John Ingerfield and Other Stories
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Jerome K. Jerome >> John Ingerfield and Other Stories
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6 *END THE SMALL PRINT! FOR PUBLIC DOMAIN ETEXTS*Ver.04.29.93*END*
JOHN INGERFIELD AND OTHER STORIES
Contents
To the Gentle Reader
In Remembrance of John Ingerfield and of Anne, his Wife
The Woman of the Saeter
Variety Patter
Silhouettes
The Lease of the "Cross Keys"
TO THE GENTLE READER;
also
TO THE GENTLE CRITIC.
Once upon a time, I wrote a little story of a woman who was crushed
to death by a python. A day or two after its publication, a friend
stopped me in the street. "Charming little story of yours," he
said," that about the woman and the snake; but it's not as funny as
some of your things!" The next week, a newspaper, referring to the
tale, remarked, "We have heard the incident related before with
infinitely greater humour."
With this--and many similar experiences--in mind, I wish distinctly
to state that "John Ingerfield," "The Woman of the Saeter," and
"Silhouettes," are not intended to be amusing. The two other items--
"Variety Patter," and "The Lease of the Cross Keys"--I give over to
the critics of the new humour to rend as they will; but "John
Ingerfield," "The Woman of the Saeter," and "Silhouettes," I repeat,
I should be glad if they would judge from some other standpoint than
that of humour, new or old.
IN REMEMBRANCE OF JOHN INGERFIELD AND OF ANNE, HIS WIFE
A STORY OF OLD LONDON, IN TWO CHAPTERS
CHAPTER I.
If you take the Underground Railway to Whitechapel Road (the East
station), and from there take one of the yellow tramcars that start
from that point, and go down the Commercial Road, past the George, in
front of which starts--or used to stand--a high flagstaff, at the
base of which sits--or used to sit--an elderly female purveyor of
pigs' trotters at three-ha'pence apiece, until you come to where a
railway arch crosses the road obliquely, and there get down and turn
to the right up a narrow, noisy street leading to the river, and then
to the right again up a still narrower street, which you may know by
its having a public-house at one corner (as is in the nature of
things) and a marine store-dealer's at the other, outside which
strangely stiff and unaccommodating garments of gigantic size flutter
ghost-like in the wind, you will come to a dingy railed-in
churchyard, surrounded on all sides by cheerless, many-peopled
houses. Sad-looking little old houses they are, in spite of the
tumult of life about their ever open doors. They and the ancient
church in their midst seem weary of the ceaseless jangle around them.
Perhaps, standing there for so many years, listening to the long
silence of the dead, the fretful voices of the living sound foolish
in their ears.
Peering through the railings on the side nearest the river, you will
see beneath the shadow of the soot-grimed church's soot-grimed porch-
-that is, if the sun happen, by rare chance, to be strong enough to
cast any shadow at all in that region of grey light--a curiously high
and narrow headstone that once was white and straight, not tottering
and bent with age as it is now. There is upon this stone a carving
in bas-relief, as you will see for yourself if you will make your way
to it through the gateway on the opposite side of the square. It
represents, so far as can be made out, for it is much worn by time
and dirt, a figure lying on the ground with another figure bending
over it, while at a little distance stands a third object. But this
last is so indistinct that it might be almost anything, from an angel
to a post.
And below the carving are the words (already half obliterated) that I
have used for the title of this story.
Should you ever wander of a Sunday morning within sound of the
cracked bell that calls a few habit-bound, old-fashioned folk to
worship within those damp-stained walls, and drop into talk with the
old men who on such days sometimes sit, each in his brass-buttoned
long brown coat, upon the low stone coping underneath those broken
railings, you might hear this tale from them, as I did, more years
ago than I care to recollect.
But lest you do not choose to go to all this trouble, or lest the old
men who could tell it you have grown tired of all talk, and are not
to be roused ever again into the telling of tales, and you yet wish
for the story, I will here set it down for you.
But I cannot recount it to you as they told it to me, for to me it
was only a tale that I heard and remembered, thinking to tell it
again for profit, while to them it was a thing that had been, and the
threads of it were interwoven with the woof of their own life. As
they talked, faces that I did not see passed by among the crowd and
turned and looked at them, and voices that I did not hear spoke to
them below the clamour of the street, so that through their thin
piping voices there quivered the deep music of life and death, and my
tale must be to theirs but as a gossip's chatter to the story of him
whose breast has felt the press of battle.
