As I sit writing in my study, I can hear our Jane bumping her way
downstairs with a brush and dustpan. She used in the old days to sing
hymn tunes, or the British national song for the time being, to these
instruments, but latterly she has been silent and even careful over
her work. Time was when I prayed with fervour for such silence, and
my wife with sighs for such care, but now they have come we are not
so glad as we might have anticipated we should be. Indeed, I would
rejoice secretly, though it may be unmanly weakness to admit it, even
to hear Jane sing "Daisy," or by the fracture of any plate but one of
Euphemia's best green ones, to learn that the period of brooding has
come to an end.
Yet how we longed to hear the last of Jane's young man before we heard
the last of him! Jane was always very free with her conversation to
my wife, and discoursed admirably in the kitchen on a variety of
topics--so well, indeed, that I sometimes left my study door open--our
house is a small one--to partake of it. But after William came, it was
always William, nothing but William; William this and William that;
and when we thought William was worked out and exhausted altogether,
then William all over again. The engagement lasted altogether three
years; yet how she got introduced to William, and so became thus
saturated with him, was always a secret. For my part, I believe it
was at the street corner where the Rev. Barnabas Baux used to hold an
open-air service after evensong on Sundays. Young Cupids were wont to
flit like moths round the paraffin flare of that centre of High Church
hymn-singing. I fancy she stood singing hymns there, out of memory and
her imagination, instead of coming home to get supper, and William
came up beside her and said, "Hello!" "Hello yourself!" she said; and,
etiquette being satisfied, they proceeded to talk together.
As Euphemia has a reprehensible way of letting her servants talk to
her, she soon heard of him. "He is _such_ a respectable young man,
ma'am," said Jane, "you don't know." Ignoring the slur cast on her
acquaintance, my wife inquired further about this William.
"He is second porter at Maynard's, the draper's," said Jane, "and
gets eighteen shillings--nearly a pound--a week, m'm; and when the
head porter leaves he will be head porter. His relatives are quite
superior people, m'm. Not labouring people at all. His father was a
greengrosher, m'm, and had a chumor, and he was bankrup' twice. And one
of his sisters is in a Home for the Dying. It will be a very good match
for me, m'm," said Jane, "me being an orphan girl."
"Then you are engaged to him?" asked my wife.
"Not engaged, ma'am; but he is saving money to buy a ring--hammyfist."
"Well, Jane, when you are properly engaged to him you may ask him round
here on Sunday afternoons, and have tea with him in the kitchen."
For my Euphemia has a motherly conception of her duty towards her
maid-servants. And presently the amethystine ring was being worn about
the house, even with ostentation, and Jane developed a new way of
bringing in the joint, so that this gage was evident. The elder Miss
Maitland was aggrieved by it, and told my wife that servants ought not
to wear rings. But my wife looked it up in _Enquire Within_ and _Mrs.
Motherly's Book of Household Management_, and found no prohibition. So
Jane remained with this happiness added to her love.
The treasure of Jane's heart appeared to me to be what respectable
people call a very deserving young man. "William, ma'am," said Jane one
day suddenly, with ill-concealed complacency, as she counted out the
beer bottles, "William, ma'am, is a teetotaller. Yes, m'm; and he don't
smoke. Smoking, ma'am," said Jane, as one who reads the heart, "_do_
make such a dust about. Beside the waste of money. _And_ the smell.
However, I suppose it's necessary to some."
Possibly it dawned on Jane that she was reflecting a little severely
upon Euphemia's comparative ill-fortune, and she added kindly, "I'm
sure the master is a hangel when his pipe's alight. Compared to other
times."
William was at first a rather shabby young man of the ready-made black
coat school of costume. He had watery grey eyes, and a complexion
appropriate to the brother of one in a Home for the Dying. Euphemia
did not fancy him very much, even at the beginning. His eminent
respectability was vouched for by an alpaca umbrella, from which he
never allowed himself to be parted.
"He goes to chapel," said Jane. "His papa, ma'am"--
"His _what_, Jane?"
"His papa, ma'am, was Church; but Mr. Maynard is a Plymouth Brother,
and William thinks it Policy, ma'am, to go there too. Mr. Maynard comes
and talks to him quite friendly, when they ain't busy, about using up
all the ends of string, and about his soul. He takes a lot of notice,
do Mr. Maynard, of William, and the way he saves string and his soul,
ma'am."
Presently we heard that the head porter at Maynard's had left, and that
William was head porter at twenty-three shillings a week. "He is really
kind of over the man who drives the van," said Jane, "and him married
with three children." And she promised in the pride of her heart to
make interest for us with William to favour us so that we might get our
parcels of drapery from Maynard's with exceptional promptitude.
After this promotion a rapidly increasing prosperity came upon Jane's
young man. One day, we learned that Mr. Maynard had given William a
book. "Smiles' Elp Yourself, it's called," said Jane; "but it ain't
comic. It tells you how to get on in the world, and some what William
read to me was _lovely_, ma'am."
Euphemia told me of this laughing, and then she became suddenly grave.
"Do you know, dear," she said, "Jane said one thing I did not like. She
had been quiet for a minute, and then she suddenly remarked, 'William
is a lot above me, ma'am, ain't he?'"
"I don't see anything in that," I said, though later my eyes were to be
opened.
One Sunday afternoon about that time I was sitting at my
writing-desk--possibly I was reading a good book--when a something
went by the window. I heard a startled exclamation behind me, and
saw Euphemia with her hands clasped together and her eyes dilated.
"George," she said in an awestricken whisper, "did you see?"
