But for all that he had been thinking about something in particular. Uncle Joseph's reference to the female virus had brought it to his mind. It was a little girl in a blue cotton frock.
CHAPTER II
LE PREMIER PAS
Having disposed of the Reverend Aubrey Buck's correspondence,—it was not so bulky as on previous occasions, for evidently the paragraph in the "Searchlight" had dealt its originator a mortal blow,—uncle and nephew sat down to an excellent luncheon, cooked and served by James Nimmo. No woman ever crossed the threshold of the house in Hampstead.
James Nimmo had originally been a ship's steward, and his conversion to misogynistic principles had been effected comparatively late in life. Always a man of thrifty disposition, he had shirked the responsibility and expense of matrimony until he had attained the ripe age of forty. Then he fell a sudden and abject captive to the charms of a damsel of Carnoustie, half his age. The match was struck, but it was stipulated by the girl's parents that the wedding should not take place until after James Nimmo's next voyage.
Before sailing, the prospective bridegroom handed over to his beloved the greater part of his savings, to be expended in the purchase and outfitting of a suitable establishment,—to wit, a bijou villa in Broughty Ferry,—in order that the honeymoon might commence without unavoidable delay upon his return.
Eight weeks later James Nimmo sailed into the Tay, to find his turtle-dove flown. Alarmed possibly by the unrest produced in the real property market by recent legislation, the lady had forborne to purchase the bijou villa. Having no house, to spend money upon furniture was obviously a work of supererogation. Lastly, inspired possibly by a yearning for a wider field in which to exercise her undoubted talents, the affianced of James Nimmo had decided to emigrate to Canada. This decision she promptly put into execution, departing without due ostentation in the steerage of an Allan liner, and taking with her her parents, James Nimmo's savings, and a young carpenter of steady habits and good wage-earning capacity whom she had married three days previously.
Six months later James Nimmo made the acquaintance of Uncle Joseph on board a P. & O. liner, homeward bound from Bombay. James was deck-steward on that voyage, and Uncle Joseph's attention was first attracted to him by the extreme coldness, not to say hauteur, with which he attended to the wants of seasick lady passengers. James Nimmo on his part noted with grim approval the whole-hearted fashion in which Uncle Joseph, who was a presentable bachelor of thirty-six in those days, boycotted the long row of chairs in the lee of the deckhouses, and confined himself to the smoking-room or the windward side of the ship.
One hot night in the Red Sea a chance remark of Uncle Joseph's unlocked the heart and loosed the tongue of James Nimmo, and before dawn the whole of the tale of the fickle beauty of Carnoustie had been told, for the first and last time, to mortal man.