_OUR ODD MAN._
I told you our odd man, Tom Dexter, came to us after that awful young
scamp of a boy, who was going to be a highwayman, left.
Mr. Wilkins wanted to recommend a man he knew, who had been ostler up in
London, but Harry said, “No, thank you, Wilkins, I’ll look out for one
myself.” It was Mr. Wilkins who recommended us the boy highwayman, so we
hadn’t much faith in his recommendations after that; though, of course,
he meant well, and only wanted to do the boy’s grandmother a good turn.
I often think what a lot of bad turns you do sometimes to many people
through trying to do one person a good turn. I’ve heard it said over and
over again, “This comes of trying to do a man a good turn;” and it has
always been about something unpleasant having happened.
It isn’t only that the person you try to do a good turn to brings
trouble about, but the person himself or herself--for women are as bad
as men in that respect--is generally ungrateful to you for what you’ve
done, and very often “rounds” on you, as the common expression is, and
tries to make out that you’ve done them, or I suppose I ought to say, to
be grammatical, done him or her an injury.
“One good turn deserves another,” the proverb says; but my experience of
doing anybody a good turn is, that it very seldom gets what it deserves;
but generally the other thing.
I recollect one place, when I was in service, where the master was a
most kind-hearted man, and a friend came to him one day, and told him a
tale about an old lady of very superior education, whose husband had
died, and left her in such reduced circumstances that if she did not
soon get something to do, she would have to go in the workhouse. The
friend told my master that this old lady was a most excellent
housekeeper, and used to looking after servants, because she had had her
own, and she spoke and wrote French, and would be very useful that way,
when there were children learning the language, to talk to them, and
give them an accent.
“I knew her husband in business,” said the friend to master, “and you’d
be doing a deserving woman a good turn, if you could find her a
situation where her talents would be appreciated.”
It happened just at that time that my mistress had been saying to master
that, her health being so delicate, and they having to travel about a
good deal through it, the awful London winter being too much for her,
they ought really to have a housekeeper--a person they could leave at
home, to look after the house and the servants while they were away.
Master came home and told missus about the old lady (Mrs. Le Jeune, her
name was), and missus said that that was just the very sort of person
they wanted. Why not give her a trial?
“Just what I was thinking myself,” said master; “only, my dear, I
thought I would consult you first.”
He knew by experience that if he _did’nt_ consult missus first about
everything, the fat would be in the fire; for she was one of those
ladies who don’t believe that a man can do anything right, and master
used to say sometimes he wondered she let him manage his own business.
Of course he didn’t say that to us servants; but we used to hear when
they were having arguments at dinner, which was pretty often.
It happened that just at the time master’s friend told him about Mrs. Le
Jeune, we were going to have a grand ball, and missus, who had nervous
headaches, was grumbling a good deal, and saying she couldn’t attend to
everything because of her health; so master said it would be a good
thing to have the old lady engaged at once, and then she could take a
lot of trouble off missus’s shoulders.
But Mrs. Le Jeune, it seems, couldn’t come for some reason just then.
What it was I don’t know, but at any rate she didn’t arrive until the
afternoon of the day that the ball was to come off, and then she drove
up in a four-wheeled cab, with a big box outside, about five o’clock.
Of course we were all sixes and sevens in the kitchen, because it was
rather a small house, and we’d had to turn the best bedroom into a
supper-room, and we’d had the upholsterer’s men about all day fitting it
up, and draping and decorating the other rooms, and we were all
topsy-turvy.
Mrs. Le Jeune, when I let her in, told me she was the new housekeeper,
and asked to see missus. Missus had gone to lie down, so as to be right
for the evening, and had given orders that she wasn’t to be disturbed
for anybody till six o’clock, and I knew it would be bad for me if I
went and woke her up; so I said to the old lady that missus was asleep;
but I would show her to the room that was to be hers.
She was a queer-looking old lady, certainly. She was very short, and had
a big bonnet on, and a long, black, foreign-looking cloak, and the
longest nose I think I ever saw on a woman in my life, but she spoke
like a lady certainly, but when she walked it almost made me laugh. It
wasn’t a walk--it was a little skip, and when she moved about, it was
for all the world as if she was dancing.
When I told her missus could not see her, she said, “Oh, it is very
strange. Madam knew that I was coming, she should have arranged for my
reception; but these City people have no manners. What’s your name,
girl?”
“Mary Jane.”
“Mary Jane what?”
“Mary Jane Buffham.”
“‘Mary Jane, madam,’ you mean. Be good enough never to address me
without calling me ‘madam.’”
