it is no use my trying to stop myself. i’m sure i’ve tried hard enough. when i changed my name from mary jane buffham to mary jane beckett by marrying harry, my sailor sweetheart (god bless him!), i said to myself—now, mary jane, my girl, no more pens and ink. you’ve written a book and had it published, and the newspaper gentlemen have been most kind in what they said about it. you’d better be satisfied with that, and do your duty in that state of life unto which you have been called, that state being mistress of a sweet little hotel—inn, some people will call it, but it’s quite as much right to be called an hotel as lots of places that have “hotel” up in big letters all over them—in a pretty village not very far from london. of course i have enough to do, though harry takes a good deal off my shoulders; but there are so many things that a landlady can do to make a house comfortable that a landlord can’t, and i take a great pride in my dear little home, and everybody says it’s a picture, and so it is. harry says it’s my training as a thorough servant that makes me such a good mistress, and i dare say it is. our house is called “the stretford arms,” and we put “hotel” on the signboard underneath it soon after we had it, and made it pretty and comfortable, so that people—nice people—came to stay at it.{2}

but, oh dear me, before we got it what a lot of trouble we had! if you have read my “memoirs” you know all about me and harry, and how i left service to marry him, and he made up his mind—having a bit of money saved, and some come to him from a relative—to take a nice little inn in the country; not a public-house, but something better, with plenty of garden to it for us to have flowers, and fruit, and fowls, and all that sort of thing; and we made up our minds we’d have one with a porch and trellis-work, and roses growing over it, and lattice windows, like we’d seen in a play before we were married.

we hadn’t gone into business when my book came out in a volume. when the publisher sent me a copy, i thought, “oh, how proud i shall be when i show this to harry!” i declare i could have cried with rage when i took the brown paper off and saw the cover. it was most wicked, and upset me awfully. there on the cover was a picture of me sitting in my kitchen with a horrid, grinning policeman, with his arm round my waist. i threw the book on the floor, the tears streaming down my face. it was such a bitter disappointment.

harry came in while i was crying, and he said, “why, my lass, what’s the matter with you?” and i sobbed out, pointing to the book, “look at that, harry!” harry picked the book up, and when he saw the cover his face went crimson under the sunburn.

he said, “did this ever happen, mary jane?” and i said, “no, harry. do you think i would ever have demeaned myself like that?”

he looked at the grinning idiot of a policeman for a minute, and then he brought his fist down hard right on his nose (the policeman’s). then he said, “put it out of my sight, and never let me see it again.” but presently he said, “there must be something about you and a policeman in the book, or they wouldn’t have put him hugging you on the cover. which chapter is it? i’ll read it and see what the truth of this business is.”

i recollected then that there was something about a policeman, so i said, “no, harry, dear, don’t read it now; you’re not in a fit state of mind. but whatever there is, i swear he didn’t sit in my kitchen with his arm round{3} my waist; and he—he—he wasn’t—a grinning idiot like that.”

i took the book away from harry, and wouldn’t let him see it then. but he kept on about it all the evening, and i could see it had made him jealous as well as savage; and it was very hard—all through that horrid picture the pleasure i had looked forward to was quite spoilt. but so it is in this world; and how often it happens that what we have been longing for to be a pleasure to us, when it comes is only a disappointment and a misery!

harry said to me that evening that he would go to london and see the publishers, and have it out with them about the picture. he said it was a libel on my character, and he wasn’t going to have his wife stuck about on all the bookstalls in a policeman’s arms. but, i said to him, the publishers didn’t mean any harm, and it was no good being cross with them, or making a disturbance at their office.

but some time afterwards i wrote a little note to messrs. chatto and windus about it, and mr. chatto wrote back that he was very sorry the picture had caused words between me and my husband, and, in the next editions, it should be altered, and soon after that he sent me a proof of the new cover, and it was harry with his arm round my waist instead of the policeman, which makes all the difference.

there were many things that i shouldn’t have written, perhaps, if i’d been quite sure that they would be published, and my husband would read them; but, after all, there was no harm, and i only wrote the truth. i wrote what i saw, and it was because it was the real experience of a real servant that people read it, and, as i have reason to know, liked it. and now, after i have been landlady of a village hotel, doing a nice trade both in the bar and in the coffee-room (why coffee-room, i don’t know, for there is less coffee drunk in it than anything), i find myself putting down what i have seen and heard on paper, just as i did in my “memoirs.”

