_CONCLUSION._
I don’t know why it is, but when I sit down to write this “Memoir,”
knowing that it may be the last that I shall ever write, it makes me
feel a little sad.
In all human probability I, Mary Jane Beckett, am writing the last few
pages of the last book that will ever come from my pen. We are leaving
the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and going into a much larger house--a real big
hotel in a well-known county town--where we shall have waiters in
evening dress, and a big coffee-room, and a large commercial-room, and
we shall make up over fifty beds, besides having a large room for sales
and auctions, and another very large, lofty room for balls and big
dinners and assemblies, and that sort of thing.
I am very sorry to leave the dear old ‘Stretford Arms,’--our first
house, and the one where we have spent some happy years, and where my
little Harry and my little Mary were both born; but we have made money,
and we must not stand still. We have sold the house most advantageously,
and made a very large profit, as we ought to do, for we have worked the
business up and improved the premises very considerably.
It was a long time before we made up our minds, and we had very long and
anxious talks; but a friend of Harry’s told us about the big hotel that
was to be had in a Midland county town, and which was just the place for
us to work up and do well in, and Harry, having a means of getting all
the extra money, wanted to take it. It seemed a pity to let it go,
especially as we could never hope to do better than we were doing at
the ‘Stretford Arms,’ and if we are not going to work hard all our lives
we must get into a place where we can make a bigger profit, and get more
scope for our capital.
I have been to see the new house, and a very fine place it is. The rooms
are simply grand. It is right opposite the Corn Exchange, and has a
noble entrance-hall with statues in it, and is called the “Royal Hotel,”
because Queen Elizabeth once slept there. Harry says that Queen
Elizabeth seems to have slept at nearly every old hotel in the kingdom;
but that is all nonsense.
The place is in really excellent order, having not long ago been
refurnished by a great London firm, and some of the bedrooms are fit for
Queen Elizabeth to come to now.
It will be quite a different trade, of course, to what we have been
accustomed to, as coffee-room customers and commercial gentlemen come in
every day by the trains, and it is a big racing house when the races are
on, and they are very famous races indeed. It will be something new for
me to study the commercial gentlemen and the sporting gentlemen, as we
didn’t have any at the ‘Stretford Arms,’ not having any shops or a
racecourse. I am told that I shall pick up a lot of character among the
commercials, who are most entertaining and full of anecdotes; but it
will be too late to put them in my book, as I must finish it now. I know
I shall have no time at the “Royal Hotel,” for it will be a big task to
manage it, and take us all we know.
I am told, too, that some of the sporting gentlemen would make capital
stories, one of them being a young marquis, who is very odd and goes on
anyhow. I suppose it will be what Harry calls “a warm time” at race
time. I rather dread it. If it is too warm I shall keep out of the way.
But that is like me. Here am I beginning to worry about things before
they happen, and instead of that I ought to be getting this chapter
finished, for to-morrow is “the change,” and the new people take my dear
old home over and enter into possession.
Everybody about the place is _so_ sorry that we are going, and the
nicest and kindest things have been said of us. There was some talk of
giving Harry a banquet; but we thought it best not for many reasons, and
so last night a few old friends and customers came into our bar-parlour
and had a little supper with us, and during supper the Doctor, who has
been one of our best friends, presented us, in the name of the company,
with a most beautiful silver salver for our sideboard, and on it was
engraved “To Mr. and Mrs. Beckett, from a few old customers of the
‘Stretford Arms,’ wishing them long life, success, and happiness.”
It was very kind of them, wasn’t it? and we both felt it very deeply. It
is a most beautiful salver, and we shall treasure it as long as we live,
and I hope our children will treasure it after we are gone. It is very
gratifying, when you have tried to keep up the character of your house
and to make your customers comfortable, to know that your efforts have
been appreciated, and that everybody wishes you well in your new
undertaking.
