[Illustration: Cover art]
MOP FAIR
Some Elegant Extracts from the Private
Correspondence of Lady Viola Drumcree,
the Fatherless Daughter of Feodorovna,
Countess of Chertsey
BY
ARTHUR M. BINSTEAD
Otherwise known as "PITCHER" of the Pink 'Un
SANDS & CO.
EDINBURGH: 13 BANK STREET
LONDON: 23 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C,
1905
"'Everyone does it,' is the excuse made by all. Our public standard
of morality, our code of honour, our national pride, seem to be
gradually wiped out."
--THE LADY TATTON SYKES.
"The girl of the Twentieth Century, even if she smokes a cigarette
and talks slang, seems to me an infinitely more capable being than
her grandmother was."
--THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK.
"Many insects are in a state of maturity thirty minutes after their
birth, and at seventy minutes begin to put their grandsires through
their facings."
--ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS NOTE.
EPISTLES
FIRST
SECOND
THIRD
FOURTH
FIFTH
SIXTH
SEVENTH
EIGHTH
NINTH
TENTH
ELEVENTH
TWELFTH
MOP FAIR
EPISTLE I
EATON SQUARE, Tuesday, _June_ 16_th._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
Yesterday was the nineteenth anniversary of my unhappy birth, and I
am going to open my heart to you chiefly because it was during that
white-violet epoch of innocence and virtue, the few days prior to my
being bundled off to the same continental boarding-school as
yourself, dear kid, that I remember some countrified wiseacre with
rather less reverence than all the rest for the holy tradition
beginning:
"God bless the Squire and his relations
And keep us in our proper stations"--
remarking that it didn't greatly matter _what_ companionships a girl
formed at a Swiss _pensionnat de demoiselles_ since her own
self-respect and her shame at the remembrance of the fun in the
dormitories would impel her to drop all such _participes criminis_
with electric promptitude on her return to England--a fatuous piece
of prophecy which our continued friendship flatly disproves. So,
between you and me, dearest, I frankly admit that mine has been a
joyless birthday by reason of my impotent yearnings after that which
I have never known--paternal love; for I feel quite sure that I told
you on that interesting night when at the Foire au Pain d'Epices we
first tasted _créme de menthe_, I came into the world many years
before the Countess of Chertsey, my mother, entered into a
matrimonial alliance with Mr Cecil Contango, since when her social
obligations and engagements have been so numerous and engrossing that
she has never yet found time to tell me even my father's name. In my
childhood I was alluded to merely as "Féo's Indiscretion," and as her
photographs of that day represent her as being extremely fascinating
and beautiful, it may even be that she herself got twisted in her
bookkeeping. I have a vague remembrance of her coming to see me at
the tiny cottage at Harrow where I vegetated with Nurse Knapper, on
one Sunday afternoon when the trees were all yellow with laburnum and
the bushes all lavender with lilac, and most probably the tall,
military Romeo in the dark cutaway, who accompanied her, was He. For
as my mother kissed me at parting, she turned to Romeo and said,
"Surely you can spare me an hour or so to-morrow to do a little
shopping for her?"; at which he shuddered dreadfully and gasped out,
"Me in the streets on a Monday in the daytime? Féo, you must be mad!
Didn't I tell you coming down that if only Fortnum and Mason would
trust me for a couple of raised pies and a case of old brandy I
intended hiding in the crypt of St Paul's till the bookies had
forgotten all about the City and Surburban?"
I saw Romeo once again later in the year when I was dreadfully ill--I
had been many days delirious through drinking rain-water; not that
all delirium is incurred in that way, but country children commonly
romp until they can drink a rain-barrel dry, and--well, as Sarah says
in the song, "That was the ruin of me!" When next I saw Féo (as I
have been trained ever since that period to address my dam; and
to-day I draw hush-money of her to call her "Sister!") it was not
Romeo who brought her down, but a spruce and elderly military buck
with a hot eye and a Ceylon breath, who obviously dyed his hair and
probably kept at least three different vintages of purple morning
mouth-wash on his dressing-table: the kind of man who involuntarily
rubs his hands together and waxes eloquently conversational on
entering the room in which the cloth is laid, and the red hock
glasses punctuate the cutlery at regular distances. At setting eyes
on me (then six years old) he stroked my hair and, turning round,
kissed Féo, which struck me as a strangely odd proceeding, not
knowing, as I do to-day, that nothing more delights the elderly than
to be accused of paternity.
But why should I bore you, dear, with this melting tale of "my salad
days when I was green in judgment," as Cleopatra, Marc Antony's
Alexandrian daisy, observes; why inflict upon you these uninteresting
details of my girlhood--that flabby stage of existence in which one
is principally conscious of growing out of one's underclothes? It
may give you some idea of my detestation for the beings with whom I
live in dependence and--then is my ink not wasted.
