In Steptoe’s opinion Master Rash had never had a chance. Born many years after his parents had lived together childlessly, he had come into the world constitutionally neurasthenic. Steptoe had never known 47 a boy who needed more to be nursed along and coaxed along by affection, and now and then by indulgence. Instead, the system of severity had been applied with results little short of calamitous. He had been sent to schools famous for religion and discipline, from which he reacted in the first weeks of freedom in college, getting into dire academic scrapes. Further severity had led to further scrapes, and further scrapes to something like disgrace, when the war broke out and a Red Cross job had kept him from going to the bad. The mother had been a self-willed and selfish woman, claiming more from her son than she ever gave him, and never perceiving that his was a nature requiring a peculiar kind of care. After her death Steptoe had prayed for a kind, sweet wife to come to the boy’s rescue, and the answer had been Miss Barbara Walbrook.
When the engagement was announced, Steptoe had given up hope. Of Miss Walbrook as a woman he had nothing to complain. Walter Wildgoose reported her a noble creature, splendid, generous, magnificent, only needing a strong hand. She was of the type not to be served but to be mastered. Rashleigh Allerton would goad her to frenzy, and she would do the same by him. She was already doing it. For weeks past Steptoe could see it plainly enough, and what would happen after they were married God alone knew. For himself he saw no future but to hang on after the wedding as long as the new mistress of the house would allow him, take his dismissal as an inevitable thing, and sneak away and die.
It was part of Steptoe’s training not to notice anything 48 till his attention was called to it. So having said his “Good-morning, sir,” he went to the closet, took down the hanger with the coat and waistcoat belonging to the suit of which he saw that Allerton had put on the trousers, and waited till the young man was ready for his ministrations.
Allerton was still brushing his hair, as he said over his shoulder: “There’s a young woman in the house, Steptoe. Been here all night.”
“Yes, sir; I know—in the little back spare-room.”
“Who told you?”
“Nettie went in for a pincushion, Mr. Rash, and the young woman was a-doin’ of ’er ’air.”
“What did Nettie say?”
“It ain’t what Nettie says, sir, if I may myke so bold. It’s what Mrs. Courage and Jane says.”
“Tell Mrs. Courage and Jane they needn’t be alarmed. The young woman is—” Steptoe caught the spasm which contracted the boy’s face—“the young woman is—my wife.”