with her mouth close to Lady Sidonia’s ear. “Don’t open it.... I’d
rather—— Where was I?”
“The Subject was in bloomers,” said Lady Sidonia.
“Oh, well! Momma and the other ladies were asked to look at her
earnestly, to fix her features in their minds, so that they couldn’t but
recognize her again if they saw her. She was a slight woman, Momma said,
about thirty-five, and but for her scarred face would have been pretty,
with her pale complexion, brown wavy hair, and large gray eyes with
black lashes.... She had one peculiarity about the left hand, which no
one who ever saw it could forget. What are you listening for?”
“_I_ hear something at the door,” faltered Lady Sidonia in a nervous
undertone.
“Fancy. You don’t keep a cat. Well, the Subject went up to the altar and
knelt, and the Theologa—Mrs. Gideon J. Swale—invoked the Mystikos in a
solemn kind of conjuration, and the crystal ball on the altar began to
hop up and down.”
“No!”
“Fact! Then it rose right off the altar and hung suspended in the air,
and the hymn broke out worse than ever, and the Theologa led the Subject
down the altar steps and put her into the bath.”
“Well?” gasped Lady Sidonia.
“The Theologa threw incense on the burners round the bath, and perfect
clouds rose up all round it, completely hiding the Subject,” explained
the Duchess.
“Then she——”
“She began to scream.”
“To scream?”
“As if she was in absolute agony; and Momma and the four other ladies
nearly fainted off their form, they were so perfectly terrified.”
“And—what happened?”
“There was a scream more piercing than any of the others.”
“Oh!”
“The clouds of incense became so thick that you couldn’t see your hand.”
“And——”
“The Occult Operatives sang more loudly and less in tune than ever, and
the crystal ball kept on jumping up and down. Then the clouds of smoke
cleared away, and the lights went up, and——” The Duchess paused
provokingly.
“Go on, go on!”
“And the Subject got out of the bath.... And she had been ugly and
scarred when she went in, but now she was young and pretty!”
“Impossible!”
“It was the same woman to all appearances, but changed—wonderfully
changed. The same pretty brown hair, the same eyes, gray, with long
curly black lashes, and the same strange malformation of one finger of
the left hand. But no cicatrices, none of the seams and marks that made
the other frightful.”
“The other!”
“Did I say the other?”
“Certainly!”
“Then I guess I let the cat out of the bag.”
“Ah, I begin to understand!”
“I thought you’d tumble.”
“There were two women—exactly alike!”
“No, goosey! One woman younger than the other, and looking exactly like
her, as _she_ looked before the injury to her face.”
“Sisters?”
“No. Mother and daughter.”
“And the change in the bath?”
“Managed with a false bottom and trap exit. The sort of trick one sees
exposed at the Egyptian Hall.”
“And the daughter took the mother’s place?”
“Under cover of the incense—and the singing. The tent held _two_, you
understand.”
“But Mrs. Van Wacken?”
“Momma and the other ladies—once the thing had been proved genuine—were
only too anxious to plank down their money and hop into the wonderful
bath. So they went up to the Theologa, and she blessed them and laid the
five money-bags on the altar, and then——”
“Then——”
“Then all the lights went out,” said the Duchess, “and there was a kind
of stampede, and Momma and the four other ladies found themselves alone
in the temple. The Theologa and the Subject and the hundred members of
the Community who’d sat round on the seats and helped with the hymns
were gone—and the dollar bags had vanished. The doors of the temple were
locked, and Momma and the four other victims had to stop there until the
morning. An express man heard their cries for help, broke in the door,
and took them to an hotel in his wagon. Dear, I’m going to toddle to
by-by!”
“It was an awful—awful swindle,” said Lady Sidonia, as she and the
Duchess kissed good-night.
“And the exposure!” The Duchess shrugged her shoulders. “Momma and the
other ladies wanted it hushed, but the police went into the matter.”
“Were the swindlers arrested?”
“The Theologa was caught at Amsterdam, and extradited. The Community got
off. Nobody could prove any of them had had any of the money. I guess,”
said the Duchess, yawning, “Mrs. Gideon J. Swale knows where it is. But
she’s in prison, now, dear. And I hope she likes it. As for the woman
and her daughter, whose likenesses to each other had been made use of by
Mrs. Gideon—they’re still at large. Good-night.”
“Do tell me,” pressed Lady Sidonia. “That peculiarity of one finger of
the left hand possessed by both mother and daughter—what was it?”
