MENDOZA. [reflectively] Yes: I, Mendoza of the Sierra, was a waiter.
Hence, perhaps, my cosmopolitanism. [With sudden intensity] Shall I tell you the story of my life?
STRAKER. [apprehensively] If it ain't too long, old chap—
TANNER. [interrupting him] Tsh-sh: you are a Philistine, Henry: you have no romance in you. [To Mendoza] You interest me extremely, President.
Never mind Henry: he can go to sleep.
MENDOZA.
The woman I loved—
STRAKER.
Oh, this is a love story, is it?
Right you are.
Go on: I was only afraid you were going to talk about yourself.
MENDOZA.
Myself!
I have thrown myself away for her sake: that is why I am here.
No matter: I count the world well lost for her.
She had, I pledge you my word, the most magnificent head of hair I ever saw. She had humor; she had intellect; she could cook to perfection; and her highly strung temperament made her uncertain, incalculable, variable, capricious, cruel, in a word, enchanting.
STRAKER.
A six shillin novel sort o woman, all but the cookin.
Er name was Lady Gladys Plantagenet, wasn't it?
MENDOZA.
No, sir: she was not an earl's daughter. Photography, reproduced by the half-tone process, has made me familiar with the appearance of the daughters of the English peerage; and I can honestly say that I would have sold the lot, faces, dowries, clothes, titles, and all, for a smile from this woman.
Yet she was a woman of the people, a worker: otherwise—let me reciprocate your bluntness—I should have scorned her.
TANNER.
Very properly.
And did she respond to your love?
MENDOZA. Should I be here if she did?
She objected to marry a Jew.
TANNER.
On religious grounds?
MENDOZA.
No: she was a freethinker.
She said that every Jew considers in his heart that English people are dirty in their habits.
TANNER. [surprised] Dirty!
MENDOZA.
It showed her extraordinary knowledge of the world; for it is undoubtedly true.
Our elaborate sanitary code makes us unduly contemptuous of the Gentile.
TANNER.
Did you ever hear that, Henry?
STRAKER.
I've heard my sister say so.
She was cook in a Jewish family once.
MENDOZA.
I could not deny it; neither could I eradicate the impression it made on her mind.
I could have got round any other objection; but no woman can stand a suspicion of indelicacy as to her person.
My entreaties were in vain: she always retorted that she wasn't good enough for me, and recommended me to marry an accursed barmaid named Rebecca Lazarus, whom I loathed.
I talked of suicide: she offered me a packet of beetle poison to do it with.
I hinted at murder: she went into hysterics; and as I am a living man I went to America so that she might sleep without dreaming that I was stealing upstairs to cut her throat.
In America I went out west and fell in with a man who was wanted by the police for holding up trains.
It was he who had the idea of holding up motors cars—in the South of Europe: a welcome idea to a desperate and disappointed man.
He gave me some valuable introductions to capitalists of the right sort.