We are going to spend a week in London before we take possession of the
“Royal Hotel,” as Harry has his solicitor and the brokers to see, and a
lot of business to attend to, and I want to take my boy to the
Zoological Gardens. He is very fond of his Noah’s Ark, and is always
delighted to hear his father tell him about the great big animals that
live in foreign parts, and I am most anxious to hear what the dear child
will say when he sees a real elephant and hears a real lion roar. He is
most intelligent for his age, and, though we were rather afraid while he
was teething, he has had the most perfect health ever since, and is as
fine a little fellow as you could find in the kingdom, and very sturdy
on his legs. He has a little sailor suit now, and marches about as proud
as you please; but he will keep his hands in his pockets. The sailor
suit which I bought him included a knife on a piece of whip-cord, which
was the terror of my life for a long time. I wanted to take it away; but
he screamed himself almost into convulsions, and I was obliged to let
him keep it; but I lived in hourly dread of nurse coming rushing in to
say Master Harry had cut himself.
I can’t think why it is that boy children always want to keep their
hands in their pockets, and so dearly love a knife. Little girls don’t
care about knives; but, then, little girls are easier to manage in every
way than little boys, who begin to assert their independence at the very
earliest age.
I hope where we are going to will suit my little ones as well as this
place has done; but everybody tells me that it is a most healthy town,
and so I won’t begin to fidget on that score, though I should feel much
happier if our nice, kind, clever doctor could be near us. But, of
course, that can’t be.
I believe I shall cry to-morrow when we leave the dear old ‘Stretford
Arms;’ but I shall try not to. I have been very happy in it, and we have
been very fortunate, far more than we had any right to expect, seeing
that we were only young beginners.
The packing up has been an awful job. It is really wonderful how things
accumulate. We have had to buy boxes and I don’t know what, and we shall
want a big van to take everything, as we take some of our furniture away
with us, the new people having some of their own they want to bring in.
I am very glad, as it will always be something to remind us of the old
place.
Things in this village haven’t changed much since we first came. Dashing
Dick’s grandmother, poor old lady, is now quite paralyzed; but the lad
has turned out much better than was expected, and has been sent to sea,
and writes very nice letters to her from foreign parts, and has begun to
send her a little money. Old Gaffer Gabbitas, his daughter, who lives in
the village, told us, a little time ago was found dead in his armchair
one Sunday afternoon, with his Bible on his lap open at the place where
he had been reading it when he fell asleep for the last time. We have
written out to Mr. Wilkins in Australia, giving him our new address, and
saying we shall always be glad to hear from him; and dear Jenny has
another baby, a little girl, so, as she says in her letter, we are both
equal now.
Graves, the farrier, has much improved lately. He is more civilized
since he took to use our house regularly, and gave up going to the other
place. He came out quite nobly not long ago, in a little affair which
made some talk in the village. One of his men injured himself while
working at the forge, he being, I am sorry to say, the worse for liquor
at the time (the man, not Graves), and was so bad he had to be sent to a
London hospital, where he remained some time, and all the while he was
away Graves paid his money to the wife, because she was an invalid, and
had a large family. This shows that there is often a lot of good under a
rough exterior; but I believe blacksmiths and farriers are very
good-hearted men as a rule, and I always respect them, for I never see
one without thinking of that noble-hearted blacksmith in the beautiful
piece of poetry which I also heard as a song one night when there was an
entertainment at our national schools. It was a lovely idea, that brawny
fellow going to church of a Sunday, and thinking of his dead wife when
he heard his daughter singing in the village choir, and wiping away a
tear.
Graves isn’t the man to do that sort of thing--he couldn’t, because he
has never married, and I don’t think he is so regular in attendance at
church as the other blacksmith was; but his keeping that poor woman and
children all those weeks, shows that his heart is in the right place, if
he doesn’t always pick his words as carefully as he might.
Miss Ward, our barmaid, that you may remember was so unfortunate in her
young man, that horrid fellow Shipsides, has married well, I am glad to
say, and she and her husband have been put in to manage a public-house
in the South of England. She wrote to me, and told me when she was
married, and sent me a piece of cake, and I wrote her a nice letter
back, and said how pleased I was to hear it.
