Title: The Observations of Henry - Illustrated
Author: Jerome, Jerome K. (Jerome Klapka)
Language: English
As this book started as an ASCII text book there are no pictures available.


*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Observations of Henry - Illustrated" ***


THE OBSERVATIONS OF HENRY


By Jerome K. Jerome

1901



THE GHOST OF THE MARCHIONESS OF APPLEFORD


|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 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:

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 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.

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.

“Garsong,” he calls out, “what’s the menoo to-day?”

“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 it where you
found it;” meaning o’ course, the kid.

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.

[Illustration: 0006]

“‘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.”

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.

“‘Ave an egg,” he suggested, the moment the rashers had
disappeared. “One of these eggs will just about finish yer.”

“I don’t really think as I can,” says she, after considering like.

“Well, you know your own strength,” he answers. “Perhaps you’re
best without it. Speshully if yer not used to ‘igh living.”

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.

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 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 the missus, or
fling a boot-jack at her. They don’t mean anything more.

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. 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 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.

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.

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.

“What, ‘Enery!” he says, “you’ve moved on, then!”

“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.

“So-so,” he says, “I’m a journalist.”

“Oh,” I says, “what sort?” for I’d 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.

“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.”

“What, the Captain Kit?” I says. O’ course I’d heard of him.

“Be’old!” he says.

“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 can’t
always be shouting about himself, can ‘e?”

He ordered a cup of coffee. He said he was waiting for someone,
and we got to chatting about old times.

“How’s Carrots?” I asked.

“Miss Caroline Trevelyan,” he answered, “is doing well.”

“Oh,” I says, “you’ve found out her fam’ly name, then?”

“We’ve found out one or two things about that lidy,” he replies.
“D’yer remember ‘er dancing?”

“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.

“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 Oxford
to-morrow. It’s ‘er I’m waiting for. She’s a-coming on, I tell you
she is,” he says.

“Shouldn’t wonder,” says I; “that was her disposition.”

“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.”

“Yes,” I says, “some women have.”

“Ah,” he says, “but ‘er voice is the sort of voice yer want to
listen to.”

“Oh,” I says, “that’s its speciality, is it?”

“That’s it, sonny,” he replies.

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 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.

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 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!

“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 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.

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.

“I’ad to be some sort of a relation, you 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.

“Why don’t you marry her?” I says, “and have done with it?”

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.”

“How d’ye mean fair?” I says.

“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 dock,
if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow ‘e’ll be a markis,
and ‘e means the straight thing--no errer. It ain’t fair for me to
stand in ‘er way.”

“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.”

“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.”

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 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.

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.”

“Oh,” I says. “What’s up now?”

“I am,” he says, “or rather my time is. I’m off to Africa.”

“Oh,” I says, “and what about--”

“That’s all right,” he interrupts. “I’ve fixed up that--a treat.
Truth, that’s why I’m going.”

I thought at first he meant she was going with him.

“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.”

“What need for you to go?” I says.

“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?”

Well, that’s just how it happened. Of course, there was a big row
when the 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.

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 been for the missis. She’s a clever one--she is. I did a
good day’s work when I married her.

“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.”

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.

Well, as I was saying, in she comes to the supper rooms, and toffy
enough she looked in her diamonds and furs, and as 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.

“Go and fetch my cloak,” she says to him after a while. “I am
cold.”

And up he gets and goes out.

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.

“Ever hear from ‘Kipper’?” she says to me.

“I have had one or two letters from him, your ladyship,” I
answers.

“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?”

“Seems to be doing himself well,” I says. “He’s started an hotel,
and is regular raking it in, he tells me.”

“Wish I was behind the bar with him!” says she.

“Why, don’t it work then?” I asks.

“It’s just like a funeral with the corpse left out,” says she.
“Serves me jolly well right for being a fool!”

The Marquis, he comes back with her cloak at that moment, and I
says: “Certainement, madame,” and gets clear.

I often used to see her there, and when 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.

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.