“I beg your pardon, I didn’t know----”
“Did you hear what I said to you? I can’t allow you to speak to me as if
I were your equal. I am a lady by birth and education. I have consented
to take charge of this establishment in order that it may be properly
conducted. I shall have to begin by teaching the servants how to behave
themselves, evidently. Now, send some one to carry my box and conduct me
to my apartment.”
“Yes, madam.”
I thought to myself, “Well, this is a nice old lady the master’s got
hold of. She and missus won’t hit it off together long;” but, of course,
it was no business of mine, so I asked one of the upholsterer’s men to
give me a hand, and we carried her box upstairs, and I showed the old
lady her room.
It was at the top of the house, next the servants’ bedrooms. Before she
got up she was out of breath.
“Oh!” she said, “the attics! This is an insult to which I cannot submit.
I am a lady; your master does not seem to be aware of the fact.”
I said I didn’t know anything about that. This was the room. So I got
her box in, and gave her a candle, and left her muttering to herself,
and taking off her bonnet in front of the looking-glass, and putting on
a most wonderful cap, which she took out of the blue bonnet-box she had
carried in her hand.
It was a big black cap, with cherries and red-currants and grapes
sticking up all over it, and she looked so odd with it on, I had to go
away, for fear I should burst out laughing, and hurt her feelings.
In about half an hour the old lady came downstairs into the kitchen, and
everybody stared at her. It was most uncomfortable for us all to have a
strange housekeeper, and such an eccentric one, walking in right in the
middle of the preparations for a party, and beginning to missus it over
us at once, and to talk like a duchess to us.
There were a lot of men about the kitchen, which made it worse, the
upholsterer’s men, and the confectioner’s men, who were finishing off
the things for supper, and the florist’s man with the plants and the
flowers; and when that extraordinary old lady walked in, with her
wonderful cap, and began to go on at us at once, and order us to do this
and to do that, and to say we were a common lot, and not one of us knew
how things ought to be done, I wondered what would be the end of it.
Before the company came, master went to have a look at the ball-room to
see if everything was right, while missus was dressing, and there he
found the old lady, who had gone upstairs, and was talking to the
upholsterer’s men, who were finishing off, and telling them about how
different things were when she was young, and the men were what is
called “getting at her,” and encouraging her to talk.
When master went in, he was quite flabbergasted to see that old lady, in
her wonderful cap, talking away, and saying this ought to be altered and
that ought to be altered, and he didn’t know who she was at first, not
recognizing her, till she came up and said--
“Good evening, sir; I’m just looking round to see if things are as they
should be.”
“Oh, thank you,” said the master, hardly knowing what to say. “But I
won’t trouble you to do that.”
“Oh, it’s no trouble,” she said; “I’m used to these affairs. If you’ll
allow me to say it, sir, I don’t care for these artificial flowers about
the place. They should be real.”
“Perhaps so,” said master; “but if you’ll kindly stay below and look
after the servants, that is all you need do at present.”
He was anxious to get her out of the way before missus came down,
because he guessed there would be trouble if missus found that old lady
interfering and giving orders.
Missus was like that. She wouldn’t allow anybody to interfere with her,
and she was very touchy on the point. Once she wanted to leave the house
they were living in, and master put it in the agent’s hands and
advertised it, and a gentleman and his wife came and looked at it
several times, and everything was settled, and the deed or agreement, or
whatever you call it, was to be signed, when, the day before, the lady
who was going to take the house came to look over it again, and, going
over the drawing-room with missus, she said, “I don’t think the colour
of your curtains harmonizes with the paper. When I have the house, I
shall have the curtains such and such a colour.”
That was enough for missus. She fired up directly, and said, “Oh, I’m
sorry I didn’t consult you when I was putting my curtains up, but the
colour suits me well enough, and you won’t alter it, because you won’t
have the house!”
And then there were a few words, and the lady thought it best to retire.
That night, when the master came home, missus told him that she’d
changed her mind, and she wouldn’t leave the house, and the agreement
wasn’t to be signed.
“Oh, but, my dear,” said master, “everything is in the lawyer’s hands,
and the place is as good as let. We can’t back out of it now.”
“You’ll have to back out of it,” said missus, “for I’m not going to let
that woman have my house. She’s had the impudence to find fault with my
taste, and to tell me what she’s going to do, and so she sha’n’t come in
at all--so there now!”
And all master could say was no good. Missus declared she’d never go
into another house alive, and, for the sake of peace and quietness,
master had to refuse to sign the agreement at the last moment.
There was an awful row about it, I heard, and the other gentleman was
very indignant, but it was no use. It was more than master dared do to
sign the agreement, knowing what his wife was, and he couldn’t be made
to, legally, so the other people had to give way after lawyer’s letters
had passed.
