for you to do anything +but make the best or the worst of it, according as your fancy takes +you.</p> +<p>“There was a fellow,” continued Henry, “as used +to work with me a good many years ago now at a small hotel in the City. +He was a waiter, like myself—not a bad sort of chap, though a +bit of a toff in his off-hours. He’d been engaged for some +two or three years to one of the <!-- page 121--><a name="page121"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 121</span>chambermaids. +A pretty, gentle-looking little thing she was, with big childish eyes, +and a voice like the pouring out of water. They are strange things, +women; one can never tell what they are made of from the taste of them. +And while I was there, it having been a good season for both of them, +they thought they’d risk it and get married. They did the +sensible thing, he coming back to his work after the week’s holiday, +and she to hers; the only difference being that they took a couple of +rooms of their own in Middleton Row, from where in summer-time you can +catch the glimpse of a green tree or two, and slept out.</p> +<p>“The first few months they were as happy as a couple in a play, +she thinking almost as much of him as he thought of himself, which must +have been a comfort <!-- page 122--><a name="page122"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 122</span>to +both of them, and he as proud of her as if he made her himself. +And then some fifteenth cousin or so of his, a man he had never heard +of before, died in New Zealand and left him a fortune.</p> +<p>“That was the beginning of his troubles, and hers too. +I don’t say it was enough to buy a peerage, but to a man accustomed +to dream of half-crown tips it seemed an enormous fortune. Anyhow, +it was sufficient to turn his head and give him ideas above his station. +His first move, of course, was to chuck his berth and set fire to his +dress suit, which, being tolerably greasy, burned well. Had he +stopped there nobody could have blamed him. I’ve often thought +myself that I would willingly give ten years of my life, provided anybody +wanted them, which I don’t see how they should, to put my own +behind the fire. <!-- page 123--><a name="page123"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 123</span>But +he didn’t. He took a house in a mews, with the front door +in a street off Grosvenor Square, furnished it like a second-class German +restaurant, dressed himself like a bookmaker, and fancied that with +the help of a few shady City chaps and a broken-down swell or two he +had gathered round him, he was fairly on the road to Park Lane and the +House of Lords.</p> +<p>“And the only thing that struck him as being at all in his +way was his wife. In her cap and apron, or her Sunday print she +had always looked as dainty and fetching a little piece of goods as +a man could wish to be seen out with. Dressed according to the +advice of his new-found friends, of course she looked like nothing else +so much as a barn-yard chicken in turkey-cock’s feathers. +He was shocked to find that her size in gloves <!-- page 124--><a name="page124"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 124</span>was +seven-and-a-quarter, and in boots something over four, and that sort +of thing naturally irritates a woman more even than finding fault with +her immortal soul. I guess for about a year he made her life pretty +well a burden for her, trying to bring her up to the standard of the +Saturday-to-Monday-at-Brighton set with which he had surrounded himself, +or which, to speak more correctly, had got round him. She’d +a precious sight more gumption than he had ever possessed, and if he +had listened to her instead of insisting upon her listening to him it +would have been better for him. But there are some men who think +that if you have a taste for champagne and the ballet that proves you +are intended by nature for a nob, and he was one of them; and any common-sense +suggestion of hers only convinced <!-- page 125--><a name="page125"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 125</span>him +of her natural unfitness for an exalted station.</p> +<p>“He grumbled at her accent, which, seeing that his own was +acquired in Lime-house and finished off in the Minories, was just the +sort of thing a fool would do. And he insisted on her reading +all the society novels as they came out—you know the sort I mean,—where +everybody snaps everybody else’s head off, and all the proverbs +are upside down; people leave them about the hotels when they’ve +done with them, and one gets into the habit of dipping into them when +one’s nothing better to do. His hope was that she might, +with pains, get to talk like these books. That was his ideal.</p> +<p>“She did her best, but of course the more she got away from +herself the more absurd she became; and the rubbish and <!-- page 126--><a name="page126"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 126</span>worse +that he had about him would ridicule her more or less openly. +And he, instead of kicking them out into the mews—which could +have been done easily without Grosvenor Square knowing anything about +it, and thereby having its high-class feelings hurt—he would blame +her when they had all gone, just as if it was her fault that she was +the daughter of a respectable bootmaker in the Mile End Road instead +of something more likely than not turned out of the third row of the +ballet because it couldn’t dance, and didn’t want to learn.</p> +<p>“He played a bit in the City, and won at first, and that swelled +his head worse than ever. It also brought him a good deal of sympathy +from an Italian Countess, the sort you find at Homburg, and that generally +speaking is a widow. Her chief sorrow was for society—that +in him was losing an <!-- page 127--><a name="page127"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 127</span>ornament. +She explained to him how an accomplished and experienced woman could +help a man to gain admittance into the tiptop circles, which, according +to her, were just thirsting for him. As a waiter, he had his share +of brains, and it’s a business that requires more insight than +perhaps you’d fancy, if you don’t want to waste your time +on a rabbit-skin coat and a paste ring, and give the burnt sole to the +real gent. But in the hands of this swell mob he was, of course, +just the young man from the country; and the end of it was that he played +the game down pretty low.</p> +<p>“She—not the Countess, I shouldn’t like you to +have that idea, but his wife—came to be pretty friendly with my +missus later on, and that’s how I got to know the details. +He comes to her one day looking pretty sheepish-like, as one can well +<!-- page 128--><a name="page128"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 128</span>believe, +and maybe he’d been drinking a bit to give himself courage.