THE COMMISSIONER'S VIEWS ARE MATRIMONIAL.
Mr. Charles Beresford, Junior Commissioner of the Tin-Tax Office, who
was expected down at Bissett, did not leave London, as he had
intended, on the day which witnessed Mr. Churchill's arrival at that
hospitable mansion. His portmanteau and gun-case had been taken by his
servant to the Club, where he was to call for them on his way to the
station; and he had arranged with one of his brother-commissioners to
undertake his work of placing his initials in the corner of various
documents submitted to him. He had stayed in town longer than his
wont; and as he looked out into the dreary quadrangle of Rutland
House, in a block of which the Tin-Tax Office was situate, and gazed
upon the blazing flags, and the dull _commissionnaires_ sitting on
their bench outside the principal entrance and winking in the heat,
and upon the open windows opposite,--whereat two clerks were
concocting an effervescent drink in a tumbler, and stirring it round
with a paper-knife,--he cursed the dulness, and expressed his delight
that he was about to rusticate for a lengthened period.
Nobody heard this speech; or if indeed, the words fell upon the ear of
the soft-shod messenger who at that moment entered the room, he was
far too dexterous and too old an official to let his face betray it.
He glided softly to Mr. Beresford's elbow, as that gentleman still
remained at the window, vacantly watching the powder-mixing clerks,
and murmured,
"Letter, sir."
"Put it down," aid Beresford, without turning round. "Official, eh?"
"No, sir, private. Brought just now by a groom. No answer, sir."
"Give it here," said Beresford, stretching out his hand. "Ah, no
answer! That'll do, Stubbs."
And Stubbs went his way to a glass-case, in which, in the company of
four other messengers and twenty bells, his official days were passed,
and gave himself up to bemoaning his stupidity in having taken his
fortnight's leave of absence in the past wet July instead of the
present sultry season.
Mr. Beresford looked at the address of the letter, and frowned
slightly. It was a small note, pink paper, with a couchant dog and an
utterly illegible monogram on the seal, and the superscription was
written in a long scrawly hand. There was an odour of patchouli, too,
about it which roused Beresford's ire, and he muttered as he opened
it, "Confounded stuff! Who on earth is she copying now, with her
scents and crests and humbug? I thought she'd more sense than that!"
And he ran his eye over the note. It was very short.
"Dear Charley,--What has become of you? Why do you never come near The
Den? It is nearly three weeks since you were here. I'm off to
Scarborough on Tuesday; a lot of my pupils are there and want me, so I
can carry on my little game of money-making, get some fresh air, and
perhaps pick up some fresh nags to sell before the hunting season, all
'under vun hat,' as Tom Orme fasechous--facesh (I don't know how to
spell it)--says. Come up and dine to-night at seven. There are two or
three good fellows coming, and I want to talk to you and to look at
your old phiz again, and see how much older you've grown during your
absence, and how much _balder_; for, you know, you're growing _bald_,
Charley, and that will be awful hard lines to such a _swell_ as you.
Seven sharp, mind.
"Always yours,
"K. M.
"P.S. Charley, if you don't come, I shall think you've grown _proud_;
and it'll be a great shame, and I shall never speak to you again.
"K.M."