And one day, when missus met the other lady in an omnibus going to
Regent Street, she said to her, “My curtains are still blue, madam;” and
the other lady called to the conductor to stop the omnibus, and she paid
her fare, and got out.
Knowing how missus was, you may be sure the master was in a fright about
the new housekeeper interfering. There would have been a nice scene,
and, with the company beginning to arrive, he didn’t want that.
So he said to the waiter who was had in--the man we always had for
dinner-parties and balls--“Waters,” he said, “for Heaven’s sake, keep
that old woman downstairs. Do anything you like, only keep her
downstairs.”
“All right; sir,” said Waters. And he got the old lady to sit down in
the breakfast-room, and keep guard over the provisions and the wine that
were put out for the musicians’ supper, and made out it was very
important she should be there, as she was to see that nobody came in and
helped themselves.
She saw that nobody did, but _she_ helped _herself_, and by the time the
ball was in full swing the poor old lady had drunk so much wine, she was
quite silly, and presently began to get lively, and, feeling lonely, I
suppose, she went upstairs to stand in the hall and see the fun, though
she had to lean up against the wall a good deal, the wine having got in
her head.
I can’t tell you the trouble we had with her; but the end of it was she
suddenly made her appearance in the ball-room with her cap very much on
one side, and her face very flushed, and said, “Where’s Mr. ---- [naming
the master]? I have a communication to make to him.”
Master was horrified, and missus said, “Good gracious, who is this
person?”
“Person, madam?” said the new housekeeper, “I’d have you to know I’m a
real lady, which is more than you are.”
She made as if she would come across to missus, but she staggered, and
fell into the arms of a very stout old gentleman, and put her arms round
his neck, and began to have hysterics, and the waiter and master had to
get her away by main force between them, the company almost bursting
with laughter.
Master was in an awful rage, and said he’d turn her out there and then,
but he couldn’t in her condition, and so two of us girls got her
upstairs and put her to bed, and we thought she’d go off to sleep; but
just as the company had sat down to supper in the bedroom, which had
been turned into a supper-room, she appeared with a candle in her hand,
like Lady Macbeth, and no cap on, only her bald head, looking the most
extraordinary figure you ever saw in your life, and asked if there was a
doctor present, as she felt very ill, and was liable to heart attacks if
not taken in time.
Master and the waiter had to get her out again; but missus was in a
terrible rage about it, and went on at master before all the company,
saying he ought to be ashamed of himself, bringing such a creature into
the house. And the rest of the party was quite spoilt, missus going off
to bed herself in a temper, saying she had a bad headache, and master
was so worried that he took a little more champagne than was good for
him, and slipped up dancing, and hit his eye against a rout seat, and
made it so bad he was disfigured for the rest of the evening, and went
and hid himself down in the breakfast-room till the company were gone,
which they soon were, as everything was upset, and it got awkward.
The next day when the old lady got up, about ten o’clock, she came down
and ordered her breakfast, and was beginning to missus it again, and say
what she was going to do, and how she was going to keep missus in her
place, when master came and told her to be off. He gave her ten
shillings, and ordered her box to be brought down and put on a cab, and
told her she was a wicked old woman, and she ought to be ashamed of
herself.
She refused to go at first, saying she was engaged for three months, and
she wanted three months’ money. But she was got into the cab at last,
and we were all very thankful to see the last of her.
But she sent master a County Court summons for three months’ wages, and
he had no end of trouble with her. And through going and giving his
friend, who had recommended her, a bit of his mind, they quarrelled, and
never spoke again; and missus, having put herself in such a rage the
night before, and gone to bed, got up cross the next morning, wild with
herself and everybody else, and had an awful quarrel with her mother,
who was very rich, and who reprimanded her for being so passionate, and
it caused such a coldness between them that, when a year after the
mother died, it was found she had altered her will, and left all her
money to charitable institutions, and master reckoned that he was twenty
thousand pounds out through doing a friend a good turn in giving that
old lady a job, besides all the worry and annoyance and the
unpleasantness that had come of it.
It was writing about Mr. Wilkins and his doing the boy-highwayman’s
grandmother a good turn that put this story into my head; but, of
course, it happened while I was in service, and has nothing to do with
the ‘Stretford Arms.’
Mr. Wilkins was very sorry, I know, and we didn’t blame him; but we
weren’t going to let him do anybody else a good turn at our expense. So
Harry looked out for man, and having heard of one who was in want of a
job, named Tom Dexter, and liking his manner, and what he had heard
about him, he took him on, and a better servant we never had.
