The Lone Hand (Pain)/Chapter 3

My principal feeling on leaving Mr. Gould's house was one of extreme weariness. The emotions wear one out more than work does. I had been living idly and even luxuriously, but I was more tired than I used to be in the days when I lived with my father, and during some financial or domestic crisis the whole of the housework fell to my lot. I had Mr. Gould's five-pound notes in my pocket, and I drove to a good hotel. I stopped there for three days, and I think spent most of my time in bed and asleep. Then I said to myself, “Wilhelmina, this will not do You are spending too much, and you are earning nothing, and you are not even looking about you.” So I left my good hotel, and went to a cheap boarding-house. And on the second night that I was there a young Hindoo proposed marriage to me. Also the cooking was very bad. So I left.

While I was there I had calculated that I had enough money to furnish a very small flat, and to live for very nearly a year. I found my flat in a Brompton back street. It was not one of the mansions with lifts and liveried porters and electric light, and lots of white paint. It was a little £30 house which had been ingeniously converted into three flats. One was in the basement, and you entered it down the area steps, and paid seven shillings a week when you got there. The ground-floor flat was eight shillings, and the upstairs flat seven-and-six. I went in for luxury and eight shillings. I had a separate entrance, and when I shut my front door I was alone in my own little world. The world contained a sitting-room, bedroom, and kitchen, and was extremely dirty and horrible until I set to work on it. I need not say that I spent more money than I had intended on cleaning, furnishing, and decorating. Everybody does that. As an economy and a punishment I did everything for myself. The flat above me was occupied by a horse-keeper from one of the 'bus-yards and his wife. The wife did a little intermittent cheap dress making. They both drank, used improper language, and occasionally flung paraffin lamps at one another. The flat below had been occupied by an old man who lived alone, and had got tired of it and died. I met his dead body coming up those area steps as I moved in. After that the flat remained untenanted. Every Saturday a knowing-looking young man with a pencil behind his ear and an account-book and a black bag called for the eight shillings. And as long as you paid that nobody cared who you were, or what you did, or why you did it. I rather liked that.

When I was comfortably installed I began to think things out I decided at first to go in for the gratitude of the aged. You know the kind of thing. You render the old gentleman or old lady some slight service in a 'bus or railway carriage, and a month later they die and leave you all their money. I think I was right in believing in the gratitude of the aged. Compared with the young they are very grateful. But I fancy they have a great tendency to have wives and children or other near relations, and to abstain from leaving their money to the entire stranger who has opened the carriage-door for them. One day in Chancery-lane a horse in a hansom cab came down rather excessively, and a very aged solicitor shot out in a miscellaneous heap into the middle of the road. I helped him up, saved his hat from the very jaws of an omnibus, so to speak, and said I was sorry for him. He did not even ask for my name and address, and at the moment of going to press I have heard nothing further from him. The other old people to whom I was able to offer some slight service seemed to think that a few words of warm thanks would be all I required. I began to disbelieve in the familiar stories of the wills of the wealthy.

And then I embarked on a business which I am afraid must prove conclusively that I was a daughter of my father, for it was just the mad, wild-cat kind of thing that he would certainly have embarked on himself, if he had ever thought of it. Briefly, I put an advertisement in one of the most popular of the Sunday papers, and also in the Morning Post, addressed to all who were unhappy in love: “I know the heart, and I know the world,” was the way I began. I pointed out cunningly that however much one might need advice in these matters, there was always a feeling of embarrassment in consulting anyone who knew you. The only person in whom one could confide was the entire stranger. I pointed out, moreover, that real names and addresses need never be given to ms. I only required to know the facts, and I would send a letter of advice specially written for each case for the sum of half a crown. Their letters were to be directed to “Irma,” and I gave the address of a little newsagent who took in letters.

I ran this business for about two months. It began slowly, but after the first fortnight I really had as much as I could do. I always asked the people to whom I sent letters to recommend me to their friends, and in many cases I know that they did so. I gave the best advice that I could, and I had a small shilling book on the marriage laws which I found very useful. Not one couple in a hundred that want to get married really know how it may or may not be done. My clients were chiefly women, and I have grave doubts as to the seriousness of some of the few men who applied to me. But I did not mind in the least so long as their postal-orders were enclosed. The women seemed to belong almost exclusively to two sets—domestic servants and foolish people in smart society. The middle-class would have nothing to do with me, and I am not sure, although I always gave the best advice I could, that the middle-class was not right Only once or twice in the curious confessions that were poured out on me did I come upon anything that I should have called real romance. There was plenty of vanity, there was plenty of sentimentality, and there was a good deal of acute money-grubbing. It was really interesting work, though it kept me a great deal indoors, and I am not sure even now that it was quite honest.

At the end of the first month some blessed young man, whom I am glad to have this opportunity of thanking, wrote a short and chaffing article about my advertisement. For days after this I was simply inundated with letters, and I had to send out postcards to my clients explaining that, owing to the pressure of business, my letters of advice to them would probably be delayed for some days. Among those letters was one bearing the address of a house in Berkeley-square, which was so extraordinary that I give it in full. It was one of the few letters that I received from men:

“Dear Madam,—I have seen your advertisement and also the short article upon it in the Daily Courier, and my own case is so curious that I have decided to address you. I enclose a postal-order for half a crown as required; but I am a man of means, and in the event of your being able to assist me I shall, as you will see, propose a more adequate remuneration. I have been a great traveller and sportsman, and you may possibly have come upon my recent work on 'Sport in Thibet.' I have now returned to England and am anxious to marry. But I am prevented by a strange psychological characteristic of my own.

