‘And if them rigmaroles of yours as I’ve got upstairs, every one on’em a-breathin love and nightingales, and stars and things, ain’t evidence enough to convict a man of horse-stealing, my name ain’t Susan Turvey.’
Why Mrs. Turvey should imagine that stealing her heart was horse-stealing I can’t say. She was given to a confusion of metaphors. But Jabez had no difficulty in apprehending her meaning. The situation which the indignant Susan conjured up to his mind, of Grigg and Limpet being instructed to commence an action for breach against their own clerk, and, worst of all, the idea of his letters being read in court, so thoroughly overcame him, that he could only give two short gasps for breath and stagger down the steps.
When he got out of sight of Mrs. Turvey standing like Nemesis at the front door, he paused and wiped the perspiration from his face.
‘My poems,’ he murmured, ‘and in full court. Published in all the papers. Here’s a pretty mess I’m in!’
Once Mr. Jabez had had dreams of publishing his poems; now there was a chance of his dream being gratified, but it was Dead Sea fruit.
He walked on, a prey to a variety of emotions. Gradually he Worked himself into a rage.
‘It’s all that cursed Egerton!’ he exclaimed, giving the firm’s client an imaginary kick. ‘Why didn’t he stop at the bottom of the sea, instead of turning up in this Coburg melodrama style? He robbed me of £500 and let me in for a breach.’
The more Mr. Duck thought of the grievous injury which Gurth Egerton had inflicted on him, the more annoyed he became. Susan’s £500 was just the little capital Jabez wanted to make a start in life on his own account, in a line for which he had alwy’s had a fancy, Now, not only was that rudely dashed from his grasp, but Susan remained on his hands.
All day long Mrs. Turvey’s threat rang in his ears. He got trying to remember what the poems were about. He regretted now that he had let the divine afflatus run him into so many extravagances of diction. He felt that as a poet he had said more than he meant as a man.
It would never do to let those poems come out. Never. There was but one alternative. He must marry the lady to whom they were addressed, and thus make them his property again, unless—well, unless he could get possession of the poems without taking possession of the owner.