Short Fiction · Mrs. Brumby (4/4)

Mr. Sharp actually pressed upon us and upon Mr. X. that we should call upon the lieutenant and explain matters to him. Mrs. Brumby had always been with us at twelve o’clock. “Go at noon,” said Mr. Sharp, “and you’ll certainly find her out.” He instructed us to tell the lieutenant “just the plain truth,” as he called it, and to explain that in no way could the proprietors of a magazine be made liable to payment for an article because the Editor in discharge of his duty had consented to read it. “Perhaps the lieutenant doesn’t know that his name has been used at all,” said Mr. Sharp. “At any rate, it will be well to learn what sort of a man he is.”

“A high minded gentleman, no doubt,” said Mr. X., the name of whose second boy was already down at the Horse Guards for a commission.

Though it was sorely against the grain, and in direct opposition to our own opinion, we were constrained to go to Harpur Street, Theobald’s Road, and to call upon Lieutenant Brumby. We had not explained to Mr. X. or to Mr. Sharp what had passed between Mrs. Brumby and ourselves when she suggested such a visit, but the memory of the words which we and she had then spoken was on us as we endeavoured to dissuade our lawyer and our publisher. Nevertheless, at their instigation, we made the visit. The house in Harpur Street was small, and dingy, and old. The door was opened for us by the normal lodging-house maid-of-all-work, who when we asked for the lieutenant, left us in the passage, that she might go and see. We sent up our name, and in a few minutes were ushered into a sitting-room up two flights of stairs. The room was not untidy, but it was as comfortless as any chamber we ever saw. The lieutenant was lying on an old horsehair sofa, but we had been so far lucky as to find him alone. Mr. Sharp had been correct in his prediction as to the customary absence of the lady at that hour in the morning. In one corner of the room we saw an old ramshackle desk, at which, we did not doubt, were written those essays on costume and other subjects, in the disposing of which the lady displayed so much energy. The lieutenant himself was a small gray man, dressed, or rather enveloped, in what I supposed to be an old wrapper of his wife’s. He held in his hands a well-worn volume of a novel, and when he rose to greet us he almost trembled with dismay and bashfulness. His feet were thrust into slippers which were too old to stick on them, and round his throat he wore a dirty, once white, woollen comforter. We never learned what was the individual character of the corps which specially belonged to H.R.H. the Duke of Sussex; but if it was conspicuous for dash and gallantry, Lieutenant Brumby could hardly have held his own among his brother officers. We knew, however, from his wife that he had been invalided, and as an invalid we respected him. We proceeded to inform him that we had been called upon to pay him a sum of twenty-five guineas, and to explain how entirely void of justice any such claim must be. We suggested to him that he might be made to pay some serious sum by the lawyers he employed, and that the matter to us was an annoyance and a trouble⁠—chiefly because we had no wish to be brought into conflict with anyone so respectable as Lieutenant Brumby. He looked at us with imploring eyes, as though begging us not to be too hard upon him in the absence of his wife, trembled from head to foot, and muttered a few words which were nearly inaudible. We will not state as a fact that the lieutenant had taken to drinking spirits early in life, but that certainly was our impression during the only interview we ever had with him. When we pressed upon him as a question which he must answer whether he did not think that he had better withdraw his claim, he fell back upon his sofa, and began to sob. While he was thus weeping Mrs. Brumby entered the room. She had in her hand the card which we had given to the maid-of-all-work, and was therefore prepared for the interview. “Sir,” she said, “I hope you have come to settle my husband’s just demands.”

Amidst the husband’s wailings there had been one little sentence which reached our ears. “She does it all,” he had said, throwing his eyes up piteously towards our face. At that moment the door had been opened, and Mrs. Brumby had entered the room. When she spoke of her husband’s “just demands,” we turned to the poor prostrate lieutenant, and were deterred from any severity towards him by the look of supplication in his eye. “The lieutenant is not well this morning,” said Mrs. Brumby, “and you will therefore be pleased to address yourself to me.” We explained that the absurd demand for payment had been made on the proprietors of the magazine in the name of Lieutenant Brumby, and that we had therefore been obliged, in the performance of a most unpleasant duty, to call upon that gentleman; but she laughed our argument to scorn. “You have driven me to take legal steps,” she said, “and as I am only a woman I must take them in the name of my husband. But I am the person aggrieved, and if you have any excuse to make you can make it to me. Your safer course, Sir, will be to pay me the money that you owe me.”

I had come there on a fool’s errand, and before I could get away was very angry both with Mr. Sharp and Mr. X. I could hardly get a word in amidst the storm of indignant reproaches which was bursting over my head during the whole of the visit. One would have thought from hearing her that she had half filled the pages of the magazine for the last six months, and that we, individually, had pocketed the proceeds of her labour. She laughed in our face when we suggested that she could not really intend to prosecute the suit, and told us to mind our own business when we hinted that the law was an expensive amusement. “We, Sir,” she said, “will have the amusement, and you will have to pay the bill.” When we left her she was indignant, defiant, and self-confident.

And what will the reader suppose was the end of all this? The whole truth has been told as accurately as we can tell it. As far as we know our own business we were not wrong in any single step we took. Our treatment of Mrs. Brumby was courteous, customary, and conciliatory. We had treated her with more consideration than we had perhaps ever before shown to an unknown, would-be contributor. She had been admitted thrice to our presence. We had read at any rate enough of her trash to be sure of its nature. On the other hand, we had been insulted, and our clerk had had his ears boxed. What should have been the result? We will tell the reader what was the result. Mr. X. paid £10 to Messrs. Badger and Blister on behalf of the lieutenant; and we, under Mr. Sharp’s advice, wrote a letter to Mrs. Brumby in which we expressed deep sorrow for our clerk’s misconduct, and our own regret that we should have delayed⁠—“the perusal of her manuscript.” We could not bring ourselves to write the words ourselves with our own fingers, but signed the document which Mr. Sharp put before us. Mr. Sharp had declared to Messrs. X., Y., Z., that unless some such arrangement were made, he thought that we should be cast for a much greater sum before a jury. For one whole morning in Paternoster Row we resisted this infamous tax, not only on our patience, but⁠—as we then felt it⁠—on our honour. We thought that our very old friend Mr. X. should have stood to us more firmly, and not have demanded from us a task that was so peculiarly repugnant to our feelings. “And it is peculiarly repugnant to my feelings to pay £10 for nothing,” said Mr. X., who was not, we think, without some little feeling of revenge against us; “but I prefer that to a lawsuit.” And then he argued that the simple act on our part of signing such a letter as that presented to us could cost us no trouble, and ought to occasion us no sorrow. “What can come of it? Who’ll know it?” said Mr. X. “We’ve got to pay £10, and that we shall feel.” It came to that at last, that we were constrained to sign the letter⁠—and did sign it. It did us no harm, and can have done Mrs. Brumby no good; but the moment in which we signed it was perhaps the bitterest we ever knew.

That in such a transaction Mrs. Brumby should have been so thoroughly successful, and that we should have been so shamefully degraded, has always appeared to us to be an injury too deep to remain unredressed forever. Can such wrongs be, and the heavens not fall! Our greatest comfort has been in the reflection that neither the lieutenant nor his wife ever saw a shilling of the £10. That, doubtless, never went beyond Badger and Blister.