Victorian Short Stories: Stories of Courtship
truth, s'help me God,' he repeated after her.
'Kiss t' Book,' she ordered.
He lifted the Bible to his lips. As he replaced it on the table, he
burst out into a short laugh:
'Be ye satisfied noo?'
She went back to the chimney corner without a word. The logs on the
hearth hissed and crackled. Outside, amid the blackness the wind was
rising, hooting through the firs, and past the windows.
After a long while he roused himself, and drawing his pipe from his
pocket almost steadily, proceeded leisurely to pare in the palm of his
hand a lump of black tobacco.
'We'll be asked in church Sunday,' he remarked bluntly.
She made no answer.
He looked across at her.
Her mouth was drawn tight at the corners: her face wore a queer, rigid
aspect. She looked, he thought, like a figure of stone.
'Ye're not feeling poorly, are ye, mother?' he asked.
She shook her head grimly: then, hobbling out into the room, began to
speak in a shrill, tuneless voice.
'Ye talked at one time o' takin' a farm over Scarsdale way. But ye'd
best stop here. I'll no hinder ye. Ye can have t' large bedroom in t'
front, and I'll move ower to what used to be my brother Jake's room. Ye
knaw I've never had no opinion of t' girl, but I'll do what's right by
her, ef I break my sperrit in t' doin' on't. I'll mak' t' girl welcome
here: I'll stand by her proper-like: mebbe I'll finish by findin' soom
good in her. But from this day forward, Tony, ye're na son o' mine. Ye've
dishonoured yeself: ye've laid a trap for me--ay, laid a trap, that's t'
word. Ye've brought shame and bitterness on yer ould mother in her ould
age. Ye've made me despise t' varra sect o' ye. Ye can stop on here, but
ye shall niver touch a penny of my money; every shillin' of 't shall go
t' yer child, or to your child's children. Ay,' she went on, raising her
voice, 'ay, ye've got yer way at last, and mebbe ye reckon ye've chosen a
mighty smart way. But time 'ull coom when ye'll regret this day, when ye
eat oot yer repentance in doost an' ashes. Ay, Lord 'ull punish ye, Tony,
chastize ye properly. Ye'll learn that marriage begun in sin can end in
nought but sin. Ay,' she concluded, as she reached the door, raising her
skinny hand prophetically, 'ay, after I'm deed and gone, ye mind ye o' t'
words o' t' apostle--"For them that hev sinned without t' law, shall also
perish without t' law."'
And she slammed the door behind her.
A LITTLE GREY GLOVE
By George Egerton (Mary Chavelita [Dunne] Bright)
(_Keynotes_, London: Elkin Mathews and John Lane, Vigo Street, 1893)
Early-Spring, 1893
_The book of life begins with a man and woman in a garden and ends--with
Revelations._
OSCAR WILDE
Yes, most fellows' book of life may be said to begin at the chapter
where woman comes in; mine did. She came in years ago, when I was a raw
undergraduate. With the sober thought of retrospective analysis, I may
say she was not all my fancy painted her; indeed now that I come to
think of it there was no fancy about the vermeil of her cheeks, rather
an artificial reality; she had her bower in the bar of the Golden Boar,
and I was madly in love with her, seriously intent on lawful wedlock.
Luckily for me she threw me over for a neighbouring pork butcher, but at
the time I took it hardly, and it made me sex-shy. I was a very poor man
in those days. One feels one's griefs more keenly then, one hasn't the
wherewithal to buy distraction. Besides, ladies snubbed me rather, on
the rare occasions I met them. Later I fell in for a legacy, the
forerunner of several; indeed, I may say I am beastly rich. My tastes
are simple too, and I haven't any poor relations. I believe they are of
great assistance in getting rid of superfluous capital, wish I had some!
It was after the legacy that women discovered my attractions. They found
that there was something superb in my plainness (before, they said
ugliness), something after the style of the late Victor Emanuel,
something infinitely more striking than mere ordinary beauty. At least
so Harding told me his sister said, and she had the reputation of being
a clever girl. Being an only child, I never had the opportunity other
fellows had of studying the undress side of women through familiar
intercourse, say with sisters. Their most ordinary belongings were
sacred to me. I had, I used to be told, ridiculous high-flown notions
about them (by the way I modified those considerably on closer
acquaintance). I ought to study them, nothing like a woman for
developing a fellow. So I laid in a stock of books in different
languages, mostly novels, in which women played title roles, in order to
get up some definite data before venturing amongst them. I can't say I
derived much benefit from this course. There seemed to be as great a
diversity of opinion about the female species as, let us say, about the
salmonidae.
My friend Ponsonby Smith, who is one of the oldest fly-fishers in the
three kingdoms, said to me once: Take my word for it, there are only
four true salmo; the salar, the trutta, the fario, the ferox; all the
rest are just varieties, subgenuses of the above; stick to that. Some
writing fellow divided all the women into good-uns and bad-uns. But as a
conscientious stickler for truth, I must say that both in trout as in
women, I have found myself faced with most puzzling varieties, that were
a tantalizing blending of several qualities. I then resolved to study
them on my own account. I pursued the Eternal Feminine in a spirit of
purely scientific investigation. I knew you'd laugh sceptically at that,
but it's a fact. I was impartial in my selection of subjects for
observation--French, German, Spanish, as well as the home product.
