Mayhew

“ As luck would have it, while he was showing me round, a lady came in; Mayhew after a word or two introduced me to her as his wife: Mrs. Mayhew was then a woman of perhaps twenty-eight or thirty, with tall, lissom slight figure and interesting rather than pretty face: her features were all good, her eyes even were large and blue-gray: she would have been lovely if her coloring had been more pronounced: give her golden hair or red or black and she would have been a beauty: she was always tastefully dressed and had appealing, ingratiating manners. ”

“ Mayhew petted and scolded her child according to her mood, but was quite consistent in her general neglect. Mr. Mayhew was a tired, busy man, who visited at his own home rather than lived there. Thus the growing girl was left chiefly to her own impulses, and average human nature ensured that the habit of thinking of herself first and of pleasing herself at all times should be early formed. Then, as she saw and became capable of understanding the homage that waits on mere beauty, the world over, pride and vanity grew in overshadowing rankness. ”

“ He listened with a pleased expression to the music, and noted, with deep satisfaction, the friendly and respectful bearing of those near, towards both his wife and himself; but he exulted in the evident admiration that his daughter excited. The people at the Lake House had already discovered that there was a decided change for the better in the Mayhew family, and they greeted the improvement with a kindly but well-bred and unobtrusive welcome that was creditable to human nature. Of course there was a great deal of whispered surmise, but nothing offensive to the eye. ”

“ Van Berg, shows where your error lies. Miss Mayhew and myself are not pellucid drops of dew that you look through at a glance. We are women: and the one thing in this world which men never will learn to understand is a woman. I'm going to puzzle you still further. I am learning to have a very thorough respect for Miss Mayhew. I am beginning to admire her exceedingly, and to think that she is growing exquisitely beautiful; and yet were she here this week you would find that I would not seek her society. Give your mind to your art, and never hope to untangle the snarl of a woman's mind. ”

“ The next morning brought another disquieting incident. I walked to the Embassy, and Mayhew joined me on the Plaza Mutor and we went on together. As we stood in the doorway the spy—as in my thoughts I had begun to term him—passed the end of the building, paused a moment to look in my direction, and then went on.
"What is it, Carbonnell?" asked Mayhew, seeing me start.
"Nothing, old man; at least nothing yet; if it turns into something, I'll speak to you about it," and not wishing him to have any clue I wheeled about and went in. ”

“ I am confessing and not excusing myself, Miss Mayhew. I once very justly appeared to you like a prig, and now I fear I shall seem a spy; but after our visit to that old garden together, and your frankness to me, I feel under bonds to tell the whole truth. You said we were fated to misunderstand each other. I think not, for if you ever permit me to be your friend I shall be the frankest one you ever had ”

“ It was on the night of the day on which I had arrived, that Doctor Mayhew and I were sitting in his sanctum; composedly and happily as men sit whom care has given over for a moment to the profound and stilly influences of the home and hearth. One topic of conversation had given place easily to another, and there seemed at length little to be said on any subject whatever, when the case of the idiot, which my own troubles had temporarily dismissed from my mind, suddenly occurred to me, and afforded us motive for the prolongation of a discourse, which neither seemed desirous to bring to a close. ”

“ Mayhew had replied fierily. "You've only been a 'dog watch' in the service, and when you know something about it, you'll know that you are wrong. Why, man, he's the best Skipper to serve under in the whole blessed navy. Call him bad tempered! Why, great snakes! that's the temper coming out of him instead of being bottled up. It's only fools and rotters who have tempers that don't come out." ”

“ Mayhew confided to him some details of her own history, which threw light upon the fact that she neither looked nor spoke like an ordinary charwoman. She was a meagre but trim-bodied little person of about the same age as her employer; clean, neat, and brisk; her face sharply outlined, with large good-humoured eyes, and a round mouth. A widow, she said, for ten years and more; childless; pretty much alone in the world, though she had relatives not badly off. ”