Now lest, after a perusal of this letter, any one should think ill of
its writer, I take leave to announce at once that Kate Mellon was a
virtuous woman; pure in heart, though any thing but simple; without
fear, but not without as much reproach as could possibly be heaped
upon her by all of her own sex who envied her good looks, her high
spirits, and her success. There are, I take it, plenty of novels in
which one can read the doings, either openly described or broadly
hinted at, of the daughters of Shame under many a pretty alias; and it
is because one of these aliases describes the calling of which Kate
Mellon was the most successful follower, that I am so desirous of
clearing her good name, and immediately vindicating her position with
my readers. Kate Mellon was a horsebreaker, a _bonâ-fide_
horsebreaker; one who curbed colts, and "took it out of" kickers and
rearers, and taught wild Irish horses and four-year-olds fresh from
Yorkshire spinneys to curvet and caper prettily in the Park. She
taught riding, too; and half the Amazons in the Row owed their
tightness of seat and lightness of hand to her judicious training. She
hunted occasionally with the Queen's hounds and with the Pytchley, and
no one rode straighter or with more _nonchalance_ than she. Give her a
lead, that was all she wanted; and when she got it, as she invariably
did from the boldest horseman in the field, she would settle herself
in her saddle, left hand well down, right hand jauntily on her hip,
and fly over timber, water, no matter what, like a bird. In social
life her great pride was that there "was no nonsense" about her; she
was not more civil to the great ladies who sent their horses to her
establishment to be broke, and who would occasionally come up and
inspect the process, than she was to the stable-helpers' wives and
children, who all worshipped her for her openhanded generosity. Tommy
Orme who was popularly supposed to be a hundred and fifty years old,
but who lived with the youth of the Household Brigade and the Foreign
Office and the _coryphées_, and who knew every body remarkable in any
one way, never was tired of telling how Kate, teaching the Dowager
Lady Wylminster to drive a pair of spirited dun ponies, had, in the
grand lady's idea, intrenched upon her prerogative, and was told that
she was a presuming person, and desired to remember her place.
"Person, indeed!" said Kate; "person yourself, ma'am! My place isn't
by you after that, and now get the duns home the best way you can;"
with which she sprang from the low phaeton, struck off across the
fields, and left the wretched representative of aristocracy "with a
couple of plunging brutes that soon spilt the old woman into the
hedge, broke the trap all to pieces, and rushed away home with the
splinter-bar at their heels--give you my word!" as Tommy used to
narrate it.
Her manner with men was perfectly frank and open, equally devoid of
reticence or coquetry. She called them all by their Christian names if
they were commoners, by their titles if they were lords. She answered
at once when addressed as "Kitty," or "Old Lady," or "Stunner;" by all
of which appellations she was known. She would lay her whip lightly
across the shoulders of any particular friend as a token of
recognition at the meet; would smoke a cigarette on her way home after
the kill; and always carried sherry and sandwiches in a silver
combination of flask and box. Her grammar was shaky, and her aspirate
occasionally misplaced; she never read any thing but _Bell's Life_ and
books on farriery, and she laughed a loud, ringing, resonant shout;
but her speech was always free from bad words, and no man ever tried a
_double entendre_ or a blasphemy twice in her presence. Living the odd
strange life she did, defiant of all society's prejudices, it was yet
strange that even London slander had left her unassailed. They did say
that she was very much taken by Bob Mayo's sabre-scar when he returned
from the Crimea, and that Barker, the steeple-chase rider, half
gentleman, half jock, was engaged to her; but nothing came of either
of these two reports. Early in her London career, very soon after she
came to town, and when men were first beginning to inquire who was the
dashing horsewoman who rode such splendid cattle with such pluck and
skill, De Blague, the Queen's messenger, assumed to know all about
her, and at Limmer's, one night, threw out certain hints by no means
uncomplimentary to himself, and eked out with many nods and winks; but
two days after that, as De Blague, with two other Foreign-Office men,
was leaning over the rails in the Row, Miss Mellon rode up, and
denouncing him as a "bragging hound," slashed him with her by no means
light riding-whip severely over the head and shoulders. After that day
no one cared to say much against Kate Mellon.
Who was she, and where did she come from? that no one positively knew.