Nothing in petticoats escaped me. I devoted myself to the freshest
_ingenue_ as well as the experienced widow of three departed; and I may
as well confess that the more I saw of her, the less I understood her.
But I think they understood me. They refused to take me _au serieux_.
When they weren't fleecing me, they were interested in the state of my
soul (I preferred the former), but all humbugged me equally, so I gave
them up. I took to rod and gun instead, _pro salute animae_; it's
decidedly safer. I have scoured every country in the globe; indeed I can
say that I have shot and fished in woods and waters where no other white
man, perhaps ever dropped a beast or played a fish before. There is no
life like the life of a free wanderer, and no lore like the lore one
gleans in the great book of nature. But one must have freed one's spirit
from the taint of the town before one can even read the alphabet of its
mystic meaning.
What has this to do with the glove? True, not much, and yet it has a
connection--it accounts for me.
Well, for twelve years I have followed the impulses of the wandering
spirit that dwells in me. I have seen the sun rise in Finland and gild
the Devil's Knuckles as he sank behind the Drachensberg. I have caught
the barba and the gamer yellow fish in the Vaal river, taken muskelunge
and black-bass in Canada, thrown a fly over _guapote_ and _cavallo_ in
Central American lakes, and choked the monster eels of the Mauritius
with a cunningly faked-up duckling. But I have been shy as a chub at the
shadow of a woman.
Well, it happened last year I came back on business--another confounded
legacy; end of June too, just as I was off to Finland. But Messrs.
Thimble and Rigg, the highly respectable firm who look after my affairs,
represented that I owed it to others, whom I kept out of their share of
the legacy, to stay near town till affairs were wound up. They told me,
with a view to reconcile me perhaps, of a trout stream with a decent inn
near it; an unknown stream in Kent. It seems a junior member of the firm
is an angler, at least he sometimes catches pike or perch in the Medway
some way from the stream where the trout rise in audacious security from
artificial lures. I stipulated for a clerk to come down with any papers
to be signed, and started at once for Victoria. I decline to tell the
name of my find, firstly because the trout are the gamest little fish
that ever rose to fly and run to a good two pounds. Secondly, I have
paid for all the rooms in the inn for the next year, and I want it to
myself. The glove is lying on the table next me as I write. If it isn't
in my breast-pocket or under my pillow, it is in some place where I can
see it. It has a delicate grey body (suede, I think they call it) with a
whipping of silver round the top, and a darker grey silk tag to fasten
it. It is marked 5-3/4 inside, and has a delicious scent about it, to
keep off moths, I suppose; naphthaline is better. It reminds me of a
'silver-sedge' tied on a ten hook. I startled the good landlady of the
little inn (there is no village fortunately) when I arrived with the
only porter of the tiny station laden with traps. She hesitated about a
private sitting-room, but eventually we compromised matters, as I was
willing to share it with the other visitor. I got into knickerbockers at
once, collared a boy to get me worms and minnow for the morrow, and as I
felt too lazy to unpack tackle, just sat in the shiny armchair (made
comfortable by the successive sitting of former occupants) at the open
window and looked out. The river, not the trout stream, winds to the
right, and the trees cast trembling shadows into its clear depths. The
red tiles of a farm roof show between the beeches, and break the
monotony of blue sky background. A dusty waggoner is slaking his thirst
with a tankard of ale. I am conscious of the strange lonely feeling that
a visit to England always gives me. Away in strange lands, even in
solitary places, one doesn't feel it somehow. One is filled with the
hunter's lust, bent on a 'kill', but at home in the quiet country, with
the smoke curling up from some fireside, the mowers busy laying the hay
in swaths, the children tumbling under the trees in the orchards, and a
girl singing as she spreads the clothes on the sweetbriar hedge, amidst
a scene quick with home sights and sounds, a strange lack creeps in and
makes itself felt in a dull, aching way. Oddly enough, too, I had a
sense of uneasiness, a 'something going to happen'. I had often
experienced it when out alone in a great forest, or on an unknown lake,
and it always meant 'ware danger' of some kind. But why should I feel it
here? Yet I did, and I couldn't shake it off. I took to examining the
room. It was a commonplace one of the usual type. But there was a
work-basket on the table, a dainty thing, lined with blue satin. There
was a bit of lace stretched over shiny blue linen, with the needle
sticking in it; such fairy work, like cobwebs seen from below, spun from
a branch against a background of sky. A gold thimble, too, with
initials, not the landlady's, I know. What pretty things, too, in the
basket! A scissors, a capital shape for fly-making; a little file, and
some floss silk and tinsel, the identical colour I want for a new fly I
have in my head, one that will be a demon to kill. The northern devil I
mean to call him. Some one looks in behind me, and a light step passes
upstairs. I drop the basket, I don't know why. There are some reviews
near it. I take up one, and am soon buried in an article on Tasmanian
fauna. It is strange, but whenever I do know anything about a subject,
I always find these writing fellows either entirely ignorant or damned
wrong.
After supper, I took a stroll to see the river. It was a silver grey
evening, with just the last lemon and pink streaks of the sunset
staining the sky. There had been a shower, and somehow the smell of the
dust after rain mingled with the mignonette in the garden brought back
vanished scenes of small-boyhood, when I caught minnows in a bottle, and