Yesterday was a day of storm and stress--for Féo. For once the gods
on high Olympus heard my prayer and dealt "Cecil's little honey-bun"
as big a bit of retributive justice as she will digest in the next
six weeks. It came about in this way.
Despite her unflagging efforts to keep him strictly to quarters,
Féo's polished, sin-worn, stockbroking old fragment is distinctly and
extravagantly flighty. All girls of one-and-twenty look alike to
him; or, as the Saturday-to-Monday hussy said of the M.C. of the
seaside dancing-rooms, "he's a bit partickler, but not what you might
call nasty partickler." From the Regent Street barmaid with the
yellow hair to the Dover Street cloak-model with the thirty-six bust
"All are Welcome." And perhaps after all, the only people in the
world who are truly virtuous--the few remaining savages--are only so
because they do not know any better. Poor things! In any event Mr
Contango is an indecisive wobbler, as his cuffs constantly covered
with illegible addresses of unknown peeresses abundantly prove; and
yesterday morning one of the maids of the bedchamber brought to Féo a
telegram which she had found under Mr Contango's pillow. It was a
hot bobsworth and had evidently been delivered to him at the club at
which he dined on the previous evening. In the ardent language of
omnibus-love, it began by assuring the addressee of the sender's
constancy and devotion, and concluded by arranging a meeting for
"seven to-morrow under the clock at Charing Cross"--plebeian
Strephons being as incurably addicted to love-making "under the
clock" as patrician ones are under the table.
In an aggressive state of hysteria and tears, Féo burst into my
morning-room, but as the vapours are absurdly out of fashion and the
woman who is on the verge of flopping is worthy only of the most
pitying contempt--as, moreover, I had already laughed heartily over
the telegram with the maid who found it--I manifested no emotion.
"Read this, read this!" she hissed, thrusting the pink slip into my
hands. "Am I--am I to believe my eyes?"
"A telegram can be repeated," I suggested, remembering the legend on
the back of the form, "at one-half the charge for transmission, any
fraction of one penny less than one half-penny being reckoned as one
halfpenny. At the same time the Postmaster-General will not be
liable for any ----."
"Have you no pity for me, Viola?" she whined. "Mr Contango has
forsaken me to go out girl-hunting."
"If so venerable a kernel, once encased in a prickly shuck--the
development of a towering spike-bloom--could arouse my compassion, I
should be compelled to lament the fact that I had become hopelessly
dippy," I replied, "but since your mental calibre is so low that you
choose to look after one man instead of being looked after by a
hundred, I must not deny you my counsel and assistance."
At this she blubbered afresh and kissing me on the forehead--ugh, how
I rubbed the spot with Piesse and Lubin later on!--she took my hand
in hers and cried:
"And you shall find me so grateful, child; for instance, to-morrow
you shall have that lovely chinchilla stole on which you set your
heart."
"Doesn't the granny muff go with it?" I asked with apparent
indifference.
"Y--yes, the muff as well," she stammered.
"Better put it down in black and white," I suggested, setting my
_écritoire_ before her. Bargains driven with difficulty are too
often the last to be complied with. "Now then," said I, as I folded
the voucher and locked it in my desk, "_quo vadis_, madame? Are you
steering this craft with your heart or your head? Is the philanderer
to be reclaimed in accordance with the rest of your belated theories,
or is he to be gaffed and subsequently landed in the Court in which
men and women are put asunder? The first is the semi-colon, the
second is the climax."
"Vi, dear," she said, as I had all along foreseen she would do, "the
semi-colon, please."
"That means," I interpreted, barely succeeding in suppressing my
disgust, "that we include ourselves in the Charing Cross assignation.
Very good, I will be ready for you at half-past six;" and I left her.
Poor fool! Small wonder that every nation in the world agreed upon
the point of woman's folly long, long ago; and what manner of
creature is this, that, finding herself disesteemed by her mate, buys
a love philtre and introduces it furtively into his evening beverage
to try and bring him back? Pah! Excuse me, dearest Pat, if I
abandon the subject--it overcomes me!
By half-past six Féo had cried herself hideous; nevertheless she was
dressed to go out, and, indeed, desired nothing more than to fall
upon the sinner's neck and weep afresh. Possibly there are faults on
both sides--as the Southend shell-fishmonger said to the
bean-feasters when they complained that they couldn't keep his
pickled cockles down. Possibly (again) I was wearing a more than
ordinarily militant expression as I stood there, for Féo next said,
with characteristic vacillancy:
"On reflection, child, I have decided to go alone. A _confrontation_
of this kind is not a spectacle for your young eyes."
"And pray how are you going?" I asked, instantly perceiving the
manifest advantages of being there myself, unhampered and alone.
"The landaulette is already at the door," she said. It, or some
other kind of car, invariably has been ever since she took to
introducing these things to her friends, and paying such of her debts
as no woman, however brazen, could continue to owe with complacency,
with the resultant "commissions."