When The Den at Ealing (she so christened it; it was called Myrtle
Farm before) was to let, the neighbours thought the landlord would
stand out of his rent for many years. The house was a little, long,
one-storied building, cut up into small rooms; old, dilapidated, and
damp. The stables were rotting with decay; the barns untiled and
tumbling down; the twenty or thirty acres of land attached were swampy
and unproductive. The place stood untenanted for half a year. Then,
one morning, an old gentleman arrived in a four-wheeled cab, went all
over the premises, had an interview with the proprietor, announced
himself as Mr. Powker, of the firm of Powker and Beak, of Lincoln's
Inn, and within a fortnight the lease was assigned to Miss Kate
Mellon, spinster. The house was papered and painted, and put in order;
the stables were entirely altered and renovated, and fitted with
enamel mangers, and tesselated pavements, and bronze devices for
holding the pillar-reins, and all the newest equine upholstery; some
of the barns were converted into carriage-houses, and one of the
largest into a tan-strewn riding-school; the land was thoroughly
drained and laid out in paddocks, where there were tan-rides and all
kinds of jumps, and an artificial brook, and every thing for a horse's
proper tuition. Miss Mellon did not receive visits from the
neighbouring gentry, principally lawyers and merchants, who went
regularly to business, and always stared hard at her when their wives
were not with them; nor did she attend the parish-church; but she gave
largely to all the parochial charities, and in the winter had a
private soup-kitchen of her own. I believe that occasionally gin was
dispensed in small glasses to the soup-recipients; but all was done
under the superintendence of Freeman, the staid stud-groom, who had
followed her from Yorkshire, where she said "her people" lived. But
she never said any thing more about them; and you would as soon have
got a comic song out of an oyster as a word from Freeman. And she
prospered wonderfully. She had to make large additions to the stables,
and to build rooms for an increased force of grooms; and even then
there were always half a score of horses waiting on her list for
admission, either for training or cure. She made money rapidly, and
kept it: no better woman of business ever breathed; in a big ledger
she scrawled her own accounts, and, as she boasted, could always tell
to a farthing "how she stood." With all this she was generous and
hospitable; paid her grooms good wages, and gave frequent
dinner-parties to her friends,--dinner-parties which scandalised her
solemnly pompous neighbours, who would look aghast at the flashing
lamps of the carriages dashing up the little carriage-drive to fetch
away the company at the small hours, or would listen from beneath
their virtuous bedclothes to the shouts of mirth and snatches of
melody which came booming over the hushed fields.
One of these dinner-parties--that to which she had invited
Beresford--is just over. The French windows in the long, low
dining-room are open; the table is covered with the remains of
dessert, and some of the guests have already lighted cigars. Kate
Mellon heads her table still; she never leaves the room to the
gentlemen,--"It's slow," he says; "women alone fight or bore;" so she
remains. You can catch a good glimpse of her now under that shaded
swinging moderator-lamp; a little woman, with a closely-knit figure,
long violet eyes, and red-gold hair, taken off over her ears, twisted
in a thick lump at the back of her head, and secured with a pink coral
comb of horse-shoe shape. She is dressed in white spotted muslin,
fastened at the throat and waist with coral brooch and clasps. Her
nose is a little too thick for beauty; her lips full; her mouth large,
with strong white teeth; her hands are white, but large and sinewy;
and the tones of her voice are sharp and clear. She is shouting with
laughter at a song which a jolly-looking young man, sitting at the
little cottage-piano at the end of the room, has just finished; and
her laugh makes the old rafters ring again.
"I always yell at that song, Tom," she says. "I haven't heard it since
last winter, the day that 'Punch' Croker dined here, and we gave him
an olive to taste for the first time."
"He's tremendous fun, is Punch," said the singer. "Why didn't he dine
here to-day? Is he out of town?"
"He's got a moor with Penkridge," said Beresford, who was sitting next
the hostess. "By Jove, how bored Penkridge will be before he's done
with him!"
"Punch has not got much to say for himself," said a tall man, in a
dark beard. "I've had him down to dine with me when I've been on guard
at the Bank, and, 'pon my soul, he's never said a word the whole
night!"
"He was at Baden with us last year," said Beresford; "and when we used
to sit and smoke our weeds after dinner in front of the Kursaal, he
used to bore us so with staring at us and saying nothing, that we used
to pay him to go away. Subscribe five francs, or thalers--according to
our means, you know--and send him to play at the tables to get rid of
him."
"He's not a bad fellow, though, Punch Croker," said Kate. "And what I
like in him is, he never lets out that he don't know every thing!"
"No, that's just it!" said the tall guardsman. "Just after the Derby,
I was confoundedly seedy, and my doctor told me I wanted more ozone."
"What's that, Jack?" asked the man at the piano.
