Good barmaids are as difficult to get as good servants. It is, perhaps, even harder to get just what you want in a barmaid, because so many different qualities are required, and the work has to be done under such different circumstances. Some girls are very quiet and nice in business, and very ladylike, and a credit to the house out of it; but are still not good barmaids, because they are not able to suit their manner to the class of customer they happen to be serving. Some of the best barmaids for work and smartness aren’t nice in other ways, giving themselves airs and showing off before the customers, and being fond of talking with the young fellows who come in and loll across the counter; and some of them dye their hair gold, and make themselves up, and look fast, which is a thing I have always had a horror of; but some of these girls are, as far as doing the trade is concerned, among the best barmaids going, and often there is a good deal less harm in them than in your quiet girls, who seem as if they couldn’t say boh to a goose, and look down on the floor, if a young fellow pays them a compliment.
A good, smart, showy barmaid has generally learnt her trade and knows her customers. The compliments paid to her run off her like water off a duck’s back, and she knows how to take care of herself. But her very independence makes her a trial to put up with, and if she’s a favourite with the customers she soon lets you know it.
Your quiet barmaid, who doesn’t dress up a bit, and only{251} says “yes” and “no” when the customers talk to her, is generally slow and makes a lot of silly mistakes, and is afraid of a bit of hard work. She is the sort of girl who can’t take more than one order at once, and draws stout for the people who ask for whiskey, and opens lemonade and puts it into the brandy for gentlemen who have ordered a B. and S. We had one of these extra quiet girls once, and she nearly drove me mad. On Saturday nights, and at busy times, if I hadn’t been in the bar half the people would have gone away without being served. But it was while she was with us that we began to feel uncomfortable about the state of the till, and, after we’d sent her off, it was found out that she’d been giving too much change every night to a scamp of a fellow that had made her believe he was desperately in love with her.
Miss Measom was one of the best barmaids we ever had, as a barmaid; but she was much too flighty for me. I didn’t like her the first day I saw her in the bar. She was what Harry called “larky,” and in a quiet place like ours that sort of thing attracts more attention than it would in London.
But when I knew her better, I really began to like her, and thought that there wasn’t any harm in the girl. It was just her animal spirits. She was full of mischief, and had the merriest laugh I ever heard, and used to say the oddest things. What annoyed me at first was that some of the young fellows who used our house for the billiard room gave her a nickname. They called her “Tommy,” and she liked it. I didn’t. One evening I was in the bar and one of them said, “Tommy, give me another whiskey cold,” and I thought it wasn’t respectful to me, so I said, “That’s not Miss Measom’s name, Mr. Smith, and if you don’t mind I’d rather you didn’t call her by it.”
He was an impudent fellow, and he said, “Oh, I beg your pardon, Mrs. Beckett,” and then he said, “May I have the honour of asking you for another whiskey cold, if you please, Miss Measom?” And then a lot of the young monkeys that were with him began “Miss Measom-ing” all over the place, and the grown-up men, who ought to have known better, did it too, and I was so indignant, I went out of the bar and left them at it.{252}
It was Saturday evening, after the football, and that was always what Miss Measom used to call “a warm time,” because the young fellows in the club got excited, and they brought in the club that had come down to play them, and I was generally rather glad when it was time to shut up.
The night that this happened in the bar that I have told you about, after we’d shut, Miss Measom came to me and she said, “I hope you’re not cross with me, Mrs. Beckett. I can’t help them calling me Tommy, and they don’t mean any harm.” “I am cross, Miss Measom,” I said. “It doesn’t sound nice, and it isn’t the sort of thing for a place like ours. If you didn’t encourage them they wouldn’t do it.”
“I don’t encourage them—indeed I don’t!” said the girl; “but it’s no good my being nasty about it.”
I don’t know what I should have said; but Harry came in at the moment, and, hearing the conversation, he joined in and said he was sure Miss Measom couldn’t help it, and, after all, it was nothing, because young fellows would be young fellows, and you couldn’t expect them to behave in a bar as if they were in a chapel.
That put my back up, and I turned on Harry quite indignantly, for I didn’t like his taking the girl’s side against me.
I don’t know what possessed me to say it, but I said, “Oh, I know Miss Measom is a great favourite of yours; wouldn’t you like me to beg her pardon?”
It was a very foolish thing to say. I felt so directly I’d said it; but I was in a temper, and wouldn’t draw it back.
Harry bit his lip; and Miss Measom flushed scarlet, and went out of the room.
“You’re very unwise to say a thing like that,” said Harry. “I can’t think what’s come to you lately.”
“I will say it,” I said; “and I am not the only person who says it. You are always sticking up for that girl against me. Both of her last Sundays out she has been home half an hour late, and you told me not to be cross with her about it.”
“You’re a foolish little woman,” Harry said. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Oh, yes; I dare say it’s not an agreeable subject.{253}”
“No, it isn’t; get on with your supper.”
“I shan’t; I don’t want any supper,” I said, pushing my plate away.
“Oh, very well,” said Harry; “perhaps you’re better without it. I should think you’ve got indigestion now, and that’s what makes you so disagreeable.”