John Ingerfield, oil and tallow refiner, of Lavender Wharf,
Limehouse, comes of a hard-headed, hard-fisted stock. The first of
the race that the eye of Record, piercing the deepening mists upon
the centuries behind her, is able to discern with any clearness is a
long-haired, sea-bronzed personage, whom men call variously Inge or
Unger. Out of the wild North Sea he has come. Record observes him,
one of a small, fierce group, standing on the sands of desolate
Northumbria, staring landward, his worldly wealth upon his back.
This consists of a two-handed battle-axe, value perhaps some forty
stycas in the currency of the time. A careful man, with business
capabilities, may, however, manipulate a small capital to great
advantage. In what would appear, to those accustomed to our slow
modern methods, an incredibly short space of time, Inge's two-handed
battle-axe has developed into wide lands and many head of cattle;
which latter continue to multiply with a rapidity beyond the dreams
of present-day breeders. Inge's descendants would seem to have
inherited the genius of their ancestor, for they prosper and their
worldly goods increase. They are a money-making race. In all times,
out of all things, by all means, they make money. They fight for
money, marry for money, live for money, are ready to die for money.
In the days when the most saleable and the highest priced article in
the markets of Europe was a strong arm and a cool head, then each
Ingerfield (as "Inge," long rooted in Yorkshire soil, had grown or
been corrupted to) was a soldier of fortune, and offered his strong
arm and his cool head to the highest bidder. They fought for their
price, and they took good care that they obtained their price; but,
the price settled, they fought well, for they were staunch men and
true, according to their lights, though these lights may have been
placed somewhat low down, near the earth.
Then followed the days when the chief riches of the world lay tossed
for daring hands to grasp upon the bosom of the sea, and the sleeping
spirit of the old Norse Rover stirred in their veins, and the lilt of
a wild sea-song they had never heard kept ringing in their ears; and
they built them ships and sailed for the Spanish Main, and won much
wealth, as was their wont.
Later on, when Civilisation began to lay down and enforce sterner
rules for the game of life, and peaceful methods promised to prove
more profitable than violent, the Ingerfields became traders and
merchants of grave mien and sober life; for their ambition from
generation to generation remains ever the same, their various
callings being but means to an end.
A hard, stern race of men they would seem to have been, but just--so
far as they understood justice. They have the reputation of having
been good husbands, fathers, and masters; but one cannot help
thinking of them as more respected than loved.
They were men to exact the uttermost farthing due to them, yet not
without a sense of the thing due from them, their own duty and
responsibility--nay, not altogether without their moments of heroism,
which is the duty of great men. History relates how a certain
Captain Ingerfield, returning with much treasure from the West
Indies--how acquired it were, perhaps, best not to inquire too
closely--is overhauled upon the high seas by King's frigate. Captain
of King's frigate sends polite message to Captain Ingerfield
requesting him to be so kind as to promptly hand over a certain
member of his ship's company, who, by some means or another, has made
himself objectionable to King's friends, in order that he (the said
objectionable person) may be forthwith hanged from the yard-arm.
Captain Ingerfield returns polite answer to Captain of King's frigate
that he (Captain Ingerfield) will, with much pleasure, hang any
member of his ship's company that needs hanging, but that neither the
King of England nor any one else on God Almighty's sea is going to do
it for him. Captain of King's frigate sends back word that if
objectionable person be not at once given up he shall be compelled
with much regret to send Ingerfield and his ship to the bottom of the
Atlantic. Replies Captain Ingerfield, "That is just what he will
have to do before I give up one of my people," and fights the big
frigate--fights it so fiercely that after three hours Captain of
King's frigate thinks it will be good to try argument again, and
sends therefore a further message, courteously acknowledging Captain
Ingerfield's courage and skill, and suggesting that, he having done
sufficient to vindicate his honour and renown, it would be politic to
now hand over the unimportant cause of contention, and so escape with
his treasure.
"Tell your Captain," shouts back this Ingerfield, who has discovered
there are sweeter things to fight for than even money, "that the Wild
Goose has flown the seas with her belly full of treasure before now,
and will, if it be God's pleasure, so do again, but that master and
man in her sail together, fight together, and die together."
