“I know I am, dear, and I can’t help it. The very sight of the man makes my gorge rise inside me. When I think of the awful misery he has caused to so many thousands of people, I feel that the only thing suitable for him is one of those Chinese punishments with physical torture in them. He couldn’t have risen superior to that. But as it is, he has had strength of mind to accept the situation philosophically, and use his wit to make it as endurable as possible. They told me he is a model convict; gets up early and cleans his cell; sings in chapel with noise and zeal; works in the quarries with cheerfulness and intelligence; and is as keen to earn all his marks and his shilling a week without stoppages as ever he was to turn a profit in the City. He was sent into penal servitude to suffer and repent, and he isn’t doing either. He’s amusing his brain by humbugging the chaplain with a well-acted repentance, by courting admiration amongst the other convicts, and by scheming to get the largest possible amount of bodily benefits possible under the circumstances. And he’s looking forward to a snug and comfortable retirement when his spell of prison is over. He’s a living piece of ridicule to the law that sentenced him, and I felt that I wanted to make him wear a cangue, or to pour boiling oil over him, to make him properly sorry for himself.”
“Well,” said Amy, “if married people didn’t differ occasionally, married life would be very dull. This is one of the times when we counteract dullness, because here I don’t agree with you in the very least. I’m quite human enough to be glad that a man I always liked is making the best of a very bad job. I know he’d feel the same if I were in his shoes. He always liked me—and George. Now it isn’t many men who, when the trouble was thickest on them, would have taken all the care he did over a dog.”
“Well, George has got a comfortable berth here,” said Fairfax. “But old Shelf needn’t have made such a fuss about it. We’d have given the animal a home just for the bare asking.”
“I like him for the fuss,” Amy retorted. “It wasn’t humbug in the least; any one could see that. He just loved that dog, and he was genuinely anxious about what was going to happen to him.”
The fox-terrier, who was lying on the hearth-rug, gave a lazy tail-wag at hearing his name mentioned, and blinked sleepily.
“If fatness is any criterion, George has got a very comfortable job of it as dog to this establishment,” said Fairfax. “He seems to drop into altered circumstances as philosophically as his master does.”
“I wonder what Mrs. Shelf is doing now,” said the young wife, dreamily. “I wonder if she is alive anywhere. She could not have disappeared more completely. She was seen on the night of that memorable ball; and the next morning she was not; and no one seems to have got a word of her since. I do wonder what has happened to her.”
“That,” said Fairfax, “is the other piece of news I have for you, and though you may like her fate, it isn’t to my taste at all. The lady is not only very much alive, but she is practising her old game with the most brilliant success in Paraguay. She is now Donna Laura Anaquel (which is ‘Shelf’ in a Spanish garb), a grass widow, and the leader of State society in Asuncion. The reigning President is a widower, and the Bishop of Asuncion has offered to grant Donna Laura a divorce on the ground of desertion. It is a polite piece of attention, and according to accounts she could certainly be Mrs. President if she liked; but she has refused to cut herself adrift from the excellent Theodore; and at the pace she is going will probably get herself elected Dictatoress of the Republic at the next election or revolution, or whatever it may be, through sheer weight of influence and popularity. She is really a most astounding woman.”
“She’s as clever as paint, if that is what you mean. But why Paraguay? and what’s she doing it on? That sort of amusement costs money.”
“Of course she has money at her command. Previous reputation counts nothing, either one way or the other, in that blissful republic. But with money and wit you can do mostly anything you want. As usual, she has to thank Mr. Theodore Shelf for the sinews of war. He, bless his heart, foresaw his crash in this country for two whole years before it came to pass, and bought a fine estançia near Asuncion, and transmitted shareholders’ money to banks in that city to run it on. She’s got hold of the lot, and as England has no extradition treaty with the rogues out there, she’s making it hum. That woman’s a lot too clever for my liking, Amy; but I’ve one solid hope for her. Either she may meddle with politics too much and get shot, or else she may work out human justice by spending up all the stolen hoard, and leave that old rascal Shelf nothing to fall back on when he gets out of Portland on his ticket-of-leave.”