"Well, it's some air or stuff that you don't get by sitting up all
night, and lying in bed till three. From the doctor's I went to the
Rag, and found Meaburn there; and we'd just agreed to dine together,
when Punch Croker came in. I told Meaburn to hold on, and we'd get a
rise out of Punch. He asked us if we were going to dine, and we said
yes, and that he might dine too, if he liked. And I told him I'd got
some ozone, and asked him his opinion, as a sort of fellow who knew
those things, how it should be cooked. He thought for one moment, and
then said, perfectly quietly, 'Well, if you have it before the cheese,
it should be broiled.' Never let on that he didn't know what it was;
never changed a muscle of his face,--give you my word!"
They all laughed at this, and then the tall guardsman said, "It's a
great bore, though, to get a reputation for stupidity. It's as bad as
being supposed to be funny. People are always expecting you to say
stupid things, and sometimes it's deuced hard to do."
"Poor old Charleville!" said Beresford; "we all sympathise with you,
old fellow, though no one can imagine you ever found any difficulty in
being stupid. Comes natural, don't it, old boy?"
Captain Charleville didn't seem to relish this remark, and was about
to reply angrily, when Tom Burton, the man who had been singing,
struck in hastily with, "Well, it's better to be or to seem stupid,
than to be stupid and have the credit of being clever. Now there's
Northaw, only said one decent thing in his life; and because that has
been told about, fellows say that he's a deuced clever fellow, and
that there's more in him than you'd think."
"What was the one good thing he did say?" asked Kate.
"Well, it was one day when he was out with the Queen's last season.
Stradwicke was there, and Pattan, and Bellairs, and a lot of men; and
Northaw was in a horrid bad temper,--had got up too soon, or
something, and was as rusty as Old Boots; so while he was fretting and
fuming about, and blackguarding the weather, and his stirrup-leathers,
and every thing else, Tom Winch rode up to him. You know Tom Winch,
son of great contractor, timber-man, builds bridges, and that sort of
thing. 'Morning, my lord!' says Tom Winch. 'Morning,' says Northaw, as
sulky as a bear. 'What do you think of my new horse, my lord?'
says Tom Winch. 'Ugly brute,' says Northaw, looking up; 'ugly,
wooden-legged brute; _looks as if he'd been made at home_."
Burton rose during the laugh that followed his story, and rang the
bell. "I must be off," he said; "I've rung to have the phaeton round,
Kitty. Charleville, you'll come with me? I can find room for you,
Beresford."
"No; thanks," said Beresford; "I rode down. Oh, tell them to bring my
horse round too," he added to the servant.
"Wait five minutes, Charley," said Kate Mellon in an undertone; "let
us have a quiet talk after they're gone. I've got something to say to
you."
"Well, good night, Kate; good night, old lady. If you pick up any
thing good in Yorkshire, let's how, there's a Stunner! I've promised
to mount my sister next season, and she sha'n't ride any thing you
don't warrant. Good night, Beresford; good night, old lady;" and with
hearty hand-shakes to Kate, and nods to Beresford, Captain Charleville
and Tom Burton took themselves off.
"Now, Charley," said Kate, leaning forward on the table while
Beresford lit a fresh cigar and threw himself back in his
chair,--"now, Charley, tell us all about it."
"About what?" asked Beresford, rolling the leaf of his cigar round
with his finger. "That is good, by Jove! You say you want to talk to
me, and you begin by asking me to tell you all about it!"
"I mean about yourself. You're horribly low, and dull, and slow, and
wretched. You've scarcely spoken all the evening, and you ate no
dinner, and you drank a great deal of wine."
"You're a pretty hostess, Kitty! You've checked off my dinner like the
keeper of a _table-d'hôte_."
"Well, you know you might drink the cellar dry, if you liked. But
you're all out of sorts, Charley; tell me all about it, I say!"
"You certainly are a strange specimen, Stunner," said Beresford, still
calmly occupied with his cigar-leaf; "but there's a wonderful deal of
good in you, and I don't mind telling you what I wouldn't say to any
one else. I'm done up, Kitty; run the wrong side of the post;
distanced, old lady. I've been hit frightfully hard all this year; my
book for the Leger looks awful; I owe pots of money, and I am very
nearly done."