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.

“Rum things, women,” he says; “never know their own minds.”

“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?”

“Pity,” he says, musing like. “I reckoned it the very thing she’d
tumble 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.”

“You ain’t ever thought of marrying yourself?” I asks.

“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.”

“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.”

“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 de veau a la financier,’ and sich
like, and it just spoils ‘em for the bacon and greens.”

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.

When I did it was at the Hotel 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 I was told to wait on her,
she having asked for someone as could speak English. She seemed
glad to see me and to talk to me.

“Well,” I says, “I suppose you’ll be bossing that bar in Capetown
now before long?”

“Talk sense,” she answers. “How can the Marchioness of Appleford
marry a hotel keeper?”

“Why not,” I says, “if she fancies him? What’s the good of being a
Marchioness if you can’t do what you like?”

“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 them. They’ve got their feelings
same as I’ve got mine.”

“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.

“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.”

She finishes her soup, and pushes the plate away from her. “As
long as I live,” she says, talking to herself.

“By Jove!” she says, starting up “why not?”

“Why not what?” I says.

“Nothing,” she answers. “Get me an African telegraph form, and be
quick about it!”

I fetched it for her, and she wrote it and gave it to the porter
then and there; and, that done, she sat down and finished her
dinner.

She was a bit short with me after that; so I judged it best to
keep my own place.

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.

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.

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-a-manger all to myself, and
had just taken up a paper when I hears the door open, and I turns
round.

I saw “her” coming down the room. There was no mistaking her. She
wasn’t that sort.

I sat with my eyes coming out of my head till she was close to me,
and then I says:

“Carrots!” I says, in a whisper like. That was the name that come
to me.

“‘Carrots’ it is,” she says, and down she sits just opposite to
me, and then she laughs.

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.

[Illustration: 0047]

“Why, it’s ‘Enery,” he says; and he gives me a slap on the back,
as knocks the life into me again.

“I heard you was dead,” I says, still staring at her. “I read it
in the paper--‘death of the Marchioness of Appleford.’”

“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, nee ‘Carrots.’”

“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!

* * * * *

That is the story, among others, told me by Henry, the waiter. I
have, at his 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.



THE USES AND ABUSES OF JOSEPH


|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 immediate curse, and a
permanent injury to those who have got to swallow you?’

“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 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 other--and read the whole time.
Our four-course shilling table d’hote 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.

“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 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.

“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.

“‘What’s up?’ I says. ‘Got the shove?’

“‘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.

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘that ain’t the sort of thing to be humpy about.’

“‘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.’

“‘Oh!’ I says, ‘and what may you prefer to spoon--duchesses?’

“‘Yes,’ he answers sulky-like; ‘duchesses are right enough--some
of ‘em.’

“‘So are servant-gals,’ I says, ‘some of ‘em. Your hat’s feeling a
bit small for you this morning, ain’t it?’

“‘Hat’s all right,’ says he; ‘it’s the world as I’m complaining
of--beastly place; there’s nothing to do in it.’

“‘Oh!’ I says; ‘some of us find there’s a bit too much.’ I’d been
up since five 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.

“‘I don’t mean that,’ he says. ‘I mean things worth doing.’

“‘Well, what do you want to do,’ I says, ‘that this world ain’t
big enough for?’

“‘It ain’t the size of it,’ he says; ‘it’s the dulness of it.
Things used to be different in the old days.’

“‘How do you know?’ I says.

“‘You can read about it,’ he answers.

“‘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 that the old
days were much the same as these days, and maybe a trifle worse.’

“‘From a Sunday School point of view, perhaps yes,’ says he; ‘but
there’s no gainsaying--’

“‘No what?’ I says.

“‘No gainsaying,’ repeats he; ‘it’s a common word in literatoor.’

“‘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.

“‘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.’

“‘What about Australia?’ says I.

“‘Australia!’ retorts he; ‘what would I do there? Be a shepherd,
like you see in the picture, wear ribbons, and play the flute?’