"Just as I imagined!" I rejoined, with an acid sneer. "And with
James and William in powder and smart liveries on the
box--'Royalty-visiting-Royalty' personified--I'll be bound! A pretty
way indeed to play Paul Pry--hanged if I don't think you'd go
deerstalking accompanied by Sousa's band! Oho! see, just across the
burn, yon big black stag feeding low down with five-and-twenty hinds:
will you kindly have the goodness to strike up _The Washington
Post-office_! Really, Féo, you are almost too absurd for human
toleration. No; you will go to the Embankment on the Underground,
and, turning up Villiers Street, will mount the wooden stairs and
enter Charing Cross station by the side door. Six paces diagonally
to the left will give you a position from which you will command an
unobstructed view of the entire platform-approach from behind Smith's
bookstall: you will thus face the clock as well as every door by
which the guilty pair can enter. So now, good-bye. I am, by the
way, fiscally crippled till the end of the month; what sugar have
you?"
Helping myself to a few sovereigns from her proffered purse, I
dutifully kissed her hand and followed her to the hall doors, waiting
there--to the no small wonderment of the footmen--until I saw her
turn the corner into Belgrave Place, when I promptly slipped out also.
Being fortunate enough to pick out a really good hansom, I was
probably the first from _our_ stable to reach the battle-ground, and,
ensconcing myself behind an abutting corner of the Continental
Parcels Office, I endeavoured to decide in my own mind which of the
many casual Eves present was the other runner. My ultimate fancy
rested between two. The first of these was a tall blonde, in a
heel-tipping skirt and mess-jacket of blue herring-bone, with
torquoise velvet cuffs and _empiècements_ and gilt studs. The
cab-man who set her down and received a bare shilling for his fare,
asked her--very kindly, I thought--if she really felt she could spare
it, at which she told him she would gladly have made it more, but she
had only a penny left, and might need that herself. The second was a
decided brunette in a daring blending of pink chiffon and pale yellow
silk, worn with a mauve Tam-o'-Shanter with a gold quill, and
patent-leather boots with white cloth tops. Omitting the white cloth
tops, she was the living ideal of the persecuted heroine of _Under
the Red Macintosh, or the Toque-Builder's Typewriter_, which, of
course, you remember quite well. I often take it up, for there has
always seemed to me to be such a genuine touch of human nature about
"Gwendolyn's" landlady who was partial to a little drop of gin, and
used to drink it out of a footless egg-cup which she carried in her
reticule whilst tramping the streets with "Gwendoleyn" in search of
an honourable theatrical engagement, such as a lady could accept.
It was at two minutes past seven, or thereabouts, that Mr Contango
appeared. He passed by the blonde in the blue herring-bone with the
wig-wag walk unnoticed, nor did he pay the least attention to
"Gwendoleyn" in the pink and yellow: you may well imagine my
surprise! As he approached the bookstall--and there were so many
people about that my eyes followed him only with great
difficulty--blundering madly towards the spot where the warmest
panther in the Peerage lay crouching for a spring, there burst from
the swing doors of the Ladies' Cloak Room a tall, fair girl in grey,
her nostrils dilated, and her Rembrandt-red hair crowned by a black
beaver Toreador, with a pink vulture's pom-pom introduced jauntily on
the left side! She saw Mr Contango, as she thought, departing, and
ran towards him; but while there still remained a good ten feet of
platform--and thrice ten solid strangers hurrying across it--between
herself and her lover, she suddenly arrested her progress as the
infuriated Féo dashed from her ambush, and, with a small but firm
gloved hand, gripped her lawful incubus by the right coat-sleeve!
"Pray, Mr Contango, what brings you here at this unusual hour?"
The coward quailed beneath her infuriated glare, and struggled as
fiercely as he dared without incurring public resentment, to wrench
his imprisoned arm free. Féo, however, clung like a barnacle to a
ship's keel. But she couldn't give the weight away. His superior
avoirdupois enabled Mr Contango to tug her steadily through the
unsympathetic crowd, and, wilfully and deliberately--though Féo, poor
fool! did not realise it--into the route or pathway down which a
grimy railway-porter was pushing an iron-wheeled trolley, burdened
with two-score of sooty and malodorous carriage-lamps.
"My leave, please, my leave; mind 'er grease!" growled the fellow,
shoving the corners of the truck into the just and unjust alike.
A strange light shone in Mr Contango's eyes: it was a beam of
inspiration. As the cumbrous hand-waggon with its glittering but
grimy cargo passed by him, he very adroitly wiped his right palm
along the oil-blacked tops of the lower tier of smoking lamps; then
closed that hand and kept it for a moment behind him. Féo,
meanwhile, finding the pulling growing gradually more feeble,
fatuously imagined that the fish was spent, and getting out the
conversational gaff to despatch it, reiterated:
"Mr Contango, I demand to know where you were going?"
