Let me tell you, my friends, that the whole thing depends On an ancient manorial right.

—Lewis Carroll, The Hunting of the Snark (1876)

The effect of Mary on the young Cockney’s mind had indeed been ruminative. He loved Mary for herself, as any normal young man in his healthy physical senses would; but he also loved her for the part she played in his dreams—which was not at all the sort of part girls play in young men’s dreams in our own uninhibited, and unimagi-native, age. Most often he saw her prettily caged behind the counter of a gentleman’s shop. From all over London, as if magnetized, distinguished male customers homed on that seductive face. The street outside was black with their top hats, deafened by the wheels of their carriages and hansoms. A kind of magical samovar, whose tap was administered by Mary, dispensed an endless flow of gloves, scarves, stocks, hats, gaiters, Oxonians (a kind of shoe then in vogue) and collars—Piccadilly’s, Shakespere’s, Dog-collar’s, Dux’s—Sam had a fixation on collars, I am not sure it wasn’t a fetish, for he certainly saw Mary putting them round her small white neck before each admir-ing duke and lord. During this charming scene Sam himself was at the till, the recipient of the return golden shower.

He was well aware that this was a dream. But Mary, so to speak, underlined the fact; what is more, sharpened the hideous features of the demon that stood so squarely in the way of its fulfillment. Its name? Short-of-the-ready. Perhaps it was this ubiquitous enemy of humankind that Sam was still staring at in his master’s sitting room, where he had made himself comfortable—having first watched Charles safely out of sight down Broad Street, with yet another mysterious pursing of the lips—as he toyed with his second supper: a spoonful or two of soup, the choicer hearts of the mutton slices, for Sam had all the instincts, if none of the finances, of a swell. But now again he was staring into space past a piece of mutton anointed with caper sauce, which he held poised on his fork, though oblivious to its charms.

Mal (if I may add to your stock of useless knowledge) is an Old English borrowing from Old Norwegian and was brought to us by the Vikings. It originally meant “speech,” but since the only time the Vikings went in for that rather womanish activity was to demand something at axeblade, it came to mean “tax” or “payment in tribute.” One branch of the Vikings went south and founded the Mafia in, Sicily; but another—and by this time mal was spelled mail—were busy starting their own protection rackets on the Scottish border. If one cherished one’s crops or one’s daughter’s virginity one paid mail to the neighborhood chieftains; and the victims, in the due course of an expensive time, called it black mail.

If not exactly engaged in etymological speculation, Sam was certainly thinking of the meaning of the word; for he had guessed at once who the “unfortunate woman” was. Such an event as the French Lieutenant’s Woman’s dismissal was too succulent an item not to have passed through every mouth in Lyme in the course of the day; and Sam had already overheard a conversation in the taproom as he sat at his first and interrupted supper. He knew who Sarah was, since Mary had mentioned her one day. He also knew his master and his manner; he was not himself; he was up to something; he was on his way to somewhere other than Mrs. Tranter’s house. Sam laid down the fork and its morsel and began to tap the side of his nose; a gesture not unknown in the ring at Newmarket, when a bow-legged man smells a rat masquerading as a racehorse. But the rat here, I am afraid, was Sam—and what he smelled was a sinking ship.

Downstairs at Winsyatt they knew very well what was going on; the uncle was out to spite the nephew. With the rural working class’s innate respect for good husbandry they despised Charles for not visiting more often—in short, for not buttering up Sir Robert at every opportunity. Servants in those days were regarded as little more than furniture, and their masters frequently forgot they had both ears and intelli-gences; certain abrasive exchanges between the old man and his heir had not gone unnoticed and undiscussed. And though there was a disposition among the younger female staff to feel sorry for the handsome Charles, the sager part took a kind of ant’s-eye view of the frivolous grasshopper and his come-uppance. They had worked all their lives for their wages; and they were glad to see Charles punished for his laziness.

Besides, Mrs. Tomkins, who was very much as Ernestina suspected, an upper-middle-class adventuress, had shrewdly gone out of her way to ingratiate herself with the housekeep-er and the butler; and those two worthies had set their imprimatur—or ducatur in matrimonium—upon the plump and effusive widow; who furthermore had, upon being shown a long-unused suite in the before-mentioned east wing, re-marked to the housekeeper how excellent a nursery the rooms would make. It was true that Mrs. Tomkins had a son and two daughters by her first marriage; but in the house-keeper’s opinion—graciously extended to Mr. Benson, the butler—Mrs. Tomkins was as good as expecting again.

“It could be daughters, Mrs. Trotter.”

“She’s a trier, Mr. Benson. You mark my words. She’s a trier.”

The butler sipped his dish of tea, then added, “And tips well.” Which Charles, as one of the family, did not.

The general substance of all this had come to Sam’s ears, while he waited down in the servants’ hall for Charles. It had not come pleasantly in itself or pleasantly inasmuch as Sam, as the servant of the grasshopper, had to share part of the general judgment on him; and all this was not altogether unconnected with a kind of second string Sam had always kept for his bow: a faute de mieux dream in which he saw himself in the same exalted position at Winsyatt that Mr. Benson now held. He had even casually planted this seed— and one pretty certain to germinate, if he chose—in Mary’s mind. It was not nice to see one’s tender seedling, even if it was not the most cherished, so savagely uprooted.

Charles himself, when they left Winsyatt, had not said a word to Sam, so officially Sam knew nothing about his blackened hopes. But his master’s blackened face was as good as knowledge.

And now this.

Sam at last ate his congealing mutton, and chewed it, and swallowed it; and all the time his eyes stared into the future.

Charles’s interview with his uncle had not been stormy, since both felt guilty—the uncle for what he was doing, the nephew for what he had failed to do in the past. Charles’s reaction to the news, delivered bluntly but with telltale avert-ed eyes, had been, after the first icy shock, stiffly polite.

“I can only congratulate you, sir, and wish you every happiness.”

His uncle, who had come upon him soon after we left Charles in the drawing room, turned away to a window, as if to gain heart from his green acres. He gave a brief account of his passion. He had been rejected at first: that was three weeks ago. But he was not the man to turn tail at the first refusal. He had sensed a certain indecision in the lady’s voice. A week before he had taken train to London and “galloped straight in again”; the obstinate hedge was tri-umphantly cleared. “She said ‘no’ again, Charles, but she was weeping. I knew I was over.” It had apparently taken two or three days more for the definitive “Yes” to be spoken.

“And then, my dear boy, I knew I had to face you. You are the very first to be told.”

But Charles remembered then that pitying look from old Mrs. Hawkins; all Winsyatt had the news by now. His uncle’s somewhat choked narration of his amorous saga had given him time to absorb the shock. He felt whipped and humili-ated; a world less. But he had only one defense: to take it calmly, to show the stoic and hide the raging boy.

“I appreciate your punctiliousness, Uncle.”

“You have every right to call me a doting old fool. Most of my neighbors will.”

“Late choices are often the best.”

“She’s a lively sort of woman, Charles. Not one of your damned niminy-piminy modern misses.” For one sharp mo-ment Charles thought this was a slight on Ernestina—as it was, but not intended. His uncle went obliviously on. “She says what she thinks. Nowadays some people consider that signifies a woman’s a thruster. But she’s not.” He enlisted the agreement of his parkland. “Straight as a good elm.”

“I never for a moment supposed she could be anything else.”

The uncle cast a shrewd look at hi............