“ It was Paul Mayhew—yes, the same Paul Mayhew that had defied his mother and sister and walked home with me one night and invited me to go for an automobile ride, only to be sent sharply about his business by my stern, inexorable Aunt Jane. Paul was in the senior class now, and the handsomest, most admired boy in school. He didn't care for girls. ”

“ Finally Mayhew axed, as indifferent as he could under all his excitement, ‘When do you intend to answer the letter you say you got from Moore & Trotter?’
“‘I’ve already answered it,’ Nelson said. ‘I told ’em I appreciated the’r offer an’ would run over an’ see ’em day after tomorrow.’”
“Good, very well said, Baker!” laughed Captain Duncan. “No wonder the young man’s become rich. You can’t keep talent like that down. But what did old Mayhew say?” ”

“ Mayhew distributes so freely with his English cudgel on the members of almost every German class and profession, and on almost every German custom and institution, is full of original thought and observation, and may be studied with profit by both German and English—especially by the German."
BELL'S MESSENGER, January 23rd, 1864.—"Mr. Mayhew's very amusing volumes well deserve careful perusal. The Luther exploration is deeply interesting." ”

“ The employment obtained for me by the kind interest of Dr Mayhew, which the return of so many summers and winters has found me steadily prosecuting, was in the house of his brother—a gentleman whose name is amongst the first in a profession adorned by a greater number of high-minded, honourable men, than the world generally is willing to allow. ”

“ In the fright of the moment she uttered a suppressed scream, and immediately disappeared. “Gracious! gracious! and it’s impossible to let him know I didn’t mean it,” she cried;—“it must have seemed to him for all the world like as if I was calling to him. Oh dear! oh dear! oh dear!? and, in the flurry of her emotions, she sat herself down on the top of the screw-press for the table-cloths, that stood in the extreme corner of the room, and hiding her face in her hands, beat a tattoo with her feet on the floor in vexation at what had happened. ”

“ Yes, but Nelson didn't grumble, and Mayhew will tell you hisself that thar never was sech a worker sence the world was made. He was a general hand at ever'thing, and as bright as a new dollar and as quick as a steel-trap. The Lord only knows when or how he did it, fer nobody ever seed a book in his hands in business hours, but he l'arned to read and write and figure. An' that wasn't all. Old Mayhew was sech an old skinflint, and so hard on folks who got in his debt, that nobody traded at his shebang except them that couldn't go anywhars else ”

“ Miss Mayhew smiled. "You must put that on a figure," she says. "Why, it's beautiful. Look at those colors."
"All faded out," says Mis' Hubbelthwait, and [Pg 143] thought Miss Mayhew was making fun of her. But she wasn't. And she insisted on draping it and putting it near the front. Miss Mayhew was nice, but she was queer in some things. I'd upholstered my kitchen rocker with part of my Paisley shawl, and covered the ironing-board under the cloth with the rest of it—and nothing would do but that old chair must be toted up in her room! ”

“ Forrester pointed.
“Hello, what's this?” cried the doctor, seeing her hand. “Blood?”
She only gestured toward the big chair.
“It's blood, doctor!” the housekeeper shrilled. “It's his! When I come in, I found her with the knife in her hand, and—”
But Mayhew was not listening. He had run forward, and was already at his old friend's side.
“Elijah!” he cried in a choked voice, down beside him on the rug. For a moment Mayhew was no longer an eminent physician—only a man. He reverted to the name of boyhood days together: “Lije! Speak to me, Lije, old man!” ”

“ All he knew was that his brother had left him in charge of Montragee House during his unavoidable absence. Clearly there was very little to be extracted from the youthful lord.
The Home Department Minister is speaking now, but apparently affording but cold comfort to his colleagues. Mr. Mayhew belongs to the English bar. He is an excellent speaker, but that is all. It would have been better if he had stuck to his profession exclusively, and left politics alone, for he has not shone in them. He is a weak man, and an obstinate one, and can never be got to acknowledge having committed a mistake. ”