</p> +<p>“‘We ain’t been getting along too well together +of late, have we, Susan?’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘We ain’t seen much of one another,’ she +answers; ‘but I agree with you, we don’t seem to enjoy it +much when we do.’</p> +<p>“‘It ain’t your fault,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘I’m glad you think that,’ she answers; +‘it shows me you ain’t quite as foolish as I was beginning +to think you.’</p> +<p>“‘Of course, I didn’t know when I married you,’ +he goes on, ‘as I was going to come into this money.’</p> +<p>“‘No, nor I either,’ says she, ‘or you bet +it wouldn’t have happened.’</p> +<p>“‘It seems to have been a bit of a mistake,’ says +he, ‘as things have turned out.’</p> +<p><!-- page 129--><a name="page129"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 129</span>“‘It +would have been a mistake, and more than a bit of a one in any case,’ +answers she.</p> +<p>“‘I’m glad you agree with me,’ says he; ‘there’ll +be no need to quarrel.’</p> +<p>“‘I’ve always tried to agree with you,’ says +she. ‘We’ve never quarrelled yet, and that ought to +be sufficient proof to you that we never shall.’</p> +<p>“‘It’s a mistake that can be rectified,’ +says he, ‘if you are sensible, and that without any harm to anyone.’</p> +<p>“‘Oh!’ says she, ‘it must be a new sort of +mistake, that kind.’</p> +<p>“‘We’re not fitted for one another,’ says +he.</p> +<p>“‘Out with it,’ says she. ‘Don’t +you be afraid of my feelings; they are well under control, as I think +I can fairly say by this time.’</p> +<p><!-- page 130--><a name="page130"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 130</span>“‘With +a man in your own station of life,’ says he, ‘you’d +be happier.’</p> +<p>“‘There’s many a man I might have been happier +with,’ replies she. ‘That ain’t the thing to +be discussed, seeing as I’ve got you.’</p> +<p>“‘You might get rid of me,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘You mean you might get rid of me,’ she answers.</p> +<p>“‘It comes to the same thing,’ he says.</p> +<p>“‘No, it don’t,’ she replies, ‘nor +anything like it. I shouldn’t have got rid of you for my +pleasure, and I’m not going to do it for yours. You can +live like a decent man, and I’ll go on putting up with you; or +you can live like a fool, and I shan’t stand in your way. +But you can’t do both, and I’m not going to help you try.’</p> +<p>“Well, he argued with her, and he tried the coaxing dodge, +and he tried the <!-- page 131--><a name="page131"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 131</span>bullying +dodge, but it didn’t work, neither of it.</p> +<p>“‘I’ve done my duty by you,’ says she, ‘so +far as I’ve been able, and that I’ll go on doing or not, +just as you please; but I don’t do more.’</p> +<p>“‘We can’t go on living like this,’ says +he, ‘and it isn’t fair to ask me to. You’re +hammering my prospects.’</p> +<p>“‘I don’t want to do that,’ says she. +‘You take your proper position in society, whatever that may be, +and I’ll take mine. I’ll be glad enough to get back +to it, you may rest assured.’</p> +<p>“‘What do you mean?’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘It’s simple enough,’ she answers. +‘I was earning my living before I married you, and I can earn +it again. You go your way, I go mine.’</p> +<p>“It didn’t satisfy him; but there was <!-- page 132--><a name="page132"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 132</span>nothing +else to be done, and there was no moving her now in any other direction +whatever, even had he wanted to. He offered her anything in the +way of money—he wasn’t a mean chap,—but she wouldn’t +touch a penny. She had kept her old clothes—I’m not +sure that some idea of needing them hadn’t always been in her +head,—applied for a place under her former manager, who was then +bossing a hotel in Kensington, and got it. And there was an end +of high life so far as she was concerned.</p> +<p>“As for him, he went the usual way. It always seems to +me as if men and women were just like water; sooner or later they get +back to the level from which they started—that is, of course, +generally speaking. Here and there a drop clings where it climbs; +but, taking them <!-- page 133--><a name="page133"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 133</span>on +the whole, pumping-up is a slow business. Lord! I have seen +them, many of them, jolly clever they’ve thought themselves, with +their diamond rings and big cigars. ‘Wait a bit,’ +I’ve always said to myself, ‘there’ll come a day when +you’ll walk in and be glad enough of your chop and potatoes again +with your half-pint of bitter.’ And nine cases out of ten +I’ve been right. James Wrench followed the course of the +majority, only a little more so: tried to do others a precious sight +sharper than himself, and got done; tried a dozen times to scramble +up again, each time coming down heavier than before, till there wasn’t +another spring left in him, and his only ambition victuals. Then, +of course, he thought of his wife—it’s a wonderful domesticator, +ill luck—and wondered what she was doing.</p> +<p><!-- page 134--><a name="page134"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 134</span>“Fortunately +for him, she’d been doing well. Her father died and left +her a bit, just a couple of hundred or so, and with this and her own +savings she started with a small inn in a growing town, and had sold +out again three years later at four times what she had paid for it. +She had done even better than that for herself. She had developed +a talent for cooking—that was a settled income in itself,—and +at this time was running a small hotel in Brighton, and making it pay +to a tune that would have made the shareholders of some of its bigger +rivals a bit envious could they have known.</p> +<p>“He came to me, having found out, I don’t know how—necessity +smartens the wits, I suppose,—that my missis still kept up a sort +of friendship with her, and begged me to try and arrange a meeting <!-- page 135--><a name="page135"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 135</span>between +them, which I did, though I told him frankly that from what I knew his +welcome wouldn’t be much more enthusiastic than what he’d +any right to expect. But he was always of a sanguine disposition; +and borrowing his fare and an old greatcoat of mine, he started off, +evidently thinking that all his troubles were over.</p> +<p>“But they weren’t exactly. The Married Women’s +Property Act had altered things a bit, and Master James found himself +greeted without any suggestion of tenderness by a business-like woman +of thirty-six or thereabouts, and told to wait in the room behind the +bar till she could find time to talk to him.