Delphi Complete Works of Jerome K. Jerome (Illustrated) (Series Four) (121 page)

Punctually to the time appointed Miss Ramsbotham arrived. Miss Ramsbotham, contrary to her custom, opened conversation with the weather. Miss Ramsbotham was of opinion that there was every possibility of rain. Peter Hope’s experience was that there was always possibility of rain.

“How is the Paper doing?” demanded Miss Ramsbotham.

The Paper — for a paper not yet two years old — was doing well. “We expect very shortly — very shortly indeed,” explained Peter Hope, “to turn the corner.”

“Ah! that ‘corner,’” sympathised Miss Ramsbotham.

“I confess,” smiled Peter Hope, “it doesn’t seem to be exactly a right-angled corner. One reaches it as one thinks. But it takes some getting round — what I should describe as a cornery corner.”

“What you want,” thought Miss Ramsbotham, “are one or two popular features.”

“Popular features,” agreed Peter guardedly, scenting temptation, “are not to be despised, provided one steers clear of the vulgar and the commonplace.”

“A Ladies’ Page!” suggested Miss Ramsbotham—”a page that should make the woman buy it. The women, believe me, are going to be of more and more importance to the weekly press.”

“But why should she want a special page to herself?” demanded Peter Hope. “Why should not the paper as a whole appeal to her?”

“It doesn’t,” was all Miss Ramsbotham could offer in explanation.

“We give her literature and the drama, poetry, fiction, the higher politics, the—”

“I know, I know,” interrupted Miss Ramsbotham, who of late, among other failings new to her, had developed a tendency towards impatience; “but she gets all that in half a dozen other papers. I have thought it out.” Miss Ramsbotham leaned further across the editorial desk and sunk her voice unconsciously to a confidential whisper. “Tell her the coming fashions. Discuss the question whether hat or bonnet makes you look the younger. Tell her whether red hair or black is to be the new colour, what size waist is being worn by the best people. Oh, come!” laughed Miss Ramsbotham in answer to Peter’s shocked expression; “one cannot reform the world and human nature all at once. You must appeal to people’s folly in order to get them to listen to your wisdom. Make your paper a success first. You can make it a power afterwards.”

“But,” argued Peter, “there are already such papers — papers devoted to — to that sort of thing, and to nothing else.”

“At sixpence!” replied the practical Miss Ramsbotham. “I am thinking of the lower middle-class woman who has twenty pounds a year to spend on dress, and who takes twelve hours a day to think about it, poor creature. My dear friend, there is a fortune in it. Think of the advertisements.”

Poor Peter groaned — old Peter, the dreamer of dreams. But for thought of Tommy! one day to be left alone to battle with a stony-eyed, deaf world, Peter most assuredly would have risen in his wrath, would have said to his distinguished-looking temptress, “Get thee behind me, Miss Ramsbotham. My journalistic instinct whispers to me that your scheme, judged by the mammon of unrighteousness, is good. It is a new departure. Ten years hence half the London journals will have adopted it. There is money in it. But what of that? Shall I for mere dross sell my editorial soul, turn the temple of the Mighty Pen into a den of — of milliners! Good morning, Miss Ramsbotham. I grieve for you. I grieve for you as for a fellow-worker once inspired by devotion to a noble calling, who has fallen from her high estate. Good morning, madam.”

So Peter thought as he sat tattooing with his finger-tips upon the desk; but only said —

“It would have to be well done.”

“Everything would depend upon how it was done,” agreed Miss Ramsbotham. “Badly done, the idea would be wasted. You would be merely giving it away to some other paper.”

“Do you know of anyone?” queried Peter.

“I was thinking of myself,” answered Miss Ramsbotham.

“I am sorry,” said Peter Hope.

“Why?” demanded Miss Ramsbotham. “Don’t you think I could do it?”

“I think,” said Peter, “no one could do it better. I am sorry you should wish to do it — that is all.”

“I want to do it,” replied Miss Ramsbotham, a note of doggedness in her voice.

“How much do you propose to charge me?” Peter smiled.

“Nothing.”

“My dear lady—”

“I could not in conscience,” explained Miss Ramsbotham, “take payment from both sides. I am going to make a good deal out of it. I am going to make out of it at least three hundred a year, and they will be glad to pay it.”

“Who will?”

“The dressmakers. I shall be one of the most stylish women in London,” laughed Miss Ramsbotham.

“You used to be a sensible woman,” Peter reminded her.

“I want to live.”

