O for the pen of that ready writer who is always in the humour for work, who can always write, sir, who is never at a loss, who sits down before a ream of foolscap paper, and tosses off sheet after sheet, sir, until he is surrounded by piles of manuscript! I have seen him do it, continues the friend at our elbow—seen him do it. And then there’s Miss ——, who is so awfully popular, you know, and stands to her work like an artist at his easel; she can write two novels a year like fun, and clever books too. George So-and-so, he goes down on his knees to write, and turns off slip after slip like a gusset and band coming out of a sewing machine. Mrs. —— plods away all day long, whether she likes it or not—pegs away, sir, and produces a certain amount of copy before she dines; and she can write two books at once, sir, like winking. That’s the woman for my money.
O for the pen of one of these ready writers, that we might throw off in a few rapid pages the conclusion of all that romantic story which Paul Somerton told the barrister a few evenings after that day at Brighton. If we sat before that ream of foolscap, and filled every sheet, we could not do full justice to the extraordinary narrative, nor to the imagination of Mrs. Jefferson Crawley, the young lady whom you met in the early part of our history as the showman’s daughter. You remember how she gobbled up the tripe on that first evening, when Mr. Dibble joined the company of the Temple of Magic to do the outside business. You would hardly give her credit for imaginative power. She handled the cards well, and was great in the basket trick, but you would not expect her to possess what phrenologists call Ideality, in a large degree.
Perhaps the education which she had received in a few months as the wife of our old acquaintance Mr. Gibbs, alias Jefferson Crawley, had been beneficial to her in this respect. Mr. Crawley nevertheless had been disappointed in the young woman. He did not find that her abilities as a shuffler at cards were of any great benefit to him; but she was useful in some respects. There was an air of respectability that was beneficial sometimes in speaking of “my wife,” and introducing Mrs. Crawley, though the class of persons to whom introductions usually took place cast knowing glances at each other, and commenced desperate flirtations with the young lady immediately. This was useful too, and Mr. Gibbs sometimes traded upon it in a way that was by no means pleasant to the showman’s daughter. She was not a refined young woman as you have seen, not over-particular as you know; but she was vain of her good looks, and had just sufficient of woman’s amour propre, speedily to contract a contempt for a husband who was base enough and mean enough to be utterly indifferent to his wife’s honour.
These two soon understood each other, almost indeed from the moment when Mr. Jefferson Crawley, having run away with the young woman, wished to set aside the ceremony of marriage which Christabel, the mysterious lady, had punctiliously insisted upon. What a wedding it was! What a honeymoon! Yet not stranger than ten thousand other weddings and honeymoons. Truth stranger than fiction! If that strange little fellow on two sticks who appeared so mysteriously to Don Cleofas, would come and take you for an evening’s ramble, you would see in half an hour how far fiction falls short of the realities of life; how far the darkest pictures which those ready writers have limned in pen and ink are less appalling than the realities of sin, and wickedness, and woe, which exist in the dark places of our modern Babylon! Ask that detective officer who used to visit the late Mr. Christopher Tallant at Barton Hall; he could tell you some rare tales of the class of people to whom Mr. and Mrs. Crawley belong. But even that gentleman would be surprised if Asmodeus sat him down upon St. Paul’s, and unroofed a few hundred yards of that mass of brick, behind which the great game of life is being played out in ten thousand different ways.
Before Mr. Gibbs had been married three months, he gave his wife permission to find a better home if she could. He vowed he had no desire to limit anybody’s freedom. As far as the work of the household went, he said, looking round the miserable den, he thought he should lose nothing by the departure of the lady of the house. He could easily get somebody else to come and clean his boots, and cut bread and butter for him. If the young lady thought it would advance her prospects to leave his humble roof, she might go; he should put no advertisement in the papers for her, he should employ no private detective to hunt her up: he was exceedingly obliged to her for becoming his wife, highly honoured in fact, if not more so, but he should not break his heart if she returned to the sawdust and naphtha lamps of the Temple of Magic.
And so the young lady disappeared accordingly; but that wonderful account which she gave of her early life, and which Lieutenant Somerton repeated to the barrister, left out altogether those incidents to which her husband had alluded. She certainly did justice to the gambler’s tuition. Old Martin could never have taught her to be such a clever dissembler; and that melancholy clown who had on his deathbed presented her father with Momus, had certainly not wit enough to instruct her in such delicate cunning.
The daughter of respectable parents at Severntown, her father died early, and left her with a widowed mother. She had received but little education in consequence, and was obliged to go out to service. Her mother soon afterwards died, and then she was left alone in the wide, wide world. She had lived for some time with her aunt, who was then a wealthy lady, residing at Carter Street West, but had since lost all her money in the panic, and had gone to Paris. Her aunt was too poor to take her along with her, or she would have done so; but she recommended her to a lady in whose service she had endeavoured to study, and carry out the good advice which her dear aunt had given her. The lady had a son who came to see her at intervals, a very handsome young gentleman, and who seemed very good. He was very kind to her, and she often saw him watching her. One day when his mamma (who was a widow) had gone out, he made love to her, and soon after he asked her to be engaged to him: she wished to ask the permission of her mistress, but he would not hear of it; she would never consent he said, and one day he persuaded her to elope with him, and in the end, after a long struggle between duty and inclination, she gave way.
And here it appeared the young lady had broken down in tears, and Paul had soothed her, and vowed eternal love, like a weak, infatuated, silly fellow that he was. We almost question whether, had she told him the whole truth of her life, he would not have done just the same.
She soon discovered that her husband was a bad man, a gambler, and everything that was wicked, and she went to his mother to beg her forgiveness, and asked to be taken back as her servant. The old lady had ordered her to be turned out of the house, and her husband laughed and jeered at her when she related the incident to him. She had never really loved him, but had hoped to have a home, and to find peace, and she tried to love him, and was a faithful true wife to him; but oh, he led such a life! he was a cheat, a forger, everything that was bad, and not the old lady’s son after all, but the son of her first husband, who was a dissipated man, and had died of delirium tremens.
How Paul pitied her! O, if she had not been married! he had exclaimed in his ecstacy, as he looked into her deep eyes, and nursed her hand in his.