</p> +<p>“She kept him waiting there for three-quarters of an hour, +just sufficient time to take the side out of him; and then <!-- page 136--><a name="page136"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 136</span>she +walks in and closes the door behind her.</p> +<p>“‘I’d say you hadn’t changed hardly a day, +Susan,’ says he, ‘if it wasn’t that you’d grown +handsomer than ever.’</p> +<p>“I guess he’d been turning that over in his mind during +the three-quarters of an hour. It was his fancy that he knew a +bit about women.</p> +<p>“‘My name’s Mrs. Wrench,’ says she; ‘and +if you take your hat off and stand up while I’m talking to you +it will be more what I’m accustomed to.’</p> +<p>“Well, that staggered him a bit; but there didn’t seem +anything else to be done, so he just made as if he thought it funny, +though I doubt if at the time he saw the full humour of it.</p> +<p>“‘And now, what do you want?” says she, seating +herself in front of her desk, <!-- page 137--><a name="page137"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 137</span>and +leaving him standing, first on one leg and then on the other, twiddling +his hat in his hands.</p> +<p>“‘I’ve been a bad husband to you, Susan,’ +begins he.</p> +<p>“‘I could have told you that,’ she answers. +‘What I asked you was what you wanted.’</p> +<p>“‘I want for us to let bygones be bygones,’ says +he.</p> +<p>“‘That’s quite my own idea,’ says she, ‘and +if you don’t allude to the past, I shan’t.’</p> +<p>“‘You’re an angel, Susan,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘I’ve told you once,’ answers she, ‘that +my name’s Mrs. Wrench. I’m Susan to my friends, not +to every broken-down tramp looking for a job.’</p> +<p>“‘Ain’t I your husband?’ says he, trying +a bit of dignity.</p> +<p><!-- page 138--><a name="page138"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 138</span>“She +got up and took a glance through the glass-door to see that nobody was +there to overhear her.</p> +<p>“‘For the first and last time,’ says she, ‘let +you and me understand one another. I’ve been eleven years +without a husband, and I’ve got used to it. I don’t +feel now as I want one of any kind, and if I did it wouldn’t be +your sort. Eleven years ago I wasn’t good enough for you, +and now you’re not good enough for me.’</p> +<p>“‘I want to reform,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘I want to see you do it,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘Give me a chance,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘I’m going to,’ says she; ‘but it’s +going to be my experiment this time, not yours. Eleven years ago +I didn’t give you satisfaction, so you turned me out of doors.’</p> +<p><!-- page 139--><a name="page139"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 139</span>“‘You +went, Susan,’ says he; ‘you know it was your own idea.’</p> +<p>“‘Don’t you remind me too much of the circumstances,’ +replies she, turning on him with a look in her eyes that was probably +new to him, ‘I went because there wasn’t room for two of +us; you know that. The other kind suited you better. Now +I’m going to see whether you suit me,’ and she sits herself +again in her landlady’s chair.</p> +<p>“‘In what way?’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘In the way of earning your living,’ says she, +‘and starting on the road to becoming a decent member of society.’</p> +<p>“He stood for a while cogitating.</p> +<p>“‘Don’t you think,’ says he at last, ‘as +I could manage this hotel for you?’</p> +<p>“‘Thanks,’ says she; ‘I’m doing that +myself.’</p> +<p><!-- page 140--><a name="page140"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 140</span>“‘What +about looking to the financial side of things,’ says he, ‘and +keeping the accounts? It’s hardly your work.’</p> +<p>“‘Nor yours either,’ answers she drily, ‘judging +by the way you’ve been keeping your own.’</p> +<p>“‘You wouldn’t like me to be head-waiter, I suppose?’ +says he. ‘It would be a bit of a come-down.’</p> +<p>“‘You’re thinking of the hotel, I suppose,’ +says she. ‘Perhaps you are right. My customers are +mostly an old-fashioned class; it’s probable enough they might +not like you. You had better suggest something else.’</p> +<p>“‘I could hardly be an under-waiter,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘Perhaps not,’ says she; ‘your manners strike +me as a bit too familiar for that.’</p> +<p><!-- page 141--><a name="page141"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 141</span>“Then +he thought he’d try sarcasm.</p> +<p>“‘Perhaps you’d fancy my being the boots,’ +says he.</p> +<p>“‘That’s more reasonable,’ says she. +‘You couldn’t do much harm there, and I could keep an eye +on you.’</p> +<p>“‘You really mean that?’ says he, starting to put +on his dignity.</p> +<p>“But she cut him short by ringing the bell.</p> +<p>“‘If you think you can do better for yourself,’ +she says, ‘there’s an end of it. By a curious coincidence +the place is just now vacant. I’ll keep it open for you +till to-morrow night; you can turn it over in your mind.’ +And one of the page boys coming in she just says ‘Good-morning,’ +and the interview was at an end.</p> +<p>“Well, he turned it over, and he took the job. He thought +she’d relent after the <!-- page 142--><a name="page142"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 142</span>first +week or two, but she didn’t. He just kept that place for +over fifteen months, and learnt the business. In the house he +was James the boots, and she Mrs. Wrench the landlady, and she saw to +it that he didn’t forget it. He had his wages and he made +his tips, and the food was plentiful; but I take it he worked harder +during that time than he’d ever worked before in his life, and +found that a landlady is just twice as difficult to please as the strictest +landlord it can be a man’s misfortune to get under, and that Mrs. +Wrench was no exception to the rule.</p> +<p>“At the end of the fifteen months she sends for him into the +office. He didn’t want telling by this time; he just stood +with his hat in his hand and waited respectful like.</p> +<p>“‘James,’ says she, after she had finished <!-- page 143--><a name="page143"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 143</span>what +she was doing, ‘I find I shall want another waiter for the coffee-room +this season. Would you care to try the place?’</p> +<p>“‘Thank you, Mrs. Wrench,’ he answers; ‘it’s +more what I’ve been used to, and I think I’ll be able to +give satisfaction.’</p> +<p>“‘There’s no wages attached, as I suppose you know,’ +continues she; ‘but the second floor goes with it, and if you +know your business you ought to make from twenty-five to thirty shillings +a week.’</p> +<p>“Thank you, Mrs. Wrench; that’ll suit me very well,’ +replies he; and it was settled.