Of course we all know who she was, the Miss Prior of Shrublands, whom papa and grandmamma called to the unruly children. Years had passed since I had shaken the Beak Street dust off my feet. The brass plate of “Prior” was removed from the once familiar door, and screwed, for what I can tell, on to the late reprobate owner’s coffin. A little eruption of mushroom-formed brass knobs I saw on the door-post when I passed by it last week, and Café des Ambassadeurs was thereon inscribed, with three fly-blown blue teacups, a couple of coffee-pots of the well-known Britannia metal, and two freckled copies of the Indépendance Belge hanging over the window blind. Were those their Excellencies the Ambassadors at the door, smoking cheroots? Pool and Billiards were written on their countenances, their hats, their elbows. They may have been ambassadors down on their luck, as the phrase is. They were in disgrace, no doubt, at the court of her imperial majesty Queen Fortune. Men as shabby have retrieved their disgraces ere now, washed their cloudy faces, strapped their dingy waistcoats with cordons, and stepped into fine carriages from quarters not a whit more reputable than the Café des Ambassadeurs. If I lived in the Leicester Square neighbourhood, and kept a café, I would always treat foreigners with respect. They may be billiard-markers now, or doing a little shady police business; but why should they not afterwards be generals and great officers of state? Suppose that gentleman is at present a barber, with his tongs and stick of fixature for the mustachios, how do you know he has not his epaulettes and his bâton de maréchal in the same pouch? I see engraven on the second-floor bell, on my rooms, “Plugwell.” Who can Plugwell be, whose feet now warm at the fire where I sate many a long evening? And this gentleman with the fur collar, the straggling beard, the frank and engaging leer, the somewhat husky voice, who is calling out on the door-step, “Step in, and ’ave it done. Your correct likeness, only one shilling”—is he an ambassador, too? Ah, no: he is only the Chargé d’affaires of a photographer who lives upstairs: no doubt where the little ones used to be. Law bless me! Photography was an infant, and in the nursery, too, when we lived in Beak Street.
Shall I own that, for old time’s sake, I went upstairs, and “’ad it done”—that correct likeness, price one shilling? Would Some One (I have said, I think, that the party in question is well married in a distant island) like to have the thing, I wonder, and be reminded of a man whom she knew in life’s prime, with brown curly locks, as she looked on the effigy of this elderly gentleman, with a forehead as bare as a billiard ball? As I went up and down that darkling stair, the ghosts of the Prior children peeped out from the banisters; the little faces smiled in the twilight: it may be wounds (of the heart) throbbed and bled again,—oh, how freshly and keenly! How infernally I have suffered behind that door in that room—I mean that one where Plugwell now lives. Confound Plugwell! I wonder what that woman thinks of me as she sees me shaking my fist at the door? Do you think me mad, madam? I don’t care if you do. Do you think when I spoke anon of the ghosts of Prior’s children, I mean that any of them are dead? None are, that I know of. A great hulking Bluecoat boy, with fluffy whiskers, spoke to me not long since, in an awful bass voice, and announced his name as “Gus Prior.” And “How’s Elizabeth?” he added, nodding his bullet head. Elizabeth, indeed, you great vulgar boy! Elizabeth,—and, by the way, how long we have been keeping her waiting!
