by W. W. Jacobs
Miss Ram at the Agency would have no more to do with her; had received afurious letter from Mrs. Eyton-Eyton; showed in the ledger a cruel lineof red ink ruled through the page that began "Name: Mary Humfray," andended "Salary:--"
"But I don't know a soul in London."
"You had a very comfortable place. You threw it away. I have areputation for reliable employees which I cannot afford to risk."
A bow closed the interview.
XII.
It was her landlady's husband, an unshaven, shifty-looking horror, whodealt her, as it seemed to her then, the last furious blow.
Returning one evening after an aimless search for employment in shopsthat had earned her rude laughter for her utter inexperience and herpresumption in supposing her services could be of any value, she foundMrs. Japes in convulsive tears, speechless.
What was the matter? Hysterical jerks of the head towards the stairs. Upto her room--the cause clear in her rifled box, its contents scatteredacross the floor, the little case in which with her pictures of Motherand Dad she kept her money gone.
A little raid by Mr. Japes, it appeared, in which Mrs. Japes's propertyhad also suffered.... He had done it before ... a bad lot ... had donetime ... the rent overdue and the brokers coming in ... she'd best go... of course she could tell the police.
Of course she did not tell the police. The whole affair bewildered andfrightened her.
To another lodging three streets away.... Initiation by the new landladyinto the mysteries of pawnshops; gradual thinning of wardrobe....Answering of advertisements found in the public library in Great SmithStreet.... Long, feet-aching trudges to save omnibus fares.... Alwaysthe same outcome. ... Experience?--None. References?--None.... "Thankyou; I'm afraid--I'm sure it's all right, but one has to be so carefulnowadays. Good morning." ... Always the same outcome.... The idea ofwriting to Ireland was hardly conceived. ... That life, those friends,seemed of a period that was dead, done, gone--ages and ages ago....
XIII.
Again it was a man who dealt the deeper blow--a gentlemanly-lookingperson of whom in Wilton Road one evening she asked the way to anaddress copied from the _Daily Telegraph_. Why, by an extraordinarycoincidence he was going that way himself, to that very house!--flat,rather. Yes, it was his mother who was advertising for a lady-help.Might he show her the way? ... It would be very kind of him.
Through a maze of streets, he chatting pleasantly enough, though puttingnow and then curious little questions which she could not understand....Hadn't he seen her at the Oxford one night? ... Assuredly he had not;what was the Oxford?
He laughed, evidently pleased. "Gad, you do keep it up!" he cried.
So to a great pile of flats; up a circular stair.
"You understand why I can't use the lift?" he said. "They're beastlyparticular here."
She did not understand; supposed it was some question of expense. Thusto a door where he took out a latch-key.
It was then for the first moment that a sudden doubt, a horror, tookher, trembling her limbs.
She looked up at the figures painted over the door.
"Why, it is the wrong number!" she cried.
He had turned the key. "Lord! you do keep it up!" he laughed, his handsuddenly about her arm.
Then she knew, and dragged back, sweating with the horror of the thing.
"Ah, let me go--let me go!"
"Oh, chuck it, you little ass!" His arm was about her waist now,dragging her; his face close.
With a sudden twist and thrust that took him by surprise she wrenchedfrom his grasp; was a flight of stairs away before he had recovered hiswits; across the hall and running--shaking, hysterical--down the street.
XIV.
Thereafter men were a constant horror to her--adding a new and mostsavage beast to the wolves of noise, of desolation and of despair thatbayed about her in this grinding city. Unable longer to face them, shewent again to Miss Ram at the Agency--almost upon her knees, crying,trembling, pitching her tale from the man with the dent in his hat tothe man in Wilton Road.
Miss Ram was moved to the original depths that lay beneath her grimexterior; had never realised the actual circumstances; would do what shecould; no need to be frightened.
Two days later Mary was unpacking her box at 14 Palace Gardens. Nosharpness, no slight now could prick her spirit; she had learned toowell; she would not face those streets again.