“‘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?’

“‘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.’

“‘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.

“‘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.’

“‘Go for a soldier,’ says I; ‘there’s excitement for you.’

“‘That would have been all right,’ says he, ‘in the days when
there was real fighting.’

“‘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.’

“‘Not the sort of fighting I mean,’ replies he; ‘I want to do
something myself, not be one of a row.’

“‘Well,’ I says, ‘I give you up. You’ve dropped into the wrong
world it seems to me. We don’t seem able to cater for you here.’

“‘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.’

“‘Yes, I know what’s in your mind,’ I says: ‘pirates.’

“‘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.’

“‘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.’

“‘Stow it!’ he says; ‘it makes me 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!’

“‘What do you mean to be, then?’ I says; ‘we’ve all got to be
something, until we’re stiff ‘uns.’

“‘Well,’ he says, quite cool-like, ‘I think I shall be a burglar.’

“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.

“‘It’s the only calling I can think of,’ says he, ‘that has got
any element of excitement left in it.’

“‘You call seven years at Portland “excitement,” do you?’ says I,
thinking of the argument most likely to tell upon him.

“‘What’s the difference,’ answers he, ‘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.’

“‘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?’

“‘A man like that deserves what he gets,’ answers he; ‘couldn’t
hit a police-man at six yards.’

“‘You bloodthirsty young scoundrel,’ I says; ‘do you mean you
wouldn’t stick at murder?’

“‘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.’

“‘It’s taking a human creature’s life,’ I says.

“‘Well,’ he says, ‘what of it? There’s plenty more where he comes
from.’

“I tried reasoning with him from time to time, but he wasn’t a
sort of boy to 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.

“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 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 the cab and got out,
leaving the clerk to pay the cabman.

“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.

“‘Anything interesting in it, Henry?’ says he.

“‘Rather a daring robbery committed on the Westminster Bank
yesterday,’ I answers.

“‘Oh, ah! I did see something about that,’ says he.

“‘The thief was described as a well-dressed young man of
gentlemanly appearance, wearing a black beard and moustache,’ says
I.

“He laughs pleasantly.

“‘That will make it awkward for nice young men with black beards
and moustaches,’ says he.

“‘Yes,’ I says. ‘Fortunately for you and me, we’re clean shaved.’

“I felt as certain he was the man as though I’d seen him do it.

“He gives me a sharp glance, but I was busy with the cruets, and
he had to make what he chose out of it.

“‘Yes,’ he replies, ‘as you say, it was a daring robbery. But the
man seems to have got away all right.’

“I could see he was dying to talk to somebody about it.

“‘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.’

“‘There’s some very intelligent men among them,’ says he: ‘no
question of it. I shouldn’t be surprised if they had a clue!’

“‘No,’ I says, ‘no more should I; though no doubt he’s telling
himself there never was such a clever thief.’

“‘Well, we shall see,’ says he.

“‘That’s about it,’ says I.

“We talked a bit about old acquaintances and other things, and
then, having finished, he handed me a sovereign and rose to go.

“‘Wait a minute,’ I says, ‘your bill 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.’

“‘As you will,’ he says, laughing, though I could see he didn’t
like it.

“‘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?’

“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 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.

“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 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.

“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.

“‘It’s all right,’ says he, ‘it’s the hand of an honest man.’

“‘It’s come into your possession very recently then,’ says I.

“He was dressed in a black frock-coat and wore whiskers. If I
hadn’t known him, I should have put him down for a parson out of
work.

“He laughs. ‘I’ll tell you all about it,’ he says.

“‘Not here,’ I answers, ‘because I’m too busy; but if you like to
meet me this evening, and you’re talking straight--’

“‘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.’

“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. She held a candle in
one hand and a revolver in the other.

[Illustration: 0079]

“‘Put your hands up above your head,’ says she.

“‘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.

“‘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.

“‘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.

“‘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.’

“‘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.’

“She went down the garden-path with him, and opened the gate.

“‘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.

