Furniture

A week or two after I dropped the letter I was in a hansom on myway to certain barracks when loud above the city's roar I heardthat accursed haw-haw-haw, and there they were, the two of them,just coming out of a shop where you may obtain pianos on the hiresystem. I had the merest glimpse of them, but there was anextraordinary rapture on her face, and his head was thrownproudly back, and all because they had been ordering a piano onthe hire system.

So they were to be married directly. It was all rathercontemptible, but I passed on tolerantly, for it is only when sheis unhappy that this woman disturbs me, owing to a clever way shehas at such times of looking more fragile than she really is.

When next I saw them, they were gazing greedily into the windowof the sixpenny-halfpenny shop, which is one of the mostdeliciously dramatic spots in London. Mary was taking notesfeverishly on a slip of paper while he did the adding up, and inthe end they went away gloomily without buying anything. I wasin high feather. "Match abandoned, ma'am," I said to myself;"outlook hopeless; another visit to the Governesses' Agencyinevitable; can't marry for want of a kitchen shovel." But I wasimperfectly acquainted with the lady.

A few days afterward I found myself walking behind her. There issomething artful about her skirts by which I always know her,though I can't say what it is. She was carrying an enormousparcel that might have been a bird-cage wrapped in brown paper,and she took it into a bric-a-brac shop and came out without it.She then ran rather than walked in the direction of the sixpenny-halfpenny shop. Now mystery of any kind is detestable to me, andI went into the bric-a-brac shop, ostensibly to look at thecracked china; and there, still on the counter, with the wrappingtorn off it, was the article Mary had sold in order to furnish onthe proceeds. What do you think it was? It was a wonderfuldoll's house, with dolls at tea downstairs and dolls going to bedupstairs, and a doll showing a doll out at the front door. Loving lips had long ago licked most of the paint off, butotherwise the thing was in admirable preservation; obviously thejoy of Mary's childhood, it had now been sold by her that shemight get married.

"Lately purchased by us," said the shopwoman, seeing me look atthe toy, "from a lady who has no further use for it."

I think I have seldom been more indignant with Mary. I boughtthe doll's house, and as they knew the lady's address (it was atthis shop that I first learned her name) I instructed them tosend it back to her with the following letter, which I wrote inthe shop: "Dear madam, don't be ridiculous. You will certainlyhave further use for this. I am, etc., the Man Who Dropped theLetter."

It pained me afterward, but too late to rescind the order, toreflect that I had sent her a wedding present; and when next Isaw her she had been married for some months. The time was nineo'clock of a November evening, and we were in a street of shopsthat has not in twenty years decided whether to be genteel orfrankly vulgar; here it minces in the fashion, but take a steponward and its tongue is in the cup of the ice-cream man. Iusually rush this street, which is not far from my rooms, withthe glass down, but to-night I was walking. Mary was in front ofme, leaning in a somewhat foolish way on the haw-er, and theywere chatting excitedly. She seemed to be remonstrating with himfor going forward, yet more than half admiring him for notturning back, and I wondered why.

And after all what was it that Mary and her painter had come outto do? To buy two pork chops. On my honour. She had beentrying to persuade him, I decided, that they were living toolavishly. That was why she sought to draw him back. But in herheart she loves audacity, and that is why she admired him forpressing forward.

No sooner had they bought the chops than they scurried away liketwo gleeful children to cook them. I followed, hoping to tracethem to their home, but they soon out-distanced me, and thatnight I composed the following aphorism: It is idle to attempt toovertake a pretty young woman carrying pork chops. I was nowdetermined to be done with her. First, however, to find outtheir abode, which was probably within easy distance of the shop.I even conceived them lured into taking their house by theadvertisement, "Conveniently situated for the Pork Emporium."

Well, one day--now this really is romantic and I am rather proudof it. My chambers are on the second floor, and are backed by ananxiously polite street between which and mine are little yardscalled, I think, gardens. They are so small that if you have thetree your neighbour has the shade from it. I was looking out atmy back window on the day we have come to when whom did I see butthe whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of thesegardens. I put up my eye-glass to make sure, and undoubtedly itwas she. But she sat there doing nothing, which was by no meansmy conception of the jade, so I brought a fieldglass to bear anddiscovered that the object was merely a lady's jacket. It hungon the back of a kitchen chair, seemed to be a furry thing, and,I must suppose, was suspended there for an airing.

