The final question discussed at our last meeting been: What shall our
hero be? MacShaughnassy had suggested an author, with a critic for the
villain. My idea was a stockbroker, with an undercurrent of romance in
his nature. Said Jephson, who has a practical mind: "The question is not
what we like, but what the female novel-reader likes."
"That is so," agreed MacShaughnassy. "I propose that we collect feminine
opinion upon this point. I will write to my aunt and obtain from her the
old lady's view. You," he said, turning to me, "can put the case to your
wife, and get the young lady's ideal. Let Brown write to his sister at
Newnham, and find out whom the intellectual maiden favours, while Jephson
can learn from Miss Medbury what is most attractive to the common-sensed
girl."
This plan we had adopted, and the result was now under consideration.
MacShaughnassy opened the proceedings by reading his aunt's letter. Wrote
the old lady:
"I think, if I were you, my dear boy, I should choose a soldier. You
know your poor grandfather, who ran away to America with that _wicked_
Mrs. Featherly, the banker's wife, was a soldier, and so was your poor
cousin Robert, who lost eight thousand pounds at Monte Carlo. I have
always felt singularly drawn towards soldiers, even as a girl; though
your poor dear uncle could not bear them. You will find many
allusions to soldiers and men of war in the Old Testament (see Jer.
xlviii. 14). Of course one does not like to think of their fighting
and killing each other, but then they do not seem to do that sort of
thing nowadays."
"So much for the old lady," said MacShaughnassy, as he folded up the
letter and returned it to his pocket. "What says culture?"
Brown produced from his cigar-case a letter addressed in a bold round
hand, and read as follows:
"What a curious coincidence! A few of us were discussing this very
subject last night in Millicent Hightopper's rooms, and I may tell you
at once that our decision was unanimous in favour of soldiers. You
see, my dear Selkirk, in human nature the attraction is towards the
opposite. To a milliner's apprentice a poet would no doubt be
satisfying; to a woman of intelligence he would he an unutterable
bore. What the intellectual woman requires in man is not something to
argue with, but something to look at. To an empty-headed woman I can
imagine the soldier type proving vapid and uninteresting; to the woman
of mind he represents her ideal of man--a creature strong, handsome,
well-dressed, and not too clever."
"That gives us two votes for the army," remarked MacShaughnassy, as Brown
tore his sister's letter in two, and threw the pieces into the
waste-paper basket. "What says the common-sensed girl?"
"First catch your common-sensed girl," muttered Jephson, a little
grumpily, as it seemed to me. "Where do you propose finding her?"
"Well," returned MacShaughnassy, "I looked to find her in Miss Medbury."
As a rule, the mention of Miss Medbury's name brings a flush of joy to
Jephson's face; but now his features wore an expression distinctly
approaching a scowl.
"Oh!" he replied, "did you? Well, then, the common-sensed girl loves the
military also."
"By Jove!" exclaimed MacShaughnassy, "what an extraordinary thing. What
reason does she give?"
"That there's a something about them, and that they dance so divinely,"
answered Jephson, shortly.
"Well, you do surprise me," murmured MacShaughnassy, "I am astonished."
Then to me he said: "And what does the young married woman say? The
same?"
"Yes," I replied, "precisely the same."
"Does _she_ give a reason?" he asked.
"Oh yes," I explained; "because you can't help liking them."
There was silence for the next few minutes, while we smoked and thought.
I fancy we were all wishing we had never started this inquiry.
That four distinctly different types of educated womanhood should, with
promptness and unanimity quite unfeminine, have selected the soldier as
their ideal, was certainly discouraging to the civilian heart. Had they
been nursemaids or servant girls, I should have expected it. The worship
of Mars by the Venus of the white cap is one of the few vital religions
left to this devoutless age. A year or two ago I lodged near a barracks,
and the sight to be seen round its huge iron gates on Sunday afternoons I
shall never forget. The girls began to assemble about twelve o'clock. By
two, at which hour the army, with its hair nicely oiled and a cane in its
hand, was ready for a stroll, there would be some four or five hundred of
them waiting in a line. Formerly they had collected in a wild mob, and
as the soldiers were let out to them two at a time, had fought for them,
as lions for early Christians. This, however, had led to scenes of such
disorder and brutality, that the police had been obliged to interfere;
and the girls were now marshalled in _queue_, two abreast, and compelled,
by a force of constables specially told off for the purpose, to keep
their places and wait their proper turn.