“ Doctor Mayhew assured me that nothing could be kinder than the manner in which the incumbent spoke of me, and that it was impossible for any man to feel a favour more deeply than he appeared to appreciate the consideration which I had shown for him. ”

“ In this room George and the Mayhews met with several men two or three times a week. There they discussed horses and made mock of the authority of women. George provided the whisky, and they all gambled timidly at cards. These bachelor parties were the source of great annoyance to the wives of the married men who attended them.
“He’s quite unbearable when he’s been at those Mayhews’,” said Meg. “I’m sure they do nothing but cry us down.”
Maud Mayhew kept apart from these meetings, watching over her two children. She had been very unhappily married, and now was reserved, silent. ”

“ The omnibus study next to Prayer Room became vacant at Christmas, and on our return at the end of January we found Mayhew, Sinclair and O'Rane in possession. We found also an ominous hand-printing-press clamped on to the window-sill, and from this injudicious outcome of an uncle's Christmas largess Mayhew set himself to produce a weekly sheet rivalling "The Times" in authority, the "Spectator" in elegance, and the "Junius Letters" in pointedness of criticism and personality. ”

“ Sandboys by the arm, he cried, “Here we are. Come along, quick! or we shall be carried off to Chelsea;” and made a desperate effort to reach the plank that connected the “Bee” with the pier; but no sooner did he trust the weight of his body to the treacherous gutta percha limb, which the heat of the funnel had by this time rendered as limp as a stale sugar-stick in a confectioner’s window, than it bent under him like a soldier’s penny cane, and down went the Major on his side, dragging the terrified Cursty along with him. ”

“ The late Mr. R. B. Postans, the house-chum of Henry Mayhew, "his companion from morning to night," and George Hodder, in his oft-quoted "Memories of My Time," agree in according undivided credit to Henry Mayhew; but they unfortunately disagree in essentials, and contradict each other, and indirectly confirm my own conclusions. Hodder further declares that Mayhew invented the paper and its name simultaneously, which sprang Minerva-like, full-titled, from his brain—which we know to be untrue, as the name was not decided upon until a subsequent meeting. ”

“ Mayhew told him. “Then at a later hour all of us will creep over and surround the place. Any Blackfeet who may be found are apt to be given a short shrift, because they are the mortal foes of the Sioux; but I do not believe the traders will be harmed, unless they should be unwise enough to shoot one of Beaver Tail’s warriors.”
Shortly afterwards Dick saw the same skillful scout go forth, and he knew that Mayhew had guessed the truth when he said a close watch was to be kept over the camp on the lake shore. ”

“ What pen shall tell the agony that poor maiden suffered in her darkness: for she made sure that the fellow had seen her speaking with the guard while the train waited at Cassel, and that fancying she had betrayed him, he had returned solely to execute the vengeance he had threatened her with. She expected each moment to be her last. How she listened for the clicking of the pistol that was to warn her of her doom. But though her senses were rendered tenfold more acute by the horrible suspense in which she was kept, she could hear only the man tumbling the articles out of his carpet-bag. ”

“ Miss Mayhew held up a very determined chin. “Really my reason for going to town to-morrow is to look up some newspaper women I knew on the other side, and see if there is any chance for me in the same profession. It is a career that appeals to me more than anything else. I never was meant for the conventional existence, and I'm getting tired of tramping over the globe and exercising my ingenuity in making both ends meet on an absurdly inadequate income. ”

“ At last, as she was about to ask her companions to walk more slowly, lest she should be left alone by the roadside in her weakness, she heard the sound of strong, rapid steps.
"Where is Miss Mayhew?" was the anxious query of a voice that made her heart bound and color come into her face, even at the moment of almost mortal weakness and weariness.
"Here is Miss Mayhew," said one of the half-grown youths. "She prefers to walk by herself, it seems."
"Thank you," replied Van Berg, decisively. "I will see her safely home;" ”