people say to me sometimes, “law, now, fancy your noticing that!—i never did;” and that’s the secret of my being an authoress, i suppose. i keep my eyes open, and{4} my ears too; and if i see a character, i like to watch it, and find out all about it.

i’ve seen some strange characters in our inn, i can tell you; and as to the people in the village, why, when you come to know their stories, you find out that every place is a little world in itself, with its own dramas being played out in people’s lives just the same as in big towns. yes, there are village tragedies and village comedies, and the village inn is the place to hear all about them. i haven’t got an imagination, so i can’t invent things, and i think it’s a good thing for me, because i might be tempted to make up stories, which are never so good as those that really happen. i thought when i came to this village i should have nothing to write about, but i hadn’t been in it long before i found my mistake. i hear a lot, of course, in the bar-parlour, because it’s like a club, and all the chatty people come there of an evening and talk their neighbours over, and i hear lots more in the house from the market women and from our cook and the people about the place, and i can promise you that i have learnt some real romances of real life—rich and poor, too—since i became the landlady of the ‘stretford arms.’

we didn’t get into the place all at once. oh dear me, what an anxious time it was till we found what we wanted! and the way we were tried to be “done,” as harry calls it, was something dreadful. harry said he supposed, being a sailor, people thought he didn’t know anything; but when we came to compare notes with other people who had started in the business, we found our experiences of trying to become licensed victuallers was quite a common one.

we had a beautiful honeymoon first; but i’m not going to write anything about that, except that we were very happy—so happy that when i thanked god for my dear, kind husband and my happy life, the tears used to come into my eyes. but all that time is sacred. it is something between two people, and not to put into print. i don’t think a honeymoon would come out well in print. it is only people who are having honeymoons who would understand it.

after we had had a nice long honeymoon, harry began{5} to think it was time we looked out for something; so he said, “now, little woman, this is all very nice and lazy and lovely, but we must begin to think about the future. the sooner we look for a place the better.”

so every day we read the advertisements in the papers of public-houses and inns and hotels in the country which were for sale.

whenever we saw “nice home,” or “lovely garden,” or “comfortable home just suited to a young married couple,” we wrote at once for full particulars. when we wrote to the agents about the best ones, i found that it was very like the paragon servants advertised—they had just been disposed of, but the agent had several others equally nice on hand if we would call.

it was very annoying to find all the “lovely gardens” and “charming homes,” which were so cheap, just gone, and to get instead of them particulars of a horrid place at the corner of a dirty lane, with only a back yard to it, or something of that sort.

we went to see some of the places the agents or brokers sent us, and they were very much nicer in the advertisements than they were in themselves.

one house we went to look at we thought would do, though the situation seemed lonely. we wrote we would come to see it on a certain day, and when we got there, certainly there was no mistake about its doing a good trade. they asked a lot of money for it, but the bar was full, and in the coffee-room were men who looked like farmers having dinner and ordering wine, and smoking fourpenny cigars quite fast. and while we were having dinner with the landlord in his room, the servant kept coming in and saying, “gentleman wants a room, sir,” till presently all the rooms were gone, and people had to be turned away.

“it’s like that now nearly always,” said the landlord. “if it wasn’t that i must go out to australia, to my brother, who is dying, and going to leave me a fortune made at the diggings, i wouldn’t part with the house for anything.”

“where do the people all come from?” said harry. “the station’s two miles off.{6}”

“oh,” said the landlord, “there’s something against the railway hotel—it’s haunted, i believe, and this last month everybody comes on here. if you like to start the fly business as well, you’ll make a lot of money at that. flys to meet the trains would fill you up every day.”

we went away from the house quite convinced that it was a great bargain, and harry said he thought we might as well settle with the agents, for we couldn’t do better.

but when we got to the station we had just missed a train, and had an hour to wait, so we went to the railway hotel. i sat down in a little room, and had some tea, while harry went into the smoke-room to hear the talk, and see if he could find out about the place being haunted, and if it was likely to be haunted long.

in half an hour he came back looking very queer. “mary jane,” he said, “that swab ought to be prosecuted”—meaning the landlord of the inn we had been after.

then he told me what he’d found out in the smoke-room, hearing a man talk, who, of course, didn’t know who harry was. he was making quite a joke about what he called the landlord’s “artful dodge,” and he let it all out.