At three o'clock the sentry on duty would come down to the wicket and
close it. "They're all gone, my dears," he would shout out to the girls
still left; "it's no good your stopping, we've no more for you to-day."
"Oh, not one!" some poor child would murmur pleadingly, while the tears
welled up into her big round eyes, "not even a little one. I've been
waiting _such_ a long time."
"Can't help that," the honest fellow would reply, gruffly, but not
unkindly, turning aside to hide his emotion; "you've had 'em all between
you. We don't make 'em, you know: you can't have 'em if we haven't got
'em, can you? Come earlier next time."
Then he would hurry away to escape further importunity; and the police,
who appeared to have been waiting for this moment with gloating
anticipation, would jeeringly hustle away the weeping remnant. "Now
then, pass along, you girls, pass along," they would say, in that
irritatingly unsympathetic voice of theirs. "You've had your chance.
Can't have the roadway blocked up all the afternoon with this 'ere
demonstration of the unloved. Pass along."
In connection with this same barracks, our char-woman told Amenda, who
told Ethelbertha, who told me a story, which I now told the boys.
Into a certain house, in a certain street in the neighbourhood, there
moved one day a certain family. Their servant had left them--most of
their servants did at the end of a week--and the day after the moving-in
an advertisement for a domestic was drawn up and sent to the _Chronicle_.
It ran thus:
WANTED, GENERAL SERVANT, in small family of eleven. Wages, 6 pounds;
no beer money. Must be early riser and hard worker. Washing done at
home. Must be good cook, and not object to window-cleaning. Unitarian
preferred.--Apply, with references, to A. B., etc.
That advertisement was sent off on Wednesday afternoon. At seven o'clock
on Thursday morning the whole family were awakened by continuous ringing
of the street-door bell. The husband, looking out of window, was
surprised to see a crowd of about fifty girls surrounding the house. He
slipped on his dressing-gown and went down to see what was the matter.
The moment he opened the door, fifteen of them charged tumultuously into
the passage, sweeping him completely off his legs. Once inside, these
fifteen faced round, fought the other thirty-five or so back on to the
doorstep, and slammed the door in their faces. Then they picked up the
master of the house, and asked him politely to conduct them to "A. B."
At first, owing to the clamour of the mob outside, who were hammering at
the door and shouting curses through the keyhole, he could understand
nothing, but at length they succeeded in explaining to him that they were
domestic servants come ill answer to his wife's advertisement. The man
went and told his wife, and his wife said she would see them, one at a
time.
Which one should have audience first was a delicate question to decide.
The man, on being appealed to, said he would prefer to leave it to them.
They accordingly discussed the matter among themselves. At the end of a
quarter of an hour, the victor, having borrowed some hair-pins and a
looking-glass from our char-woman, who had slept in the house, went
upstairs, while the remaining fourteen sat down in the hall, and fanned
themselves with their bonnets.
"A. B." was a good deal astonished when the first applicant presented
herself. She was a tall, genteel-looking girl. Up to yesterday she had
been head housemaid at Lady Stanton's, and before that she had been under-
cook for two years to the Duchess of York.
"And why did you leave Lady Stanton?" asked "A. B."
"To come here, mum," replied the girl. The lady was puzzled.
"And you'll be satisfied with six pounds a year?" she asked.
"Certainly, mum, I think it ample."
"And you don't mind hard work?"
"I love it, mum."
"And you're an early riser?"
"Oh yes, mum, it upsets me stopping in bed after half-past five."