"Certainly, dearest. Straight into the lavatory. Just look at this,
as Serpolette says----" and he stuck out the paw that literally
reeked with oily blackness.
"Been shaking hands with one of your city friends, I presume?"
sneered Féo, stepping back to avoid contact with the paw, for, to do
her justice, Féo is always so daintily, unimpeachably turned out that
even the flies wipe their feet before alighting on her.
"Alas!" replied Mr Contango in a melodramatic way, espying an exit
from his dilemma, "there is one friend at least whose honest hand I
ne'er may grasp again--(here he improved his market by covering his
eyes with his hand, thereby transferring much soot to his face)--I
fly to his bedside now--now, er--by way of the lavatory. Do not
further detain me, dear heart."
"I release you that you may perform your much-needed ablutions,"
stipulated Féo, loosening her grip, "but I still await you, and your
explanation, here. Go, and return quickly;" and Mr Contango slunk
away as meanly as did Theseus when he gave poor Ariadne the slip on
the "front" at Naxos.
Down the stone steps went Mr Contango, and into the palatial marble
dungeon on whose atmosphere the all-pervading odour of scented-soap
has a firm half-Nelson, and whose echoing walls magnify the hiss of
the half-minute rushes of water into the roars of Niagaraic torrents.
At least that is how such an apartment was once described in the
report of an inquest upon a defaulting attendant who had committed
suicide on being told after the quarterly stocktaking that he was
two-hundred-and-fifty-four wash-up's, ten roller towels, and eight
gold fish short.
As he descended the stairs, Mr Contango's concernment was less for
his lawful than for his unlawful partner, but his lucidity returned
on the instant of his setting eyes on a middle-aged postman who was
dallying at the wash-basins, the traditional fidelity of the postman
being readily apparent to anyone who has looked over some of the
continental postcards which he, in spite of all temptations, has
faithfully surrendered to the addressees. Therefore Mr Contango went
up at once to the postman and said:
"I have two little commissions for you to execute; they will not
occupy you more than five minutes, and the pay is one shilling a
minute. First of all, go to the booking-office and purchase me a
first-single to some station a little way down the line; no matter
where. Take this half-sovereign and bring me the change."
So the postman went. He was an unconscionable time gone, the delay
mainly arising out of his ingenuous consideration for his employer's
pocket. With praiseworthy economy he selected "Spa Road,
Bermondsey," at the ticket-window, and, as first-singles to that
fashionable promenade are seldom or never asked for at Charing Cross,
the booking-clerk had to fake one with a typewriter. The joy of the
simple letter-carrier at having nine-and-sixpence to return in change
was so real, however, that Mr Contango checked his angry impatience,
and hurriedly proceeded to instruct the postman in his second errand.
"Upstairs, just over by the big slate on which they chalk up the
Channel weather report and the number of baggages on the Folkestone
boat," he said, "you will see a young lady--tall and fair, with
lavishly large brown eyes; wearing a grey frock, and a black hat with
a pink feather in it. Hand her this card, and----ah, yes, here are
the five shillings I promised you;" and he placed in the postman's
hand the silver and one of his visiting cards, inscribed:--
+------------------------------------------+
| |
| "_Fly. Pray pardon this seeming but |
| unintentional despotism, Queen of the |
| Human Race, but_ PLEASE _fly: we are |
| observed. Will pick you up later on. |
| You and you only, the entire time |
| for_ CECIL." |
| |
+------------------------------------------+
From half-way up the lavatory steps, with his keen eyes on a level
with the platform, Mr Contango watched the postman single out the
tall girl in grey, and deliver his message. He saw her smile
sadly--tall women have not the vital force of little women--as she
turned to leave the station by the arched exit through which the cabs
pass, and, sticking the railway ticket conspicuously in his hatband
(an unusual proceeding, but a desirable one in the circumstances), he
sallied forth to rejoin his wife with as brave a show of unconcern as
ever a man returning to a life of irksome chastity carried.
"And now, dear Féo," he said blandly, as he rejoined the surmising
simpleton who was fully prepared to submit to a mild remonstrance on
the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, or
deplorable-pity-of-a-man-marrying-a-woman-who-never-
seems-to-understand-him lines, as the price of her victory, "is your
stirring little farce at an end, and am I to be permitted to smooth
the pillow of my poor friend who lies at the point of death at--at,
er--Tunbridge Wells?"
"Tunbridge Wells!" she echoed, half acquiescing only for the reason
that her brain was reeling at her utter inability to reconcile the
proposition to the telegram still in her pocket; "I presume that,
without an atom of luggage, you would return to-night?"
Strolling aimlessly across the station as they talked, they had by
this time reached the open door of the glaring refreshment-bar, and
as Mr Contango raised his eyes he caught an instantaneous reflection
in the oblong mirror, just ahead, of a group of three persons of
which he and his wife were but two.
The third was the faithful postman!