</p> +<p>“He did better as a waiter; he’d got it in his blood, +as you might say; and so after a time he worked up to be head-waiter. +Now and then, of course, it came about that he found himself waiting +on <!-- page 144--><a name="page144"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 144</span>the +very folks that he’d been chums with in his classy days, and that +must have been a bit rough on him. But he’d taken in a good +deal of sense since then; and when one of the old sort, all rings and +shirt-front, dining there one Sunday evening, started chaffing him, +Jimmy just shut him up with a quiet: ‘Yes, I guess we were both +a bit out of our place in those days. The difference between us +now is that I have got back to mine,’ which cost him his tip, +but must nave been a satisfaction to him.</p> +<p>“Altogether he worked in that hotel for some three and a half +years, and then Mrs. Wrench sends for him again into the office.</p> +<p>“‘Sit down, James,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘Thank you, Mrs. Wrench,’ says James, and sat.</p> +<p><!-- page 145--><a name="page145"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 145</span>“‘I’m +thinking of giving up this hotel, James,’ says she, ‘and +taking another near Dover, a quiet place with just such a clientele +as I shall like. Do you care to come with me?’</p> +<p>“‘Thank you,’ says he, ‘but I’m thinking, +Mrs. Wrench, of making a change myself.’</p> +<p>“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘I’m sorry to hear +that, James. I thought we’d been getting on very well together.’</p> +<p>“‘I’ve tried to do my best, Mrs. Wrench,’ +says he, ‘and I hope as I’ve given satisfaction.’</p> +<p>“‘I’ve nothing to complain of, James,’ says +she.</p> +<p>“‘I thank you for saying it,’ says he, ‘and +I thank you for the opportunity you gave me when I wanted it. +It’s been the making of me.’</p> +<p><!-- page 146--><a name="page146"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 146</span>“She +didn’t answer for about a minute. Then says she: ‘You’ve +been meeting some of your old friends, James, I’m afraid, and +they’ve been persuading you to go back into the City.’</p> +<p>“‘No, Mrs. Wrench,’ says he; ‘no more City +for me, and no more neighbourhood of Grosvenor Square, unless it be +in the way of business; and that couldn’t be, of course, for a +good long while to come.’</p> +<p>“‘What do you mean by business?’ asks she.</p> +<p>“‘The hotel business,’ replies he. ‘I +believe I know the bearings by now. I’ve saved a bit, thanks +to you, Mrs. Wrench, and a bit’s come in from the wreck that I +never hoped for.’</p> +<p>“‘Enough to start you?’ asks she.</p> +<p><!-- page 147--><a name="page147"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 147</span>“‘Not +quite enough for that,’ answers he. ‘My idea is a +small partnership.’</p> +<p>“‘How much is it altogether?’ says she, ‘if +it’s not an impertinent question.’</p> +<p>“‘Not at all,’ answers he. ‘It tots +up to £900 about.’</p> +<p>“She turns back to her desk and goes on with her writing.</p> +<p>“‘Dover wouldn’t suit you, I suppose?’ says +she without looking round.</p> +<p>“‘Dover’s all right,’ says he, ‘if +the business is a good one.’</p> +<p>“‘It can be worked up into one of the best things going,’ +says she, ‘and I’m getting it dirt cheap. You can +have a third share for a thousand pounds, that’s just what it’s +costing, and owe me the other hundred.”</p> +<p>“‘And what position do I take?’ says he.</p> +<p><!-- page 148--><a name="page148"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 148</span>“‘If +you come in on those terms,’ says she, ‘then, of course, +it’s a partnership.’</p> +<p>“He rose and came over to her. ‘Life isn’t +all business, Susan,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘I’ve found it so mostly,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘Fourteen years ago,’ says he, ‘I made the +mistake; now you’re making it.’</p> +<p>“‘What mistake am I making?’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘That man’s the only thing as can’t learn +a lesson,’ says he.</p> +<p>“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘and what’s the lesson +that you’ve learnt?’</p> +<p>“‘That I never get on without you, Susan,’ says +he.</p> +<p>“‘Well,’ says she, ‘you suggested a partnership, +and I agreed to it. What more do you want?’</p> +<p>“‘I want to know the name of the firm,’ says he.</p> +<p><!-- page 149--><a name="page149"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 149</span>“‘Mr. +and Mrs. Wrench,’ says she, turning round to him and holding out +her hand. ‘How will that suit you?’</p> +<p>“‘That’ll do me all right,’ answers he. +‘And I’ll try and give satisfaction,’ adds he.</p> +<p>“‘I believe you,’ says she.</p> +<p>“And in that way they made a fresh start, as it were.”</p> +<h2><!-- page 153--><a name="page153"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 153</span>THE +WOOING OF TOM SLEIGHT’S WIFE.</h2> +<p>“It’s competition,” replied Henry, “that +makes the world go round. You never want a thing particularly +until you see another fellow trying to get it; then it strikes you all +of a sudden that you’ve a better right to it than he has. +Take barmaids: what’s the attraction about ’em? In +looks they’re no better than the average girl in the street; while +as for their temper, well that’s a bit above the average—leastways, +so far as my experience goes. Yet the thinnest of ’em has +her dozen, making sheep’s-eyes at her across the counter. +I’ve known girls that on the <!-- page 154--><a name="page154"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 154</span>level +couldn’t have got a policeman to look at ’em. Put +’em behind a row of tumblers and a shilling’s-worth of stale +pastry, and nothing outside a Lincoln and Bennett is good enough for +’em. It’s the competition that’s the making +of ’em.</p> +<p>“Now, I’ll tell you a story,” continued Henry, +“that bears upon the subject. It’s a pretty story, +if you look at it from one point of view; though my wife maintains—and +she’s a bit of a judge, mind you—that it’s not yet +finished, she arguing that there’s a difference between marrying +and being married. You can have a fancy for the one, without caring +much about the other. What I tell her is that a boy isn’t +a man, and a man isn’t a boy. Besides, it’s five years +ago now, and nothing has happened since: though of course one can never +say.”</p> +<p><!-- page 155--><a name="page155"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 155</span>“I +would like to hear the story,” I ventured to suggest; “I’ll +be able to judge better afterwards.”</p> +<p>“It’s not a long one,” replied Henry, “though +as a matter of fact it began seventeen years ago in Portsmouth, New +Hampshire. He was a wild young fellow, and always had been.”</p> +<p>“Who was?” I interrupted.