“Well, it was a rum beginning to a courtship, but the end was
rummer. The girl was willing to marry him if he would turn honest.
Joe wanted to turn honest, but didn’t know how.

“‘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.’

“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.

“‘What’s your religion?’ says the old gent to Joe.

“‘I’m not particular, sir; I’ll leave it to you,’ says Joe.

“‘Good!’ says the old gent. ‘You’re no fanatic. What are your
principles?’

“At first Joe didn’t think he’d got any, but, the old gent
leading, he found to his surprise as he had.

“‘I believe,’ says Joe, ‘in doing a job thoroughly.’

“‘What your hand finds to do, you believe in doing with all your
might, eh?’ says the old gent.

“‘That’s it, sir,’ says Joe. ‘That’s what I’ve always tried to
do.’

“‘Anything else?’ asks the old gent.

“‘Yes; stick to your pals,’ said Joe.

“‘Through thick and thin,’ suggests the old gent.

“‘To the blooming end,’ agrees Joe.

“‘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?’

“‘That’s the idea,’ says Joe.

“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:

“‘If you undertake the work,’ says he, ‘you’ll go through with it
without faltering--you’ll devote your life to it?’

“‘If I undertake the job, I’ll do that,’ says Joe. ‘What may it
be?’

“‘To go to Africa,’ says the old gent, ‘as a missionary.’

“Joe sits down and stares at the old gent, and the old gent looks
him back.

“‘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 from being scattered and lost, who
will be their champion, their protector, their friend.’

“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
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.

“Later on the Society sent him still further inland, to open up a
fresh station; 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.”



THE SURPRISE OF MR. MILBERRY


|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.”

“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
acrostic. We had been discussing the question whether sardines
served their purpose better as a hors d’oeuvre 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.

“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, 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.”

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.

“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 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.”

“Do you mean,” I said, “there was no possible means of
distinguishing?”

“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 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.”

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. 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.

“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.”

“Is it a proper story,” I asked, “a story fit for me to hear?”

On consideration, Henry saw no harm in it, and told it to me
accordingly.

* * * * *

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 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.

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.

“Are you a married man?” says he.

It was an odd question to put to a waiter, but coming from a gent
there was nothing to be alarmed about.

“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--”

“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?”

“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?”

“Ah, do,” he says. “Wait a minute,” he says; “we’ll open it
first.”

He began to fumble with the cord, then he suddenly lets go and
begins to chuckle to himself.

“No,” he says, “you open it. Open it carefully; it will surprise
you.”

I don’t take much stock in surprises myself. My experience is that
they’re mostly unpleasant.

“What’s in it?” I says.

“You’ll see if you open it,” he says: “it won’t hurt you.” And off
he goes again, chuckling to himself.

“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.

“It ain’t a corpse,” I says, “is it?”

He turned as white as the sheet on the bed, and clutched the
mantlepiece. “Good God! don’t suggest such a thing,” he says; “I
never thought of that. Open it quickly.”

“I’d rather you came and opened it yourself, sir,” I says. I was
beginning not to half like the business.

“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.”

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.

“Is it all right?” he says. “Is it alive?”

“It’s about as alive,” I says, “as anybody’ll ever want it to be,
I should say.”

“Is it breathing all right?” he says.

“If you can’t hear it breathing,” I says, “I’m afraid you’re
deaf.”

You might have heard its breathing outside in the street. He
listened, and even he was satisfied.

“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!”

“You’re fond of it?” I says.

He looked round at me. “Fond of it,” he repeats. “Why, I’m his
father.” And then he begins to laugh again.

“Oh!” I says. “Then I presume I have the pleasure of addressing
Mr. Coster King?”

“Coster King?” he answers in surprise. “My name’s Milberry.”

I says: “The father of this child, according to the label inside
the cover, is Coster King out of Starlight, his mother being Jenny
Deans out of Darby the Devil.”

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.

“My child!” he shrieks, with his eyes starting out of his head,
“That thing isn’t my child. What’s happened? Am I going mad?”