"You know we do the washing at home?"
"Yes, mum. I think it so much better to do it at home. Those laundries
ruin good clothes. They're so careless."
"Are you a Unitarian?" continued the lady.
"Not yet, mum," replied the girl, "but I should like to be one."
The lady took her reference, and said she would write.
The next applicant offered to come for three pounds--thought six pounds
too much. She expressed her willingness to sleep in the back kitchen: a
shakedown under the sink was all she wanted. She likewise had yearnings
towards Unitarianism.
The third girl did not require any wages at all--could not understand
what servants wanted with wages--thought wages only encouraged a love of
foolish finery--thought a comfortable home in a Unitarian family ought to
be sufficient wages for any girl.
This girl said there was one stipulation she should like to make, and
that was that she should be allowed to pay for all breakages caused by
her own carelessness or neglect. She objected to holidays and evenings
out; she held that they distracted a girl from her work.
The fourth candidate offered a premium of five pounds for the place; and
then "A. B." began to get frightened, and refused to see any more of the
girls, convinced that they must be lunatics from some neighbouring asylum
out for a walk.
Later in the day, meeting the next-door lady on the doorstep, she related
her morning's experiences.
"Oh, that's nothing extraordinary," said the next-door lady; "none of us
on this side of the street pay wages; and we get the pick of all the best
servants in London. Why, girls will come from the other end of the
kingdom to get into one of these houses. It's the dream of their lives.
They save up for years, so as to be able to come here for nothing."
"What's the attraction?" asked "A. B.," more amazed than ever.
"Why, don't you see," explained the next door lady, "our back windows
open upon the barrack yard. A girl living in one of these houses is
always close to soldiers. By looking out of window she can always see
soldiers; and sometimes a soldier will nod to her or even call up to her.
They never dream of asking for wages. They'll work eighteen hours a day,
and put up with anything just to be allowed to stop."
"A. B." profited by this information, and engaged the girl who offered
the five pounds premium. She found her a perfect treasure of a servant.
She was invariably willing and respectful, slept on a sofa in the
kitchen, and was always contented with an egg for her dinner.
The truth of this story I cannot vouch for. Myself, I can believe it.
Brown and MacShaughnassy made no attempt to do so, which seemed
unfriendly. Jephson excused himself on the plea of a headache. I admit
there are points in it presenting difficulties to the average intellect.
As I explained at the commencement, it was told to me by Ethelbertha, who
had it from Amenda, who got it from the char-woman, and exaggerations may
have crept into it. The following, however, were incidents that came
under my own personal observation. They afforded a still stronger
example of the influence exercised by Tommy Atkins upon the British
domestic, and I therefore thought it right to relate them.
"The heroine of them," I said, "is our Amenda. Now, you would call her a
tolerably well-behaved, orderly young woman, would you not?"
"She is my ideal of unostentatious respectability," answered
MacShaughnassy.
"That was my opinion also," I replied. "You can, therefore, imagine my
feelings on passing her one evening in the Folkestone High Street with a
Panama hat upon her head (_my_ Panama hat), and a soldier's arm round her
waist. She was one of a mob following the band of the Third Berkshire
Infantry, then in camp at Sandgate. There was an ecstatic, far-away look
in her eyes. She was dancing rather than walking, and with her left hand
she beat time to the music.
"Ethelbertha was with me at the time. We stared after the procession
until it had turned the corner, and then we stared at each other.
"'Oh, it's impossible,' said Ethelbertha to me.
"'But that was my hat,' I said to Ethelbertha.
"The moment we reached home Ethelbertha looked for Amenda, and I looked
for my hat. Neither was to be found.
"Nine o'clock struck, ten o'clock struck. At half-past ten, we went down
and got our own supper, and had it in the kitchen. At a quarter-past
eleven, Amenda returned. She walked into the kitchen without a word,
hung my hat up behind the door, and commenced clearing away the supper
things.