I was chagrined, and then I insisted stoutly with myself that, asit was not Mary, it must be Mary's jacket. I had never seen herwear such a jacket, mind you, yet I was confident, I can't tellwhy. Do clothes absorb a little of the character of theirwearer, so that I recognised this jacket by a certain coquetry? If she has a way with her skirts that always advertises me of herpresence, quite possibly she is as cunning with jackets. Orperhaps she is her own seamstress, and puts in little tucks ofherself.

Figure it what you please; but I beg to inform you that I put onmy hat and five minutes afterward saw Mary and her husband emergefrom the house to which I had calculated that garden belonged.Now am I clever, or am I not?

When they had left the street I examined the house leisurely, anda droll house it is. Seen from the front it appears to consistof a door and a window, though above them the trained eye maydetect another window, the air-hole of some apartment which itwould be just like Mary's grandiloquence to call her bedroom. The houses on each side of this bandbox are tall, and Idiscovered later that it had once been an open passage to theback gardens. The story and a half of which it consists had beenknocked up cheaply, by carpenters I should say rather thanmasons, and the general effect is of a brightly coloured van thathas stuck for ever on its way through the passage.

The low houses of London look so much more homely than the tallones that I never pass them without dropping a blessing on theirbuilders, but this house was ridiculous; indeed it did not callitself a house, for over the door was a board with theinscription "This space to be sold," and I remembered, as I rangthe bell, that this notice had been up for years. On avowingthat I wanted a space, I was admitted by an elderly, somewhatdejected looking female, whose fine figure was not on scale withher surroundings. Perhaps my face said so, for her first remarkwas explanatory.

"They get me cheap," she said, "because I drink."

I bowed, and we passed on to the drawing-room. I forget whetherI have described Mary's personal appearance, but if so you have apicture of that sunny drawing-room. My first reflection was, Howcan she have found the money to pay for it all! which is alwaysyour first reflection when you see Mary herself a-tripping downthe street.

I have no space (in that little room) to catalogue all the whim-whams with which she had made it beautiful, from the hand-sewnbell-rope which pulled no bell to the hand-painted cigar-box thatcontained no cigars. The floor was of a delicious green withexquisite oriental rugs; green and white, I think, was the lady'sscheme of colour, something cool, you observe, to keep the sununder. The window-curtains were of some rare material and thecolour of the purple clematis; they swept the floor grandly andsuggested a picture of Mary receiving visitors. The piano we mayignore, for I knew it to be hired, but there were many daintypieces, mostly in green wood, a sofa, a corner cupboard, and amost captivating desk, which was so like its owner that it couldhave sat down at her and dashed off a note. The writing paper onthis desk had the word Mary printed on it, implying that if therewere other Marys they didn't count. There were many oil-paintings on the walls, mostly without frames, and I must mentionthe chandelier, which was obviously of fabulous worth, for shehad encased it in a holland bag.

"I perceive, ma'am," said I to the stout maid, "that your masteris in affluent circumstances."

She shook her head emphatically, and said something that I failedto catch.

"You wish to indicate," I hazarded, "that he married a fortune."

This time I caught the words. They were "Tinned meats," andhaving uttered them she lapsed into gloomy silence.

"Nevertheless," I said, "this room must have cost a prettypenny."

"She done it all herself," replied my new friend, withconcentrated scorn.

"But this green floor, so beautifully stained--"

"Boiling oil," said she, with a flush of honest shame, "and ashillingsworth o' paint."

"Those rugs--"

"Remnants," she sighed, and showed me how artfully they had beenpieced together.

"The curtains--"

"Remnants."

"At all events the sofa--"

She raised its drapery, and I saw that the sofa was built ofpacking cases.

"The desk--"

I really thought that I was safe this time, for could I not seethe drawers with their brass handles, the charming shelf forbooks, the pigeon-holes with their coverings of silk?

"She made it out of three orange boxes," said the lady, at last alittle awed herself.