Of course, directly I knew we were going to move, I wrote to Mr. Saxon,
and told him what our new address would be, and said that he might be
sure if he paid us a visit no one would be more welcome. He wrote back
and said perhaps he would come when the races were on. I hear he has
taken to go racing lately, which is a thing I should never have
expected, though I remember hearing that, years ago, he used to be very
fond of sport, but got too busy to keep it up. I hope it will do him
good; at any rate, it is a change, and the fresh air is just what he
wants. But I hope he won’t gamble and lose a lot of money; but I don’t
think he will, as he has to work too hard to get it. I have been told
that he takes that nice Swedish gentleman about with him to the races,
so perhaps he will come, too. I shall be very glad to see him again, as
he was one of the nicest gentlemen I ever talked to, and had been all
over the world, and was full of information. Poor fellow! he ought to be
taken about; for he must have a bad time of it at home with Mr. Saxon,
whose liver seems to get worse as he gets older.
The last I heard of him he had been to Italy for a month, for the
benefit of his health, and came back in a fortnight, swearing that he
had shortened his life by ten years, by going. Fancy a man going away
for rest, and to benefit his health, and travelling five thousand miles,
night and day, in a railway carriage, and then going on because he felt
knocked up. But, with all his faults and his queer ways, there will be
nobody that I shall be more pleased to see at the “Royal Hotel” than Mr.
Saxon.
The new clergyman, the young fellow who was the cause of Mr. Wilkins
going to Australia, has turned out what Harry calls “quite a trump.”
There is no mistake about the impression he has made in the place. He
has woke it up, so to speak, and, though nobody liked him at first,
resenting his new-fangled ways, now he is the greatest favourite with
everybody. He is a fine cricketer, and has made a cricket club, and he
sings capitally, and gets up penny readings and entertainments in the
winter, and his sermons are first class. The first Sunday some of the
old-fashioned people were horrified. He made a joke in his sermon, and
it was such a good joke that it made the people laugh before they
remembered where they were. He said afterwards that he saw a lot of
people were horrified, but that it wasn’t wicked to laugh. He said being
good didn’t mean being sulky and gloomy and pulling a long face, and
there was no more harm in feeling glad and gay inside a church than
outside it; in fact, if there was any place in which people ought to
feel comfortable and happy, and ready to smile on the slightest
provocation, it was when they were worshipping One who had done so much
to make His people glad and gay and happy here below.
It took time to get the old-fashioned people round to his way of
thinking; but he did it at last, and now our parson is the best-liked
man in the place. Everybody respects him and likes him, and nobody is
afraid of him, except the bad characters, and they are afraid of him
because he don’t care whether they are high or low, rich or poor. He
tells them straight what he thinks of them. The Rev. Tommy was a dear
nice old gentleman; but his mind was always wandering away to before the
Flood, and he let everything after the Flood go its own way. The new
man, “the whipper-snapper,” doesn’t bother himself even about yesterday.
He makes the best of to-day, and looks out for to-morrow, and, after
all, that is the only way to take life practically, and to make the best
of it.
Which reminds me that I have to make the best of to-day myself, and to
look out for to-morrow as well, for I shall have all my work cut out, so
my dear old “Memoirs” will have to be cut short, and wound up, and put
away, for there won’t be any “Memoirs” at the “Royal Hotel.”
I think I have told you nearly everything about the people you know who
have been mixed up with the ‘Stretford Arms.’ We leave it with plenty of
friends, and, I honestly believe, without a single enemy. And we leave
it with a first-class reputation and an excellent connection. It has
become quite a “pulling-up house,” as it is called in the trade, with
people who drive from London, and is now well-known as a quiet and
comfortable country hotel for ladies and gentlemen and families, who
wish to stay for a little time a short distance from town. The local
connection has not been neglected, and our smoke-room has become quite a
nice little local club, while the billiard-room has brought many of the
young fellows from the best private houses to make it a rendezvous. We
have been very particular to keep the billiard-room quiet and select,
and to discourage gambling, and this has made it a boon to the
neighbourhood, when with bad management it might have become quite the
reverse.
The new people who are coming in are luckier than we were, for they will
find a good business ready made for them. All they have to do is to keep
everything up to the mark, and I think they will. I have seen them
several times, and I like them very much. Their name is Eager. Mr.
Eager is a man of about thirty-five, tall and dark, and I think rather
handsome, and his wife is a pretty little woman of about
five-and-twenty. They have both been in the business before, her papa
having been an hotel-proprietor in the North of England, and he having
been manager to a small hotel at the seaside, where the proprietor was
his uncle.