"Ethelbertha rose, calm but severe.
"'Where have you been, Amenda?' she inquired.
"'Gadding half over the county with a lot of low soldiers,' answered
Amenda, continuing her work.
"'You had on my hat,' I added.
"'Yes, sir,' replied Amenda, still continuing her work, 'it was the first
thing that came to hand. What I'm thankful for is that it wasn't
missis's best bonnet.'
"Whether Ethelbertha was mollified by the proper spirit displayed in this
last remark, I cannot say, but I think it probable. At all events, it
was in a voice more of sorrow than of anger that she resumed her
examination.
"'You were walking with a soldier's arm around your waist when we passed
you, Amenda?' she observed interrogatively.
"'I know, mum,' admitted Amenda, 'I found it there myself when the music
stopped.'
"Ethelbertha looked her inquiries. Amenda filled a saucepan with water,
and then replied to them.
"'I'm a disgrace to a decent household,' she said; 'no mistress who
respected herself would keep me a moment. I ought to be put on the
doorstep with my box and a month's wages.'
"'But why did you do it then?' said Ethelbertha, with natural
astonishment.
"'Because I'm a helpless ninny, mum. I can't help myself; if I see
soldiers I'm bound to follow them. It runs in our family. My poor
cousin Emma was just such another fool. She was engaged to be married to
a quiet, respectable young fellow with a shop of his own, and three days
before the wedding she ran off with a regiment of marines to Chatham and
married the colour-sergeant. That's what I shall end by doing. I've
been all the way to Sandgate with that lot you saw me with, and I've
kissed four of them--the nasty wretches. I'm a nice sort of girl to be
walking out with a respectable milkman.'
"She was so deeply disgusted with herself that it seemed superfluous for
anybody else to be indignant with her; and Ethelbertha changed her tone
and tried to comfort her.
"'Oh, you'll get over all that nonsense, Amenda,' she said, laughingly;
'you see yourself how silly it is. You must tell Mr. Bowles to keep you
away from soldiers.'
"'Ah, I can't look at it in the same light way that you do, mum,'
returned Amenda, somewhat reprovingly; 'a girl that can't see a bit of
red marching down the street without wanting to rush out and follow it
ain't fit to be anybody's wife. Why, I should be leaving the shop with
nobody in it about twice a week, and he'd have to go the round of all the
barracks in London, looking for me. I shall save up and get myself into
a lunatic asylum, that's what I shall do.'
"Ethelbertha began to grow quite troubled. 'But surely this is something
altogether new, Amenda,' she said; 'you must have often met soldiers when
you've been out in London?'
"'Oh yes, one or two at a time, walking about anyhow, I can stand that
all right. It's when there's a lot of them with a band that I lose my
head.'
"'You don't know what it's like, mum,' she added, noticing Ethelbertha's
puzzled expression; 'you've never had it. I only hope you never may.'
"We kept a careful watch over Amenda during the remainder of our stay at
Folkestone, and an anxious time we had of it. Every day some regiment or
other would march through the town, and at the first sound of its music
Amenda would become restless and excited. The Pied Piper's reed could
not have stirred the Hamelin children deeper than did those Sandgate
bands the heart of our domestic. Fortunately, they generally passed
early in the morning when we were indoors, but one day, returning home to
lunch, we heard distant strains dying away upon the Hythe Road. We
hurried in. Ethelbertha ran down into the kitchen; it was empty!--up
into Amenda's bedroom; it was vacant! We called. There was no answer.
"'That miserable girl has gone off again,' said Ethelbertha. 'What a
terrible misfortune it is for her. It's quite a disease.'
"Ethelbertha wanted me to go to Sandgate camp and inquire for her. I was
sorry for the girl myself, but the picture of a young and
innocent-looking man wandering about a complicated camp, inquiring for a
lost domestic, presenting itself to my mind, I said that I'd rather not.
"Ethelbertha thought me heartless, and said that if I would not go she
would go herself. I replied that I thought one female member of my
household was enough in that camp at a time, and requested her not to.