Then we both spoke to one another at the same moment, slowly and
solemnly: "_A silk hat! Yellow gloves! A new umbrella!_"
"It may be my fancy, dear," said Euphemia; "but his tie was very like
yours. I believe Jane keeps him in ties. She told me a little while
ago in a way that implied volumes about the rest of your costume, 'The
master _do_ wear pretty ties, ma'am.' And he echoes all your novelties."
The young couple passed our window again on their way to their
customary walk. They were arm in arm. Jane looked exquisitely proud,
happy, and uncomfortable, with new white cotton gloves, and William, in
the silk hat, singularly genteel!
That was the culmination of Jane's happiness. When she returned, "Mr.
Maynard has been talking to William, ma'am," she said, "and he is to
serve customers, just like the young shop gentlemen, during the next
sale. And if he gets on, he is to be made an assistant, ma'am, at the
first opportunity. He has got to be as gentlemanly as he can, ma'am;
and if he ain't, ma'am, he says it won't be for want of trying. Mr.
Maynard has took a great fancy to him."
"He _is_ getting on, Jane," said my wife.
"Yes, ma'am," said Jane thoughtfully, "he _is_ getting on."
And she sighed.
That next Sunday, as I drank my tea, I interrogated my wife. "How is
this Sunday different from all other Sundays, little woman? What has
happened? Have you altered the curtains, or rearranged the furniture,
or where is the indefinable difference of it? Are you wearing your hair
in a new way without warning me? I clearly perceive a change in my
environment, and I cannot for the life of me say what it is."
Then my wife answered in her most tragic voice: "George," she said,
"that--that William has not come near the place to-day! And Jane is
crying her heart out upstairs."
There followed a period of silence. Jane, as I have said, stopped
singing about the house, and began to care for our brittle possessions,
which struck my wife as being a very sad sign indeed. The next Sunday,
and the next, Jane asked to go out, "to walk with William," and my
wife, who never attempts to extort confidences, gave her permission,
and asked no questions. On each occasion Jane came back looking
flushed and very determined. At last one day she became communicative.
"William is being led away," she remarked abruptly, with a catching of
the breath, apropos of tablecloths. "Yes, m'm. She is a milliner, and
she can play on the piano."
"I thought," said my wife, "that you went out with him on Sunday."
"Not out with him, m'm--after him. I walked along by the side of them,
and told her he was engaged to me."
"Dear me, Jane, did you? What did they do?"
"Took no more notice of me than if I was dirt. So I told her she should
suffer for it."
"It could not have been a very agreeable walk, Jane."
"Not for no parties, ma'am.
"I wish," said Jane, "I could play the piano, ma'am. But anyhow, I
don't mean to let _her_ get him away from me. She's older than him, and
her hair ain't gold to the roots, ma'am."
It was on the August Bank Holiday that the crisis came. We do not
clearly know the details of the fray, but only such fragments as poor
Jane let fall. She came home dusty, excited, and with her heart hot
within her.
The milliner's mother, the milliner, and William had made a party to
the Art Museum at South Kensington, I think. Anyhow, Jane had calmly
but firmly accosted them somewhere in the streets, and asserted her
right to what, in spite of the consensus of literature, she held to
be her inalienable property. She did, I think, go so far as to lay
hands on him. They dealt with her in a crushingly superior way. They
"called a cab." There was a "scene," William being pulled away into the
four-wheeler by his future wife and mother-in-law from the reluctant
hands of our discarded Jane. There were threats of giving her "in
charge."
"My poor Jane!" said my wife, mincing veal as though she was mincing
William. "It's a shame of them. I would think no more of him. He is not
worthy of you."
"No, m'm," said Jane. "He _is_ weak."
"But it's that woman has done it," said Jane. She was never known
to bring herself to pronounce "that woman's" name or to admit her
girlishness. "I can't think what minds some women must have--to try and
get a girl's young man away from her. But there, it only hurts to talk
about it," said Jane.
Thereafter our house rested from William. But there was something in
the manner of Jane's scrubbing the front doorstep or sweeping out the
rooms, a certain viciousness, that persuaded me that the story had not
yet ended.
"Please, m'm, may I go and see a wedding to-morrow?" said Jane one day.
My wife knew by instinct whose wedding. "Do you think it is wise,
Jane?" she said.
"I would like to see the last of him," said Jane.
"My dear," said my wife, fluttering into my room about twenty minutes
after Jane had started, "Jane has been to the boot-hole and taken all
the left-off boots and shoes, and gone off to the wedding with them in
a bag. Surely she cannot mean"--
"Jane," I said, "is developing character. Let us hope for the best."
Jane came back with a pale, hard face. All the boots seemed to be still
in her bag, at which my wife heaved a premature sigh of relief. We
heard her go upstairs and replace the boots with considerable emphasis.
"Quite a crowd at the wedding, ma'am," she said presently, in a purely
conversational style, sitting in our little kitchen, and scrubbing the
potatoes; "and such a lovely day for them." She proceeded to numerous
other details, clearly avoiding some cardinal incident.
"It was all extremely respectable and nice, ma'am; but _her_ father
didn't wear a black coat, and looked quite out of place, ma'am. Mr.
Piddingquirk"--
"_Who?_"
"Mr. Piddingquirk--William that _was_, ma'am--had white gloves, and
a coat like a clergyman, and a lovely chrysanthemum. He looked so
nice, ma'am. And there was red carpet down, just like for gentlefolks.
And they say he gave the clerk four shillings, ma'am. It was a real
kerridge they had--not a fly. When they came out of church there was
rice-throwing, and her two little sisters dropping dead flowers. And
someone threw a slipper, and then I threw a boot"--
"Threw a _boot_, Jane!"
"Yes, ma'am. Aimed at _her_. But it hit _him_. Yes, ma'am, hard. Gev
him a black eye, I should think. I only threw that one. I hadn't the
heart to try again. All the little boys cheered when it hit him."