“Went straight up to bed, did he? Did he take his legs off first? I notice there’s a pair of them sticking out from under the kitchen table.”
“Yes,” I admitted, “I’ve told better lies in my time. Oh, Mr. Policeman, don’t be hard. I never wanted my young man to come larking about like this. But—he’s not a burglar. He’s the exhibit from the Auto-extensor Co.’s in Regent Street. You can pull out the rest of him and see if he isn’t.”
“That’s what I told the cabman,” said the policeman. “I said to him: ‘You juggins,’ I said, ‘do you think a burglar who wants to get into a house waits till a cab’s going past and then gives a acrobatic exhibition to attract the driver’s attention? That’s some young fool after one of the maids.’ No, I don’t want to see the rest of the young man—not if he’s like the sample. Get him unwound as soon as you can, and send him about his business. If he’s not out in two minutes, I shall ring the front door, and you’ll be in the cart. And don’t act so silly another time.”
Hugo was out in 1 min. 35 sec. He stopped to chat with the policeman, jumped the seven-foot railings into the square garden, and jumped back again, just to show what he could do, and went off.
I gave a long, deep sigh. I always do that when an incident in my life fails to reach the best autobiographical level. I neither knew nor cared what the policeman thought. You see, I would never deserve a bad reputation, but there’s nothing else I wouldn’t do to get one.
For eighty-four years—my memory for numbers is not absolutely accurate, but we will say eighty-four—for eighty-four years I wrote him a letter every morning and evening of every day, with the exception of Sundays, bank holidays, and the days when I did not feel like it.
But it was not to be. He was not without success in the circus which he subsequently joined, but he was improvident. His income increased in arithmetical progression, and his expenditure in geometrical. This, as Dr. Micawber and Professor Malthus have shown us, must end in disaster. Looking at it from the noblest point of view—the autobiographical—I saw that a marriage with Hugo would inevitably cramp my style.
And so the great sacrifice was made. Our feelings were so intense as we said farewell that my native reserve and reticence forbid me to describe them. But we parted one night in June, with a tear in the throat and a catch in the eye. As he strode from the park, I looked upward and saw in the brown crags above me some graceful animal silhouetted against an opal sky. I always have said that those Mappin Terraces were an improvement.