The Strand Magazine/Volume 4/Issue 20/There's Many a Slip
"There's Many a Slip."
By Annie L. Coghill.
UST draw your chair round a little; I know there's a draught on that side. I did intend at one time to have it cured in some way, but it does not much matter now. I'll have a screen put round your corner Mine is comfortable enough."
This was said to me one winter evening by my cousin John Elder, as we sat on each side of the fire in his particularly cosy dining-room, where the table, with its lamp, flowers, and dessert, had been drawn up to an easy distance from our hands. John was sipping port, and I was cracking nuts, for which, in spite of my years, I have an abiding affection; and behind my chair was the door from which might, but did not, come the draught John was speaking of.
John is an elderly gentleman, a bachelor, very well off, very comfortable, and very popular, but still rather mysteriously a bachelor, because he has always liked and been liked by women. I am an elderly lady, widow, and John and I have been friends all our lives. The reason why I was sitting beside John's dining-room fire was that I had come to pay him a visit, and, as there were no other guests in the house, it was much more sensible for me to stay and talk with him while he enjoyed his after-dinner ease than to go away by myself into the drawing-room.
"There is no draught," I said, "none at present, I am sure. But there may be when the wind is north, and a screen would make all safe."
"'Yes,' he answered musingly."
"Yes," he answered musingly, as he looked at the wine he had just poured out, "a screen would do, but I did think once of altering the door, making really a good job of it. I planned that with other alterations."
"And the plans were never carried out?" I asked, after I had waited a moment to see if he would say more. "Well, I suppose I know when they were made, but I never did quite understand why they came to nothing."
"No," he answered. "I don't think anybody knew but ourselves. It was my fault—certainly, it was all my fault."
He stopped, but I thought he was not disinclined to go on, and I was curious. Indeed, there had been an episode in John's life about which we had all been curious; and, though it was a good while past, I still felt I should like to know. So I said,
"I fancied it had been Miss Woodroffe's doing?"
"I said it was my fault," he answered. "I did not say it was my doing."
"Oh!" I answered rather blankly, and there was a silence. Then John gave a little laugh, half ridicule of himself, I thought, and half ruefulness for the story that was in his mind.
"I may as well tell you all about it," he said. "You are not likely to tell it to any of the young ones, and it certainly was an odd way of losing one's promised wife. You'll see that she was not to blame."
I saw now that I was in for the story, whatever it might be, the catastrophe of which had left John a bachelor; so I settled myself in my chair, put my feet more comfortably my footstool, and laid down the nutcrackers.
"Well," he said, "I daresay you remember that I have always been much fonder of seeing my friends in my own house than of going elsewhere for society. I don't suppose I've dined out ten times in the last ten years; and ten years ago I disliked doing it almost as much as I do now. Only I wasn't quite such an old fogey, and I believe I had some vague idea of marrying. The difficulty was that I had never seen exactly the right woman, and very naturally I wasn't nearly about finding her as I had been twenty years before that. It is just ten years now since I met Miss Woodroffe."
"Miss Woodroffe."
"Yes," I said, "I remember it is about ten years since I heard of her."
"The only house where I ever cared to dine in those days was Joddrell's, and I used to go there about once for every four times they asked me. One evening in September I went there much against my will. Joddrell had promised me that I should meet some old friends, but when I arrived there was not one present but strangers, and nearly all the party were young people. Fancy asking me to meet a roomful of young people! It wasn't until dinner was announced that I saw the lady I was to take in; then Joddrell led me into a corner of the drawing-room, and introduced me to Miss Woodroffe, a friend of his wife's."
John stopped a little here, and I fancied he was trying to find words in which to describe Miss Woodroffe. If that were so, he did not succeed. After a minute he went on again, without attempting to give me any portraiture of the heroine of his story.
"Upon my word, Mary, I can't tell how it happened. All I know is that she was the most charming woman I ever saw in my life. We talked a great deal during dinner, and we talked a great deal after dinner; and the more she talked, and the more I looked at her, the more I thought with disgust of my solitary existence. Somehow or other, before I got up next morning I had made up my mind that I would try to persuade her to become my wife. All this, of course, is very commonplace; plenty of men, I suppose, even some men of fifty-five, must have had the same sort of experience. Now comes the part of the story which I think must belong to me alone. Do you remember how, years ago, I persuaded you to let me send some of your handwriting to a lady who professed to know all about the people whose writing she was allowed to examine? I sent yours and some others; do you remember?"
"Yes," I answered, "I remember very well; and we thought the characters sent back were wonderfully true."
