“It’d ’ave been better for Mr. Rashleigh,” he mused, “if ’e’d ’ad ’ad somethink of the kind to tackle in ’is life; it’d ’ave myde ’im more of a man. But because ’e adn’t—Did madam ever notice,” he broke off to ask, “’ow them as ’as everythink myde easy for ’em begins right off to myke things ’ard for theirselves. It’s a kind of law like. It’s just as if nyture didn’t mean to let no one escype. When a man’s got no troubles you can think of, ’e’ll go to work to create ’em.”
“Didn’t he”—she had never yet pronounced the name of the man who had married her—”didn’t he ever have any troubles?”
“’E was fretted terrible—crossed like—rubbed up the wrong wye, as you might sye,—but a real trouble like what you and me ’ave ’ad plenty of—never! It’s my opinion that trouble is to char-ac-ter what a peg’ll be to a creepin’ vine—something to which the vine’ll ’ook on and pull itself up by. Where there’s nothink to ketch on to the vine’ll grow; but it’ll grow in a ’eap of flop.” There was a tremor in his tone as he summed up. “That’s somethink like my poor boy.”
Letty found this interesting. That in these exalted circles there could be a need of refining chastisement came to her as a surprise.
“The wife as I’ve always ’oped for ’im,” Steptoe went on, “is one that’d know what trouble was, and ’ow to fyce it. ’E’d myke a grand ’usband to a woman 112 who was—strong. But she’d ’ave to be the wall what the creepin’ vine could cover all over and—and beautify.”
“That wouldn’t be me.”
“If I was madam I wouldn’t be so sure of that. It don’t do to undervalyer your own powers. If I’d ’a done that I wouldn’t ’a been where I am to-dye. Many’s the time, when I was no more than a poor little foundlin’ boy in a ’ome I’ve said to myself, I’m fit for somethink big. Somethink big I always meant to be. When it didn’t seem possible for me to aim so ’igh I’d myde up my mind to be a valet and a butler. It comes—your hambition does. What you’ve first got to do is to form it; and then you’ve got to stick to it through thick and thin.”
To say what she said next Letty had to break down barrier beyond barrier of inhibition and timidity. “And if I was to—to form the—the ambition—to be—to be the kind of wall you was talkin’ about just now––”
“That wouldn’t be hambition; it’d be—consecrytion.”
He allowed her time to get the meaning of this before going on.