Whereupon King's frigate pounds away more vigorously than ever, and
succeeds eventually in carrying out her threat. Down goes the Wild
Goose, her last chase ended--down she goes with a plunge, spit
foremost with her colours flying; and down with her goes every man
left standing on her decks; and at the bottom of the Atlantic they
lie to this day, master and man side by side, keeping guard upon
their treasure.
Which incident, and it is well authenticated, goes far to prove that
the Ingerfields, hard men and grasping men though they be--men caring
more for the getting of money than for the getting of love--loving
more the cold grip of gold than the grip of kith or kin, yet bear
buried in their hearts the seeds of a nobler manhood, for which,
however, the barren soil of their ambition affords scant nourishment.
The John Ingerfield of this story is a man very typical of his race.
He has discovered that the oil and tallow refining business, though
not a pleasant one, is an exceedingly lucrative one. These are the
good days when George the Third is king, and London is rapidly
becoming a city of bright night. Tallow and oil and all materials
akin thereto are in ever-growing request, and young John Ingerfield
builds himself a large refining house and warehouse in the growing
suburb of Limehouse, which lies between the teeming river and the
quiet fields, gathers many people round about him, puts his strong
heart into his work, and prospers.
All the days of his youth he labours and garners, and lays out and
garners yet again. In early middle age he finds himself a wealthy
man. The chief business of life, the getting of money, is
practically done; his enterprise is firmly established, and will
continue to grow with ever less need of husbandry. It is time for
him to think about the secondary business of life, the getting
together of a wife and home, for the Ingerfields have ever been good
citizens, worthy heads of families, openhanded hosts, making a brave
show among friends and neighbours.
John Ingerfield, sitting in his stiff, high-backed chair, in his
stiffly, but solidly, furnished dining-room, above his counting-
house, sipping slowly his one glass of port, takes counsel with
himself.
What shall she be?
He is rich, and can afford a good article. She must be young and
handsome, fit to grace the fine house he will take for her in
fashionable Bloomsbury, far from the odour and touch of oil and
tallow. She must be well bred, with a gracious, noble manner, that
will charm his guests and reflect honour and credit upon himself; she
must, above all, be of good family, with a genealogical tree
sufficiently umbrageous to hide Lavender Wharf from the eyes of
Society.
What else she may or may not be he does not very much care. She
will, of course, be virtuous and moderately pious, as it is fit and
proper that women should be. It will also be well that her
disposition be gentle and yielding, but that is of minor importance,
at all events so far as he is concerned: the Ingerfield husbands are
not the class of men upon whom wives vent their tempers.
Having decided in his mind WHAT she shall be, he proceeds to discuss
with himself WHO she shall be. His social circle is small.
Methodically, in thought, he makes the entire round of it, mentally
scrutinising every maiden that he knows. Some are charming, some are
fair, some are rich; but no one of them approaches near to his
carefully considered ideal.
He keeps the subject in his mind, and muses on it in the intervals of
business. At odd moments he jots down names as they occur to him
upon a slip of paper, which he pins for the purpose on the inside of
the cover of his desk. He arranges them alphabetically, and when it
is as complete as his memory can make it, he goes critically down the
list, making a few notes against each. As a result, it becomes clear
to him that he must seek among strangers for his wife.
He has a friend, or rather an acquaintance, an old school-fellow, who
has developed into one of those curious social flies that in all ages
are to be met with buzzing contentedly within the most exclusive
circles, and concerning whom, seeing that they are neither rare nor
rich, nor extraordinarily clever nor well born, one wonders "how the
devil they got there!" Meeting this man by chance one afternoon, he
links his arm in his and invites him home to dinner.
So soon as they are left alone, with the walnuts and wine between
them, John Ingerfield says, thoughtfully cracking a hard nut between
his fingers -
"Will, I'm going to get married."
"Excellent idea--delighted to hear it, I'm sure," replies Will,
somewhat less interested in the information than in the delicately
flavoured Madeira he is lovingly sipping. "Who's the lady?"
"I don't know, yet," is John Ingerfield's answer.
His friend glances slyly at him over his glass, not sure whether he
is expected to be amused or sympathetically helpful.
"I want you to find one for me."
Will Cathcart puts down his glass and stares at his host across the
table.
