But this is not telling you whether I had lovers, sweethearts, followers, or not. I have no room to go into that matter here; yet, let me name two young gentlemen. The first was the son of one of my trustees, Captain Galloway, who lived at Shadwell. The youth was good-looking, and had a pleasant, easy manner; he had been well educated, and at this time held some post of small consequence in the London Docks. He hung about me much, contrived to meet me at friends’ houses, often called, and managed sometimes to discover whither I had gone on a ramble, and to meet me as though by accident. I never doubted that I owed a good deal of this lad’s attention to old Captain Galloway’s fatherly advice. I laughed in my sleeve at the poor boy, though I was always gentle and kind to him; and if I never gave him any marked encouragement, for his father’s sake I took care never to pain or in any way disconcert him; until one evening, happening to be at a quadrille party, to which he had been invited, though he did not attend, a pretty, sad-faced young creature was pointed out to me as a girl whom Jim Galloway had jilted so provokingly as to earn him a caning at the hands of the young lady’s brother. This was enough for me. I first made sure that the story was true, and when next I met my youthful admirer I took him on one side, and, having told him what I had heard, informed him that he was a wicked, dangerous boy, unfit for the society of ladies, and, affecting a great air of indignation, I asked if by his hanging about me he did not intend to make a fool of me too. What passed put an end to the young gentleman’s addresses; but I always regret that this affair should have occasioned a coolness between Captain Galloway and myself.
My second suitor, or follower, so to term the fellow, was no less a person than my stepfather’s nephew. I had been spending my twenty-first birthday at my aunt’s, and on my return home Mr. Stanford sent up word to know if I would see him. I was in a good humour, and told the maid to ask my stepfather up. His motive in visiting me was to get me to allow him to invite his nephew to stay in the house. He wished to make his nephew’s better acquaintance. The youth was studying medicine, and Mr. Stanford believed a time might come when it would be convenient to take him into partnership. I told him to ask his nephew and welcome.
‘What’s the gentleman’s name?’ said I.
‘Edward Potter,’ said he.
In two or three days’ time Mr. Edward Potter drove up in a hackney coach. He brought a quantity of luggage, insomuch that I reckoned the partnership might not be so far off as my stepfather had hinted. Mr. Potter was a very corpulent young man; his neck was formed of rings of fat, and his small-clothes and arm sleeves sheathed his limbs as tight as a bladder holds lard. Nothing remarkable happened for some time, and then I discovered that this pursy young man was beginning to pay me some attention. To be sure, his opportunities in this way were few; he dared not enter my rooms without being invited, and then again, as you know, I was much away from home. Yet he would contrive to waylay me on the stairs and hold me in conversation, and he once went to the length of snatching up his hat and passing with me into the street, and walking with me down the Commercial Road to as far as Whitechapel, where I managed to shake him off.
One afternoon, on going downstairs, I heard the sound of voices in the parlour. The door stood ajar; my name was uttered; and the sound of it arrested my steps. The voices within were those of Mr. Stanford and his nephew, who were still at table, lingering over their wine.
‘Yes, she has the temper of a devil,’ said my stepfather. ‘I love her so exceedingly that I’d like nothing better than to have her for a patient. But the wench’s constitution is as sound as her fortune. Why don’t you go ahead with her?’
‘She’s plaguy hard to get at,’ said Mr. Potter, in his strange voice, as though his mouth was full of grease.
‘You don’t shove enough,’ said his uncle. ‘A woman of her sort isn’t to be won by staring and breathing hard. Go for her boldly. Blunder into the sitting-room sometimes, follow her when she goes out and meet her round the next corner. It was the chance I spoke to your mother about and that you’re here for. She means five hundred a year and this house. You’ll need to kill or cure scores this way to earn five hundred a year.’
‘It’s like taking a naked light into a powder magazine to talk to her,’ said Mr. Potter. ‘Every look she gives one is a sort of explosion. I always feel like wishing that the road may be clear when I address her.’