</p> +<p>“Tom Sleight,” answered Henry, “the chap I’m +telling you about. He belonged to a good family, his father being +a Magistrate for Monmouthshire; but there had been no doing anything +with young Tom from the very first. At fifteen he ran away from +school at Clifton, and with everything belonging to him tied up in a +pocket-handkerchief made his way to Bristol Docks. There he shipped +as boy on board an American schooner, the <!-- page 156--><a name="page156"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 156</span>Cap’n +not pressing for any particulars, being short-handed, and the boy himself +not volunteering much. Whether his folks made much of an effort +to get him back, or whether they didn’t, I can’t tell you. +Maybe, they thought a little roughing it would knock some sense into +him. Anyhow, the fact remains that for the next seven or eight +years, until the sudden death of his father made him a country gentleman, +a more or less jolly sailor-man he continued to be. And it was +during that period—to be exact, three years after he ran away +and four years before he returned—that, as I have said, at Portsmouth, +New Hampshire, he married, after ten days’ courtship, Mary Godselle, +only daughter of Jean Godselle, saloon keeper of that town.”</p> +<p>“That makes him just eighteen,” I <!-- page 157--><a name="page157"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 157</span>remarked; +“somewhat young for a bridegroom.”</p> +<p>“But a good deal older than the bride,” was Henry’s +comment, “she being at the time a few months over fourteen.”</p> +<p>“Was it legal?” I enquired.</p> +<p>“Quite legal,” answered Henry. “In New Hampshire, +it would seem, they encourage early marriages. ‘Can’t +begin a good thing too soon,’ is, I suppose, their motto.”</p> +<p>“How did the marriage turn out?” was my next question. +The married life of a lady and gentleman, the united ages of whom amounted +to thirty-two, promised interesting developments.</p> +<p>“Practically speaking,” replied Henry, “it wasn’t +a marriage at all. It had been a secret affair from the beginning, +as perhaps you can imagine. The old man <!-- page 158--><a name="page158"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 158</span>had +other ideas for his daughter, and wasn’t the sort of father to +be played with. They separated at the church door, intending to +meet again in the evening. Two hours later Master Tom Sleight +got knocked on the head in a street brawl. If a row was to be +had anywhere within walking distance he was the sort of fellow to be +in it. When he came to his senses he found himself lying in his +bunk, and the ‘Susan Pride’—if that was the name of +the ship; I think it was—ten miles out to sea. The Captain +declined to put the vessel about to please either a loving seaman or +a loving seaman’s wife; and to come to the point, the next time +Mr. Tom Sleight saw Mrs. Tom Sleight was seven years later at the American +bar of the Grand Central in Paris; and then he didn’t know her.”</p> +<p><!-- page 159--><a name="page159"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 159</span>“But +what had she been doing all the time?” I queried. “Do +you mean to tell me that she, a married woman, had been content to let +her husband disappear without making any attempt to trace him?”</p> +<p>“I was making it short,” retorted Henry, in an injured +tone, “for your benefit; if you want to have the whole of it, +of course you can. He wasn’t a scamp; he was just a scatterbrain—that +was the worst you could say against him. He tried to communicate +with her, but never got an answer. Then he wrote to the father, +and told him frankly the whole story. The letter came back six +months later, marked—‘Gone away; left no address.’ +You see, what had happened was this: the old man died suddenly a month +or two after the marriage, without <!-- page 160--><a name="page160"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 160</span>ever +having heard a word about it. The girl hadn’t a relative +or friend in the town, all her folks being French Canadians. She’d +got her pride, and she’d got a sense of humour not common in a +woman. I was with her at the Grand Central for over a year, and +came to know her pretty well. She didn’t choose to advertise +the fact that her husband had run away from her, as she thought, an +hour after he had married her. She knew he was a gentleman with +rich relatives somewhere in England; and as the months went by without +bringing word or sign of him, she concluded he’d thought the matter +over and was ashamed of her. You must remember she was merely +a child at the time, and hardly understood her position. Maybe +later on she would have seen the necessity of doing something. +<!-- page 161--><a name="page161"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 161</span>But +Chance, as it were, saved her the trouble; for she had not been serving +in the Café more than a month when, early one afternoon, in walked +her Lord and Master. ‘Mam’sell Marie,’ as of +course we called her over there, was at that moment busy talking to +two customers, while smiling at a third; and our hero, he gave a start +the moment he set eyes on her.”</p> +<p>“You told me that when he saw her there he didn’t know +her,” I reminded Henry.</p> +<p>“Quite right, sir,” replied Henry, “so I did; but +he knew a pretty girl when he saw one anywhere at any time—he +was that sort, and a prettier, saucier looking young personage than +Marie, in spite of her misfortunes, as I suppose you’d call ’em, +you wouldn’t have found <!-- page 162--><a name="page162"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 162</span>had +you searched Paris from the Place de la Bastille to the Arc de Triomphe.”</p> +<p>“Did she,” I asked, “know him, or was the forgetfulness +mutual?”</p> +<p>“She recognised him,” returned Henry, “before he +entered the Café, owing to catching sight of his face through +the glass door while he was trying to find the handle. Women on +some points have better memories than men. Added to which, when +you come to think of it, the game was a bit one-sided. Except +that his moustache, maybe, was a little more imposing, and that he wore +the clothes of a gentleman in place of those of an able-bodied seaman +before the mast, he was to all intents and purposes the same as when +they parted six years ago outside the church door; while she had changed +from a child in a short muslin frock and <!-- page 163--><a name="page163"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 163</span>a +‘flapper,’ as I believe they call it, tied up in blue ribbon, +to a self-possessed young woman in a frock that might have come out +of a Bond Street show window, and a Japanese coiffure, that being then +the fashion.