"My poor Charley!" said the girl, bending forward, with deep interest
in her face. "That certainly is a blue look-out," she continued,--for
however earnest was her purpose, she could not but express herself in
her slang metaphor. "Is there nothing to fall back upon?"
"Nothing; no resource, save one--and that I'm going to look after at
once--marriage!"
"Marriage!"
"Yes; if I could pick up a woman with money, I'd settle down into a
regular quiet humdrum life. I'd cut the turf, and ride a bishop's cob,
and give good dinners, and go to church, and be regularly respectable,
by Jove! I should make a good husband, too; I think I should;
only--the worst of it is, that these women with money, by some
dispensation of nature, are generally so frightfully hideous."
"Yes," said the girl, who had pushed her hands through her hair, and
then clenched them tightly in front of her, and who was looking at him
with staring, earnest eyes. "I can't fancy you married, Charley;
that's quite a new view of matters; and, as you say, the rich women
are not generally pretty. You can't have every thing, Charley?"
"No," said Beresford, gloomily. "I know that; and it would be deuced
hard lines to have to take a Gorgon about with you, and to have to
glare at a plain-headed woman sitting opposite you for the rest of
your life. But need must--what am I to do?"
"Charley," said the girl, suddenly tilting her chair on to its front
legs, and drumming with her right hand upon the table; "look here. You
can't have every thing, you know, and it's better to make the running
over open ground, no matter how heavy, than to dash at a thick hedge
where there may be water and Lord knows what on the other side. Don't
hurry it so, Charley; you'll get pounded without knowing it, and then
there'll be nothing to pull you through. You can't expect every thing
in a wife, you know, Charley. If you got money, you couldn't look for
rank, you know, eh?"
"Why, how you do talk about it, old lady!" said Beresford, flicking
the ash off his cigar. "No; I'm not exacting. I wouldn't care about
her pedigree, so long as she was well weighted."
"That's right; of course not, Charley! I should think you'd find some
one, Charley; not grand, you know, but good and honest, and all that.
Not very beautiful either, perhaps, but not ugly, you know; and one
who'd love you, Charley, and be true to you, and take care of you, and
make you a good wife."
"Yes, I know, and all that sort of thing; but where is she to come
from?"
"You might find such a one, Charley, where you never looked for it,
perhaps; one who could bring you a little fortune, all honest money,
and who could tell you of her past life, which you never dreamed of,
and need not be ashamed of. There might be such a one, Charley!"
She had slid from her chair to the ground, and knelt, with her hands
on his knees, looking eagerly into his face. Her eyes gleamed with
excitement she had pushed her hair back from her forehead, and her
lips were parted in eager anticipation of his words. They came at
length, very slowly. At first he turned pale, and caught his breath
for an instant; then gently lifted her hands, and muttered between his
teeth, "It's impossible, Kate; it can't be!"
"Impossible!"
"It can't be, I tell you. What would--there, you don't understand
these things, and I can't explain. It's impossible! I was a fool to
start the subject. Now I must go. Good-by, child; write me a line
from Scarborough; they'll forward it from the office. Won't you say
good-by?"
He gripped her cold, passive hand, and two minutes afterwards she
heard the sound of his departing horse's feet on the carriage-drive.
For a while Kate Mellon stood motionless, then stamped her foot
violently, and sank into a chair, covering her face with her hands,
through which the tears welled slowly. Rousing herself at length,
she hurried to a writing-table, pulled out a gaudily-decorated
_papier-mâché_ blotting-book, and commenced scrawling a letter. She
wrote hurriedly, passionately, until she had covered the sheet,
running her gold pen-holder through the tangled mass of hair at the
back of her head, and twisting a stick of sealing-wax with her teeth
the while. The letter finished, she skimmed through it hastily, put it
in an envelope, and directed it to "F. Churchill, Esq., _Statesman_
Office, E.C."