"Should be delighted to help you, Jack," he stammers, in an alarmed
tone--"'pon my soul I should; but really don't know a damned woman I
could recommend--'pon my soul I don't."
"You must see a good many: I wish you'd look out for one that you
COULD recommend."
"Certainly I will, my dear Jack!" answers the other, in a relieved
voice. "Never thought about 'em in that way before. Daresay I shall
come across the very girl to suit you. I'll keep my eyes open and
let you know."
"I shall be obliged to you if you will," replies John Ingerfield,
quietly; "and it's your turn, I think, to oblige me, Will. I have
obliged you, if you recollect."
"Shall never forget it, my dear Jack," murmurs Will, a little
uneasily. "It was uncommonly good of you. You saved me from ruin,
Jack: shall think about it to my dying day--'pon my soul I shall."
"No need to let it worry you for so long a period as that," returns
John, with the faintest suspicion of a smile playing round his firm
mouth. "The bill falls due at the end of next month. You can
discharge the debt then, and the matter will be off your mind."
Will finds his chair growing uncomfortable under him, while the
Madeira somehow loses its flavour. He gives a short, nervous laugh.
"By Jove," he says: "so soon as that? The date had quite slipped my
memory."
"Fortunate that I reminded you," says John, the smile round his lips
deepening.
Will fidgets on his seat. "I'm afraid, my dear Jack," he says, "I
shall have to get you to renew it, just for a month or two,--deuced
awkward thing, but I'm remarkably short of money this year. Truth
is, I can't get what's owing to myself."
"That's very awkward, certainly," replies his friend, "because I am
not at all sure that I shall be able to renew it."
Will stares at him in some alarm. "But what am I to do if I hav'n't
the money?"
John Ingerfield shrugs his shoulders.
"You don't mean, my dear Jack, that you would put me in prison?"
"Why not? Other people have to go there who can't pay their debts."
Will Cathcart's alarm grows to serious proportions. "But our
friendship," he cries, "our--"
"My dear Will," interrupts the other, "there are few friends I would
lend three hundred pounds to and make no effort to get it back. You,
certainly, are not one of them."
"Let us make a bargain," he continues. "Find me a wife, and on the
day of my marriage I will send you back that bill with, perhaps, a
couple of hundred added. If by the end of next month you have not
introduced me to a lady fit to be, and willing to be, Mrs. John
Ingerfield, I shall decline to renew it."
John Ingerfield refills his own glass and hospitably pushes the
bottle towards his guest--who, however, contrary to his custom, takes
no notice of it, but stares hard at his shoe-buckles.
"Are you serious?" he says at length.
"Quite serious," is the answer. "I want to marry. My wife must be a
lady by birth and education. She must be of good family--of family
sufficiently good, indeed, to compensate for the refinery. She must
be young and beautiful and charming. I am purely a business man. I
want a woman capable of conducting the social department of my life.
I know of no such lady myself. I appeal to you, because you, I know,
are intimate with the class among whom she must be sought."
"There may be some difficulty in persuading a lady of the required
qualifications to accept the situation," says Cathcart, with a touch
of malice.
"I want you to find one who will," says John Ingerfield.
Early in the evening Will Cathcart takes leave of his host, and
departs thoughtful and anxious; and John Ingerfield strolls
contemplatively up and down his wharf, for the smell of oil and
tallow has grown to be very sweet to him, and it is pleasant to watch
the moonbeams shining on the piled-up casks.
Six weeks go by. On the first day of the seventh John takes Will
Cathcart's acceptance from its place in the large safe, and lays it
in the smaller box beside his desk, devoted to more pressing and
immediate business. Two days later Cathcart picks his way across the
slimy yard, passes through the counting-house, and enters his
friend's inner sanctum, closing the door behind him.
He wears a jubilant air, and slaps the grave John on the back. "I've
got her, Jack," he cries. "It's been hard work, I can tell you:
sounding suspicious old dowagers, bribing confidential servants,
fishing for information among friends of the family. By Jove, I
shall be able to join the Duke's staff as spy-in-chief to His
Majesty's entire forces after this!"
"What is she like?" asks John, without stopping his writing.
"Like! My dear Jack, you'll fall over head and ears in love with her
the moment you see her. A little cold, perhaps, but that will just
suit you."