“You’re on that way,” I says, and so he was. “Calm yourself,” I
says; “what did you expect to see?”

“My child,” he shrieks again; “my only child--my baby!”

“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.

“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.”

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.

“‘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.”

“What do you mean?” he says.

“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?”

“From Banbury,” he says; “I’m well known in Banbury.”

“I can quite believe it,” I says; “you’re the sort of young man
that would be known anywhere.”

“I’m Mr. Milberry,” he says, “the grocer, in the High Street.”

“Then what are you doing here with this dog?” I says.

“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!’”

“A very motherly sentiment,” I says, “which does her credit.”

“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.”

“And I guess,” I says, “it will be the biggest one you have ever
given her.”

“Don’t try to be funny about it,” he says; “I’m not altogether
myself, and I may do you an injury.”

He was right. It wasn’t a subject for joking, though it had its
humorous side.

“But why,” I says, “put it in a dog-basket?”

“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. It’s
witchcraft, that’s what it is. I shall believe in the devil after
this.”

“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?”

He was calmer now. He leant over and examined it carefully. “It
looks like it,” he says; “but I can’t swear to it.”

“You tell me,” I says, “you never let it go out of your hands. Now
think.”

“No,” he says, “it’s been on my knees all the time.”

“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.”

He thought again, and a light broke over 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.’”

“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?”

“I believe you’re right,” he says.

“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.”

He leant his head against the bed-post and groaned. “Milly may
be here at any 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.”

“Go on to Birmingham,” I says, “and try and find it. You can catch
the quarter to six and be back here before eight.”

“Come with me,” he says; “you’re a good man, come with me. I ain’t
fit to go by myself.”

He was right; he’d have got run over outside the door, the state
he was in then.

“Well,” I says, “if the guv’nor don’t object--”

“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--”

“I’ll tell him it’s a matter of half sovereign extra on to the
bill,” I says. “That’ll more likely do the trick.”

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 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.

“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.”

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:

“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.”

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 thing in the road; that woke the child up, and
it began to cry.

“Good Lord, Ma’am! what is it?” asks the chambermaid, “a baby?”

“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.”

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.

“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 you open my bag,” says she, “you will find a
bottle of milk and some dog-biscuits.”

“Dog-biscuits!” says the chambermaid.

“Yes,” says the old lady, laughing, “my baby loves dog-biscuits.”

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.

[Illustration: 0119]

Then she set to work to slap the old lady back to life again. In
about a minute the 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.

“What is it?” she says, speaking in an awed voice. “The thing in
the hamper?”

“It’s a baby, Ma’am,” says the maid.

“You’re sure it ain’t a dog?” says the old lady. “Look again.”

The girl began to feel nervous, and to wish that she wasn’t alone
with the old lady.

“I ain’t likely to mistake a dog for a baby, Ma’am,” says the
girl. “It’s a child--a human infant.”

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.”

“What’s happened?” says the chambermaid, who was naturally enough
growing more and more curious.

“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.”

“But bulldogs,” says the chambermaid, “ain’t changed into babies
by magic.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“That’s when they did it,” says the chambermaid, “and a clever
trick it was.”

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!”

“It’s a fine-looking child,” says the chambermaid.

“Would you like it?” says the old lady.

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 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.

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.

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.



THE PROBATION OF JAMES WRENCH


|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.

“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
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 Europaischer 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 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 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. 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.

“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
the Koln 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.

“‘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.

“‘No,’ he answers, ‘nor nine years. But it’s been long enough to
teach me a lesson.’

“‘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.’

“He was a rum sort of chap, always thought things out from his own
point of view as it were.”

“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.”

“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.

“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 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.

“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 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.

“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. 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.

“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 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 him of her natural unfitness for an exalted station.

“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.

“She did her best, but of course the more she got away from
herself the more absurd she became; and the rubbish and 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.

“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 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.

“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 believe, and maybe
he’d been drinking a bit to give himself courage.