“It was,” said the Duchess, “a double nail.”
“_How_ odd!” said Lady Sidonia. “My maid has the same queer deformity,
and it is the only thing I don’t like about her.... She hates to have it
noticed.”
“I guess she does,” said the Duchess.
“Look at her hand to-morrow,” said Lady Sidonia. “It’s awfully queer.
Don’t forget.”
“I won’t,” said the Duchess. “But she won’t be here to-morrow!”
Lady Sidonia’s eyes opened to their widest extent. “Won’t—_be here_?”
“No. She is the girl who got out of the bath!”
“Good heavens!” cried Lady Sidonia. “How do you——Are you——”
“I had been shown her photograph by the police—recognized her the moment
I saw her,” said the Duchess. “I’m not mistaken any, you may be sure.
But you needn’t trouble about her. She’s gone!”
“Gone!”
“She was listening at the door, and heard the whole story. When _you_
spoke about the cat, she made tracks. She’s clear of this house by now,
you may bet your back teeth. Don’t worry about her,” said the Duchess.
“I’ll send my own maid to you in the morning. Good-night!”
THE BREAKING PLACE
_Being a letter from Miss Tossie Trilbina, of No. 000, Giddingham
Mansions, W., to the Editor of “The Keyhole,” an illustrated Weekly
Journal of Caterings for the Curious._
DEAR SIR,
Since reserve and reticence can be carried too far by a lady, I drop the
present line of explanation, the newspapers having took so kind a
interest in the differences between me and Lord Wretchingham. And if
poets ask what’s in a name, the experience of me and many another young
lady whose talent for the Stage, developed by application and
go-aheadness, not to say good luck—for that there is such a thing must
be plain to the stubbornest person—has made her friends from the
Orchestra—(you’d never guess how the Second Violin can queer you in an
accomp. if you hadn’t experienced it!)—to the highest row in the
Threepenny Gallery at The Druids, or the shilling one at The Troc.—would
answer, _more than people think for_!
My poor dear mother, who has been pretty nearly crazy about the affair,
in that shrinking from publicity which is natural to a lady, told the
young gentleman from _The Keyhole_, who dropped in on her at her little
place at Brixton, to fish and find out for himself why the
marriage-engagement between her daughter and his lordship should have
been broken off on the very verge of the altar.
Of course, I don’t assume his lordship’s proposal wasn’t a compliment to
a young lady in the Profession; but lordly roofs and music halls may
cover vice or shelter virtue, as one of the serio characters so
beautifully said in the autumn show at dear old Drury Lane, the name of
which has slipped me. And I don’t pretend that my deepest and holiest
feelings were not wrenched a bit by me having to say in two words, after
mutual vows and presents of the solemnest kind had been exchanged
between me and Lord Wretchingham: “All is over between you and me for
ever, Hildebrand; and if you possess the mind as well as the manners and
appearance of a gentleman, you will not force me to give you the
definite chuck.”
He went on awfully, grinding the heels of his boots into a brand-new
Wilton carpet, and telling me over and over that I had no heart and
never loved him, concerning which I prefer to keep myself to myself.
There are those that make as much noise when things go wrong with ’em as
a one-and-fourpenny sparking-plug, and there are others that keep
theirselves to theirselves and suffer in silence, of which I hope I am
one. Even supposing my ancestry did not toddle over with Edward the
Conkeror, which they may, for all I know.
It was on the very first night of the production of _The Pop-in-Taw
Girl_, by the Trust or Bust Theatrical Syndicate, at the Hiram P. Goff
Theatre, W., that Lord Wretchingham caught my eye. Musical Comedy is my
strongest weakness, for though a principal boy’s part, with heaps of
changes, and electro-calcium with chromatic glasses for every song and
dance touches the spot, pantomime is not so refined. Perhaps you may
recall the record hits I made in “Freddy’s Flannel Waistcoat Wilted in
the Wash,” and “Lay Your Head on My Shoulder, Dear.” Not that it’s my
habit to refer to my successes, but the street organs alone will rub it
in when you happen to be the idol of the hour.