“Can’t you manage to do it without — without being a fool, my dear.”

“No,” answered Miss Ramsbotham, “a woman can’t. I’ve tried it.”

“Very well,” agreed Peter, “be it so.”

Peter had risen. He laid his shapely, white old hand upon the woman’s shoulder. “Tell me when you want to give it up. I shall be glad.”

Thus it was arranged.
Good Humour
gained circulation and — of more importance yet — advertisements; and Miss Ramsbotham, as she had predicted, the reputation of being one of the best-dressed women in London. Her reason for desiring such reputation Peter Hope had shrewdly guessed. Two months later his suspicions were confirmed. Mr. Reginald Peters, his uncle being dead, was on his way back to England.

His return was awaited with impatience only by the occupants of the little flat in the Marylebone Road; and between these two the difference of symptom was marked. Mistress Peggy, too stupid to comprehend the change that had been taking place in her, looked forward to her lover’s arrival with delight. Mr. Reginald Peters, independently of his profession, was in consequence of his uncle’s death a man of means. Miss Ramsbotham’s tutelage, which had always been distasteful to her, would now be at an end. She would be a “lady” in the true sense of the word — according to Miss Peggy’s definition, a woman with nothing to do but eat and drink, and nothing to think of but dress. Miss Ramsbotham, on the other hand, who might have anticipated the home-coming of her quondam admirer with hope, exhibited a strange condition of alarmed misery, which increased from day to day as the date drew nearer.

The meeting — whether by design or accident was never known — took place at an evening party given by the proprietors of a new journal. The circumstance was certainly unfortunate for poor Peggy, whom Bohemia began to pity. Mr. Peters, knowing both women would be there and so on the look-out, saw in the distance among the crowd of notabilities a superbly millinered, tall, graceful woman, whose face recalled sensations he could not for the moment place. Chiefly noticeable about her were her exquisite neck and arms, and the air of perfect breeding with which she moved, talking and laughing, through the distinguished, fashionable throng. Beside her strutted, nervously aggressive, a vulgar, fat, pimply, shapeless young woman, attracting universal attention by the incongruity of her presence in the room. On being greeted by the graceful lady of the neck and arms, the conviction forced itself upon him that this could be no other than the once Miss Ramsbotham, plain of face and indifferent of dress, whose very appearance he had almost forgotten. On being greeted gushingly as “Reggie” by the sallow-complexioned, over-dressed young woman he bowed with evident astonishment, and apologised for a memory that, so he assured the lady, had always been to him a source of despair.

Of course, he thanked his stars — and Miss Ramsbotham — that the engagement had never been formal. So far as Mr. Peters was concerned, there was an end to Mistress Peggy’s dream of an existence of everlasting breakfasts in bed. Leaving the Ramsbotham flat, she returned to the maternal roof, and there a course of hard work and plain living tended greatly to improve her figure and complexion; so that in course of time, the gods smiling again upon her, she married a foreman printer, and passes out of this story.

Meanwhile, Mr. Reginald Peters — older, and the possessor, perhaps, of more sense — looked at Miss Ramsbotham with new eyes, and now not tolerated but desired her. Bohemia waited to assist at the happy termination of a pretty and somewhat novel romance. Miss Ramsbotham had shown no sign of being attracted elsewhere. Flattery, compliment, she continued to welcome; but merely, so it seemed, as favourable criticism. Suitors more fit and proper were now not lacking, for Miss Ramsbotham, though a woman less desirable when won, came readily to the thought of wooing. But to all such she turned a laughing face.

“I like her for it,” declared Susan Fossett; “and he has improved — there was room for it — though I wish it could have been some other. There was Jack Herring — it would have been so much more suitable. Or even Joe, in spite of his size. But it’s her wedding, not ours; and she will never care for anyone else.”

And Bohemia bought its presents, and had them ready, but never gave them. A few months later Mr. Reginald Peters returned to Canada, a bachelor. Miss Ramsbotham expressed her desire for another private interview with Peter Hope.

“I may as well keep on the Letter to Clorinda,” thought Miss Ramsbotham. “I have got into the knack of it. But I will get you to pay me for it in the ordinary way.”

“I would rather have done so from the beginning,” explained Peter.

“I know. I could not in conscience, as I told you, take from both sides. For the future — well, they have said nothing; but I expect they are beginning to get tired of it.”

“And you!” questioned Peter.

“Yes. I am tired of it myself,” laughed Miss Ramsbotham. “Life isn’t long enough to be a well-dressed woman.”