Tom was about fifty, a fine, burly fellow; but his hair was quite grey,
and his face wrinkled. It was trouble, as we found out afterwards, that
had given him such an old look.
Tom was soon a great favourite with us all, and it was quite a pleasure
to ask him to do anything; he was so willing. The customers liked him,
too; and he soon began to do very well, because, being so civil and
obliging, he got good tips. And one great thing about him was, he was a
strict teetotaller.
I dare say you’ll laugh at a licensed victualler’s wife praising a man
for being a teetotaller, because if everybody were teetotallers our
trade wouldn’t have been what it was; but I must say with servants it is
a great thing when they are teetotallers, especially servants about a
place where drink is easy to get.
Tom was quite a character in his way, being full of odd sayings, and
very sharp at reckoning people up in a minute. Harry used to say that
directly Tom had cleaned a man’s boots he knew his character, but I do
not go so far as that, though certainly he was able to tell what people
would be like, almost directly he saw them.
When anybody new came, Tom would carry their luggage upstairs, and, for
fun, Harry would say sometimes, “Well, Tom, what’s this lot’s
character?” Tom would say, “Grumblers, sir,” or “troublesome,” or
“mean,” or “jolly,” or something else, as the case might be, and he
wasn’t often wrong. Sometimes he would say, “Wait till I’ve had their
boots through my hands, sir.” And it was very rarely after that that he
hesitated. He used to declare that a man’s boots told a lot about him,
and once he tried to explain to me how it was with the boots he was
cleaning, for an example. It wasn’t only the shape, but it was the way
they were worn at the heels, and the condition of them, and the way he
found them put outside the door, and all that. It was a curious idea,
but I dare say living among boots, so to speak, and seeing the different
varieties, makes you notice little things that other people wouldn’t.
Tom had been with us six months before I knew what his story was, for
about himself he never had very much to say. Harry was chaffing him
about making a fortune. He was doing so well in tips, and not spending
anything, and, having nobody, so far as we knew, to keep, Harry said he
would be taking a public-house and setting up in opposition to us.
Tom smiled, and said, “Not likely, sir.” And one thing led to another,
till he told us why he was a teetotaller, and what he was saving his
money up for.
It seems he had had a wife, who had been a great trouble to him--not at
first, because they were very happy, and married for love. Tom was in a
good situation in London when they married, and he got a comfortable
home together, having always been a hard-working, saving fellow.
He was about thirty when he married, and his wife was ten years younger,
so they were a very good match. After they had been married about ten
years, and had got two nice children--a boy and a girl--a great trouble
came. The little boy was the mother’s favourite, and she doted on him,
as mothers will. But when the boy was a nice age, and growing into a
sturdy little fellow, he caught the scarlet fever of some other
children, and, in spite of everything that could be done for him, he
died.
It nearly turned the poor mother’s brain, and I can quite understand it,
for, oh! what should I do, if anything happened to my little one? Tom
was nearly broken-hearted too; but, as he said, he had his work to go to
every day, and that took his mind off his trouble. But it is so
different for the woman, who has to be alone with her grief in the
house, where everything reminds her of her lost one, and where she
misses him every minute.
Tom came home always, directly his work was over, and he put on a
cheerful face, and tried to get his wife to talk of something else, but
she always came back to the one subject that was on her mind--her boy.
Then Tom tried to do her good by taking her out to places of amusement
now and then, and on Saturday evening they would go to a play, or a
music-hall; but it was all no good. He would see his wife’s face change
all of a sudden, and he would know that her thoughts were far away from
the noise and the glare, and the smoke and the smiling faces round her;
far away in the great cemetery, where her little boy lay buried.
Tom putting his big, rough hand across his eyes as he told me this, it
brought the tears into mine. Poor woman! it must be so dreadful, when
your life ought to be at its best, to be haunted like that.
Well, at last she got so melancholy and absent-minded that Tom saw it
was no good taking her out, and he was quite unhappy about it. She loved
him, and she loved her little girl, but she was one of those people who,
when sorrow comes, haven’t the strength of mind to battle with it, but
nurse it, and pamper it, and encourage it, giving themselves over body
and soul to it, and brooding night and day, instead of making an effort
to throw it off.
The home, which had once been so spick and span, now began to look dirty
and untidy; the little girl was neglected, and when Tom came home if was
a very different place that he came to from what it used to be.
He didn’t like to say much to the poor, broken-hearted woman; but he was
only a man, and at last began to grumble a little, because things were
going from bad to worse, and his home was really going to rack and ruin.
