“Hang the paperwork, Mr. Dickens!”
“Do not ask me to break the regulations, Mr. Price. I dare not risk my job here.” Dickens sniffed and snapped down the lid on his inkpot. “The wife has given me another baby, and I cannot afford to lose my employment.”
“A new baby! Congratulations to you, Mr. Dickens. Will you not allow me to make you a gift in celebration?”
“That would be most handsome of you, sir. We clerks can barely make ends meet.”
“Yes, I know, Mr. Dickens. It would be my pleasure. Three guineas, shall we say? Five? Now then—now that we are good friends again, I know you will do what you can to assist me, won’t you?”
William Price was gone out of Portsmouth, by post chaise, within the hour.
* * * * * * *
Even a girl so modest as Fanny could not deceive herself. Both yesterday and today, Mr. Gibson’s attentions had been very pointed. At first she laid his behaviour to the recent calamity; it was not surprising that he should be solicitous of her well-being after she had first lost her employment and nearly her life, all within a few days. But there was a pronounced tenderness which threw her into confusion. She could not forget with what pleasure, with what satisfaction, he heard the news that she was not engaged to marry Mr. Edifice.
He had sat with her and Mrs. Butters most of yesterday afternoon and, upon Mrs. Butters’ invitation, was to join them today for an airing at Kensington Park. Upon their arrival, however, Mrs. Butters, professing a disinclination for a long walk, remained in the carriage and went on to pay some morning calls.
A few words between Fanny and her companion sufficed to decide upon their route. She took his arm and they walked in comfortable silence for a time. Fanny was about to make some commonplace remark about the gardens, when William Gibson addressed her thus: “Miss Price, I wish to obtain your thoughts. I have been thinking seriously about the hardships any wife of mine would be forced to endure.”
“Mr.—Mr. Gibson, you surprise me! I thought you had determined against matrimony.” Fanny began to feel a little light headed, and hoped she would not start speaking nonsense.
“That, Miss Price, was many, many years ago—well, two years ago, at least. For some time now, I have been of a different frame of mind.”
Fanny was all agitation and flutter; all hope and apprehension.
“I have compiled a list of my faults, which I hope you will do me the kindness to review along with me, so that you might include all the other drawbacks which have escaped my observation, but which will naturally occur to you.”
“My friends all assure me that I am a very good listener, Mr. Gibson, so please begin.” Fanny said, her mind and heart racing. She kept her gaze resolutely on the path ahead of her, although she listened with all her heart and soul to what he had to say.
“Ahem! Very well. First, I am exceedingly irregular in my hours. My wife could not expect me to always join her for breakfast, not when I have been awake half the night writing. Even worse, I am impulsive—the kind of fellow who will, on the spur of a moment, invite half-a-dozen strangers home for dinner, or empty his pockets for every beggar he sees on the street. I could not be trusted to manage money—all of the household accounts would have to be in my wife’s hands, or else certain penury would be the result.
“As well, I need hardly dwell upon the miserable lot of the woman married to someone who depends for his livelihood upon the notice of the public. I seek acclamation, even when it comes in the form of beguiling females. My wife will accompany me to receptions and dinners and perhaps I will be monopolized by some beautiful woman, and my wife will be forced to watch it all with a tolerant smile!
“And yet, had I a hundred such ladies throwing themselves at me, no amount of praise and fame will satisfy a public man.
“The care and feeding of my vanity will be a greater labour for my wife than stocking my pantry or seeing to my wardrobe. She must soothe my wounded ego when I receive a bad review, and condemn the reviewer for a philistine and a blockhead, and she must read and be in raptures over all my new productions.
“And do not forget how I pique myself on my intellectual rigour and my rectitude. No day is complete for me unless I can point out the moral shortcomings of others. I did so well at making enemies in Bristol that, as you know, I was hauled off the streets and pressed into the Navy. It takes a special aptitude for outraging public opinion to end up with a press gang sent after you.
“My wife will soon discover that while I espouse the deepest regard for my fellow creatures and while I present myself as the champion of the downtrodden, the people I most neglect and abuse, are, by no coincidence, the people I profess to love most dearly. For example, if some public matter commands my attention, it absorbs me utterly, so that if my wife were to set herself on fire at the aforementioned breakfast table in an effort to get my attention, I would probably not even look up from my newspaper and merely ask if she had burnt the toast.
