Novel Notes Part 26

"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 m.u.f.fled answer. 'Will you please let me out?

you'll find the key on the ground near the door.'

"I discovered it on the gra.s.s 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 pa.s.sion for soldiers was her one tribute to sentiment. Towards all others of the male s.e.x she maintained an att.i.tude 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 m.u.f.fin 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 m.u.f.fins. 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 pa.s.sengers, 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 amus.e.m.e.nt 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 pa.s.sengers, and proceeded on our way. Half a mile up the Liverpool Road a lady stood on the kerb regarding us as we pa.s.sed with that pathetic mingling of desire and distrust which is the average woman's att.i.tude 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 pa.s.sengers; "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."

CHAPTER XI

Said Brown one evening, "There is but one vice, and that is selfishness."