And it must be acknowledged that Johnny Eames had, in certain unguarded moments, confided to Cradell the secret of a second weaker passion for Amelia. “She is a fine girl—a deuced fine girl!” Johnny Eames had said, using a style of language which he had learned since he left Guestwick and Allington. Mr. Cradell, also, was an admirer of the fair sex; and, alas! that I should say so, Mrs. Lupex, at the present moment, was the object of his admiration. Not that he entertained the slightest idea of wronging Mr. Lupex—a man who was a scene-painter, and knew the world. Mr. Cradell admired Mrs. Lupex as a connoisseur, not simply as a man. “By heavens! Johnny, what a figure that woman has!” he said, one morning, as they were walking to their office.
“Yes; she stands well on her pins.”
“I should think she did. If I understand anything of form,” said Cradell, “that woman is nearly perfect. What a torso she has!”
From which expression, and from the fact that Mrs. Lupex depended greatly upon her stays and crinoline for such figure as she succeeded in displaying, it may, perhaps, be understood that Mr. Cradell did not understand much about form.
“It seems to me that her nose isn’t quite straight,” said Johnny Eames. Now, it undoubtedly was the fact that the nose on Mrs. Lupex’s face was a little awry. It was a long, thin nose, which, as it progressed forward into the air, certainly had a preponderating bias towards the left side.
“I care more for figure than face,” said Cradell. “But Mrs. Lupex has fine eyes—very fine eyes.”
“And knows how to use them, too,” said Johnny.
“Why shouldn’t she? And then she has lovely hair.”
“Only she never brushes it in the morning.”
“Do you know, I like that kind of deshabille,” said Cradell. “Too much care always betrays itself.”
“But a woman should be tidy.”
“What a word to apply to such a creature as Mrs. Lupex! I call her a splendid woman. And how well she was got up last night. Do you know, I’ve an idea that Lupex treats her very badly. She said a word or two to me yesterday that—,” and then he paused. There are some confidences which a man does not share even with his dearest friend.
“I rather fancy it’s quite the other way,” said Eames.
“How the other way?”
“That Lupex has quite as much as he likes of Mrs. L. The sound of her voice sometimes makes me shake in my shoes, I know.”
“I like a woman with spirit,” said Cradell.
“Oh, so do I. But one may have too much of a good thing. Amelia did tell me;—only you won’t mention it.”
“Of course, I won’t.”
“She told me that Lupex sometimes was obliged to run away from her. He goes down to the theatre, and remains there two or three days at a time. Then she goes to fetch him, and there is no end of a row in the house.”
“The fact is, he drinks,” said Cradell. “By George, I pity a woman whose husband drinks—and such a woman as that, too!”
“Take care, old fellow, or you’ll find yourself in a scrape.”
“I know what I’m at. Lord bless you, I’m not going to lose my head because I see a fine woman.”
“Or your heart either?”
“Oh, heart! There’s nothing of that kind of thing about me. I regard a woman as a picture or a statue. I dare say I shall marry some day, because men do; but I’ve no idea of losing myself about a woman.”
“I’d lose myself ten times over for—”
“L. D.,” said Cradell.
“That I would. And yet I know I shall never have her. I’m a jolly, laughing sort of fellow; and yet, do you know, Caudle, when that girl marries, it will be all up with me. It will, indeed.”
“Do you mean that you’ll cut your throat?”
“No; I shan’t do that. I shan’t do anything of that sort; and yet it will be all up with me.”
“You are going down there in October;—why don’t you ask her to have you?”
“With ninety pounds a year!” His grateful country had twice increased his salary at the rate of five pounds each year. “With ninety pounds a year, and twenty allowed me by my mother!”
“She could wait, I suppose. I should ask her, and no mistake. If one is to love a girl, it’s no good one going on in that way!”
“It isn’t much good, certainly,” said Johnny Eames. And then they reached the door of the Income-tax Office, and each went away to his own desk.
From this little dialogue, it may be imagined that though Mrs. Roper was as good as her word, she was not exactly the woman whom Mrs. Eames would have wished to select as a protecting angel for her son. But the truth I take to be this, that protecting angels for widows’ sons, at forty-eight pounds a year, paid quarterly, are not to be found very readily in London. Mrs. Roper was not worse than others of her class. She would much have preferred lodgers who were respectable to those who were not so—if she could only have found respectable lodgers as she wanted them. Mr. and Mrs. Lupex hardly came under that denomination; and when she gave them up her big front bedroom at a hundred a year, she knew she was doing wrong. And she was troubled, too, about her own daughter Amelia, who was already over thirty years of age. Amelia was a very clever young woman, who had been, if the truth must be told, first young lady at a