</p> +<p>“She finished with her French customers, not hurrying herself +in the least—that wasn’t her way; and then strolling over +to her husband, asked him in French what she could have the pleasure +of doing for him. His education on board the ‘Susan Pride’ +and others had, I take it, gone back rather than forward. He couldn’t +understand her, so she translated it for him into broken English, with +an accent. He asked her how she knew he was English. She +told him it was because Englishmen had such pretty moustaches, and came +back with his order, which was <!-- page 164--><a name="page164"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 164</span>rum +punch. She kept him waiting about a quarter of an hour before +she returned with it. He filled up the time looking into the glass +behind him when he thought nobody was observing him.</p> +<p>“One American drink, as they used to concoct it in that bar, +was generally enough for most of our customers, but he, before he left, +contrived to put away three; also contriving, during the same short +space of time, to inform ‘Mam’sel Marie’ that Paris, +since he had looked into her eyes, had become the only town worth living +in, so far as he was concerned, throughout the whole universe. +He had his failings, had Master Tom Sleight, but shyness wasn’t +one of them. She gave him a smile when he left that would have +brought a less impressionable young man than he back <!-- page 165--><a name="page165"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 165</span>again +to that Café; but for the rest of the day I noticed ‘Mam’sel +Marie’ frowned to herself a good deal, and was quite unusually +cynical in her view of things in general.</p> +<p>“Next afternoon he found his way to us again, and much the +same sort of thing went on, only a little more of it. A sailor-man, +so I am told, makes love with his hour of departure always before his +mind, and so gets into the habit of not wasting time. He gave +her short lessons in English, for which she appeared to be grateful, +and she at his request taught him the French for ‘You are just +charming! I love you!’ with which, so he explained, it was +his intention, on his return to England, to surprise his mother. +He turned up again after dinner, and the next day before lunch, when +after that I <!-- page 166--><a name="page166"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 166</span>looked +up and missed him at his usual table, the feeling would come to me that +business was going down. Marie always appeared delighted to see +him, and pouted when he left; but what puzzled me at the time was, that +though she fooled him to the top of his bent, she flirted every bit +as much, if not more, with her other customers—leastways with +the nicer ones among them. There was one young Frenchman in particular—a +good-looking chap, a Monsieur Flammard, son of the painter. Up +till then he’d been making love pretty steadily to Miss Marie, +as, indeed, had most of ’em, without ever getting much forrarder; +for hitherto a chat about the weather, and a smile that might have meant +she was in love with you or might have meant she was laughing at you—no +man could ever tell which,—<!-- page 167--><a name="page167"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 167</span>was +all the most persistent had got out of her. Now, however, and +evidently to his own surprise, young Monsieur Flammard found himself +in clover. Provided his English rival happened to be present and +not too far removed, he could have as much flirtation as he wanted, +which, you may take it, worked out at a very tolerable amount. +Master Tom could sit and scowl, and for the matter of that did; but +as Marie would explain to him, always with the sweetest of smiles, her +business was to be nice to all her customers, and to this, of course, +he had nothing to reply: that he couldn’t understand a word of +what she and Flammard talked and laughed about didn’t seem to +make him any the happier.</p> +<p>“Well, this sort of thing went on for perhaps a fortnight, +and then one morning <!-- page 168--><a name="page168"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 168</span>over +our déjeuné, when she and I had the Café entirely +to ourselves, I took the opportunity of talking to Mam’sel Marie +like a father.</p> +<p>“She heard me out without a murmur, which showed her sense; +for liking the girl sincerely, I didn’t mince matters with her, +but spoke plainly for her good. The result was, she told me her +story much as I have told it to you.</p> +<p>“‘It’s a funny tale,’ says I when she’d +finished, ‘though maybe you yourself don’t see the humour +of it.’</p> +<p>“‘Yes, I do,’ was her answer. ‘But +there’s a serious side to it also,’ says she, ‘and +that interests me more.’</p> +<p>“‘You’re sure you’re not making a mistake?’ +I suggested.</p> +<p>“‘He’s been in my thoughts too much for me to forget +him,’ she replied. <!-- page 169--><a name="page169"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 169</span>‘Besides, +he’s told me his name and all about himself.’</p> +<p>“‘Not quite all,’ says I.</p> +<p>“‘No, and that’s why I feel hard toward him,’ +answers she.</p> +<p>“‘Now you listen to me,’ says I. ‘This +is a very pretty comedy, and the way you’ve played it does you +credit up till now. Don’t you run it on too long, and turn +it into a problem play.’</p> +<p>“‘How d’ye mean?’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘A man’s a man,’ says I; ‘anyhow he’s +one. He fell in love with you six years ago when you were only +a child, and now you’re a woman he’s fallen in love with +you again. If that don’t convince you of his constancy, +nothing will. You stop there. Don’t you try to find +out any more.’</p> +<p>“‘I mean to find out one thing, <!-- page 170--><a name="page170"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 170</span>answers +she: ‘whether he’s a man—or a cad.’</p> +<p>“‘That’s a severe remark,’ says I, ‘to +make about your own husband.’</p> +<p>“‘What am I to think?’ says she. ‘He +fooled me into loving him when, as you say, I was only a child. +Do you think I haven’t suffered all these years? It’s +the girl that cries her eyes out for her lover; we learn to take ’em +for what they’re worth later on.’</p> +<p>“‘But he’s in love with you still,’ I says. +I knew what was in her mind, but I wanted to lead her away from it if +I could.</p> +<p>“‘That’s a lie,’ says she, ‘and you +know it.’ She wasn’t choosing her words; she was feeling, +if you understand. ‘He’s in love with a pretty waitress +that he met for the first time a fortnight ago.’</p> +<p><!-- page 171--><a name="page171"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 171</span>“‘That’s +because she reminds him of you,’ I replied, ‘or because +you remind him of her, whichever you prefer. It shows you’re +the sort of woman he’ll always be falling in love with.’