They are very nice, quiet, straightforward people, and our business with
them has been done very pleasantly indeed. They are what we were when we
took the ‘Stretford Arms’--a newly-married couple--and they seem most
affectionate and amiable.
Mrs. Eager and I had a quiet cup of tea together while the gentlemen
were talking business over a cigar and a glass of whiskey-and-water, and
she told me all about their meeting, and falling in love, and it wasn’t
at all a bad story.
It seems that Mrs. Eager, who was a Miss Braham, was staying with her
papa, who was not very well, at the seaside place where Mr. Eager’s
hotel was. Her papa was a good swimmer, and used to bathe early in the
morning from the beach. One morning he was swimming when suddenly he
felt very bad, and found he was losing strength, and being carried too
far from shore in a rough sea. Another gentleman who was swimming, saw
what was the matter, and swam towards him, and managed to help him, and
keep him up and shout till a man on the beach saw them, and jumped into
a boat and rowed out to them, and rescued them both. The old gentleman
(he wasn’t very old) was very grateful, and said the young fellow, who
was Mr. Eager, had saved his life--and that was quite true, for, but for
him, he would have been drowned, as his strength was fast deserting him.
That began the acquaintance, and Mr. Eager was invited to come and stay
at Mr. Braham’s hotel up north, and he did; and then the daughter, as
well as the papa, took a great liking to him, and they were very soon
engaged to be married. When the father found how the land lay he was
very pleased, and he said he would start the young couple in a nice
little hotel of their own as soon as they were married, and that is how
they came to take the ‘Stretford Arms’ of us.
I hope they will be as happy in it as we have been. I shall often sit
and think of an evening, when I am at the “Royal Hotel” of the little
‘Stretford Arms,’ and, in fancy, I shall see the dear old bar-parlour
and the smoke-room, and the customers sitting there smoking their
evening pipes, when I am far away.
“What is it? Come in. The master wants me? All right; say I’m coming
directly.” I must finish. I have promised Harry that I won’t start any
more “Memoirs” in the new house, as he says, when I have a few minutes
to spare, he wants to enjoy the pleasure of my society; and so I am
going to get every bit of this book written and finished to-night, and
then good-bye to pens and ink, and all the pleasure and all the pains of
authorship.
Looking back on all that has happened since I left service, and married
Harry, and went into this line of business, I feel that I have every
reason to be grateful. We have had good luck, good health, and a good
time, and not one really great or serious trouble. If we go on as we
have begun, perhaps before we are too old to enjoy it we shall have made
enough money to retire and live in a pretty little house, and devote
ourselves to each other and our children. That is my idea of happiness.
When that time comes I may perhaps be tempted to write some more of my
experiences. I dare say I shall have had plenty by then. But till that
time does come I have made up my mind to think about no books but the
books of the “Royal Hotel,” and to study no characters but the
characters of my servants. And so, gentle reader, though it makes me
feel sad to say the words, I have at last to wish you good-bye--a long,
long good-bye. I hope you won’t forget me altogether, but that
sometimes, when you are reading other people’s stories, you will say to
yourself, “I wonder how Mary Jane is getting on;” and if any of you are
ever near the Midland town we are going to make our new home in, I hope
you will come and stay at the “Royal Hotel,” proprietor Harry Beckett,
late of the ‘Stretford Arms.’ You may be sure that we shall make you as
comfortable as possible, and I think from what you know of my husband
and myself you will be able to rely upon finding a good kitchen and a
good cellar, and comfort, cleanliness, and attention, combined with
moderate charges.
Please don’t think that I say this by way of advertisement. I should be
very sorry to make my book an advertisement for my business, as I don’t
believe in that sort of thing. I have written the “Memoirs” of our
village hotel as I wrote the “Memoirs” of myself in service, because I
thought I had something to write about that would be interesting to the
people who read books. As a landlady, I have had as many opportunities
of observing people and hearing their stories as I had when a
servant--more varied opportunities as the landlady than as the servant.
I hope that now, as in the former “Memoirs,” I have written nothing
which can offend or be considered a breach of confidence. I have tried
in my humble way to describe everything I have seen and heard
faithfully, and to give a correct description of all that happened in
our hotel.
