“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.
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 Europäischer Hof: a quiet, meek little man he was, a journeyman butcher by trade; and his wife was a dressmaker, a Schneiderin, as they call them over there, and ran a fairly big business in the Praguer Strasse. I’ve always been told that German husbands are the worst going, treating their wives like slaves, or, at the best, as mere upper servants. But my experience is that human nature don’t alter so much according to distance from London as we fancy it does, and that husbands have their troubles same as wives all the world over. Anyhow, I’ve come across a German husband or two as didn’t carry about with him any sign of the slave driver such as you might notice, at all events not in his own house; and I 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 Köln platform, where I was waiting for a train to Paris. He told me they had made up all their differences by correspondence, and that he was then on his way back to her. He seemed quite cheerful and expectant.
“‘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.
“‘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 nave 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 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 Café more than a month when, early one afternoon, in walked her Lord and Master. ‘Mam’sell Marie,’ as of course we called her over there, was at that moment busy talking to two customers, while smiling at a third; and our hero, he gave a start the moment he set eyes on her.”
“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 Café, owing to catching sight of his face through the glass door while he was trying to find the handle. Women on some points have better memories than men. Added to which, when you come to think of it, the game was a bit one-sided. Except that his moustache, maybe, was a little more imposing, and that he wore the clothes of a gentleman in place of those of an able-bodied seaman before the mast, he was to all intents and purposes the same as when they parted six years ago outside the church door; while she had changed from a child in a short muslin frock and 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 Café; but for the rest of the day I noticed ‘Mam’sel Marie’ frowned to herself a good deal, and was quite unusually cynical in her view of things in general.
“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 déjeuné, when she and I had the Café 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 Café 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 Café—for now and then she would let him meet her of a morning in the Tuileries and walk down to the Café 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 Café a light-hearted, sweet-tempered girl; now, when she wasn’t engaged in her play-acting—for that’s all it was, I could see plainly enough—she would go about her work silent and miserable-looking, or if she spoke at all it would be to say something bitter. Then one morning after a holiday she had asked for, and which I had given her without any questions, she came to business more like her 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 Café that day, however, at all, and she never said a word until closing time, when she asked me to walk part of the way home with her.
“‘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.’