Then a cousin of hers died and left her a very large fortune.
There’s no mistake about that.
My wife is a very, very rich woman.
She has always read a great deal of English fiction and her one desire was to have a London season and entertain and do all the grand things she had read about in books.
It was her money and although the prospect did not particularly tempt me, I was very glad that she should gratify her wish.
We sailed last April.
The young Duke and Duchess of Hereford happened to be on board.”
“I know.
It was they who first launched Mrs Barnaby.
They were crazy about her. They’ve boomed her like an army of press-agents.”
“I was ill when we sailed, I had a carbuncle which confined me to my stateroom, and Mrs Barnaby was left to look after herself.
Her deck-chair happened to be next the duchess’s, and from a remark she overheard it occurred to her that the English aristocracy were not so wrapped up in our social leaders as one might have expected.
My wife is a quick little woman and she remarked to me that if you had an ancestor who signed Magna Carta perhaps you were not excessively impressed because the grandfather of one of your acquaintances sold skunks and the grandfather of another ran ferryboats.
My wife has a very keen sense of humour.
Getting into conversation with the duchess, she told her a little Western anecdote, and to make it more interesting told it as having happened to herself.
Its success was immediate.
The duchess begged for another and my wife ventured a little further.
Twenty-four hours later she had the duke and duchess eating out of her hand.
She used to come down to my stateroom at intervals and tell me of her progress.
In the innocence of my heart, I was tickled to death and since I had nothing else to do, I sent to the library for the works of Bret Harte and primed her with effective touches.”
I slapped my forehead. “We said she was as good as Bret Harte,” I cried.
“I had a grand time thinking of the consternation of my wife’s friends when at the end of the voyage I appeared and we told them the truth.
But I reckoned without my wife.
The day before we reached Southampton Mrs Barnaby told me that the Herefords were arranging parties for her.
The duchess was crazy to introduce her to all sorts of wonderful people.
It was a chance in a thousand; but of course I should spoil everything, she admitted that she had been forced by the course of events to represent me as very different from what I was.
I did not know that she had already transformed me into One-Bullet Mike, but I had a shrewd suspicion that she had forgotten to mention that I was on board.
Well, to make a long story short, she asked me to go to Paris for a week or two till she had consolidated her position.
I didn’t mind that.
I was much more inclined to do a little work at the Sorbonne than to go to parties in Mayfair, and so leaving her to go on to Southampton, I got off at Cherbourg.
But when I had been in Paris ten days she flew over to see me.
She told me that her success had exceeded her wildest dreams: it was ten times more wonderful than any of the novels; but my appearance would ruin it all.
Very well, I said, I would stay in Paris.
She didn’t like the idea of that; she said she’d never have a moment’s peace so long as I was so near and I might run across someone who knew me.
I suggested Vienna or Rome.
They wouldn’t do either, and at last I came here and here have I been hiding like a criminal for three interminable months.”
“Do you mean to say you never killed the two gamblers, shooting one with your right hand and the other with your left?”
“Sir, I have never fired a pistol in my life.”
“And what about the attack on your log-cabin by the Mexican bandits when your wife loaded your guns for you and you stood the siege for three days till the Federal troops rescued you?”
Mr Barnaby smiled grimly.
“I never heard that one.
Isn’t it a trifle crude?”
“Crude!
It was as good as any Wild West picture.”
“If I may venture a guess, that is where my wife in all probability got the idea.”
“But the wash-tub.
Washing the miners’ clothes and all that.
You don’t know how she made us roar with that story.
Why, she swam into London Society in her wash-tub.”
I began to laugh.