He sat with his mouth wide open—of course, I refer to Lord
Wretchingham—all the time yours truly was on the stage, and I will say
no gentleman could have a more delicate regard for a young lady’s
feelings than his lordship did in sending a perfect haystack of the most
expensive hothouse flowers addressed to Miss Tossie Trilbina, with a
diamond and turquoise muff-chain twined round the moss handle of the
basket, and not a speck of address on the card for my poor dear mother
to return the jewelry to, her being over and above particular, I have
often thought, in discouraging attentions that only sprang from
gentlemen’s appreciation of the performance, and masked nothing the
smallest objections could be taken to.
She quite warmed to Lord Wretchingham, I will say, when him being
respectfully presented by the Syndicate, and me being recommended fresh
country air by the doctors when suffering from tonsils in the throat,
his lordship placed his motor-car at my disposal. With poor dear mother
invariably in the glass compartment behind, the tongue of scandal could
not possibly find a handle, and her astonishment when she discovered
that Hildebrand regarded me with a warmer feeling than that of mere
admiration gave her quite a turn.
We were formally engaged—me and Lord Wretchingham. We kept the thing so
dark I cannot think how the newspapers managed to get hold of it. But a
public favorite must pay the price of popularity in having her private
affairs discussed by the crowd. My poor dear mother felt it, but there!
what can you do? With interviewers calling same time as the milk, and
Press snap-shotters lurking behind the laurel bushes in the front
garden, is it to be wondered at that Hildebrand’s family were apprised
of our betrothal not only by pars., but by the publication of our
photographs, taken hand-in-hand on my poor dear mother’s doorstep, with
a vine climbing up behind us, Hildebrand’s motor car, an 18.26 h. p.
“Gadabout,” at the bottom of the doorsteps, with the French _chofore
parley-vousing_ away a good one to the three Japanese pugs, and poor
dear mother, looking a perfect lady, at her fancy-work, in the front
parlor window. How the negative was obtained, and how it found its way
into all the Illustrated Papers, and particularly how it got upon the
postcards, I don’t pretend to guess. It’s one of those regular mysteries
you come across in real life.
Hildebrand, or, possibly, as all is over, I should say Lord
Wretchingham’s family, went into perfect fits when the news of our
betrothal leaked out. The Earl of Blandish, his father, raged like a mad
bull; and the Countess, his mother, implored him on her knees to break
the engagement.
“Oh,” she said, with the tears in her eyes, “my own boy,” she said, “do
not, I beg of you,” she said—for, of course, I got it all out of
Hildebrand afterwards—“show yourself to be of so weak and unoriginal a
cast of mind as to follow the example of the countless other young men
of rank and property,” she said, “who have contracted unequal and
unhappy unions with young women on the boards,” she said—and like her
classy cheek! Upon which Lord Wretchingham calmly up and told her that
his word was his bond, and that I had got both; my poor dear mother
having insisted from the beginning that things should be set down in
black and white, which the spelling of irrevokable almost proved a
barrier the poor dear could not tackle, his education having been
neglected at Eton to that extent.
Me and my poor dear mother being—I don’t mind telling you on the
strict—prepared for a struggle with Wretchingham’s family, was more than
surprised when, after a Saturday to Monday of anxious expectancy, a note
on plain paper with a coronet stamped in white from Lady Blandish
informed us that her ladyship had made up her mind to call. And she kept
the appointment as punctual as clockwork, driving up in a taxi, and
perfectly plainly dressed; and when I made my entrance in the dearest
morning arrangement of Valenciennes lace and baby ribbon you ever saw, I
will say she met me like a lady should her son’s intended, and said that
Lord Blandish and her had come to the determination to make the best of
their son’s choice, and invited me down to stay at Blandish Towers, in
Huntshire, when the run of _The Pop-in-Taw Girl_ broke off for the
autumn holidays.
“Oh,” I said, “Lady Blandish,” I said, “of course, I shall be perfectly
delighted,” and let her know how unwilling I felt as a lady to make bad
blood between Lord Wretchingham and his family. “But, of course,” I
said, “my duty to the man who I have vowed to love and honor leaves me
no choice.”
“My dear Miss Tossie Trilbina,” she said, “your sentiments towards
Wretchingham do you the utmost credit,” she said, and I explained to her
that though the surname sounds foreign, there is nothing of the
Italiano-ice-creamo about yours truly.
“Oh!” she said, in that sweetly nasty way that the Upper Ten do seem to
have the knack of, “do not trouble to explain, my dear Miss Trilbina.