"Good family?" asks John, signing and folding the letter he has
finished.
"So good that I was afraid at first it would be useless thinking of
her. But she's a sensible girl, no confounded nonsense about her,
and the family are poor as church mice. In fact--well, to tell the
truth, we have become most excellent friends, and she told me herself
frankly that she meant to marry a rich man, and didn't much care
whom."
"That sounds hopeful," remarks the would-be bridegroom, with his
peculiar dry smile: "when shall I have the pleasure of seeing her?"
"I want you to come with me to-night to the Garden," replies the
other; "she will be in Lady Heatherington's box, and I will introduce
you."
So that evening John Ingerfield goes to Covent Garden Theatre, with
the blood running a trifle quicker in his veins, but not much, than
would be the case were he going to the docks to purchase tallow--
examines, covertly, the proposed article from the opposite side of
the house, and approves her--is introduced to her, and, on closer
inspection, approves her still more--receives an invitation to visit-
-visits frequently, and each time is more satisfied of the rarity,
serviceableness, and quality of the article.
If all John Ingerfield requires for a wife is a beautiful social
machine, surely here he has found his ideal. Anne Singleton, only
daughter of that persistently unfortunate but most charming of
baronets, Sir Harry Singleton (more charming, it is rumoured, outside
his family circle than within it), is a stately graceful, high-bred
woman. Her portrait, by Reynolds, still to be seen above the carved
wainscoting of one of the old City halls, shows a wonderfully
handsome and clever face, but at the same time a wonderfully cold and
heartless one. It is the face of a woman half weary of, half
sneering at the world. One reads in old family letters, whereof the
ink is now very faded and the paper very yellow, long criticisms of
this portrait. The writers complain that if the picture is at all
like her she must have greatly changed since her girlhood, for they
remember her then as having a laughing and winsome expression.
They say--they who knew her in after-life--that this earlier face
came back to her in the end, so that the many who remembered opening
their eyes and seeing her bending down over them could never
recognise the portrait of the beautiful sneering lady, even when they
were told whom it represented.
But at the time of John Ingerfield's strange wooing she was the Anne
Singleton of Sir Joshua's portrait, and John Ingerfield liked her the
better that she was.
He had no feeling of sentiment in the matter himself, and it
simplified the case that she had none either. He offered her a plain
bargain, and she accepted it. For all he knew or cared, her attitude
towards this subject of marriage was the usual one assumed by women.
Very young girls had their heads full of romantic ideas. It was
better for her and for him that she had got rid of them.
"Ours will be a union founded on good sense," said John Ingerfield.
"Let us hope the experiment will succeed," said Anne Singleton.
CHAPTER II.
But the experiment does not succeed. The laws of God decree that man
shall purchase woman, that woman shall give herself to man, for other
coin than that of good sense. Good sense is not a legal tender in
the marriage mart. Men and women who enter therein with only sense
in their purse have no right to complain if, on reaching home, they
find they have concluded an unsatisfactory bargain.
John Ingerfield, when he asked Anne Singleton to be his wife, felt no
more love for her than he felt for any of the other sumptuous
household appointments he was purchasing about the same time, and
made no pretence of doing so. Nor, had he done so, would she have
believed him; for Anne Singleton has learned much in her twenty-two
summers and winters, and knows that love is only a meteor in life's
sky, and that the true lodestar of this world is gold. Anne
Singleton has had her romance and buried it deep down in her deep
nature and over its grave, to keep its ghost from rising, has piled
the stones of indifference and contempt, as many a woman has done
before and since. Once upon a time Anne Singleton sat dreaming out a
story. It was a story old as the hills--older than some of them--but
to her, then, it was quite new and very wonderful. It contained all
the usual stock material common to such stories: the lad and the
lass, the plighted troth, the richer suitors, the angry parents, the
love that was worth braving all the world for. One day into this
dream there fell from the land of the waking a letter, a poor,
pitiful letter: "You know I love you and only you," it ran; "my
heart will always be yours till I die. But my father threatens to
stop my allowance, and, as you know, I have nothing of my own except
debts. Some would call her handsome, but how can I think of her
beside you? Oh, why was money ever let to come into the world to
curse us?" with many other puzzling questions of a like character,
and much severe condemnation of Fate and Heaven and other parties
generally, and much self-commiseration.
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