Straight up came the blundering idiot and roared as if into a
megaphone:
"I give the laidy the note as you wrote downstairs, sir, an' she said
All-right; she'll go straight up to Verrey's an' wait in the
restarong till you join her!"
* * * * * *
Féo and Mr Contango returned to Eaton Square in eloquent silence and
a four-wheeler, and ascended at once to their respective rooms to
sulk, Féo first going to the very nadir of narrow-minded littleness
by locking the street door and taking the key upstairs with
her--which proceeding on the part of a countess so shocked Andrews,
our head butler, that he handed Féo his portfolio when he passed the
matutinal mocha and the vesper rashers this morning. How it will all
end I little know and care considerably less. Quite possibly Féo
will once again act the upper and the nether millstone by the
essentially materialistic man who seems not to worry about little
inconsistencies so long as he leads the life dictated by the senses:
probably he will tardily give her his word of honour to leave undone
the things which he finds himself unable to do; also to be seen at
church between drinks on a Sunday. The only certainty about these
squabbles is that, whenever this excessive hammering in of the old,
well-settled nail is going on, the burden of supporting existence in
the company of the two most morose and splenetic mortals in London
falls upon me. How truly has Ben Jonson said, "Apes are apes, though
clothed in scarlet!"
Have you heard, by the way, what a fearfully narrow squeak dear Lady
Invernairne had the other day? Her marriage to the middle-aged Earl
was, of course, a terrible error--though not in the sense intended by
the Parisian restaurateur whose consort's arithmetic as practised on
the customers' bills was so distinctly "against the consumer" that
Monsieur once assured one of his intimates, "Jules, mon vieux, I
would not take fifty thousand francs for the errors committed by
madame, my wife, this season alone!" No, dear, it was a mistaken
business in the sense that while she was--and still is--positively
irresistible to any right-thinking bachelor in any part of
Christendom, he soon returned to his old life of club, and
race-meeting, and card table. Naturally she has had to console
herself, and--well, the other day she was sitting at her tiny writing
table, penning a note that commenced with "My very naughty, but
delightful darling," and concluded with "Yours and yours alone, I
swear," when she became suddenly aware that the Earl had entered the
room and was standing immediately behind her, looking over her
shoulder, and doubtless reading sentences which were warm enough to
have caused growing wild flowers to droop their heads and wither.
Without an instant's hesitation she dipped her pen deep into the ink
pot, signed the letter in a bold hand "Jane Huggins," and arose with
the remark:
"There, that's done! But who in the wide world could have foreseen
the domestic servant problem reaching the point of compelling a
Countess to write her illiterate, but in all other senses desirable,
parlour-maid's love-letters?"
From the Far East there returned yesterday, torn and seared,
Lieutenant Percy Brancaster, who a year or so ago was betrothed to
the Honourable Mrs Attie Alderney, the young Meredithian widow of his
once dearest chum--at least they were at Harrow together, and Attie
never set eyes on Percy without soundly punching his head, even if he
had to run a hundred yards to do it. Percy, as you doubtless are
aware, was deeply in love with Phyllis Postance long before Attie
Alderney came along and took her, after which, poor thing! he was
like the solitary prisoner who had nothing to do and nowhere to go
when they took him out of the Bastille and destroyed it. Having left
the Navy through a breach of regulation number
two-million-eight-hundred-and-ninety-seven, concerning the method of
parting the eyebrows across the top of the nose, he became imbued
with a somewhat Quixotic and reasonless desire to go and fight on
behalf of the little yellow Japs, but had no sooner arrived in the
Ping Yang Inlet on the Ta-Tong River than a Russian torpedo-boat
handed him the distressing injury which, I am told, disqualifies him
for any active service save the compilation of some such work of
personal observation as "With Neither Side in the Late War." So
luckless a person, prematurely aged, his cheeks hollowed by long
suffering, his once golden-brown hair all etiolated and falling,
compels one's sympathy, yet one cannot quite blame Phyllis for
absolutely declining to receive, let alone resume courtship, with one
who as a husband would be completely incapable of ever making up any
little domestic disagreement which would be sure to arise from time
to time. For when the torpedo exploded, so Phyllis tells me (and she
is an advanced student of Phrenology), it carried poor Mr
Brancaster's bump of forgiveness entirely away! And yet we are
continually being told that the "horrors of war" are much overstated!
But my hand grows cramped, so, dearest, adios.
Your affectionate friend,
VIOLA.