Lord Blandish and myself are quite prepared,” she said, “to accept the
inevitable,” she said, and kissed me, and smiled a great deal at my poor
dear mother, who was explaining to her ladyship that her family did not
regard an alliance with the aristocracy as anything but a match between
equals, and that my education had been of the most expensive and classy
kind you can imagine. And smiled herself into her taxi, and motored
away.
That was in the middle of the summer season, and I bespoke my costumes
for my visit to my new relations next day. Of course, I expected a
house-party of really hall-marky, classy swells, and meant to do the
honors and help Lady Blandish to entertain as was my duty bound. And my
shooting and golfing and angling costumes, and motoring get-up and
riding-habit, and tea-gowns and dinner-dresses and ball-confections,
were a fair old treat to see, and did Madame Battens credit.
Wretchingham drove me down in his 18.26 h.p. “Gadabout,” with my
dresser-maid in the glass case behind, and an omnibus motor from the
garage behind us with my dressing-baskets, and I thought of poor dear
mother at home, I don’t mind telling you, when the Towers rose up at the
end of an oak avenue longer than Regent Street, and Wretchingham’s two
sisters came running down the steps to hug their brother and be
presented to their new sister, and the white-headed family butler threw
a glass door open and Wretchingham led me in between six footmen,
bowing, three on each side.
What price poor little me when I heard there wasn’t any House-Party?
Cheap wasn’t the word, with all those costumes in my dress-baskets.
However, I faked myself up in a frock that I really felt was a credit to
a person of my rank and station, and swam down to what her ladyship
called a “quiet family dinner.”
The Earl of Blandish came in, leaning on his secretary’s arm, with a
gouty foot, and did the heavy father, calling me “my dear.” I sat on his
lordship’s right hand, and certainly he was most agreeable, telling me
the black oak carvings in the great hall were by Jacob Bean, and that
the walled garden with a separate division for every month in the year
and a bowling alley in the middle had been made by a lady ancestor of
his who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was a friend of the
person who wrote Shakespeare.
“Oh!” I said, “I suppose,” I said, “in those days bowls were not
considered a low form of amusement. Though if ever my poor dear mother
and father did have to call words, it would be over his weakness for
bowls and skittles as a waste of time and leading to betting and drink.
And as for Shakespeare, I call it all very well for literary swells with
nothing else to do,” I said, “but what the Halls cater for is the
business gentleman who drops in with a pal to hear the popular favorite
in a ten-o’clock turn over a cigar and a small Scotch. And gardening
never was much in my line,” I said, “though when a child it was my
favorite amusement to grow mustard and cress on damp flannel. Hunting is
my passion,” I said, “and as Wretchingham has told me you keep a
first-class stable of hunters and hacks, besides carriage beasts, I hope
to show your lordship that I shan’t disgrace you,” I said, and asked him
when the next meet would be?
The Earl’s old eyebrows went up to the top of his aristocratic bald
forehead as he said not until October, and then only for cubbing, and
the two girls flushed up red, trying not to laugh, and wriggled in their
chairs, and Lady Blandish said in her nice nasty way that every day
brought innovations, and one might as well ride to hounds in August as
skate on artificial ice in May.
“And if you are fond of sport,” Lord Blandish said, “we could possibly
find you some fishing. Don’t you think so, my dear?” and he looked at
his wife.
“I have my salmoning costume with me,” I said, just to let them know,
“and a rod, and everything. And I suppose Wretchie won’t object,” I
said, giving the poor thing a smile, “to prompt me if I am fluffy in the
business.”
“Dear me!” said Lady Blandish, “how stupid of me not to have explained
before,” she said, “that this is a trouting County and not a salmon
County, and that such trout as there are run very small.” And the two
girls choked again in the most underbred way I ever.
I said I’d fall back on golf, having a killing get-up in my basket, but
there wasn’t a links within miles, Lady Blandish said, and how sorry she
was. All the hot-weather entertainment she had it in her power to offer
me in their quiet country home, she said, was an occasional flower-show,
or County cricket-match, or a garden-party, or a friendly dinner with
people who were not _too_ exacting. In September there would be the
birds, but then I would not be there. It was too unfortunate, she said.
Not that her saying so took me in much.
I thought the top of my head would have come off with yawning that
evening, I really did; and when I remembered that there were three weeks
more of it before me I could have screamed out loud. Me and Wretchingham
went for a spin in his T-cart next morning before lunch, and that drive
settled me in deciding to off it on the next chance.