“‘We ain’t been getting along too well together of late, have we,
Susan?’ says he.

“‘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.’

“‘It ain’t your fault,’ says he.

“‘I’m glad you think that,’ she answers; ‘it shows me you ain’t
quite as foolish as I was beginning to think you.’

“‘Of course, I didn’t know when I married you,’ he goes on, ‘as I
was going to come into this money.’

“‘No, nor I either,’ says she, ‘or you bet it wouldn’t have
happened.’

“‘It seems to have been a bit of a mistake,’ says he, ‘as things
have turned out.’

“‘It would have been a mistake, and more than a bit of a one in
any case,’ answers she.

“‘I’m glad you agree with me,’ says he; ‘there’ll be no need to
quarrel.’

“‘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.’

“‘It’s a mistake that can be rectified,’ says he, ‘if you are
sensible, and that without any harm to anyone.’

“‘Oh!’ says she, ‘it must be a new sort of mistake, that kind.’

“‘We’re not fitted for one another,’ says he.

[Illustration: 0145]

“‘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.’

“‘With a man in your own station of life,’ says he, ‘you’d be
happier.’

“‘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.’

“‘You might get rid of me,’ says he.

“‘You mean you might get rid of me,’ she answers.

“‘It comes to the same thing,’ he says.

“‘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.’

“Well, he argued with her, and he tried the coaxing dodge, and he
tried the bullying dodge, but it didn’t work, neither of it.

“‘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.’

“‘We can’t go on living like this,’ says he, ‘and it isn’t fair to
ask me to. You’re hammering my prospects.’

“‘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.’

“‘What do you mean?’ says he.

“‘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.’

“It didn’t satisfy him; but there was 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.

“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 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.

“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.

“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
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.

“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.

“She kept him waiting there for three-quarters of an hour, just
sufficient time to take the side out of him; and then she walks in
and closes the door behind her.

“‘I’d say you hadn’t changed hardly a day, Susan,’ says he, ‘if it
wasn’t that you’d grown handsomer than ever.’

“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.

“‘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.’

“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.

“‘And now, what do you want?” says she, seating herself in front
of her desk, and leaving him standing, first on one leg and then
on the other, twiddling his hat in his hands.

“‘I’ve been a bad husband to you, Susan,’ begins he.

“‘I could have told you that,’ she answers. ‘What I asked you was
what you wanted.’

“‘I want for us to let bygones be bygones,’ says he.

“‘That’s quite my own idea,’ says she, ‘and if you don’t allude to
the past, I shan’t.’

“‘You’re an angel, Susan,’ says he.

“‘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.’

“‘Ain’t I your husband?’ says he, trying a bit of dignity.

“She got up and took a glance through the glass-door to see that
nobody was there to overhear her.

“‘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.’

“‘I want to reform,’ says he.

“‘I want to see you do it,’ says she.

“‘Give me a chance,’ says he.

“‘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.’

“‘You went, Susan,’ says he; ‘you know it was your own idea.’

“‘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.

“‘In what way?’ says he.

“‘In the way of earning your living,’ says she, ‘and starting on
the road to becoming a decent member of society.’

“He stood for a while cogitating.

“‘Don’t you think,’ says he at last, ‘as I could manage this hotel
for you?’

“‘Thanks,’ says she; ‘I’m doing that myself.’

“‘What about looking to the financial side of things,’ says he,
‘and keeping the accounts? It’s hardly your work.’

“‘Nor yours either,’ answers she drily, ‘judging by the way you’ve
been keeping your own.’

“‘You wouldn’t like me to be head-waiter, I suppose?’ says he. ‘It
would be a bit of a come-down.’

“‘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.’

“‘I could hardly be an under-waiter,’ says he.

“‘Perhaps not,’ says she; ‘your manners strike me as a bit too
familiar for that.’

“Then he thought he’d try sarcasm.

“‘Perhaps you’d fancy my being the boots,’ says he.

