Man and Maid

“What an ideal housekeeper!” he said to himself, as he placed a chair for her. And then an odd thrill of discomfort and shame shot through him. This delicate, dainty old lady – he was to insult her by a form of marriage, and then to live near her, waiting for her death? No; it was impossible – the whole thing was impossible. He found himself in the middle of a sentence.

“And so I fear I am already suited.”

The old lady raised eyebrows as delicate as Sylvia’s own.

“Hardly, I think,” she said, “since your servant admitted me to an interview with you. May I ask you one or two questions before you finally decide against me?”

The voice was low and soft – the voice men loved in the early sixties, before the shrill shriek became the voice of fashionable ladies.

“Certainly,” Michael said. He could hardly say less, and in the tumult of embarrassment that had swept over him, he could not for his life have said more.

The old lady went on. “I am competent to manage a house. I can read aloud fairly well. I am a good nurse in case of sickness; and I am accustomed to entertain. But I gather from the amount of the salary offered that some other duties would be required of me?”

“That’s clever of her, too,” Michael thought; “none of the others saw that.”

He bowed.

“Would you enlighten me,” she went on, “as to the nature of the services you would require?”

“Ah – yes – of course,” he said glibly, and then stopped short.

“From your hesitation,” said the old lady, with unimpaired self-possession, “I gather that the matter involves an explanation of some delicacy, or else – pardon the egotism – that my appearance is personally unpleasing to you.”

“No – oh, no,” Michael said very eagerly; “on the contrary, if I may say so, it is just because you are so – so – exactly my ideal of an old lady, that I feel I can’t go on with the business; and that’s put stupidly, so that it sounds like an insult. Please forgive me.”

She looked him straight in the eyes through her gold-rimmed spectacles.

“You see, I am old enough to be your grandmother,” she said. “Why not tell me the truth?”

And, to his horror and astonishment, he told it.

“And that’s what I meant to do,” he ended. “It was a mad idea, and I see now that if I do it at all I must marry some one who is not – who is not like you. You have made me ashamed of myself.”

A spot of pink colour glowed in her faded cheek. The old lady put up her gloved hand and touched her cheek, as if it burned. She got up and walked to the window, and stood there, looking out.

“If you are going to do it,” she said in a voice that was hardly audible, “I have been used to live among beautiful surroundings – I should like to end my days among them. I do not come of a long-lived family. You would not have long to wait for your freedom and your second wife.”

Never in all his days had Michael known so sharp an agony of embarrassment.

“When must you be married,” the old lady went on calmly, “to ensure your fortunes and estates?”

“In about a month.”

“Well, Mr Wood, I make you a formal offer of marriage, and for reference I can give you my banker and my solicitor – ”

Her voice was calm; it was his voice that trembled as he answered: “You are too good. I can’t see that it would be fair to you. May I think about it till to-morrow?”

The contrast between the old lady’s dainty correctness of attire and speech, and the extraordinary unconventionality of her proposal, made Michael’s brain reel. She turned from the window, again looked him fairly in the eyes, and said: “You will not find me unconventional in other matters. This is purely an affair of business, and I approach it in a business spirit. You would be giving a home to one who wants it, and I should be helping you to what you need still more. I have never been married. I never wished to marry; and when I am dead – Don’t look so horror-stricken. I should not die any sooner because you – you had married me. My name is Thrale – Frances Thrale. That is my card that you have been pulling to pieces while you have been talking to me. Shall I come and see you again at this time to-morrow? It is not a subject on which I should wish either to write or to receive letters.”

He could only acquiesce. At the door the old lady turned.

“If you think I look so old as to make your marriage too absurd,” she said – and now, for the first time, her voice trembled – “I could dye my hair.”

“Oh no,” Michael said, “your hair is beautiful. Good-bye, and thank you.”

As the old lady went down the dusty Temple stairs she stamped a small foot angrily on the worn oak.

“Fool!” she said, “how could you? Hateful, shameless, unwomanly! And it’s all for nothing, too. He’ll never do it. It’s too mad!”

Michael went straight to Sylvia, and told his tale.

“And I felt I couldn’t,” he said; “she is the daintiest, sweetest little old lady. I couldn’t marry her and see her every day and live in the hope of her death.”

“I don’t see why not,” Sylvia said, a little coldly. “She wouldn’t die any sooner because you married her, and, anyway, she can’t have long to live.”

The words were almost those of the little old lady herself. Yet – or perhaps for that very reason – they jarred on Michael’s mood. He alleged business, and cut short his call.

Next day Miss Thrale called again. Mr Wood was sorry to have given her so much trouble. He had decided that the idea was too wild, and must be abandoned.

“Is it because I am too old?” said the old lady wistfully; “would you marry me if I were young?”

“Upon my word, I believe I would,” Michael surprised himself by saying. That it was not the answer Miss Thrale expected was evident from her smile of sudden amusement.

“May I say,” she said, “in return for what, in its way, is a compliment, that I like you very much. I would take care of you, and I shall perhaps not live more than a year or two.”

The tremor of her voice touched him. The £15,000 a year pulled at his will. In that instant he saw the broad glades of waving bracken, the big trees of the park, the sober face of the great house he might inherit, looking out over the smooth green lawns. He looked again at the little lady. After all, he was more than thirty. The world would laugh – well, they laughed best who laughed last. And, after a few years, there would be Sylvia – pretty, charming, enchanting Sylvia. He put the thought of her roughly away. Not because he was ashamed of it, but because it hurt him. The thought that Sylvia should wait for a dead woman’s shoes had seemed natural; what hurt him was that she herself should see nothing unnatural in such waiting.

The silence had grown to the limit that spells discomfort; the ticking of the tall clock, the rustle of the plane tree’s leaves outside the window, the discords of Fleet Street harmonised by distance, all deepened the silence and italicised it. She spoke.

“Well?” she said.

The plane tree’s leaves murmured eloquently of the great oaks in the park. The old lady’s eyes looked at him appealingly through the pale-smoked glasses. How she would like that old place! And his debts – he could pay them all.

“I will,” he said suddenly; “if you will, I will; and I pray you may never regret it.”

“I don’t think you will regret it,” she said gently; “it is a truly kind act to me.”

Bank and solicitor, duly consulted, testified to Miss Thrale’s respectability and to her income – the requisite hundred a year in Consols. And on a certain day in June Michael Wood woke from a feverish dream, in which obstinacy and the longing for money had fought with many better things and worsted them, to find himself married to a white-haired woman of sixty.

The awakening took place in his rooms in the Temple. He had yielded to the little old lady’s entreaties, and consented, most willingly, to forego the “wedding journey,” in this case so sad a mockery.

The set was a large one – five rooms; it seemed that they might live here, and neither irk the other.

And she was in the room he had caused to be prepared for her – dainty and neat as herself – and he, left alone in the room where he had first seen her, crossed his arms on the table, and thought. His wedding-day! And it might have been Sylvia, the rustle of whose dress he could hear in the next room. He groaned. Then he laid his head on his arms and cried – like a child that has lost its favourite toy: for he saw, suddenly, that respect for his old wife must keep him from ever seeing Sylvia now; and life looked grey as the Thames in February twilight.

A timid hand on his shoulder startled him to the raising of his tear-stained face. The little old lady stood beside him.

“Ah, don’t!” she said softly – “don’t! Believe me, it will be all right. Your old wife won’t live more than a year – I know it. Take courage.”