“Tossie darling,” said the poor dear thing, “it has gratified my father
exceedingly to ascertain,” he said, “that you are fond of the country;
because a condition of the provision he is willing to make for us when
we are married,” he said—and he would have put his arm round my waist
only the trotter shied—“is that we reside at the Dower House,” he said,
“twenty miles from here, and lead a healthy life in accordance with his
views as regards what is appropriate for future land-owners who will one
day hold a solid stake in the County. Of course, you will leave the
Stage forever, my darling,” he said, “as a future Countess of Blandish
cannot figure upon the Lyric Boards,” he said, “without in some degree
compromising her reputation and bringing discredit upon the family of
which,” he said, “she has become a member. My father will allow us two
thousand a year at first,” he said, “which will enable us to keep a
couple of motor-cars and a hack or two, and with an occasional week-end
in Town, I have no doubt,” he said, “that our married life will be,” he
said, “one of ideal happiness for both of us. You observe,” he said,
pointing with his whip straight over the trotter’s ears, “that rather
low-pitched stone building of the Grange description down in that wooded
hollow there? The house is quite commodious,” he said. “You will
appreciate the exceptional garden; and as there is a good deal of arable
land comprised,” he said, “in the estate, I shall take up farming,” he
said, “with enthusiasm.”
“You may take up farming,” I said haughtily, “with enthusiasm, dear old
boy; but what I say is, you will not take it up with yours truly! Do you
suppose in cold blood that Tossie Trilbina is the sort of girl to sit
down in the middle of a ploughed field and lead a life of ideal
happiness with a farming husband in gaiters,” I said, tossing my head,
“telling me how the turnips are looking every evening at dinner, and
taking me up to Town for a week-end,” I said, “every now and then as a
treat? No, Hildebrand,” I said, “clearly understand, much as I regret to
say it, that I am not taking any; and unless the old gentleman can be
brought to see the reason,” I said, “of a flat in Mayfair, all is over
betwixt me and you, and I shall go back to my poor dear mother by
to-night’s express,” I said, “if the lacerated state of your feelings
does not permit,” I said, “of your taking the steering-wheel.”
Of course, the poor dear thing was dreadfully upset, and did his little
best to bring Lord Blandish to weaken on his spiteful old determination;
and Lady Blandish said heaps of nice-sounding nasty things, and the two
girls tried to be sympathetic and not to look as if they were really
ready to jump for joy. But the Earl remained relentless, and Lord
Wretchingham is free. I must now close. Hoping you will accept this
explanation in the spirit in which it is made,
I remain, dear Sir, yours respectfully,
TOSSIE TRILBINA.
A LANCASHIRE DAISY
One of the giant police-constables on duty outside the Cotton Hall,
Smutchester, upon the occasion of the Conference of the National Union
for the Emancipation of Women Workers, was seized with the spirit of
prophecy when he saw Sal o’ Peg’s borne in, gesticulating, declaiming,
carried head and shoulders above an insurging wave of beshawled and
rampant factory-girls.
“Theeaw goes th’ Stormy Pettrill, Tum!” he roared to a fellow guardian
of the public peace. “Neeaw us be sewer to ha’ trooble wi’ theeay——” He
did not add “tykes.”
“Thee mun be misteeawken, mon,” urged Tum, who had newly joined the
Smutchester City Division. “’Tis boh a lil’ feer-feaced gell aw cud
braak between ma finger an’ thoomb lig a staalk o’ celery.” The great
blue eyes of the “lil’ feer-feaced gell” had done execution, it was
plain, and the first speaker, who was a married man, snorted
contemptuously. Sal o’ Peg’s had completely earned the disturbing
nickname bestowed on her. The courts and alleys of the roaring black
city would vomit angry, white-gilled, heavy-shod men and women at one
shrill, summoning screech of hers. The police-constable upon whose
features she had more recently executed a clog war-dance was not yet
discharged from the Infirmary, though the seventeen years and fragile
proportions of his assailant had, for the twentieth time, softened “th’
Beawk” into letting Sal o’ Peg’s off with the option of a fortnight or a
fine, and the threat of being bound over to keep the peace next time, if
she insisted in being “so naughty.”
With these blushing honors thick upon her, Sal o’ Peg’s attended the
Conference, and became, before the close of the presidential address, an
ardent convert to the cause of Female Suffrage. During the debate she
climbed a pillar and addressed the meeting, and when, with immense
difficulty, dislodged from her post of vantage, she took the platform by
storm.