Once Aboard the Lugger-- The History of George and his Mary

by A. S. M. Hutchinson

Mary-outside-the-glass essayed her best to prevent the interview. “Poof!” Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young person, sneered. “Poof! You little idiot! A stranger with whom you spoke for five minutes, whom you will never again see, and from whose recollections you have most certainly passed unless to be recalled as a joke—perhaps to some other girl!” (A nasty dig that, but they are monsters these Marys-outside-the-glass.) “Why, you must be a donkey to think about him! For goodness' sake come away before you make yourself too utterly ridiculous! You won't. Well, perhaps you will try to recall the figure you must have cut in his eyes? Do you remember what you must have looked like as you shot out of the cab like a sack of straw? Pretty sight, eh? And can you imagine the expression on your face as you banged into his arms? Charming you must have looked, mustn't you? And can you by any means realise the idiot you must have looked when Mrs. Chater came up and swept you off like an escaped puppy, recaptured and in for a whipping? Striking figure you cut, didn't you? You didn't happen to peep back through the little window at the back of the cab and see him laughing, I suppose? Ah, you should have looked....”

And so on. This was the attitude of that cold, calculating, dispassionate Mary-outside-the-glass. But Mary smothered the voice—would not hear a word of it. Completely she became Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, and in that personality tripped along the path of thought where stood her stranger.

Delectably she relived the encounter. Paced down the street, took again his arm; without a fault recalled his words, without a check gave her replies; recalled the pitch of his voice to the nicest note, struck again the light in his eyes.

Now why? She had met other men; in Ireland had thrice wounded her tender heart by negations that had caused three suitors most desperate anguish. None had awakened in her a deeper interest; and yet here was a stranger—suddenly encountered, as suddenly left—who in her mind had appropriated a track which she was eager to make a well-beaten path. Why?

But Mary-in-the-glass, that sentimental young woman, was no prober of emotions. They veiled the hard business of commonplace life; and amid them mistily she now floated afar into dim features where her stranger, stranger no more, walked with her hand in hand.

There was attempt at first to construct an actual re-encounter. Mary-in-the-glass, that romantic young woman, very speciously pointed out that in London when once you see a man you may reasonably suppose that you will again meet him. For in London one does not aimlessly wander; one has some set purpose and traverses a thousand times the same streets, crossing daily at the same points as though upon the pursuit of a chalked line. Mary-in-the-glass, therefore, constructing a re-encounter, happened to be strolling along the scene of the accident, and lo! there was he!

Unhappily this vision was transient. Mary-outside-the-glass, that cold young woman, got in a word here that erased the picture. The square where the cab crashed was too far afield to take the children for their walk; holiday was a boon rarely granted and never granted at the particular hour of the catastrophe—the only time of day at which, according to the chalked-line theory, she might reasonably expect to find the stranger in the same spot.

But Mary did not brood long upon this melancholy obstacle; drove away Mary-outside-the-glass; became again Mary-in-the-glass. And they are impossible creatures these Marys-in-the-glass. They will approach an unbridged chasm across which no Mary-out-side could by any means adventure, and, floating the gulf, will deliriously roam in the fields beyond.

So now. And in that dream-world of the musing brain Mary with her stranger sublimely wandered. With her form and his she peopled all the favourite spots she knew; contrived others and strolled in them; introduced other persons, and marked their comment on her dear companion.

It was he whom she made to do mighty deeds in those misty fields; of herself hers were merely a girl's gentle fancies, held modest by her sex's natural desire to be loved for itself alone—not for big behaviour.