That was eighteen months, close upon two years ago. Wounds werehealing now; old-time brightness was coming back to laugh at presentdiscomforts. It was only now and again--as now--that she, driven by somesudden stress, allowed her mind backwards to wander--bruising itself inthose dark passages.
The cab stopped. She with a start came to the present; gulped a sob; washerself.
Mrs. Chater said: "Run in quickly and mix me a brandy-and-soda."
CHAPTER II.
Excursions In Vulgarity.
A violent dispute with the cabman set that disturbed heart yet morewildly thumping in Mrs. Chater's bosom; the sight of her husbanduneasily mooning in the dining-room heated her wrath to wilderbubblings.
Mr. Chater--a 'oly dam' terror in Mincing Lane, if his office-boy may bequoted--was an astonishingly mild man in his own house.
He said brightly, noting with a shiver the gusty stress of his wife'sdeportment: "You _drove_ up, my dear?--And quite right, too," he hastilyadded, upon a sudden fear that his remark might be interpreted asreproach.
"How do you know?" Mrs. Chater's nose went into the brandy-and-soda.
"I saw you from the window," her husband beamed. He repeated, "Thewindow," and nervously pointed at it. There was a strained atmosphere inthe room, and he was a little frightened.
"_Oh!_" Out from the brandy-and-soda came the nose; down went the glasswith an emphasising bang: "_Oh!_"
Mr. Chater gave a startled little jump. He saw, immediately he hadspoken, the misfortune into which his admission had plunged him; thebang of the glass twanged his already apprehensive nerves, and he jerkedout, "Certainly, my dear," without any clear grasp as to what he wasaffirming.
"If you had been a _man_," said Mrs. Chater, speaking with a slow andextraordinary bitterness--"if you had been a _man_, you would have comeout and helped me."
"But you had got out when I came to the window, my dear."
"With the _cabman_, I mean." Mrs. Chater fired the word with alarmingferocity. "With the _cabman_. Did you not see that violent bruteinsulting me?"
It was precisely because he had observed the episode that Mr. Chater hadkept well behind the curtain; but he did not adduce the fact.
"I certainly did not," he affirmed.
"Ah! I expect you took precious good care not to. You've done the samething before. Never to my dying day shall I forget the figure you cutoutside Swan and Edgar's last Christmas. Making me--"
Mr. Chater implored: "Oh, my dear, don't drag that up again!"
"But I _do_ drag it up!" Mrs. Chater a little unnecessarily cried. "I_do_ drag it up, and I shall always drag it up--making me a fool as youdid! I was ashamed of you. I was--"
Mr. Chater nervously wiped his moist palms with his pocket handkerchief:"I've told you over and over again, my dear, that I never understoodthe circumstances. There was a great crowd, and I was very much pushedabout. If I had known the circumstances--"
Mrs. Chater hurled back the word at him: "Circumstances!"
"My dear," the agitated man replied, ticking off the points on softfingers, "my dear, I had gone to the window of Swan and Edgar's, leavingyou, as you expressly desired, to pay the man _yourself_. When I came_back_ to you, what I gathered was that the man was entitled to afurther _sixpence_ and that you had no _change_."
Mrs. Chater lashed herself with the recollection: "Nothing of the kind!"she burst. "Nothing of the kind! What did the man say to you when youasked what was the matter?"
"I quite forget."
"You do not forget."
"My dear, I really and truly do forget."
"For
the hundredth time, then, let me tell you. He said that if youpushed your ugly mug into it he would knock off your blooming head."
"Did he say _mug?_" asked Mr. Chater, assuming the air of one who,knowing this at the time, would have committed a singularly ferociousmurder.
"Well you know that he _did_ say mug--_ugly_ mug. Was _that_ a thing fora man of spirit to take quietly? Was _that_ a thing for a wife tohear bawled at her husband in the open street with the commissionairegrinning behind his hand? To my dying day I shall never forget myhumiliation when you handed him sixpence."
The unhappy husband murmured: "I do so wish you could, my dear."
Mrs. Chater shook, handled her troops with the skill of a perfecttactician, and hurled in the attack upon another quarter.