You see, as I beheld her, a heap of memories struck upon me, and I could not help chattering; when of course—and you are perfectly right, only you might just as well have left the observation alone: for I knew quite well what you were going to say—when I had much better have held my tongue. Elizabeth means a history to me. She came to me at a critical period of my life. Bleeding and wounded from the conduct of that other individual (by her present name of Mrs. O’D—her present O’D-ous name—I say, I will never—never call her)—desperately wounded and miserable on my return from a neighbouring capital, I went back to my lodgings in Beak Street, and there there grew up a strange intimacy between me and my landlady’s young daughter. I told her my story—indeed, I believe I told anybody who would listen. She seemed to compassionate me. She would come wistfully into my rooms, bringing me my gruel and things (I could scarcely bear to eat for awhile after—after that affair to which I may have alluded before)—she used to come to me, and she used to pity me, and I used to tell her all, and to tell her over and over again. Days and days have I passed tearing my heart out in that second-floor room which answers to the name of Plugwell now. Afternoon after afternoon have I spent there, and poured out my story of love and wrong to Elizabeth, showed her that waistcoat I told you of—that glove (her hand wasn’t so very small either)—her letters, those two or three vacuous, meaningless letters, with “My dear sir, mamma hopes you will come to tea;” or, “If dear Mr. Batchelor should be riding in the Phœnix Park near the Long Milestone, about 2, my sister and I will be in the car, and,” &c.; or, “Oh, you kind man! the tickets (she called it tickuts—by heaven! she did) were too welcome, and the bouquays too lovely” (this word, I saw, had been operated on with a penknife. I found no faults, not even in her spelling—then); or—never mind what more. But more of this puling, of this humbug, of this bad spelling, of this infernal jilting, swindling, heartless hypocrisy (all her mother’s doing, I own; for until he got his place, my rival was not so well received as I was)—more of this RUBBISH, I say, I showed Elizabeth, and she pitied me!
She used to come to me day after day, and I used to talk to her. She used not to say much. Perhaps she did not listen; but I did not care for that. On—and on—and on I would go with my prate about my passion, my wrongs, and despair; and untiring as my complaints were, still more constant was my little hearer’s compassion. Mamma’s shrill voice would come to put an end to our conversation, and she would rise up with an “Oh, bother!” and go away: but the next day the good girl was sure to come to me again, when we would have another repetition of our tragedy.
I daresay you are beginning to suppose (what, after all, is a very common case, and certainly no conjuror is wanted to make the guess) that out of all this crying and sentimentality, which a soft-hearted old fool of a man poured out to a young girl—out of all this whimpering and pity, something which is said to be akin to pity might arise. But in this, my good madam, you are utterly wrong. Some people have the small-pox twice, I do not. In my case, if a heart is broke, it’s broke: if a flower is withered, it’s withered. If I choose to put my grief in a ridiculous light, why not? Why do you suppose I am going to make a tragedy of such an old, used-up, battered, stale, vulgar, trivial, every-day subject as a jilt who plays with a man’s passion, and laughs at him, and leaves him? Tragedy indeed! Oh, yes! poison—black-edged note-paper—Waterloo Bridge—one more unfortunate, and so forth! No: if she goes, let her go!—si celeres quatit pennas, I puff the what-d’ye-call away! But I’ll have no tragedy, mind you!
Well! it must be confessed that a man desperately in love (as I fear I must own I then was, and a good deal cut up by Glorvina’s conduct) is a most selfish being: whilst women are so soft and unselfish that they can forget or disguise their own sorrows for awhile, whilst they minister to a friend in affliction. I did not see, though I talked with her daily, on my return from that accursed Dublin, that my little Elizabeth was pale and distraite, and sad, and silent. She would sit quite dumb whilst I chattered, her hands between her knees, or draw one of them over her eyes. She would say, “Oh, yes! Poor fellow—poor fellow!” now and again, as giving a melancholy confirmation of my dismal stories; but mostly she remained quiet, her head drooping towards the ground, a hand to her chin, her feet to the fender.
I was one day harping on the usual string. I was telling Elizabeth how, after presents had been accepted, after letters had passed between us (if her scrawl could be called letters, if my impassioned song could be so construed), after everything but the actual word had passed our lips—I was telling Elizabeth how, on one accursed day, Glorvina’s mother greeted me on my arrival in M-rr-n Square, by saying, “Dear—dear Mr. Batchelor, we look on you quite as one of the family! Congratulate me—congratulate my child! Dear Tom has got his appointment as Recorder of Tobago; and it is to be a match between him and his cousin Glory.”
“His cousin What!” I shriek with a maniac laugh.
“My poor Glorvina! Sure the children have been fond of each other ever since they could speak. I knew your kind heart would be the first to rejoice in their happiness!”