Mr. Witt's Widow: A Frivolous Tale

“How could I ever have forgotten?” said George, aloud, as he walked home. “I remember her now as if it was yesterday.”

Memory, like much else that appertains to man, is a queer thing, and the name of Peckton had supplied the one link missing in his recollection. How, indeed, had he ever forgotten it? Can a man forget his first brief any more than his first love? – so like are they in their infinite promise, so like in their very finite results!

The picture was now complete in his mind: the little, muggy court at Peckton; old Dawkins, his wig black with age, the rest of him brown with snuff; the fussy clerk; the prosecuting counsel, son to the same fussy clerk; he himself, thrusting his first guinea into his pocket with shaking hand and beating heart (nervous before old Daw! Imagine!); the fat, peaceful policeman; the female warder, in her black straw-bonnet trimmed with dark-blue ribbons; and last of all, in the dock, a young girl, in shabby, nay, greasy, black, with pale cheeks, disordered hair, and swollen eyelids, gazing in blank terror on the majesty of the law, strangely expressed in the Recorder’s ancient person. And, beyond all doubt or imagination of a doubt, the girl was Gerald’s bride, Neaera Witt.

“I could swear to her to-day!” cried George.

She had scraped together a guinea for his fee. “I don’t know where she got it from,” the fat policeman said with professional cynicism as he gave it to George. “She pleads guilty and wants you to address the court.” So George had, with infinite trepidation, addressed the court.

The girl had a father – drunk when not starving, and starving when not drunk. Now he was starving, and she had stolen the shoes (oh! the sordidness of it all!) to pawn, and buy food – or drink. It was a case for a caution merely – and – and – and George himself, being young to the work, stammered and stuttered as much from emotion as from fright. You see the girl was pretty!

All old Daw said was, “Do you know anything about her, policeman?” and the fat policeman said her father was a bad lot, and the girl did no work, and —

“That’s enough,” said old Daw; and, leaning forward, he pronounced his sentence:

“I’ll deal lightly with you. Only” – shaking a snuffy forefinger – “take care you don’t come here again! One calendar month, with hard labour.”

And the girl, gazing back at honest old Daw, who would not have hurt a fly except from the Bench, softly murmured, “Cruel, cruel, cruel!” and was led away by the woman in the black straw bonnet.

Whereupon George did a very unprofessional thing. He gave his guinea, his firstborn son, back to the fat policeman, saying, “Give it her when she comes out. I can’t take her money.” At which the policeman smiled a smile that convicted George of terrible youthfulness.

It was all complete – all except the name by which the fussy clerk had called on the girl to plead, and which old Dawkins had mumbled out in sentencing her. That utterly escaped him. He was sure it was not “Neaera” – of course not “Neaera Witt;” but not “Neaera Anything,” either. He would have remembered “Neaera.”

“What on earth was it?” he asked himself as he unlocked his door and went upstairs. “Not that it matters much. Names are easily changed.”

George Neston shared his chambers in Half Moon Street with the Honourable Thomas Buchanan Fillingham Myles, commonly known (as the peerage has it) as Tommy Myles. Tommy also had a small room in the Temple Chambers, where the two Nestons and Mr. Blodwell pursued their livelihood; but Tommy’s appearances at the latter resort were few and brief. He did not trouble George much in Half Moon Street either, being a young man much given to society of all sorts, and very prone to be in bed when most people are up, and vice versâ. However, to-night he happened to be at home, and George found him with his feet on the mantelpiece, reading the evening paper.

“Well, what’s she like?” asked Tommy.

“She’s uncommonly pretty, and very pleasant,” said George. Why say more, before his mind was made up?

“Who was she?” pursued Tommy, rising and filling his pipe.

“Ah! I don’t know. I wish I did.”

“Don’t see that it matters to you. Anybody else there?”

“Oh, a few people.”

“Miss Bourne?”

“Yes, she was there.”

Tommy winked, sighed prodigiously, and took a large drink of brandy and soda.

“Where have you been?” asked George, changing the subject.

“Oh, to the Escurial – to a vulgar, really a very vulgar entertainment – as vulgar as you could find in London.”

“Are you going out again?”

“My dear George! It’s close on twelve!” said Tommy, in reproving tones.

“Or to bed?”

“No. George, you hurt my feelings. Can it be that you wish to be alone?”