She said: "Ah, now insult me! Insult me before Miss Humfray! That'sright! _That's_ right! That's what I'm accustomed to. We all have ourcross to bear, as the vicar said last Sunday, and open insult from myhusband is mine. I can't complain; I married you with my eyes open."
Mrs. Chater revealed this secret of her girlhood in a voice whichimplied that most young women go through the ceremony with their eyestightly closed, mixed a second brandy-and-soda for her shattered nerves,swallowed it with the air of one draining a poison flask by way of happyrelease from martyrdom, banged down the glass, and, before her amazedhusband could open his lips, hammered in the attack from a thirdquarter.
"Little you would have cared," cried she, "if a miracle had not saved mylife this afternoon!"
Mr. Chater stood aghast. "My dearest! Saved you! From what?"
His dearest bitterly inquired: "What does it matter to you? You take nointerest. If my battered corpse--" Swept to tremendous heights bythe combined forces of her agitation, her imagination, and her twobrandys-and-sodas, she rose, pointed though the window. "If my batteredcorpse had been carried up those steps by two policemen this veryafternoon, what would you have done, I wonder?"
Mr. Chater, apprehension creeping among the roots of his hair, affirmedthat he would have dropped dead in the precise spot at which he happenedto be standing at the moment.
Mrs. Chater trumpeted "Never!"--dropped to her chair, and continued."You would have been glad." Her voice shook. "Glad--and in all this wideworld only my Bob and my blessed lambs in the nursery would have wepto'er my body."
Of so melancholy a character was the picture thus presented to her mind,augmenting her previous agitation, that the tumult within her welleddamply through her eyes, with noisy distress through her lips.
Patting her distressed back, imploring her to calm, Mr. Chater beggedsome account of the catastrophe from which she had escaped.
Between convulsive sobs she told him, he bridging the hiatuses ofemotion with "Oh-dear-oh-dears," in which alarm and sympathy were nicelymingled.
Painting details with a masterly hand, "And there was I alone," sheconcluded--"alone, at the mercy of a wild horse and a drunken cabman."
"But Miss Humfray was with you?"
"Miss Humfray managed to jump out and leave me."
Through all this scene--in one form or another a matter of dailyoccurrence, and therefore not to arouse interest--Mary had stood waitingits cessation and her orders. Mr. Chater turned upon her. Naturallydisposed to be kind to the girl, he yet readily saw in his wife'sstatement a way of escape from the castigation he had been enduring.As the small boy who has been kicked by the bully will with delightedrelief rush to the bully's aid when the kicks are at length turned toanother, urging him on so that he may forget his first prey, so Mr.Chater, delighted at his fortune, eagerly joined in turning his wife'swrath to Mary's head. For self-preservation, at whatever cost toanother, is the most compelling of instincts: its power great inproportion as we have allowed our fleshly impulses to master us. If,when they prompt, we coldly and impersonally regard them, findthem unworthy and crush them back humiliated, they become in timedisciplined--wither and die. In proportion as we permit them, upon theother hand, they come in time to drive us with a fierceness that cannotbe checked.
Mr. Chater had disciplined no single impulse that came to him with hisflesh.
In pious horror he turned upon the girl.
"Managed to jump out!" he exclaimed, speaking as one re-echoing a horrorhardly to be believed.
"Managed to jump out! Miss Humfray, I would not have thought it of you!"
She cried: "Mr. Chater, I fell!"
Disregarding, and with a deeper note of pained reproach, he continued:"So many ties, I should have thought, would have bound you to my wifein such an emergency--the length of time you have been with us;the unremitting kindness she has shown you, treating you as one ofourselves, in sickness tending you, bountifully feeding and clothingyou, going out of her way to make you happy. Oh, Miss Humfray!"
The strain on his invention paused him. Mrs. Chater, moved by thisastonishing revelation of her love, assumed an air in keeping--an airof some pain but no surprise at such ingratitude. She warmed to thishusband who, if no hero in the matter of ferocious cabmen, could atleast champion her upon occasion.
Mary cried: "But I did not jump out! Indeed I did not, Mr. Chater; Ifell."
Mrs. Chater said _"Fell!"_ With sublime forbearance she added, "Nevermind; the incident is past."