“The fact, put briefly, is that I cannot stand fear. Any evidence of timidity in a man inspires me with rage, and in a woman with disgust. However attractive she may be, at the slightest sign that she fears me, love vanishes completely. I cannot stand her, I cannot bear to be with her. This is the more unfortunate because I am by nature a dominant person. I have been told that my eyes are mesmeric I do not believe in this nonsense, but certainly women seem to find it difficult to meet my gaze fairly and squarely. I have a somewhat hasty temper, and nothing exasperates it more than the attempt to smooth it down, accompanied, as it always is, by fear of what I may do next. I want a woman who does not care one straw what I do next—who will be as absolutely free from every form of cowardice, physical or moral, as I am myself. The mother of my children must not be a coward.

“I am thirty-seven years of age, wealthy, and not, I believe, much uglier than other men, and I cannot find the woman that I require. Possibly, among the many cases which must have been brought to your notice, you will have come across some such woman. If so, and if you will arrange a meeting between her and me, I will pay you the sum of one hundred pounds, provided, of course, that I am satisfied on the question of her courage. If, though satisfied on this point, I do not wish to marry her, I will pay her also the sum of one hundred pounds for the trouble which I have given her. She must, of course, not be older than I am myself, and I confess that good looks are a great consideration with me. Social standing is of no importance whatever. I do not allow popular prejudices to interfere with my actions, even when they are of the least importance, and far less do I admit of such interference in my choice of a wife.—I am, my dear Madam, faithfully yours, .”

I do not give his signature. It is a name that you will find in Debrett, though I did not look it up at the time. That letter gave me a great deal to think over. There was a queer mixture of bragging and modesty about it. Yet, I asked myself, how could he give me the facts which it was necessary for me to know without appearing to brag? The commission of one hundred pounds was certainly tempting, but none of my correspondents occurred to me as being likely to meet his requirements, even if they had not had their own affairs on their hands. Fear is a feminine quality. Women have a right to it; without being cowardly, they may be able to realise a danger and they may have delicate nerves. Nor can I see that they arc any the worse for it. After a little reflection I wrote to say that I believed I should be able to assist him if he could wait for about a fortnight. And I had a reply on the following day to say that he would wait with pleasure.

I was not, decidedly not, thirty-seven, and I was as pretty as I thought he had any right to expect. I was not the creature of steel that he required, but none the less my nerves were in fairly good order, and I thought that I could get through, at any rate, any of the preliminary tests to which he might subject me. Two hundred pounds is better than one hundred. Possibly I might marry this man. I did not know and did not want to marry anybody. But he might take his chance, and, in case of failure, fall in line with the doctor at Castel-on-Weld and the young Hindoo in the boarding-house. It is wonderful how many excuses one can find for an action which brings in two hundred pounds.

At the end of the fortnight I wrote and gave him an appointment for the afternoon of two days later, outside the Stores in Victoria-street, when I said that the young lady whom I had selected as likely to meet his requirements would meet him. I suggested that there should be some sign by which he might be known. Next day I received a telegram in these words: “I shall come dashing up. The red rose is, and always has been, my sign”

I thought over that telegram for a long time, and I did not quite like it. It was altogether too queer. But I meant to see the thing through. After all, I had given him no sign by which he could recognise me, and I could always back out at the last moment if I thought it necessary. So, at the time appointed, which was at three in the afternoon, I was in Victoria-street, at some little distance from the Stores, waiting to see what might happen.

What actually happened was rather grotesque. A four-wheeled cab drove up, and an old gentleman got out. He wore a red rose in his buttonhole and another in his hat. He took four rose-bushes in pots from the interior of the cab and placed them on the pavement, dived back into his cab once more, and came out with a large florist's box. This was packed with red roses, which he proceeded to scatter broadcast. His cabman laughed till he nearly fell off the box, and a large crowd quickly gathered round. The crowd seemed to annoy the old gentleman. I heard him shouting in a querulous voice, “I am here for a special purpose. Kindly go away. I require this street for the afternoon.” A small boy knocked over one of the little rose-bushes, and this exasperated the old gentleman still further. In a moment he had whipped a revolver out of his pocket, and began firing it up into the air in an indiscriminate manner. The police very promptly got him. And I said nothing to anybody and went home.

Naturally the case was reported in all the papers. The old man had been strange in his manner for some time, but his relations had not apprehended anything serious. This afternoon he had been particularly enraged because he could not get a four-wheeler, and he was too nervous to ride in hansoms.

I never heard any more oi the case, but it gave me a dislike of the business which I was engaged upon, and the dislike was increased a few days later. I was looking out of my windows when I saw a woman of common appearance give an almost imperceptible nod to a passing policeman. She then came on to my flat and knocked. I let her in.

“You are the lady who advertises as 'Irma,'” she said.

“I am. How did you know that I lived here?”

“They told me at the tobacconist's where your letters are sent. Now I want you to give me some help. I have got the money here and I can pay well.”

“What is it you want?” I asked

“Well, I'm told that you are a wise woman, and know the future. A man, rather younger than myself, has every appearance of being attracted by me, but I don't know whether he means anything serious or not. I thought perhaps you'd look at my hand and tell me what was destined.”

I sent her away at once. It was a police trap, of course. When you receive many letters, containing many postal-orders, and you cash those orders all at one office, I suppose the police become interested. It seemed degrading, and I hated it. Also I had reflected that this was not really work that would lead to anything.

I sat down there and then and wrote letters withdrawing the “Irma” advertisements. My total profit, after all expenses were paid, amounted to a little over twenty pounds.