It is possible that I may have spoken a little too sharply. Anyway, faithful Selina interceded for her friend. “Oh, dear sir, don’t be hard on Elizabeth! She always means well.” Mrs. Tenbruggen, as facetious as ever, made a grateful return for a small compliment. She chucked Miss Jillgall under the chin, with the air of an amorous old gentleman expressing his approval of a pretty servant-girl. It was impossible to look at the two, in their relative situations, without laughing. But Mrs. Tenbruggen failed to cheat me into altering my opinion of her. Innocent Miss Jillgall clapped her ugly hands, and said: “Isn’t she good company?”
Mrs. Tenbruggen’s social resources were not exhausted yet. She suddenly shifted to the serious side of her character.
“Perhaps I have improved a little,” she said, “as I have advanced in years. The sorrows of an unhappy married life may have had a purifying influence on my nature. My husband and I began badly. Mr. Tenbruggen thought I had money; and I thought Mr. Tenbruggen had money. He was taken in by me; and I was taken in by him. When he repeated the words of the marriage service (most impressively read by your friend the Chaplain): ‘With all my worldly goods I thee endow’—his eloquent voice suggested one of the largest incomes in Europe. When I promised and vowed, in my turn, the delightful prospect of squandering my rich husband’s money made quite a new woman of me. I declare solemnly, when I said I would love, honor, and obey Mr. T., I looked as if I really meant it. Wherever he is now, poor dear, he is cheating somebody. Such a handsome, gentleman-like man, Selina! And, oh, Mr. Governor, such a blackguard!”
Having described her husband in those terms, she got tired of the subject. We were now favored with another view of this many-sided woman. She appeared in her professional character.
“Ah, what a delicious breeze is blowing, out here in the country!” she said. “Will you excuse me if I take off my gloves? I want to air my hands.” She held up her hands to the breeze; firm, muscular, deadly white hands. “In my professional occupation,” she explained, “I am always rubbing, tickling, squeezing, tapping, kneading, rolling, striking the muscles of patients. Selina, do you know the movements of your own joints? Flexion, extension, abduction, adduction, rotation, circumduction, pronation, supination, and the lateral movements. Be proud of those accomplishments, my dear, but beware of attempting to become a Masseuse. There are drawbacks in that vocation—and I am conscious of one of them at this moment.” She lifted her hands to her nose. “Pah! my hands smell of other people’s flesh. The delicious country air will blow it away—the luxury of purification!” Her fingers twisted and quivered, and got crooked at one moment and straight again at another, and showed themselves in succession singly, and flew into each other fiercely interlaced, and then spread out again like the sticks of a fan, until it really made me giddy to look at them. As for Miss Jillgall, she lifted her poor little sunken eyes rapturously to the sky, as if she called the homiest sunlight to witness that this was the most lovable woman on the face of the earth.
But elderly female fascination offers its allurements in vain to the rough animal, man. Suspicion of Mrs. Tenbruggen’s motives had established itself firmly in my mind. Why had the Popular Masseuse abandoned her brilliant career in London, and plunged into the obscurity of a country town? An opportunity of clearing up the doubt thus suggested seemed to have presented itself now. “Is it indiscreet to ask,” I said, “if you are here in your professional capacity?”
Her cunning seized its advantage and put a sly question to me. “Do you wish to be one of my patients yourself?”
“That is, unfortunately, impossible,” I replied “I have arranged to return to London.”
“Immediately?”
“To-morrow at the latest.”