EPISTLE II
EATON SQUARE, _Thursday, July_ 2_nd._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
For three very good reasons, each in itself sufficient, I am about to
tell you a profound secret. Firstly, I feel quite sure that absolute
secrecy is completely impossible from you; comparative secrecy where
you are concerned, dear, is only a matter of degree; so that in a
week at most my news will be all over London; Secondly, I well know
how hopelessly remote my matrimonial prospects have seemed to you,
because everyone has told me how sympathetically you have stated your
views on the subject; Thirdly, I feel it my duty as an old
schoolfellow to rekindle the spark of expectancy in your own bosom by
imparting the news that there is now one girl the less to oppose you
in the marriage market--and though, dear, I would far rather see you
develop into a sour and parchment-skinned old maid than frighten you
into making a hasty and perhaps unhappy alliance, every competitor to
disappear from the betting should inspire new life in the poor crocks
still unprofitably swelling the handicap, and especially those whose
roses are beginning to look faded, and who are, broadly speaking,
becoming manifestly frayed and shop-worn. Men, who are largely
optimists, tell us that marriage will never lose its popularity,
because if there were no marriages there would be no married women,
and if there were no married women, who would there be for the men to
make love to? But we--I should of course, say you--know differently.
Fish will not rise at bait that has been on the hook time after time,
and girls lose their bloom by being slobbered and mauled by many
triflers. In her translation of the dressing-room-guide of the
Baroness Staffe, Lady Colin Campbell flatly stated that much kissing
was extremely bad for the complexion, so though as you say--with
monotonous frequency, by the way--"we weren't doing a thing but
having a good time," it really was your trifler of the moment who
(according to his low-flash lights, poor booby!) was having the "good
time" and you who were "not doing a thing," I can feel for you. At
the bottom of that lane lies the Discard, dear Patricia.
It was on the box seat of a regimental coach at Ascot, while Botfly
was delaying the start for the Wokingham Stakes, that I accepted a
proposal of marriage from Lord Evelyn Godolphin Mountprospect,
youngest son of the Earl of Atholbrose. Being of our house party at
Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush's, at Wargrave, he had been addressing me in
rather wild superlatives all the week, but it was not until we sat
side by side upon the coach, and every head but his and mine was
turned towards where the delightful Botfly was playing the goat, that
Evelyn permitted his right arm to reconnoitre. And Evelyn--my
Evelyn--is as _svelte_ and refined as his name suggests; personally,
I have no desire to be pursued and hugged by a hairy monster, and
Plato tells us how the early athlete goes to pieces. Imagine the
loathsome lot, Patricia, of the unhappy girl united in holy matrimony
with an athlete who has unexpectedly gone to pieces! Owing to the
exercise of influence in high quarters, Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush says,
Evelyn's military duties are considerably lightened, and consist
chiefly of writing the prologues and epilogues to the plays presented
by the dramatic club and showing the general's lady guests where to
wash their hands. Contrast my Ascot, spent under these halcyon
conditions, with my only previous experience of a racecourse; when I
was driven down to Sandown Park by Mr Contango, who, being heavily in
debt to the Ring, had to get under the dogcart whenever a bookmaker
looked across the course!
Speaking of this terrible person moves me to relate to you an
adventure into which he precipitated Féo, poor wretch! only a week
ago. Mr Contango's City affairs were, I may tell you, in a very
parlous state, and what he vulgarly terms the
"Carnegie-library-compound" was very scarce. He had applied
frequently to Féo for one hundred pounds to keep his tailor quiet,
but as Féo had some months previously entrusted him with a similar
amount to pay a dressmaker's bill, and he had dishonestly expended it
in taking a ballet girl to Brighton--a positively dreadful creature
who, biting the wrong end of the asparagus at the table d'hôte (so
Noser's Detectives ascertained) cried to the waiter, "Hoy, cully,
these muddy bluebells aint half done!"--she very naturally declined.
Moreover, her health has of late been so indifferent as to have
soured her temper, and her physician despotically said that if she
did not go at once to a more genial climate, she would before long be
investigating the surprises of a future state.
Last Thursday, therefore, she and Mr Contango, followed by the
luggage brake piled high, set out for the Riviera, their destination
being Hyères, the sheltered little city which nestles beneath the
friendly Maurettes. The train by which they proposed to travel was
the eleven o'clock first-class boat express from Victoria, but
scarcely had they entered that station and alighted from their
brougham than the unexpected--by Féo, anyway--happened.
Out from the refreshment buffet rushed two big men who pounced upon
Mr Contango and grabbed him by each arm. One of them said something
about "handcuffs," but the other ruled it out as being unnecessary;
in less than twenty minutes they would be at Brixton, he said,
meanwhile if the prisoner resisted they could put him on the floor of
the cab and sit on him. As Mr Contango did naught but roll his eyes
in misery and groan quite audibly, Féo had to interplead.
"What--what do you want of my husband?" she demanded.
The elder of the two men took a blue document from his breast pocket
and replied:
"Two hundred an' forty-one pound thirteen an' fourpence."
"And what for pray?" inquired Féo.
"Judment an' costs, Copthall _versus_ Contango--Stock Exchange
differences," answered the bailiff with an air almost of personal
resentment.
For a moment or so Féo gazed with scornful disgust at the wretch who
stood cowering between his captors.