I looked around me despairingly, and my eye alighted on theholland covering. "There is a fine chandelier in that hollandbag," I said coaxingly.

She sniffed and was raising an untender hand, when I checked her."Forbear, ma'am," I cried with authority, "I prefer to believe inthat bag. How much to be pitied, ma'am, are those who have lostfaith in everything." I think all the pretty things that thelittle nursery governess had made out of nothing squeezed my handfor letting the chandelier off.

"But, good God, ma'am," said I to madam, "what an exposure."

She intimated that there were other exposures upstairs.

"So there is a stair," said I, and then, suspiciously, "did shemake it?"

No, but how she had altered it.

The stair led to Mary's bedroom, and I said I would not look atthat, nor at the studio, which was a shed in the garden.

"Did she build the studio with her own hands?"

No, but how she had altered it.

"How she alters everything," I said. "Do you think you are safe,ma'am?"

She thawed a little under my obvious sympathy and honoured mewith some of her views and confidences. The rental paid by Maryand her husband was not, it appeared, one on which any self-respecting domestic could reflect with pride. They got the housevery cheap on the understanding that they were to vacate itpromptly if anyone bought it for building purposes, and becausethey paid so little they had to submit to the indignity of thenotice-board. Mary A---- detested the words "This space to besold," and had been known to shake her fist at them. She was aselated about her house as if it were a real house, and alwaystrembled when any possible purchaser of spaces called.

As I have told you my own aphorism I feel I ought in fairness torecord that of this aggrieved servant. It was on the subject ofart. "The difficulty," she said, "is not to paint pictures, butto get frames for them." A home thrust this.

She could not honestly say that she thought much of her master'swork. Nor, apparently, did any other person. Result, tinnedmeats.

Yes, one person thought a deal of it, or pretended to do so; wasconstantly flinging up her hands in delight over it; had evenbeen caught whispering fiercely to a friend, "Praise it, praiseit, praise it!" This was when the painter was sunk in gloom. Never, as I could well believe, was such a one as Mary for luringa man back to cheerfulness.

"A dangerous woman," I said, with a shudder, and fell toexamining a painting over the mantel-shelf. It was a portrait ofa man, and had impressed me favourably because it was framed.

"A friend of hers," my guide informed me, "but I never seed him."

I would have turned away from it, had not an inscription on thepicture drawn me nearer. It was in a lady's handwriting, andthese were the words: "Fancy portrait of our dear unknown." Could it be meant for me? I cannot tell you how interested Isuddenly became.

It represented a very fine looking fellow, indeed, and not a daymore than thirty.

"A friend of hers, ma'am, did you say?" I asked quite shakily."How do you know that, if you have never seen him?"

"When master was painting of it," she said, "in the studio, heused to come running in here to say to her such like as, 'Whatcolour would you make his eyes?'"

"And her reply, ma'am?" I asked eagerly.

"She said, 'Beautiful blue eyes.' And he said, 'You wouldn'tmake it a handsome face, would you?' and she says, 'A veryhandsome face.' And says he, 'Middle-aged?' and says she,'Twenty-nine.' And I mind him saying, 'A little bald on the top?'and she says, says she, 'Not at all.'"

The dear, grateful girl, not to make me bald on the top.

"I have seed her kiss her hand to that picture," said the maid.

Fancy Mary kissing her hand to me! Oh, the pretty love!

Pooh!

I was staring at the picture, cogitating what insulting message Icould write on it, when I heard the woman's voice again. "Ithink she has known him since she were a babby," she was saying,"for this here was a present he give her."

She was on her knees drawing the doll's house from beneath thesofa, where it had been hidden away; and immediately I thought,"I shall slip the insulting message into this." But I did not,and I shall tell you why. It was because the engaging toy hadbeen redecorated by loving hands; there were fresh gowns for allthe inhabitants, and the paint on the furniture was scarcely dry.The little doll's house was almost ready for further use.

I looked at the maid, but her face was expressionless. "Put itback," I said, ashamed to have surprised Mary's pretty secret,and I left the house dejectedly, with a profound conviction thatthe little nursery governess had hooked on to me again.