“‘That’s more reasonable,’ says she. ‘You couldn’t do much harm
there, and I could keep an eye on you.’

“‘You really mean that?’ says he, starting to put on his dignity.

“But she cut him short by ringing the bell.

“‘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.

“Well, he turned it over, and he took the job. He thought she’d
relent after the 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.

“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.

“‘James,’ says she, after she had finished what she was doing, ‘I
find I shall want another waiter for the coffee-room this season.
Would you care to try the place?’

“‘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.’

“‘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.’

“Thank you, Mrs. Wrench; that’ll suit me very well,’ replies he;
and it was settled.

“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
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 have been a satisfaction to him.

“Altogether he worked in that hotel for some three and a half
years, and then Mrs. Wrench sends for him again into the office.

“‘Sit down, James,’ says she.

“‘Thank you, Mrs. Wrench,’ says James, and sat.

“‘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?’

“‘Thank you,’ says he, ‘but I’m thinking, Mrs. Wrench, of making a
change myself.’

“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘I’m sorry to hear that, James. I thought we’d
been getting on very well together.’

“‘I’ve tried to do my best, Mrs. Wrench,’ says he, ‘and I hope as
I’ve given satisfaction.’

“‘I’ve nothing to complain of, James,’ says she.

“‘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.’

“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.’

“‘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.’

“‘What do you mean by business?’ asks she.

“‘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.’

“‘Enough to start you?’ asks she.

“‘Not quite enough for that,’ answers he. ‘My idea is a small
partnership.’

“‘How much is it altogether?’ says she, ‘if it’s not an
impertinent question.’

“‘Not at all,’ answers he. ‘It tots up to 900 pounds about.’

“She turns back to her desk and goes on with her writing.

“‘Dover wouldn’t suit you, I suppose?’ says she without looking
round.

“‘Dover’s all right,’ says he, ‘if the business is a good one.’

“‘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.”

“‘And what position do I take?’ says he.

“‘If you come in on those terms,’ says she, ‘then, of course, it’s
a partnership.’

“He rose and came over to her. ‘Life isn’t all business, Susan,’
says he.

“‘I’ve found it so mostly,’ says she.

“‘Fourteen years ago,’ says he, ‘I made the mistake; now you’re
making it.’

“‘What mistake am I making?’ says she.

“‘That man’s the only thing as can’t learn a lesson,’ says he.

“‘Oh,’ says she, ‘and what’s the lesson that you’ve learnt?’

“‘That I never get on without you, Susan,’ says he.

“‘Well,’ says she, ‘you suggested a partnership, and I agreed to
it. What more do you want?’

“‘I want to know the name of the firm,’ says he.

“‘Mr. and Mrs. Wrench,’ says she, turning round to him and holding
out her hand. ‘How will that suit you?’

“‘That’ll do me all right,’ answers he. ‘And I’ll try and give
satisfaction,’ adds he.

“‘I believe you,’ says she.

“And in that way they made a fresh start, as it were.”



THE WOOING OF TOM SLEIGHT’S WIFE


|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 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.

“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.”

“I would like to hear the story,” I ventured to suggest; “I’ll be
able to judge better afterwards.”

“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.”

“Who was?” I interrupted.

“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 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.”

“That makes him just eighteen,” I remarked; “somewhat young for a
bridegroom.”

“But a good deal older than the bride,” was Henry’s comment, “she
being at the time a few months over fourteen.”

“Was it legal?” I enquired.

“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.”

“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.

“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 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.”

“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?”

“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 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. But Chance, as it were, saved her
the trouble; for she had not been serving in the Cafe 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.”

“You told me that when he saw her there he didn’t know her,” I
reminded Henry.

“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 had you searched Paris from the Place de la Bastille to the
Arc de Triomphe.”

“Did she,” I asked, “know him, or was the forgetfulness mutual?”

“She recognised him,” returned Henry, “before he entered the Cafe,
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 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.

“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 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.

“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 again to
that Cafe; 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.

[Illustration: 0183]

“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 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,--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.