it seems the place we had been after had been going down for months, and the landlord had made up his mind to get out of it before he lost all his capital. so to get a good price he had been getting a lot of loafers and fellows about the village to come in and have drinks with him and fill up the place, and the day we came nobody paid for anything, and the farmers in the coffee-room were all his friends, and it was one man who kept taking all the bedrooms that the servant came in about when we were there.

wasn’t it wicked? but it opened our eyes, and showed us that there are tricks in every trade, and that we should have to be very careful how we took a place by its appearance.

but, cautious as we were after that, we had one or two narrow escapes, and i may as well tell you something about them as a warning to young people going into business. of course we laughed at the tricks tried to be played on us, because we escaped being taken in, but if we had invested our money and lost it all in a worthless concern, we shouldn’t have been able to laugh. perhaps{7} harry would have had to get another ship, and i should have had to get another situation, and be a servant again. and a nice thing that would have been with my ba——

but i must not anticipate events. i know more about writing now than i did when i put my “memoirs” together, and i’m going to see if i can’t write a book about our inn, and our village, and all that happened in them, without troubling the gentleman who was so kind to me over my first book. i wish he had seen to the outside as well as the inside, and prevented that nasty, impertinent, grinning policeman behaving so disgracefully in my kitchen on the cover.

i say we can afford to laugh now; and there are many things in life to laugh at when we are on the safe side that we might cry at if we weren’t. i know that i always laugh when people say about me not having changed my initials, but being mary jane beckett instead of mary jane buffham, and they quote the old proverb:

“change your name and not the letter,

change for the worse and not the better.”

i laugh, because i have changed for the better; and harry’s as good as gold and as gentle as a baby—well, a good deal gentler, for i shouldn’t like harry to pull my hair, and put his finger in my eye, and kick me like my ba——

but i am anticipating again.

i was writing about the houses we went to look at before we fixed on the ‘stretford arms.’ there was one not quite in the country, but out in a suburb of london—a new sort of a suburb: rather melancholy, like new suburbs are when some of the houses are only skeletons, and the fields are half field and half brickyard, and old iron and broken china lie scattered about, with a dead cat in a pond that’s been nearly used up and just shows the cat’s head; and a bit of rotten plank above the inch or so of clay-coloured water. and there’s generally a little boy standing on the plank, and making it squeeze down into the water and jump up again, and smothering himself up to the eyes in squirts of the dirty, filthy water, which seems to be quite a favourite amusement with little suburban boys and girls. i suppose it’s through so much building always going on.{8}

we went to look at a nice house, that certainly was very cheap and nicely fitted up, in this new suburb; and there was a fair garden and a bit of a field at the back. it stood on the high-road, or what would be the high-road when the suburb was finished, and we were told it would one day be a fine property, as houses were letting fast, and all being built in the new pretty way; you know what i mean—a lot of coloured glass and corners to them, and wood railings dotted about here and there, something like the swiss cottage, where the omnibuses stop—queen anne, i think they call them.

we wanted to be more out of town, but we heard such glowing accounts from the broker about this place, we hesitated to let it go. the landlord, we were told, was giving up the business because he had to go to a warmer climate for the winter, being in bad health, and, having lost his wife, he had nobody to leave behind to look after the place. if ever you try to take a business, dear reader, i dare say you will find, as we did, that the people who are going to sell it to you never give up because things aren’t good, but always because they’ve made so much money they don’t want any more, or because they have to go and live a long way off. i suppose it wouldn’t do to be quite truthful in advertising a business for sale, any more than in giving a servant a character. if the whole truth and nothing but the truth was told in these cases, i fancy very few businesses would change hands and very few servants get places.

we had only seen this house in the new suburb once on a very fine day in the autumn, and it looked very nice, as i told you; but, as luck would have it, we made up our minds to go down without saying we were coming, one wet saturday afternoon. “let’s see how it looks in bad weather,” said harry. so i put on my thick boots and my waterproof, and off we went.

certainly that new suburb didn’t look lively in the rain. the mud was up to your ankles in the new roads, and the unfinished houses looked soaked to the skin, and seemed to steam with the damp.

when we got to the house we went in and asked for the landlord. “he’s very ill in bed,” said the barmaid, who had her face tied up with a handkerchief.{9}

“what’s the matter with him?” said harry.

“rheumatics,” said the barmaid. “he’s regular bent double, and twisted into knots with it.”

the barmaid didn’t know us or our business, so harry gave me a look not to say anything, and then he got the girl on to talk about the house.

