“Ain't yer going to do it this time?” she demanded with a falling face.
“You done it last time. I tell her you done it”--she pointed to her
friend who was looking wistfully at me--“ain't you to let her see you
doing of it?”
For a moment I thought that her desire was another shilling, but by a
piece of pantomime she showed that she wanted me to lift my hat to her.
So I lifted it, and when I looked behind she had her head in the air and
her neighbour was gazing at her awestruck. These little creatures are
really not without merit.
About a week afterward I was in a hired landau, holding a newspaper
before my face lest anyone should see me in company of a waiter and his
wife. William was taking her into Surrey to stay with an old nurse of
mine, and Irene was with us, wearing the most outrageous bonnet.
I formed a mean opinion of Mrs. Hicking's intelligence from her pride in
the baby, which was a very ordinary one. She created a regrettable scene
when it was brought to her, because “she had been feared it would not
know her again.” I could have told her that they know no one for years
had I not been in terror of Irene, who dandled the child on her knees
and talked to it all the way. I have never known a bolder little hussy
than this Irene. She asked the infant improper questions, such as “Oo
know who gave me this bonnet?” and answered them herself. “It was
the pretty gentleman there,” and several times I had to affect sleep,
because she announced, “Kiddy wants to kiss the pretty gentleman.”
Irksome as all this necessarily was to a man of taste, I suffered
still more acutely when we reached our destination, where disagreeable
circumstances compelled me to drink tea with a waiter's family. William
knew that I regarded thanks from persons of his class as an outrage, yet
he looked them though he dared not speak them. Hardly had he sat down
at the table by my orders than he remembered that I was a member of the
club and jumped up. Nothing is in worse form than whispering, yet again
and again he whispered to his poor, foolish wife, “How are you now?
You don't feel faint?” and when she said she felt like another woman
already, his face charged me with the change. I could not but conclude
from the way she let the baby pound her that she was stronger than she
pretended.
I remained longer than was necessary because I had something to say to
William which I feared he would misunderstand, but when he announced
that it was time for him to catch a train back to London, at which his
wife paled, I delivered the message.
“William,” I said, backing away from him, “the head-waiter asked me to
say that you could take a fortnight's holiday. Your wages will be paid
as usual.”
Confound him.
“William,” I cried furiously, “go away.”
Then I saw his wife signing to him, and I knew she wanted to be left
alone with me.
“William,” I cried in a panic, “stay where you are.”
But he was gone, and I was alone with a woman whose eyes were filmy. Her
class are fond of scenes. “If you please, ma'am!” I said imploringly.
But she kissed my hand; she was like a little dog.
“It can be only the memory of some woman,” said she, “that makes you so
kind to me and mine.”
Memory was the word she used, as if all my youth were fled. I suppose I
really am quite elderly.
“I should like to know her name, sir,” she said, “that I may mention her
with loving respect in my prayers.”
I raised the woman and told her the name. It was not Mary. “But she has
a home,” I said, “as you have, and I have none. Perhaps, ma'am, it would
be better worth your while to mention me.”
It was this woman, now in health, whom I intrusted with the purchase of
the outfits, “one for a boy of six months,” I explained to her, “and one
for a boy of a year,” for the painter had boasted to me of David's rapid
growth. I think she was a little surprised to find that both outfits
were for the same house; and she certainly betrayed an ignoble curiosity
about the mother's Christian name, but she was much easier to brow-beat
than a fine lady would have been, and I am sure she and her daughter
enjoyed themselves hugely in the shops, from one of which I shall never
forget Irene emerging proudly with a commissionaire, who conducted her
under an umbrella to the cab where I was lying in wait. I think that was
the most celestial walk of Irene's life.
I told Mrs. Hicking to give the articles a little active ill-treatment
that they might not look quite new, at which she exclaimed, not being in
my secret, and then to forward them to me. I then sent them to Mary and
rejoiced in my devilish cunning all the evening, but chagrin came in the
morning with a letter from her which showed she knew all, that I was her
Mr. Anon, and that there never had been a Timothy. I think I was never
so gravelled. Even now I don't know how she had contrived it.
Her cleverness raised such a demon in me that I locked away her letter
at once and have seldom read it since. No married lady should have
indited such an epistle to a single man. It said, with other things
which I decline to repeat, that I was her good fairy. As a sample of the
deliberate falsehoods in it, I may mention that she said David loved me
already. She hoped that I would come in often to see her husband, who
was very proud of my friendship, and suggested that I should pay him my
first visit to-day at three o'clock, an hour at which, as I happened to
know, he is always away giving a painting-lesson. In short, she wanted
first to meet me alone, so that she might draw the delicious, respectful
romance out of me, and afterward repeat it to him, with sighs and little
peeps at him over her pocket-handkerchief.
She had dropped what were meant to look like two tears for me upon the
paper, but I should not wonder though they were only artful drops of
water.
I sent her a stiff and tart reply, declining to hold any communication
with her.