She didn’t say anything when he grumbled. She only cried, and that upset
Tom awfully, so he said, “Come, come, missus, I didn’t mean to be
unkind. Kiss me, and make it up. I know your poor heart’s broke, my
lass, but life’s got to be lived, you know, my dear, and sorrows will
come. Let’s make the best of it, instead of the worst. We’ve got each
other, and we’ve got our little girl, God bless her, and we must be
thankful for the blessings we’ve got, instead of grieving over those
we’ve lost.”
Tom’s wife sighed, and said, in a weary sort of a way, she’d try; and
she did try for a week or two, and Tom’s home was a little better; but
after that she dropped back again into her old listless state, and
nothing seemed to rouse her.
And then Tom made an awful discovery. The poor woman was doing what
hundreds have done before--drinking to drown her sorrow, drinking
quietly, never getting drunk, but only dazed and helpless.
He was nearly broken-hearted when he found it out, and he went down on
his knees and prayed to her for God’s sake to give it up, or it would be
ruin for all of them. But she didn’t seem to care now even for him, and
his reproaches and prayers and entreaties only made her more miserable,
and then she took more drink than ever.
He didn’t tell me all he went through for two or three years after that,
but it must have been awful for him to do what he did. She ruined him,
brought him down till his home was sold up. It’s a common enough
story--the drinking wife or the drinking husband that ruins the home,
and you can read about it in the police cases almost every day.
Sometimes it comes to murder, for a man who is a decent, hard-working
fellow goes mad when he gets together home after home, only to see each
go to pieces, wrecked by the dreadful drink, and his children, that he
is proud of and loves, running the streets ragged and neglected.
But it was doubly sad in our odd man’s case, poor fellow, because the
thing that brought it about was the mother’s love for her little one. He
had lost his child, and through that he lost his wife and his home.
He found at last that all his trying was no good. If he didn’t give his
wife money to get the drink she pawned his things, and what she couldn’t
pawn she sold. She ran him into debt and got him into difficulties
everywhere, and he was driven mad when he saw his life and her life
being wrecked in such a dreadful way.
It was too much for him at last, and then he grew desperate. One night,
when he came home and found the place stripped and his wife in a drunken
sleep, he went out himself, and, meeting a friend, they went to the
public-house together, and Tom had a glass of brandy to steady his
nerves, and then he had another, and then--well, and then he took to
drink too--drank hard himself to drown _his_ trouble, and then the end
came quickly. He was dismissed from his place for drunkenness, a place
he had had for twenty years, and that week he was homeless--homeless,
with a drunken wife and a delicate child, and, as he said, it might have
been so different.
Oh, that “might have been!” What a lot it means in our lives!
When Tom got to this part of his story, he broke down at last. “You
mustn’t mind me, ma’am,” he said; “but I can’t think of that awful time
even now without a shudder. The first night that I slept in the casual
ward, and lay awake and thought the past over, I thought I should have
gone mad. I made up my mind that the next day I’d go to one of the
bridges and drown myself.
“And then I thought, What would become of my poor little girl and that
poor misguided woman if I was dead?
“I was the only hope they had in the world. Then I said to myself,
‘Perhaps, now things are at the worst, they will mend. There may be a
chance of my poor lass coming to her senses now she sees what she’s
brought us all to. At any rate, she can’t get any drink now, and the
break may be the means of curing her.’”
“And was it, Tom?” I said, for I was getting interested in his story,
and I knew something must have happened to change his luck, as they call
it, or he wouldn’t be our odd man now, so cheerful, and so contented and
respectable.
“Well, ma’am, it didn’t all come right at once. We’d a good deal to go
through before things began to mend. My wife----”
“Is your wife alive, Tom?” I said, interrupting him.
“I hope so, ma’am.”
“You hope so! Don’t you know?”
“No, ma’am--that’s the sad part of the story. That’s what I’m coming to.
When we left the casual ward the next day----”
* * * * *
No. 17 going--given you a cheque for his bill. Let me see it. That’s a
good bank, but I don’t think I ought to take a cheque. But if I say I
won’t, it’s like suspecting the gentleman of being a swindler. His
luggage is very respectable. Dear me, I wish Harry was here.
Something’s sure to crop up just because he’s gone down for two days to
see his mother. It’s only ten pounds odd. I suppose I’d better take it.
All right; receipt the bill. Oh, dear, I hope it’s all right. Harry will
think me so stupid if it isn’t. I shall have that cheque on my mind,
night and day, till it’s paid. I don’t think I’ll take it. Susan, Susan,
bring that bill back. What! you’ve given it to the gentleman? He’s got
his bill receipted? Dear, dear, I don’t think I can refuse now. Well, I
hope it will be all right.