“house!” she said, putting her hand to her swollen face; “’tain’t a house; it’s a mausolium—it’s a mortchery. why, the cat as belongs to the place can’t hardly crawl for the rheumatiz. and the master, who came here a healthy, upright young man a year ago, he’s a wreck, that’s what he is, and the missis died here. if he don’t sell the place and get out of it soon he’ll die here too.”

“and how long have you been barmaid here?” asked harry.

“oh, i ain’t the regular barmaid. she’s gone away ill. i’m the ’ousemaid; but i serve in the bar when any one wants anything, which isn’t often now, for the people declare as they catch cold only standing in the place.”

“what’s the matter with it?” i asked.

“what’s the matter with it?” said the girl. “why, damp’s the matter with it. it was built wet, and it’ll never get dry. and there ain’t no drainage yet; and when it rains—— well, you should see our cellars!”

“i think i will,” said harry, “if you’ll allow me;” and by pitying the girl, and one thing and another, harry managed to get her to let him see the cellars.

it was really something shocking. the cellars were full of water, and the beer and the spirits were actually floating about.

“it’s only on days when it’s pouring wet we get like that,” said the girl; “but the damp’s always in the house.”

“yes,” said harry, “it would be.” with that he finished his glass of beer and biscuit, and said “good day,” without troubling to leave word for the landlord that he had called.

“my dear,” he said, when we got outside, “i don’t think this place’ll do. i want a business ashore, not afloat.”

“oh, harry,” i said, almost with a little sob, for it did seem as if we were never to be dealt fairly with—“oh, harry,” i said, “isn’t it dreadful? fancy that we might{10} have gone into that place and died there for all these people cared.”

“self-preservation, my dear,” said harry; “it’s only a natural thing, if you come to think of it. this poor fellow wants to get out, and to get himself out he must let somebody else in. so long as he doesn’t die there, it doesn’t much matter to him who does.”

i didn’t answer, but i felt quite sad all the way home. it seemed to me that life was one great game of cheat your neighbour, and i began to wonder if to get on in business we should have to cheat our neighbours too. and that evening, when we were in our lodgings, sitting by the nice cosy fire, and i was doing my work, and harry was smoking his big brown meerschaum pipe, i told him how sad i felt about all this trickery and deceit, and i asked him if perhaps there might not be some business that we could buy that wasn’t so full of traps and dodges as the public-house business. he shook his head, and said, “no. he was sure a nice little country inn was what would suit us, and it was only a question of waiting a little, and keeping our wits about us, and we should get what we wanted, and be none the worse for the experiences we picked up in the search.”

and we did pick up some experiences, and i wish i had time to write them all out: i am sure that hundreds of thousands of pounds of hard-earned money would be saved, and many suffering women and helpless children be shielded from misery.

harry has got his eyes pretty wide open, and he knows how to take care of himself, but he has often said to me that in trying to get a public-house he met more land-sharks lying in wait for his money than ever he saw in ratcliff highway lying in wait for the sailors. i should like to show up some of these nice little advertisements of desirable houses you see in the daily papers, but perhaps it wouldn’t do. i’m always so afraid of that law which sends you to prison for writing what is true—the law of libel, i think it is called. but this i will say, that i hope no young married couple with a bit of money will ever take a public-house except through a really respectable broker. don’t be led away by a beautiful description:{11} and when you call on the broker and he won’t tell you where it is till you have signed a paper, don’t sign it. if you do you’ll have to pay for it. the broker and the man who is selling the property will “cut you up”—that’s what harry calls it—between them, and you’ll probably go into the house only to leave it for the place which is called “the house,” and where there are plenty of people who have got there through putting all their little fortune into one of these “first-class houses” as advertised.

we had plenty of them tried on us, and of course we saw plenty of genuine concerns. some brokers are very nice, and all is square and above-board; and they let you know all about the property, and tell you the truth about it, and don’t make you sign anything before they tell you where it is to be seen.

at one place which wasn’t a swindle we had an adventure which i can’t help telling. it was a very pretty place just by a lock on the river, with gardens and roses, and a place for a pony, and quite a pretty view, and the rooms very cosy and comfortable, and harry and i quite fell in love with it.

“i do believe this place will do, dear,” i said, being quite worn out with seeing so many.