Ethelbertha expressed her sense of my inhuman behaviour by haughtily
declining to eat any lunch, and I expressed my sense of her
unreasonableness by sweeping the whole meal into the grate, after which
Ethelbertha suddenly developed exuberant affection for the cat (who
didn't want anybody's love, but wanted to get under the grate after the
lunch), and I became supernaturally absorbed in the
day-before-yesterday's newspaper.
"In the afternoon, strolling out into the garden, I heard the faint cry
of a female in distress. I listened attentively, and the cry was
repeated. I thought it sounded like Amenda's voice, but where it came
from I could not conceive. It drew nearer, however, as I approached the
bottom of the garden, and at last I located it in a small wooden shed,
used by the proprietor of the house as a dark-room for developing
photographs.
"The door was locked. 'Is that you, Amenda?' I cried through the
keyhole.
"'Yes, sir,' came back the muffled answer. 'Will you please let me out?
you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'
"I discovered it on the grass about a yard away, and released her. 'Who
locked you in?' I asked.
"'I did, sir,' she replied; 'I locked myself in, and pushed the key out
under the door. I had to do it, or I should have gone off with those
beastly soldiers.'
"'I hope I haven't inconvenienced you, sir,' she added, stepping out; 'I
left the lunch all laid.'"
* * * * *
Amenda's passion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards
all others of the male sex she maintained an attitude of callous
unsusceptibility, and her engagements with them (which were numerous)
were entered into or abandoned on grounds so sordid as to seriously shock
Ethelbertha.
When she came to us she was engaged to a pork butcher--with a milkman in
reserve. For Amenda's sake we dealt with the man, but we never liked
him, and we liked his pork still less. When, therefore, Amenda announced
to us that her engagement with him was "off," and intimated that her
feelings would in no way suffer by our going elsewhere for our bacon, we
secretly rejoiced.
"I am confident you have done right, Amenda," said Ethelbertha; "you
would never have been happy with that man."
"No, mum, I don't think I ever should," replied Amenda. "I don't see how
any girl could as hadn't the digestion of an ostrich."
Ethelbertha looked puzzled. "But what has digestion got to do with it?"
she asked.
"A pretty good deal, mum," answered Amenda, "when you're thinking of
marrying a man as can't make a sausage fit to eat."
"But, surely," exclaimed Ethelbertha, "you don't mean to say you're
breaking off the match because you don't like his sausages!"
"Well, I suppose that's what it comes to," agreed Amenda, unconcernedly.
"What an awful idea!" sighed poor Ethelbertha, after a long pause. "Do
you think you ever really loved him?"
"Oh yes," said Amenda, "I loved him right enough, but it's no good loving
a man that wants you to live on sausages that keep you awake all night."
"But does he want you to live on sausages?" persisted Ethelbertha.
"Oh, he doesn't say anything about it," explained Amenda; "but you know
what it is, mum, when you marry a pork butcher; you're expected to eat
what's left over. That's the mistake my poor cousin Eliza made. She
married a muffin man. Of course, what he didn't sell they had to finish
up themselves. Why, one winter, when he had a run of bad luck, they
lived for two months on nothing but muffins. I never saw a girl so
changed in all my life. One has to think of these things, you know."
But the most shamefully mercenary engagement that I think Amenda ever
entered into, was one with a 'bus conductor. We were living in the north
of London then, and she had a young man, a cheesemonger, who kept a shop
in Lupus Street, Chelsea. He could not come up to her because of the
shop, so once a week she used to go down to him. One did not ride ten
miles for a penny in those days, and she found the fare from Holloway to
Victoria and back a severe tax upon her purse. The same 'bus that took
her down at six brought her back at ten. During the first journey the
'bus conductor stared at Amenda; during the second he talked to her,
during the third he gave her a cocoanut, during the fourth he proposed to
her, and was promptly accepted. After that, Amenda was enabled to visit
her cheesemonger without expense.