With that he got up from the table, and went and sat down in the armchair and lit his pipe, and took up the paper.
And we didn’t speak another word to each other that evening.
* * * * *
The next morning was Sunday, and, after breakfast, Miss Measom came to me and said, “Mrs. Beckett, can I say a word to you?”
“Yes,” I said quite sharply. “What is it?”
“I think I’d better leave.”
“As you please, Miss Measom.”
“Then, as soon as you’re suited.”
“Certainly!” and with that I turned on my heel and went upstairs to dress for church.
I didn’t say anything to Harry about Miss Measom having given notice. To tell the truth, I was beginning to be a little bit ashamed of myself, and to think that I had been too hasty.
After that Miss Measom’s manner quite changed in the bar. She hadn’t a smile for anybody, and the customers asked me what was the matter with the girl. The next Saturday when the young fellows came in one of them called her “Tommy.” She looked up quietly, and said, “Mr. So-and-so, I should be much obliged if you wouldn’t call me that. There are reasons why I ask you, which I can’t tell you.”
The young fellow, who was a gentleman, raised his hat, and after that nobody called our barmaid “Tommy” again.
The night before it was Miss Measom’s day to leave, after business she went straight up to her room. When I went up, I had to pass her door, and I thought I heard a strange noise. I stopped and listened, and then I knew it was some one sobbing. I went to Miss Measom’s door and{254} knocked. It was a minute or two before she opened it, and when she did I saw that her eyes were quite red.
“What’s the matter, Jenny?” I said, calling her by her Christian name, feeling rather sorry for her.
She didn’t answer for a second, and then she began to cry right out. So I pushed the door to and made her sit down, and then I said, “Jenny, I don’t want to part bad friends with you. You’re in trouble. Won’t you tell me what it is?”
She looked at me through her tears a moment, and then she said, “Oh, Mrs. Beckett, I’m so sorry I’m going away like this.”
“So am I, Jenny,” I said; “but you gave me notice; you know I didn’t give it to you.”
“I couldn’t bear to cause trouble between you and your husband,” she answered. “You’ve been the nicest, kindest people I ever lived with, and I’ve been very happy here—till—till—till you said what you did; but you didn’t mean it, did you? Tell me you didn’t mean it.”
I hesitated for a moment. But the girl looked so heart-broken that I said, “No, Jenny, I didn’t; and I’m very sorry I ever said it.”
That broke the poor girl down altogether. So I put my arm round her waist, and drew her to me, and kissed her.
“There,” I said, “all is forgiven and forgotten, and if you like to stay on I’ll pay the new girl that’s coming a month’s wages, and tell her she isn’t wanted.”
“No; you are good and kind, as you have always been; but I can’t stay with you now—it wouldn’t be right—unless—unless you know all, and forgive me.”
When she said this it gave me quite a start. A hundred things came into my head. What had I to know, and to forgive when I knew it?
Without meaning it my manner changed, and I said, almost coldly, “What is it that I ought to know?”
“What I am,” she said, looking straight before her at the wall.” If my story were ever to come to you from some one else, after what you said that night, you might think worse of me than perhaps you will when you hear it from my own lips.”
“Go on,” I said hoarsely.{255}
“Mrs. Beckett, you’ve been very cross with me once or twice, when I’ve been late in on my nights out. Shall I tell you where I’d been, and what made me late?”
“Yes—if—if you think you ought to.”
“I had been to London to see my baby.”
“What—are you—are you—a married woman, then?”
“No! God help me, no!”
* * * * *
I can’t recollect what happened, or what I said or did for a few minutes after that. It was such a shock to me—so unexpected—that it almost took my breath away.
All I know is that presently I found Jenny on her knees by my side, pouring her story into my ears, telling it quickly and excitedly, as though she feared that I should refuse to hear her, if she didn’t get it out before I could stop her.
It was a very sad story.
Jenny Measom had been well brought up by her father and mother until she was fifteen, and then her father, who held a good position in a big brewery, had a paralytic stroke. The most unfortunate thing about it was that it happened a week after he had left his old firm of his own accord, and gone to take a better position in another, so that he had not the slightest claim on either firm for much consideration, and the stroke meant ruin. He got a little better, but not well enough to get about or to do anything, and so Jenny’s mother had to take needlework, and Jenny was, by the kindness of the old firm, got into a public-house as a barmaid, and her earnings and her mother’s were all that kept them from the workhouse.
Jenny, with her bright merry ways and her smartness at her work, soon got on as a barmaid, and left the first public-house, and went to a big West End house, where the trade was of a higher character.
It was when she was eighteen, and in this swell West End house, that the great misfortune of her life happened to her. Among the young fellows who came to the bar was one named Sidney Draycott. He was a handsome young fellow, the son of an English doctor who had at that time a practice in Paris. Sidney Draycott was studying for his father’s profession, and, like most young fellows of his{256} class, he spent a good many of his evenings in bars and billiard-rooms.
He fell awfully in love with Jenny, and the poor girl fell in love with him, and they walked out............