"Mrs. Chater, you must know that I fell out. I was leaning out--you hadasked me to see the name of the street--when the horse stumbled."
"It is curious," said Mrs. Chater, with a pained little smile, "that youmanaged to 'fall out' before the horse could recover and bolt."
"Very, very curious," Mr. Chater echoed.
How hateful they were, the girl felt. She broke out: "I--"
"Miss Humfray, that is enough. Help me upstairs. I will lie down."
Mr. Chater jumped brightly to the bell. "My dear, do; I will send you ahot-water bottle."
His wife recalled the shortcomings for which she had been taking him totask. "Send a fiddlestick," she rapped; "on a boiling day like this!"
She took Mary's arm; leaning heavily, passed from the room.
CHAPTER III.
Excursions In The Mind Of A Heroine.
Her mistress disrobed, head among pillows, slippered, coverleted,eau-de-Cologne on temples, with closed eyes inviting sleep to lull thetumults of the day. Mary climbed to her room.
About her mouth there was a ridiculous twitching; and as she watched itin the mirror she strove to wrap herself in the armour in which she hadlearned to take buffetings.
To be dispassionate was the salve she had schooled herself to use upona wounded spirit--to regard this Mary with the comically twitching facewhom now she saw in the glass as a second person whose sufferings mightbe coldly regarded and dissected.
It is a most admirable accomplishment. Nothing is so easy as to bephilosophic upon the cares of another--nothing so easy as to waximpatient with an acquaintance who allows himself to be overridden bytroubles and pains which appear to us of trifling moment. If, then, wecan school ourselves to regard the figure that bears our name as oneperson, and our ego as another, we have at least a chance of chidingthat figure out of all the fancied sufferings it may undergo.
With some success Mary had studied the art; now gave thatMary-in-the-glass who stood before her a healthy reproof.
"The ridiculous thing you did," Mary-in-the-glass was told--"theridiculous thing you did to make yourself miserable was to go thinkingabout--about Ireland."
The mouth of Mary-in-the-glass ominously twitched.
"There you go again. And it is so absolutely forbidden to think aboutthat. Whatever's the use of it?"
Mary-in-the-glass could adduce no reason, and must be prodded.
"Does it do you any good? Does it do _them_ any good, do you suppose, toknow that you can never think of them without making yourself unhappy?"
Mary-in-the-glass attempted a weak quibble; was instantly snapped.
"I'm not saying you are _never_ to think of them. Goodness knows whatI should do if I did not. It's all right to think of them when you
arehappy and they can share the happiness with you; but, when you chooseto be idiotically miserable, that's the time you are not to go whininganywhere near them--understand? You only make them unhappy and make yourtroubles worse. Troubles! if you can't see the fun of Mrs. Chater, youmust be a wretched sort of person. Her face when the cab brought herback! And trying to feel her heart! And her rage with that little wormof a Mr. Chater! Can't you see the fun of it instead of crying over it?"
Mary-in-the-glass could. The successive recollections induced theprettiest dimples on her face. She was at once forgiven.
Indeed, to snuggle back into her and to merge into her again was justnow very desirable to the censorious Mary-outside-the-glass. For, mergedin her sentimental and romantic personality, a most delectable line ofthought could be pursued--a delectable line, since along this trail wasto be encountered that stranger who had caught her in her wild ejectionfrom the cab.
Sinking in a chair, Mary adventured upon it; she was instantly met.
Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview."Poof!" Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered. "Poof!You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whomyou will never again see, and from whose recollections you have mostcertainly passed unless to be recalled as a joke--perhaps to someother girl!" (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters theseMarys-outside-the-glass.) "Why, you must be a donkey to think abouthim! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too utterlyridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall the figureyou must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you must have lookedlike as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw? Pretty sight, eh?And can you imagine the expression on your face as you banged into hisarms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you? And can you by anymeans realise the idiot you must have looked when Mrs. Chater cameup and swept you off like an escaped puppy, recaptured and in for awhipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you? You didn't happen topeep back through the little window at the back of the cab and see himlaughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked...."