J. Comyns Carr: Stray Memories, by His Wife

								

bedroom looking out to the backyard where I was putting on my hat, with
the news that a gentleman was asking for me at the front door?
I never guessed who it was, but, through the sunshine that struck into
the dingy hall, I saw a strong figure on the door-step and, as I
advanced out of the dimness, a mouth hidden in a fair beard--thick and
long according to the fashion of the hour--parted in a smile; then I
recognised the young man whom I had seen two nights ago at the play.
He had brought my lost brooch, but I don’t think the excuse
was needed. I knew why he had come, though at the moment an unwonted
shyness had fallen on me, and I think I did not know whether to be
pleased or frightened.
He said, “Mayn’t I come in?”
And I recollect my vexation as I answered, “There’s nowhere
to come to! The drawing-room is full of old ladies--the sort who tell
one that a waterproof and an umbrella are the safe dress for a girl in
London.”
How he laughed! the laugh that many knew and loved him for: and any who
recollect the speckled-hen variety of the waterproof of the seventies
will not wonder.
Then he said: “But you are going out. Which way are you
going?”
My reply so well betrayed utter ignorance of London thoroughfares that
his next remark was natural.
“Well, as I know you’re a stranger, I won’t say
you’ve a small bump of locality!” he said. And how often
did he say it again in after years! “But you had better let me
take you along. I’m going that way.”
He told the lie unblushingly--and unblushing I did as he bade me and
followed him into the street.
I had been brought up with the strictness not only of my
father’s cloth but of Italian customs, and I felt I was doing a
bold thing: in those days my whole English adventure was considered
bold by Mrs. Grundy, and my poor father had already come over on a
hasty visit from Italy to place me with those relatives from whom I had
escaped; but on that occasion I was simply overborne. Long afterwards,
at a crush where Royalty was present, my husband won a bet that he
would sup in the Royal room merely by the way in which he bade the
footman drop the dividing red rope, and by the same way of bidding a
porter put his valise on a cab, he won another with J. L. Toole as to
his luggage passing unexamined on a return from abroad. So it was by
some kindred “way” that he led me forth that day--whither
I knew not. And honestly, I forget where we went. I only knew that he
took me a long way--in more senses than one--and showed me many things
that were new and told me many that were more Greek to me than I chose
to admit at the time.
I was an ignorant girl--the smattering of a brief boarding-school
education counting probably far less than the companionship of refined
parents in a land of beauty, and of the sort of cultivation in which
Joe lived and revelled I knew absolutely nothing.