“You have done with all that?”

“I hope so,” answered Miss Ramsbotham.

“And don’t want to talk any more about it?” suggested Peter.

“Not just at present. I should find it so difficult to explain.”

By others, less sympathetic than old Peter, vigorous attempts were made to solve the mystery. Miss Ramsbotham took enjoyment in cleverly evading these tormentors. Thwarted at every point, the gossips turned to other themes. Miss Ramsbotham found interest once again in the higher branches of her calling; became again, by slow degrees, the sensible, frank, ‘good sort’ that Bohemia had known, liked, respected — everything but loved.

Years later, to Susan Fossett, the case was made clear; and through Susan Fossett, a nice enough woman but talkative, those few still interested learned the explanation.

“Love,” said Miss Ramsbotham to the bosom friend, “is not regulated by reason. As you say, there were many men I might have married with much more hope of happiness. But I never cared for any other man. He was not intellectual, was egotistical, possibly enough selfish. The man should always be older than the woman; he was younger, and he was a weak character. Yet I loved him.”

“I am glad you didn’t marry him,” said the bosom friend.

“So am I,” agreed Miss Ramsbotham.

“If you can’t trust me,” had said the bosom friend at this point, “don’t.”

“I meant to do right,” said Miss Ramsbotham, “upon my word of honour I did, in the beginning.”

“I don’t understand,” said the bosom friend.

“If she had been my own child,” continued Miss Ramsbotham, “I could not have done more — in the beginning. I tried to teach her, to put some sense into her. Lord! the hours I wasted on that little idiot! I marvel at my own patience. She was nothing but an animal. An animal! she had only an animal’s vices. To eat and drink and sleep was her idea of happiness; her one ambition male admiration, and she hadn’t character enough to put sufficient curb upon her stomach to retain it. I reasoned with her, I pleaded with her, I bullied her. Had I persisted I might have succeeded by sheer physical and mental strength in restraining her from ruining herself. I was winning. I had made her frightened of me. Had I gone on, I might have won. By dragging her out of bed in the morning, by insisting upon her taking exercise, by regulating every particle of food and drink she put into her mouth, I kept the little beast in good condition for nearly three months. Then, I had to go away into the country for a few days; she swore she would obey my instructions. When I came back I found she had been in bed most of the time, and had been living chiefly on chocolate and cakes. She was curled up asleep in an easy-chair, snoring with her mouth wide open, when I opened the door. And at sight of that picture the devil came to me and tempted me. Why should I waste my time, wear myself out in mind and body, that the man I loved should marry a pig because it looked like an angel? ‘Six months’ wallowing according to its own desires would reveal it in its true shape. So from that day I left it to itself. No, worse than that — I don’t want to spare myself — I encouraged her. I let her have a fire in her bedroom, and half her meals in bed. I let her have chocolate with tablespoonfuls of cream floating on the top: she loved it. She was never really happy except when eating. I let her order her own meals. I took a fiendish delight watching the dainty limbs turning to shapeless fat, the pink-and-white complexion growing blotchy. It is flesh that man loves; brain and mind and heart and soul! he never thinks of them. This little pink-and-white sow could have cut me out with Solomon himself. Why should such creatures have the world arranged for them, and we not be allowed to use our brains in our own defence? But for my looking-glass I might have resisted the temptation, but I always had something of the man in me: the sport of the thing appealed to me. I suppose it was the nervous excitement under which I was living that was changing me. All my sap was going into my body. Given sufficient time, I might meet her with her own weapons, animal against animal. Well, you know the result: I won. There was no doubt about his being in love with me. His eyes would follow me round the room, feasting on me. I had become a fine animal. Men desired me, Do you know why I refused him? He was in every way a better man than the silly boy I had fallen in love with; but he came back with a couple of false teeth: I saw the gold setting one day when he opened his mouth to laugh. I don’t say for a moment, my dear, there is no such thing as love — love pure, ennobling, worthy of men and women, its roots in the heart and nowhere else. But that love I had missed; and the other! I saw it in its true light. I had fallen in love with him because he was a pretty, curly-headed boy. He had fallen in love with Peggy when she was pink-and-white and slim. I shall always see the look that came into his eyes when she spoke to him at the hotel, the look of disgust and loathing. The girl was the same; it was only her body that had grown older. I could see his eyes fixed upon my arms and neck. I had got to grow old in time, brown skinned, and wrinkled. I thought of him, growing bald, fat—”