“Well, at any rate, hold your tongue, Tommy. I want to think.”

“Only one word. Has she been cruel?”

“Oh, get out. Here, give me a drink.”

Tommy subsided into the Bull’s-eye, that famous print whose motto is Lux in tenebris (meaning, of course, publicity in shady places), and George set himself to consider what he had best do in the matter of Neaera Witt.

The difficulties of the situation were obvious enough, but to George’s mind they consisted not so much in the question of what to do as in that of how to do it. He had been tolerably clear from the first that Gerald must not marry Neaera without knowing what he could tell him; if he liked to do it afterwards, well and good. But of course he would not. No Neston would, thought George, who had his full share of the family pride. Men of good family made disgraceful marriages, it is true, but not with thieves; and anyhow nothing of the kind was recorded in the Neston annals. How should he look his uncle and Gerald in the face if he held his tongue? His course was very clear. Only – well, it was an uncommonly disagreeable part to be cast for – the denouncer and exposer of a woman who very probably was no worse than many another, and was unquestionably a great deal better-looking than most others. The whole position smacked unpleasantly of melodrama, and George must figure in the character of the villain, a villain with the best motives and the plainest duty. One hope only there was. Perhaps Mrs. Witt would see the wisdom of a timely withdrawal. Surely she would. She could never face the storm. Then Gerald need know nothing about it, and six months’ travel – say to America, where pretty girls live – would bind up his broken heart. Only – again only – George did not much fancy the interview that lay before him. Mrs. Witt would probably cry, and he would feel a brute, and —

“Mr. Neston,” announced Tommy’s valet, opening the door.

Gerald had followed his cousin home, very anxious to be congratulated, and still more anxious not to appear anxious. Tommy received him with effusion. Why hadn’t he been asked to the dinner? Might he call on Mrs. Witt? He heard she was a clipper; and so forth. George’s felicitations stuck in his throat, but he got them out, hoping that Neaera would free him from the necessity of eating them up at some early date. Gerald was radiant. He seemed to have forgotten all about “Peckton,” though he was loud in denouncing the unnatural hardness of Mr. Blodwell’s head. Oh, and the last thing Neaera said was, would George go and see her?

“She took quite a fancy to you, old man,” he said affectionately. “She said you reminded her of a judge.”

George smiled. Was Neaera practising double entente on her betrothed?

“What an infernally unpleasant thing to say!” exclaimed Tommy.

“Of course I shall go and see her,” said George, – “to-morrow, if I can find time.”

“So shall I,” added Tommy.

Gerald was pleased. He liked to see his taste endorsed with the approbation of his friends. “It’s about time old George, here, followed suit, isn’t it, Tommy? I’ve given him a lead.”

George’s attachment to Isabel Bourne was an accepted fact among his acquaintance. He never denied it: he did like her very much, and meant to marry her, if she would have him. And he did not really doubt that she would. If he had doubted, he would not have been so content to rest without an express assurance. As it was, there was no hurry. Let the practice grow a little more yet. He and Isabel understood one another, and, as soon as she was ready, he was ready. But long engagements were a nuisance to everybody. These were his feelings, and he considered himself, by virtue of them, to be in love with Isabel. There are many ways of being in love, and it would be a want of toleration to deny that George’s is one of them, although it is certainly very unlike some of the others.

Tommy agreed that George was wasting his time, and with real kindness led Gerald back to the subject which filled his mind.

Gerald gladly embraced the opportunity. “Where did I meet her? Oh, down at Brighton, last winter. Then, you know, I pursued her to Manchester, and found her living in no end of a swell villa in the outskirts of that abominable place. Neaera hated it, but of course she had to live there while Witt was alive, and she had kept the house on.”

“She wasn’t Manchester-born, then?”

“No. I don’t know where she was born. Her father seems to have been a romantic sort of old gentleman. He was a painter by trade – an artist, I mean, you know, – landscapes and so on.”

“And went about looking for bits of nature to murder, eh?” asked Tommy.

“That’s about it. I don’t think he was any great shakes at it. At least, he didn’t make much; and at last he settled in Manchester, and tried to pick up a living, working for the dealers. Witt was a picture-fancier, and, when Neaera came to sell, he saw her, and – ”

“The late Witt’s romance began?”