So much pre-occupied was he at the club that he actually played out the thirteenth trump upon his partner's long suit and so sacrificed the game--being the first and only time that he was ever known to throw away a point. He told Von Baumser all about it when he came back.
"She's a demned foine-looking woman, whoever she may be," he remarked, at they sat together before turning in. "Be George! she's the foinest woman I've seen for a long time."
"She's a window," said the German.
"A what?"
"A window--the window of an engineer."
"Is it a widow you mane? What d'ye know about her? What's her name, and where does she come from?"
"I have heard from the slavey that a win--a widow lives over dere in those rooms. She boards mit Madame Morrison, and that window belongs to her privacy zimmer--dat is, chamber. As to her name, I have not heard it, or else I disremember it."
"Ged!" said the major, "she'd eyes that looked right through ye, and a figure like Juno."
"She's vierzig if she's a day--dat is, forty," Von Baumser remarked.
"Well, if she is, me boy, a woman of forty is just in the proime o' loife. If you'd seen her at the window, she would have taken ye by storm. She stands like this, and she looks up like this, and then down in this way." The major pursed up his warlike features into what he imagined to be an innocent and captivating expression. Then she looks across and sees me, and down go the lids of her eyes, like the shutting off of a bull's-eye lantern. Then she blushed and stole just one more glance at me round the corner of the curtain. She had two peeps, the divil a doubt of it."
"Dat is very good," the German said encouragingly.
"Ah, me boy, twinty years ago, when I was forty inches round the chest and thirty-three round the waist, I was worth looking at twice. Bedad, when a man gets ould and lonely he sees what a fool he was not to make better use of his time when he'd the chance."
"Mein Gott!" cried Von Baumser. "You don't mean to say that you would marry suppose you had the chance?"
"I don't know," the major answered reflectively.
"The vomens is not to be trusted," the German said sadly. "I knew a voman in my own country which was the daughter of a man dat kept a hotel--and she and I was promised to be married to each others. Karl Hagelstein, he was to be vat you call my best man. A very handsome man was Karl, and I sent him often mit little presents of one thing or another to my girl, for there were reasons why I could not go myself. He was nicer than me because my hair was red, and pretty soon she began to like him, and he liked her too. So the day before the vedding she went down the Rhine to Frankfort by the boat, and he went down by train, and there they met and was married the one to the other."
"And what did you do?" the major asked with interest.
"Ah, dat was the most worst thing of all, for I followed them mit a friend of mine, and when we caught them I did not let her know, but I called him out of his hotel, and I told him that he must fight me. Dat vos a mistake. I should have done him an insult, and then he vould have had to ask me to fight, and I could have chosen my own veapon. As it was he chose swords, for he knew veil that I knew nothing of them, and he had been the best fencer in the whole of his University. Then we met in the morning, and before I had time to do anything he ran me through the left lung. I have shown you the mark of it. After dat I vas in bed for two month and more, and it still hurts me ven de veather is cold. That is vat they call satisfaction," Baumser added, pulling his long red beard reflectively. "To me it has ever seemed the most dissatisfactory thing that could be imagined."
"I don't wonder you're afraid of the women after that," said the major, laughing. "There are plenty of good women in the world, though, if you have the luck to come across them. D'ye know a young fellow called Dimsdale--? Ah, you wouldn't, but I've met him lately at the club. He's got a girl who's the adopted daughter of that same ould Girdlestone that we talk about.