"We did," said John emphatically, "and that was the mischief of it. Some time after that I had a housekeeper whom I suspected of cheating me, and I sent a note of hers to Miss Harris by way of clearing up my opinion of her. Miss Harris wrote back that she was civil and plausible, but not to be trusted; and sure enough after a time I detected her in downright robbery. Upon my word, Mary, if I did believe in Miss Harris, I had good reason, and I'm not so very sure yet that she doesn't deserve to be believed in. Well, now, what do you think I did? I determined to get a note from Miss Woodroffe, and send it to Miss Harris, before I took another step in the affair. Miss Woodroffe, as it happened, was to stay at the Joddrells' for two or three weeks; and before a week was over I had managed to get a note of two or three lines from her. This I sent to Miss Harris, and I can show you the answer I received."
Here John took from his pocket a lettercase, or pocket-book, from which, after some turning over of the papers it contained, he drew out a much-worn letter, and handed it to me. It began "The handwriting of the note, of which you have requested my opinion, is a very remarkable one; it expresses in the strongest degree the qualities of a noble and refined character. The writer has a clear brain, an affectionate heart, and great rectitude of mind; she talks well, and neither too much nor too little." There was a good deal more in the same style, describing such a paragon of our sex that I really felt an inch or two taller for the reading of it.
"If Miss Woodroffe was all that," I said, "I can't imagine how you ever let her go."
"She was," he answered; "at any rate, I have no reason to doubt it."
He put the paper back in its place, and went on:—
"I think I may say that I lost no time after that. She was friendly from the beginning. About four weeks after our first meeting I asked her to marry me, and she said 'Yes.' Upon my word, Mary, if I had been twenty-five instead of fifty-five, I don't think I could have been happier. She was just going away from the Joddrells', and before she went I told her all about Miss Harris, and what a thorough belief I had in her skill. Miss Woodroffe laughed at me, but unfortunately I was quite convinced that my belief was well founded, and quite determined to persuade her to think so too.
"She went away, and of course I wrote to her. In one of my first letters I sent her the one I have just shown you, and I begged her to send my handwriting also to Miss Harris for her own satisfaction. You see I felt quite safe in doing this, because the description of me which had been sent at the time, you remember, had been rather flattering. On that occasion Miss Harris had declared that I 'was of an amiable temper, liberal but trustworthy.' I remember the words well, and I thought it could do me nothing but good if such an account of me found its way to Miss Woodroffe.
"What fools people are! The woman was a rank impostor, of course, as I found afterwards to my cost, and as I ought to have known then, but I did really believe in her. Could you have guessed it?"
"Well, no," I answered, "I really don't think I should have believed it—only you know, John, you shrewd men can be so dreadfully credulous. Why, I remember a friend of my husband's who doubted everything, and yet he believed in Madame Blavatsky."
John grunted. He did not seem to like the comparison, which was foolish of him, poor fellow.
"I asked her to marry me."
"She said," he went on, " that she could trust her own judgment, and did not want anybody else's. That might have satisfied anybody, but it did not satisfy me. I wrote again, and begged her to do as I wished, telling her about the housekeeper. At last she wrote that she had done to please me what she never would have done for herself, and she said: 'I suppose you expect me to abide by whatever Miss Harris may say.'
"Do you know that those words gave me a fright. I had never doubted till then that Miss Harris would give just the same character of me as she had done before, and also I had only thought of it as giving me more value to Miss Woodroffe. I got nervous after I heard she had really consulted the Sibyl, and two days later I received these."
He turned over his pocket-book again and handed to me two papers, sinking back in his chair after he had done so with a gesture that said, "You have the catastrophe and its results before you."
I opened one of the papers, and literally I opened it with trembling fingers. There was something tragical in poor John's gesture, and in the emptiness and silence of the house. My eyes fell upon a sheet of paper, half covered with a neat, legible handwriting, the words of which were much as follows:—
"This writing belongs to a person of singularly impulsive and eager temperament, easily carried away by the feeling of the moment; very uncertain and unreliable, sadly inconsistent, without fixed purpose or deliberate judgment; not wanting in ability, but only in the power to apply it usefully; careless of money, but scarcely to be called generous; not altogether free from vanity, his temper is very irritable and passionate. . ."
There was more, but a sigh from John—poor John! the most faithful and generous of friends, and the most steady-going of mortals—made me drop the sheet and take up the other.
This was a very short note:—
"Dear Mr. Elder,—You insisted that I should consult Miss Harris, and trust her verdict on your character rather than my own. What that is you will see by the enclosed, and I am sure you cannot wonder that I dare not marry the man described. I am sending back your presents and letters by next post. With most sincere wishes for your happiness,
"Yours truly,
"Louisa Woodroffe."
"Oh, John!" I said, when I had read this, but she could not have meant it."
"She meant it so thoroughly that when I got to her mother's house in London, the very evening of the day I received it, they were both gone abroad, and I have not so much as seen her from that time to this."
So that was why the dining-room door was never altered.
"They were both gone abroad."