"You shambling, sheep-faced exile from Hell!" she cried, "how much
more are you going to cost me? Fade, fade, ye roses! Is it for this
that----"
But the men cut her brutally short by saying it was high time they
were moving, as they had got to fetch "another one" from Kennington
before dinner; consequently Féo realised that it was up to her to get
busy with her little oblong grey-green cheque-book or let her consort
go--Inside! Like the fool that she is, she couldn't bear to see him
buckled--indeed even as she gazed at him she was secretly longing to
throw her arms around him. All intense natures quarrel with those
they adore.
"Where can I write a cheque?" she asked of the man with the warrant.
"Come into the bar, lady," replied the bailiff, and led the way.
"To whom shall I make it payable?"
"Flight and Dobell, ma'am, Serjeants-at-Mace to the Sheriffs of
London, at your service. But it must be an open cheque to 'bearer,'
please, and my mate will remain with the gentleman while I fetch the
cash."
Féo certainly squirmed a little at the prospect of remaining in the
company of the bailiff and his prisoner while the tipstaff went to
Coutts's and returned, but there was no help for it; Mr Contango's
iron devotion to backsliding would assuredly land him in some fresh
muddle if he were left alone; meanwhile the eleven o'clock train had
passed on its way, and there was no other until nine that night.
"Please take a cab both ways," said Féo, as she handed her cheque and
a small gold coin to the officer, "and bid the driver not to spare
his cattle."
Never did ten minutes go so slowly; with the conventional
splitting-headache demanded by the occasion, Féo endeavoured to still
her nerves with tea in the buffet, but to no purpose. Eventually the
man came back, grinning his satisfaction.
"Is this wretched business ended now, pray?"
"Quite, ma'am; everythink's all-Sir-Garnet," replied the bailiff, "of
course it's not perticklarly pleasant, but we've only done our duty
and I hope, ma'am--and you too, sir--will admit as we've not exceeded
it. Should you do so, sir, this is our firm's address--pardon the
envelope but I haven't got a card about me. Good day, ma'am, and
good day to you, sir:" and they departed.
Poor fool--if only she had known! For the dirty grubby envelope
which Mr Contango instantly thrust into his pocket contained fresh
clean bank notes to the value of eighty pounds--Contango's "corner,"
or third share, in the most disgraceful conspiracy ever conceived to
victimise a wealthy wife. Mr Contango had planned the whole thing.
The imaginary "bailiff" who spoke about the handcuffs is well known
in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket as Posh Peters, "the Panton
Street Plunger," while the counterfeit "tipstaff" who smashed the
cheque is a dog-fighting publican who runs a pothouse for sports
called "The Shepherd and Flock" in Golden Square--our retained
detective pointed him out to me on the course at Ascot; he was
dressed in a yellow suit with scarlet stripes, with a leather satchel
at his waist, and a mauve opera-hat on his head; he was standing on
an upturned wine-box and bellowing, "This an' the next! The old
firm! This an' the next!"
Yet Féo has forgiven all. A blubbered promise to sin no more, and a
written first-charge on the stock of a brace of Kentish coal-mines as
innocent of the possession of a scrap of inflammable fossil as a
pickled onion, have more than made peace, and Féo and her Cecil are
slowly stewing in the balsamic sunshine in the tropical gardens of
the Hotel des Palmiers at Hyères.
By this mention of "the proscenium of the Riviera" I am reminded, by
the way, that, walking down Bond Street the other afternoon, I
encountered Gertrude Viney, now a confirmed invalid through sheer
worry. In good health, however, she was always a trifle too florid,
so that she really looks awfully well when in fact she is dreadfully
ill. As I daresay you remember, dear, she went, about eighteen
months ago, to stay with a married sister during a certain
interesting period, and became so hopelessly involved with her own
brother-in-law that the young mamma on her first day out, drove
straight to her solicitor and had a petition put on the file. The
decree nisi which resulted was made absolute only in April, the
erring Gordon Peter and Gertrude being united the self-same
afternoon. But now come the complications. Muriel proves to be in a
rapid decline and as her death alone would bring the happy pair
within the operative scope of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill--this
on the word of folks, male and female, married and single, "wives,
widows, or whatnots," as the Woman's Suffrage orator put it--they are
nursing her assiduously, and are about to give a bill-of-sale on
their guilty home in order to raise sufficient funds to give the
wronged woman the full course of the celebrated curds-and-whey cure
at Hyères. Experiencing the divine afflatus at times, poor Gertrude
has put her life's romance into a poem, an autographed copy of which
she gave me, and which I would, in turn, put before the whole world
were it not for the fact that it seems rank sacrilege to place such
pretty penmanship in the soiled hands of the practical printer. You
may form an opinion of its beautiful sentiment, however, from the
opening lines:
"As Gordon dried my tears which flowed with unabated force,
Up in the lift our lawyer rode to hand us our divorce."