“yes,” said harry, “it’s a perfect little paradise. i think we could be very happy here, my darling, and the customers seem nice, quiet sort of people, don’t they?”

we talked like that before we’d made our business known and been shown over the place.

presently we went round the outhouses, and as i was going on a little ahead i went into one before our guide came up. i went right in, and then i gave a shriek and ran out, feeling as if i should fall to the ground.

there, lying on the straw, stark and staring, i had seen the dead body of a man, and, oh, that dreadful face! i shall never forget it while i live.

“what’s the matter?” cried harry, running to me and catching me in his arms just as i was fainting.

“oh, oh!” i gasped; “there’s a dead man in there.”

“oh, that’s nothing,” said the guide. “there’s always something of the sort in that shed. it’s kept on purpose.”

“what!” i stammered; “always a corpse there?{12}”

“yes, ma’am. you see, most of the people as throws theirselves into the river get carried into this lock, so we’re always on the look-out for ’em, and this is the inquest house. lor’, ma’am, you wouldn’t believe what a lot of custom they bodies bring to the house! what with friends coming to identify ’em, and the inquest and the funeral, it’s a very good thing for the house, i can tell you.”

“oh, harry,” i said, as soon as i felt a little better; “i could never be happy here. fancy these roses and flowers, and yet always a corpse on the premises. let’s go away; we don’t want to see any more.”

but we did get settled at last. we found the place where i’m writing these memoirs—the ‘stretford arms.’ it is called so after the stretfords, who were the great family here, and it’s on what used to be their property, and nice people they were—some of them—but a queer lot some of the others, with stories in the family to make the police news sunday-school reading to them. the house is very pretty, quite countryfied, and standing back from the road, with a garden on each side of it, and lots of trees. and the windows are latticed, and there are creepers growing all over the walls, and it looks really just like the pretty house harry and i saw in the melodrama and fell in love with.

we got it through a respectable broker, who was very useful to us, and told us everything we had to do, and put us right with the brewer and the distiller, and managed “the change” for us capitally, and gave us excellent advice about the house and the class of customers we should have to deal with, and was very obliging in every way.

he told us that it was just the house to suit us, and we should just suit the house. he said it was a mistake to suppose that a man who could manage one house could manage another. “there are men for houses and houses for men,” he said, “and this was the house for a quiet, energetic young couple, with taste and pleasing manners, and plenty of domestic management.”

it was nice of him—wasn’t it?—to say that, and he didn’t charge for it in the bill. he explained that it was a house which might easily be worked up into a little country hotel, if it had a good housewife to look after it;{13} and harry and i both felt that we really were lucky to get it, and we made up our minds to try and make it a nice, quiet hotel for london people, who wanted a few days in the country, to come and stay at.

i remember hearing my old master, mr. saxon, say how nice it was to know a really pretty country inn where one could have a room and breathe pure air for a few days, and eat simple food, and get away from the fog and the smoke, and feel truly rural.

“harry,” i said, “as soon as we’re straight, and everything’s in order, i’ll write and let a lot of my old masters and mistresses know where i am. perhaps with their recommendation we might get a nice little connection together for the hotel part. the local people will keep the bar going all right.”

“yes,” said harry, “that wouldn’t be a bad plan; and don’t you think that literary gentleman you lived with—the one that had the bad liver—might come, and recommend his friends? i should think it was just the house for a literary gentleman. why, i believe i could write poetry here, myself.”

the dear old goose!—i should like to see his poetry. he’s always saying that some day he shall write his memoirs, and then i shall be nowhere.

oh dear, what fun it would be! but he wouldn’t have patience to go on long; he hates pens and ink.

but when he said about the literary people i didn’t answer all at once. i should like mr. saxon to come, but i don’t think i should like it to be a literary house altogether. literary gentlemen are so queer in their ways, and they are not so particular as they might be with the ink, and they do burn the gas so late, and some of them smoke in bed; and there was another thing—if we had a lot of literary people down, they might get hold of the characters and the stories of the place, and then where would my book be?

so i said, “no, dear; i think we’ll ask mr. saxon to come, but we won’t try to get any more writers just yet. what we want are nice, quiet married couples and respectable elderly gentlemen—people who can appreciate peace and quietness, and won’t give much trouble.{14}”

ah me! when i think of the respectable elderly gentleman who did come, and then remember that i thought elderly respectable gentlemen were desirable guests, i feel inclined to——

* * * * *

oh, dear, dear, how unkind of you, baby! you needn’t have woke up just as i’ve got a few minutes to myself. all right, dear, mamma’s coming. bless his big blue eyes! oh, he is so like harry!