“All right, dear; I won’t be one minute.” I _must_ finish this chapter
now, or I shall not have another chance. To-morrow we shall be moving up
to London, and I shan’t get a minute. Good-bye, dear reader; that
impatient husband of mine won’t let me have another minute to myself,
and so I can’t write the nice finish that I wanted to. All I have time
to say is this. Don’t all of you go and take country hotels or village
inns because we have done so well and been so comfortable. For one that
succeeds in our business there are half-a-dozen who fail; and I have
told you a good deal more about the bright side of our business than
about the dark side, because I don’t think people nowadays want to look
on the dark side of anything more than they can help. We have been
fortunate; but you might get a business that would nearly drive you mad,
and ruin you. I told you about a few of the dangers of taking a business
in our line in my first chapter, and since I wrote that I have learnt a
good deal more. I could tell you some stories of hard-working young
couples who have put all their capital, and a lot of their friends’ and
relations’ capital, into a licensed house, and come to the most
dreadful grief. I know there is an idea that a public-house or an hotel
is a royal road to fortune. The money makes itself, and all the landlady
has to do is to dress herself up and wear diamond earrings and a big
gold chain, while the landlord drives a fast trotter in a gig, and goes
to races, and comes home and spends the evening in smoking big cigars
and drinking champagne.
That is the idea some people have of being a licensed victualler, and it
is a very nice one. Go to the Licensed Victuallers’ Asylum and ask some
of the inmates what _their_ idea is, and you will hear a different tale.
We have done well because we have worked hard, and because we walked
before we tried to run, and looked after our business ourselves, and
didn’t expect it to go up all by itself in a night, like the mushrooms
grow. “Luck,” you say. No, that is a word that has no right to come into
business at all. I was reading a book of poetry the other day, that one
of the gentlemen who stays with us left behind him, and I came on
something about Luck which I thought was so good that I copied it out.
It was this----
“A right hand, guided by an earnest soul
With a true instinct, takes the golden prize
From out a thousand blanks. What men call luck
Is the prerogative of valiant souls--
The fealty life pays its rightful kings.”
Of course I don’t mean to say that Harry and I are “rightful kings.”
That is the way a poet has to put it to make it poetry, I suppose; but I
do mean to say that the first part of the verse is true about us and the
way we got on. And so, if we drew a prize where others get blanks, it
isn’t fair to put it down to our “luck.”
But, luck or no luck, we did draw a prize, and I hope we are going to
draw another. The “Royal Hotel” will never be to me what the ‘Stretford
Arms’ was. There won’t be the romance about it, and perhaps it is as
well, as a woman with a big business and two little children to look
after hasn’t much time for romance. The romance of the ‘Stretford Arms’
was very nice though, for it enabled me to write these Tales of a
Village Inn, and to ask the reader to share in the joys and sorrows,
the pains and pleasures, and the trials and adventures of Mary Jane
Married, and--no, not settled--anything but settled.
If you could see the way this room is blocked up with boxes half packed,
and how things are lying about all over the place, you wouldn’t say
settled--unsettled, just at present, would be the word. Never mind; I
dare say it will come all right, and in a few weeks we _shall_ be
settled at the “Royal Hotel,” and I hope it will be a very long time
before we make another move.
And now, farewell, dear reader; I must write the word at last. Harry
sends you his kind regards, little Harry says “Ta-ta,” and my dear
little baby girl puts her little fat hand to her mouth and blows you a
kiss, and, with just one little tear of regret in her eye, Mary Jane
Beckett, formerly Mary Jane Buffham, and late of the ‘Stretford Arms’
Hotel, wishes you all a long and happy life, and bids you slowly and
sadly a long “Farewell.”
* * * * *
It is written, the last line. Perhaps the last line I shall ever write
for print. Think kindly of me, won’t you? and let my book have a nice
place in your library. I can promise you that it will be a nicer cover
than the last. No grinning policeman this time, with his arm round my
waist. This will be a book that I can give to my husband, and be proud
of, and write his name inside--
“_To my dear Harry._
_From his loving wife, the Authoress._”
THE END.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, LONDON AND BECCLES.
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