He was a quaint character himself, this 'bus conductor. I often rode
with him to Fleet Street. He knew me quite well (I suppose Amenda must
have pointed me out to him), and would always ask me after her--aloud,
before all the other passengers, which was trying--and give me messages
to take back to her. Where women were concerned he had what is called "a
way" with him, and from the extent and variety of his female
acquaintance, and the evident tenderness with which the majority of them
regarded him, I am inclined to hope that Amenda's desertion of him (which
happened contemporaneously with her jilting of the cheesemonger) caused
him less prolonged suffering than might otherwise have been the case.
He was a man from whom I derived a good deal of amusement one way and
another. Thinking of him brings back to my mind a somewhat odd incident.
One afternoon, I jumped upon his 'bus in the Seven Sisters Road. An
elderly Frenchman was the only other occupant of the vehicle. "You vil
not forget me," the Frenchman was saying as I entered, "I desire Sharing
Cross."
"I won't forget yer," answered the conductor, "you shall 'ave yer Sharing
Cross. Don't make a fuss about it."
"That's the third time 'ee's arst me not to forget 'im," he remarked to
me in a stentorian aside; "'ee don't giv' yer much chance of doin' it,
does 'ee?"
At the corner of the Holloway Road we drew up, and our conductor began to
shout after the manner of his species: "Charing Cross--Charing Cross--'ere
yer are--Come along, lady--Charing Cross."
The little Frenchman jumped up, and prepared to exit; the conductor
pushed him back.
"Sit down and don't be silly," he said; "this ain't Charing Cross."
The Frenchman looked puzzled, but collapsed meekly. We picked up a few
passengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road
a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we passed with that pathetic
mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's attitude
towards conveyances of all kinds. Our conductor stopped.
"Where d'yer want to go to?" he asked her severely--"Strand--Charing
Cross?"
The Frenchman did not hear or did not understand the first part of the
speech, but he caught the words "Charing Cross," and bounced up and out
on to the step. The conductor collared him as he was getting off, and
jerked him back savagely.
"Carn't yer keep still a minute," he cried indignantly; "blessed if you
don't want lookin' after like a bloomin' kid."
"I vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," answered the Frenchman, humbly.
"You vont to be put down at Sharing Cross," repeated the other bitterly,
as he led him back to his seat. "I shall put yer down in the middle of
the road if I 'ave much more of yer. You stop there till I come and
sling yer out. I ain't likely to let yer go much past yer Sharing Cross,
I shall be too jolly glad to get rid o' yer."
The poor Frenchman subsided, and we jolted on. At "The Angel" we, of
course, stopped. "Charing Cross," shouted the conductor, and up sprang
the Frenchman.
"Oh, my Gawd," said the conductor, taking him by the shoulders and
forcing him down into the corner seat, "wot am I to do? Carn't somebody
sit on 'im?"
He held him firmly down until the 'bus started, and then released him. At
the top of Chancery Lane the same scene took place, and the poor little
Frenchman became exasperated.
"He keep saying Sharing Cross, Sharing Cross," he exclaimed, turning to
the other passengers; "and it is _no_ Sharing Cross. He is fool."
"Carn't yer understand," retorted the conductor, equally indignant; "of
course I say Sharing Cross--I mean Charing Cross, but that don't mean
that it _is_ Charing Cross. That means--" and then perceiving from the
blank look on the Frenchman's face the utter impossibility of ever making
the matter clear to him, he turned to us with an appealing gesture, and
asked:
"Does any gentleman know the French for 'bloomin' idiot'?"
A day or two afterwards, I happened to enter his omnibus again.
"Well," I asked him, "did you get your French friend to Charing Cross all
right?"
"No, sir," he replied, "you'll 'ardly believe it, but I 'ad a bit of a
row with a policeman just before I got to the corner, and it put 'im
clean out o' my 'ead. Blessed if I didn't run 'im on to Victoria."