</p> +<p>“She laughed at that, but the next moment she was serious again. +‘A man’s got to fall out of love before he falls into it +again,’ she replied. ‘I want a man that’ll stop +there. Besides,’ she goes on, ‘a woman isn’t +always young and pretty: we’ve got to remember that. We +want something else in a husband besides eyes.’</p> +<p>“‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ says I.</p> +<p>“‘I’ve thought a lot about it,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘What sort of husband do you want?’ says I.</p> +<p>“‘I want a man of honour,’ says she.</p> +<p><!-- page 172--><a name="page172"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 172</span>“That +was sense. One don’t often find a girl her age talking it, +but her life had made her older than she looked. All I could find +to say was that he appeared to be an honest chap, and maybe was one.</p> +<p>“‘Maybe,’ says she; ‘that’s what I +mean to find out. And if you’ll do me a kindness,’ +she adds, ‘you won’t mind calling me Marie Luthier for the +future, instead of Godselle. It was my mother’s name, and +I’ve a fancy for it.’</p> +<p>“Well, there I left her to work out the thing for herself, +having come to the conclusion she was capable of doing it; and so for +another couple of weeks I merely watched. There was no doubt about +his being in love with her. He had entered that Café at +the beginning of the month with as good an opinion of himself as a <!-- page 173--><a name="page173"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 173</span>man +can conveniently carry without tumbling down and falling over it. +Before the month was out he would sit with his head between his hands, +evidently wondering why he had been born. I’ve seen the +game played before, and I’ve seen it played since. A waiter +has plenty of opportunities if he only makes use of them; for if it +comes to a matter of figures, I suppose there’s more love-making +done in a month under the electric light of the restaurant than the +moon sees in a year—leastways, so far as concerns what we call +the civilised world. I’ve seen men fooled, from boys without +hair on their faces, to old men without much on their heads. I’ve +seen it done in a way that was pretty to watch, and I’ve seen +it done in a manner that has made me feel that given a wig and a petticoat +I could do it <!-- page 174--><a name="page174"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 174</span>better +myself. But never have I seen it neater played than Marie played +it on that young man of hers. One day she would greet him for +all the world like a tired child that at last has found its mother, +and the next day respond to him in a style calculated to give you the +idea of a small-sized empress in misfortune compelled to tolerate the +familiarities of an anarchist. One moment she would throw him +a pout that said as clearly as words: ‘What a fool you are not +to put your arms round me and kiss me’; and five minutes later +chill him with a laugh that as good as told him he must be blind not +to see that she was merely playing with him. What happened outside +the Café—for now and then she would let him meet her of +a morning in the Tuileries and walk down to the Café <!-- page 175--><a name="page175"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 175</span>with +her, and once or twice had allowed him to see her part of the way home—I +cannot tell you: I only know that before strangers it was her instinct +to be reserved. I take it that on such occasions his experiences +were interesting; but whether they left him elated or depressed I doubt +if he could have told you himself.</p> +<p>“But all the time Marie herself was just going from bad to +worse. She had come to the Café a light-hearted, sweet-tempered +girl; now, when she wasn’t engaged in her play-acting—for +that’s all it was, I could see plainly enough—she would +go about her work silent and miserable-looking, or if she spoke at all +it would be to say something bitter. Then one morning after a +holiday she had asked for, and which I had given her without any questions, +she came to business more like her <!-- page 176--><a name="page176"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 176</span>old +self than I had seen her since the afternoon Master Tom Sleight had +appeared upon the scene. All that day she went about smiling to +herself; and young Flammard, presuming a bit too far maybe upon past +favours, found himself sharply snubbed: it was a bit rough on him, the +whole thing.</p> +<p>“‘It’s come to a head,’ says I to myself; +‘he has explained everything, and has managed to satisfy her. +He’s a cleverer chap than I took him for.’</p> +<p>“He didn’t turn up at the Café that day, however, +at all, and she never said a word until closing time, when she asked +me to walk part of the way home with her.</p> +<p>“‘Well,’ I says, so soon as we had reached a quieter +street, ‘is the comedy over?’</p> +<p><!-- page 177--><a name="page177"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 177</span>“‘No,’ +says she, ‘so far as I’m concerned it’s commenced. +To tell you the truth, it’s been a bit too serious up to now to +please me. I’m only just beginning to enjoy myself,’ +and she laughed, quite her old light-hearted laugh.</p> +<p>“‘You seem to be a bit more cheerful,’ I says.</p> +<p>“‘I’m feeling it,’ says she; ‘he’s +not as bad as I thought. We went to Versailles yesterday.’</p> +<p>“‘Pretty place, Versailles,’ says I; ‘paths +a bit complicated if you don’t know your way among ’em.’</p> +<p>“‘They do wind,’ says she.</p> +<p>“‘And there he told you that he loved you, and explained +everything?’</p> +<p>“‘You’re quite right,’ says she, ‘that’s +just what happened. And then he kissed <!-- page 178--><a name="page178"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 178</span>me +for the first and last time, and now he’s on his way to America.’</p> +<p>“‘On his way to America?’ says I, stopping still +in the middle of the street.</p> +<p>“‘To find his wife,’ she says. ‘He’s +pretty well ashamed of himself for not having tried to do it before. +I gave him one or two hints how to set about it—he’s not +over smart—and I’ve got an idea he will discover her.’ +She dropped her joking manner, and gave my arm a little squeeze. +She’d have flirted with her own grandfather—that’s +my opinion of her.</p> +<p>“‘He was really nice,’ she continues. ‘I +had to keep lecturing myself, or I’d have been sorry for him. +He told me it was his love for me that had shown him what a wretch he +had been. He said he knew I didn’t care for him two straws—<!