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 awe-stricken 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 table-cloths. “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 some one 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.”
After an interval—“I am sorry the boot hit _him_.”
Another pause. The potatoes were being scrubbed violently. “He always
_was_ a bit above me, you know, ma’am. And he was led away.”
The potatoes were more than finished. Jane rose sharply, with a sigh,
and rapped the basin down on the table.
“I don’t care,” she said. “I don’t care a rap. He will find out his
mistake yet. It serves me right. I was stuck up about him. I ought not
to have looked so high. And I am glad things are as things are.”
My wife was in the kitchen, seeing to the higher cookery. After the
confession of the boot-throwing, she must have watched poor Jane fuming
with a certain dismay in those brown eyes of hers. But I imagine they
softened again very quickly, and then Jane’s must have met them.
“Oh, ma’am,” said Jane, with an astonishing change of note, “think of
all that _might_ have been! Oh, ma’am, I _could_ have been so happy! I
ought to have known, but I didn’t know—You’re very kind to let me talk
to you, ma’am—for it’s hard on me, ma’am—it’s har-r-r-r-d—”
And I gather that Euphemia so far forgot herself as to let Jane sob out
some of the fulness of her heart on a sympathetic shoulder. My Euphemia,
thank Heaven, has never properly grasped the importance of “keeping up
her position.” And since that fit of weeping, much of the accent of
bitterness has gone out of Jane’s scrubbing and brush-work.
Indeed, something passed the other day with the butcher-boy—but that
scarcely belongs to this story. However, Jane is young still, and time
and change are at work with her. We all have our sorrows, but I do not
believe very much in the existence of sorrows that never heal.