“Well, this sort of thing went on for perhaps a fortnight, and
then one morning over our dejeune, when she and I had the Cafe
entirely to ourselves, I took the opportunity of talking to
Mam’sel Marie like a father.

“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.

“‘It’s a funny tale,’ says I when she’d finished, ‘though maybe
you yourself don’t see the humour of it.’

“‘Yes, I do,’ was her answer. ‘But there’s a serious side to it
also,’ says she, ‘and that interests me more.’

“‘You’re sure you’re not making a mistake?’ I suggested.

“‘He’s been in my thoughts too much for me to forget him,’ she
replied. ‘Besides, he’s told me his name and all about himself.’

“‘Not quite all,’ says I.

“‘No, and that’s why I feel hard toward him,’ answers she.

“‘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.’

“‘How d’ye mean?’ says she.

“‘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.’

“‘I mean to find out one thing, answers she: ‘whether he’s a
man--or a cad.’

“‘That’s a severe remark,’ says I, ‘to make about your own
husband.’

“‘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.’

“‘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.

“‘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.’

“‘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.’

“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.’

“‘You seem to know a lot about it,’ says I.

“‘I’ve thought a lot about it,’ says she.

“‘What sort of husband do you want?’ says I.

“‘I want a man of honour,’ says she.

“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.

“‘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.’

“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 Cafe at the
beginning of the month with as good an opinion of himself as a 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 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 Cafe--for now
and then she would let him meet her of a morning in the Tuileries
and walk down to the Cafe 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.

“But all the time Marie herself was just going from bad to worse.
She had come to the Cafe 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 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.

“‘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.’

“He didn’t turn up at the Cafe 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.

“‘Well,’ I says, so soon as we had reached a quieter street, ‘is
the comedy over?’

“‘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.

“‘You seem to be a bit more cheerful,’ I says.

“‘I’m feeling it,’ says she; ‘he’s not as bad as I thought. We
went to Versailles yesterday.’

“‘Pretty place, Versailles,’ says I; ‘paths a bit complicated if
you don’t know your way among ‘em.’

“‘They do wind,’ says she.

“‘And there he told you that he loved you, and explained
everything?’

“‘You’re quite right,’ says she, ‘that’s just what happened. And
then he kissed me for the first and last time, and now he’s on his
way to America.’

“‘On his way to America?’ says I, stopping still in the middle of
the street.

“‘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.

“‘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--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.’

“‘It’s a bit complicated,’ says I. ‘I suppose you understood it?’

“‘It was perfectly plain,’ says she, somewhat shortly, ‘and, as I
told him, made me really like him for the first time.’

“‘It didn’t occur to him to ask you why you had been flirting like
a volcano with a chap you didn’t like,’ says I.

“‘He didn’t refer to it as flirtation,’ says she. ‘He regarded it
as kindness to a lonely man in a strange land.’

“‘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.’

“‘He has a very lovable personality when you once know him,’ says
she. ‘All sailors are apt to be thoughtless.’

“‘I should try and break him of it later on,’ says I.

“‘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.

“About a month passed after that without anything happening. For
the first 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 Cafe 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
Cafe 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, nee Mary Godselle, to Quebec. From Quebec, on the death
of 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.

“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?

“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 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.

“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 world! She had taken a situation in the Hotel du Louvre.
Master Tom expected to be in Paris almost as soon as his letter.

“‘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.’

“Two days after, at one o’clock precisely, Mr. Tom Sleight walked
into the Cafe. 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 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.

“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 advice. She had in one hand a beautiful opal
brooch set in diamonds--it was what he had given her that
morning--and in her other hand the one of onyx.

“‘Shall I wear them both?’ asked she, ‘or only the one?’ She was
half laughing, half crying, already.

“I thought for a bit. ‘I should wear the onyx to-night,’ I said,
‘by itself.’”





*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "The Observations of Henry - Illustrated" ***

Copyright 2023 LibraryBlog. All rights reserved.