-- page 179--><a name="page179"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 179</span>and +there I didn’t contradict him—and that he respected me all +the more for it. I can’t explain to you how he worked it +out, but what he meant was that I was so good myself that no one but +a thoroughly good fellow could possibly have any chance with me, and +that any other sort of fellow ought to be ashamed of himself for daring +even to be in love with me, and that he couldn’t rest until he +had proved to himself that he was worthy to have loved me, and then +he wasn’t going to love me any more.’</p> +<p>“‘It’s a bit complicated,’ says I. +‘I suppose you understood it?’</p> +<p>“‘It was perfectly plain,’ says she, somewhat shortly, +‘and, as I told him, made me really like him for the first time.’</p> +<p>“‘It didn’t occur to him to ask you <!-- page 180--><a name="page180"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 180</span>why +you had been flirting like a volcano with a chap you didn’t like,’ +says I.</p> +<p>“‘He didn’t refer to it as flirtation,’ says +she. ‘He regarded it as kindness to a lonely man in a strange +land.’</p> +<p>“‘I think you’ll be all right,’ says I. +‘There’s all the makings of a good husband in him—seems +to be simple-minded enough, anyhow.’</p> +<p>“‘He has a very lovable personality when you once know +him,’ says she. ‘All sailors are apt to be thoughtless.’</p> +<p>“‘I should try and break him of it later on,’ says +I.</p> +<p>“‘Besides, she was a bit of a fool herself, going away +and leaving no address,’ adds she; and having reached her turning, +we said good-night to one another.</p> +<p>“About a month passed after that without anything happening. +For the first <!-- page 181--><a name="page181"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 181</span>week +Marie was as merry as a kitten, but as the days went by, and no sign +came, she grew restless and excited. Then one morning she came +into the Café twice as important as she had gone out the night +before, and I could see by her face that her little venture was panning +out successfully. She waited till we had the Café to ourselves, +which usually happened about mid-day, and then she took a letter out +of her pocket and showed it me. It was a nice respectful letter +containing sentiments that would have done honour to a churchwarden. +Thanks to Marie’s suggestions, for which he could never be sufficiently +grateful, and which proved her to be as wise as she was good and beautiful, +he had traced Mrs. Sleight, née Mary Godselle, to Quebec. +From Quebec, on the death of <!-- page 182--><a name="page182"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 182</span>her +uncle, she had left to take a situation as waitress in a New York hotel, +and he was now on his way there to continue his search. The result +he would, with Miss Marie’s permission, write and inform her. +If he obtained happiness he would owe it all to her. She it was +who had shown him his duty; there was a good deal of it, but that’s +what it meant.</p> +<p>“A week later came another letter, dated from New York this +time. Mary could not be discovered anywhere; her situation she +had left just two years ago, but for what or for where nobody seemed +to know. What was to be done?</p> +<p>“Mam’sel Marie sat down and wrote him by return of post, +and wrote him somewhat sharply—in broken English. It seemed +to her he must be strangely lacking <!-- page 183--><a name="page183"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 183</span>in +intelligence. Mary, as he knew, spoke French as well as she did +English. Such girls—especially such waitresses—he +might know, were sought after on the Continent. Very possibly +there were agencies in New York whose business it was to offer good +Continental engagements to such young ladies. Even she herself +had heard of one such—Brathwaite, in West Twenty-third Street, +or maybe Twenty-fourth. She signed her new name, Marie Luthier, +and added a P.S. to the effect that a right-feeling husband who couldn’t +find his wife would have written in a tone less suggestive of resignation.</p> +<p>“That helped him considerably, that suggestion of Marie’s +about the agent Brathwaite. A fortnight later came a third letter. +Wonderful to relate, his wife was actually in Paris, of all places in +the <!-- page 184--><a name="page184"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 184</span>world! +She had taken a situation in the Hotel du Louvre. Master Tom expected +to be in Paris almost as soon as his letter.</p> +<p>“‘I think I’ll go round to the Louvre if you can +spare me for quarter of an hour,’ said Marie, ‘and see the +manager.’</p> +<p>“Two days after, at one o’clock precisely, Mr. Tom Sleight +walked into the Café. He didn’t look cheerful and +he didn’t look sad. He had been to the ‘Louvre’; +Mary Godselle had left there about a year ago; but he had obtained her +address in Paris, and had received a letter from her that very morning. +He showed it to Marie. It was short, and not well written. +She would meet him in the Tuileries that evening at seven, by the Diana +and the Nymph; he would know her by her wearing the onyx brooch he <!-- page 185--><a name="page185"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 185</span>had +given her the day before their wedding. She mentioned it was onyx, +in case he had forgotten. He only stopped a few minutes, and both +he and Marie spoke gravely and in low tones. He left a small case +in her hands at parting; he said he hoped she would wear it in remembrance +of one in whose thoughts she would always remain enshrined. I +can’t tell you what he meant; I only tell you what he said. +He also gave me a very handsome walking-stick with a gold handle—what +for, I don’t know; I take it he felt like that.</p> +<p>“Marie asked to leave that evening at half-past six. +I never saw her looking prettier. She called me into the office +before she went. She wanted my advice. She had in one hand +a beautiful opal brooch set in diamonds—it was what he <!-- page 186--><a name="page186"></a><span class="pagenum">p. 186</span>had +given her that morning—and in her other hand the one of onyx.</p> +<p>“‘Shall I wear them both?’ asked she, ‘or +only the one?’ She was half laughing, half crying, already.</p> +<p>“I thought for a bit. ‘I should wear the onyx to-night,’ +I said, ‘by itself.’”</p> +<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE OBSERVATIONS OF HENRY***</p> +<pre> + + +***** This file should be named 17943-h.htm or 17943-h.zip****** + + +This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: +http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/1/7/9/4/17943 + + + +Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions +will be renamed. + +Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no +one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation +(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without +permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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