Most earnestly do I hope that no black and untoward event may mar
their happiness, since it really is a most desirable alliance for
Gertrude, Gordon Peter coming of a fearfully old and original
Scottish family--so old, in fact, that it was his direct ancestor who
died of shellfish-poisoning through eating the identical mussel that
Musselburgh was named after. But before I write another line I must
turn aside to tell you of the despicable way in which Lord
Invernairne rang the bell on poor Lavinia over the trifling "Jane
Huggins" deception of which I made mention in my last.
The elderly rake, most of whose amours are even less pretentious than
were those of Zeus himself, has long been suspected by Lavinia of
pursuing the beautiful in the shape of a certain hourglass-figured
Maddox Street frock-hitcher--(the earlier vulgate had it "little
milliner," which, through gradations of "showroom sideshrine," "Busy
Lizzie the teagown model," and "Miss Never-never of the night rails,"
has subsided to "frock-hitcher"; though, bless your heart, what's in
a name, as the little Kaffir boy observed when he explained to the
missionary that he was called "Two for Tuppence" partly because he
was a twin, and partly because his father was, from his mother's
account, by no means a rich man)--who took less concern about the
salvation of her soul than that her height remained at sixty-eight
and her waist measurement at twenty inches. Well, the other morning,
Lavinia had heard the postman's knock, and had just caught sight of
Invernairne returning to a mauve envelope a letter which he had
hurriedly perused. As Lavinia swept into the room the _billet_, with
its angular feminine superscription, fell upon the tablecloth, and
she asked imperatively, "Pray, who is your solitary correspondent
this morning?" "Why, one of those confounded scoundrels that
Labouchere is always showing up!" cried the old sinner, never batting
an eyelash, never petering an inch, though the angry missive, which
still lay on the white damask, was from the little "side-shrine of
the showroom," to say that she was so unutterably sick of her
indefinite position, that unless she received a "pony" in cash (with
which to go away for a few days and forget her identity) by lunch
time, she was going to put on her red hat and blue bird's-eye skirt,
and come straight round to interview his "squaw," tear down his
tepee, and "then set fire to the prairie."
"A dod-gasted betting circular from Brussels, my darling, an alleged
state-aided raffle for a carriage and pair," he continued. "It is
perfectly monstrous that such stuff is allowed to pass through the
G.P.O.!" Men are never too crafty to rule by pretending to submit,
well knowing that a suspicious woman who has lost her temper is the
prize bunk of the universe; but it was gratuitously mean of him to
kick her as she lay in a frenzy of screaming and laughing on the
hearthrug, notwithstanding the pretty general agreement amongst
medical men that when a person is hysterical certain portions of the
body have absolutely no feeling.
Evelyn has just written to ask if he may take me on Wednesday next to
the annual show of the National Sweet Pea Society, but I am far more
desirous of going to the Music Hall Sports, if only I can decide how
best to convey to him the fact that I am aware not only of their
existence but of their proximity. And I here place it on record that
my vassalage to the music hall cause dates from my perusal of the
latest novelette of the enthralling "Peas-in-the-Pot Series"--_'Tween
the Met and the Mogul, or Who Shared her Brougham?_--for though I can
pretend neither to endorse or refute the opening chapter, in which
the soulless Waterloo Road Agent, utterly unscrupulous when in search
of fresh "talent," appears at the village picnic and doctors the
claret cup, whereby he not only ensnares all the more beautiful of
the village maidens, and precipitates an unseemly squabble between
two bishops, who doff their aprons and invite each other to "settle
it ahtside," but by the same mean subterfuge causes a rural dean to
compromise an aged lady district visitor in a shrubbery, and a
cub-curate to openly relate the story of the chimney-sweep at Epsom;
the main story is obviously inspired. Again is the keen observation
of the author apparent to his readers in the chapter in which the
heroine, on her death-bed, her frail life ebbing slowly away, has
sent for the girl who had been in the same row in the chorus with
her, with an imploring request to see her ere her spirit wings its
way to the skies, and the friend, having nerved herself for the
trying interview, stands weeping by the melancholy bedside and asks
if there is any last service she can render. "There is, there is,"
cries the dying girl, as a gleam lights up her poor wan features.
"In the top drawer of my dressing-table you will find about a bushel
and a half of somewhat sporty photographs which I shouldn't like my
Charlie to get hold of when I, alas! am no more!" And then the poor
head falls back, and an unutterable calm comes over the scene, broken
only by the sobs of the _confidante_ as she searches among the
medicine bottles to see if there isn't a solitary, but comforting,
drain of gin left; it is an intensely engaging book.
With these themes taking the place of the very breath in my nostrils,
I slipped out after dinner the other night disguised in an old
race-course coat of Féo's, and a three-cornered French feather toque,
and went for the first time in my life alone to a music hall. Had
Féo been at home she would probably, with the proverbial fickleness
of _méres_ in July, have tolled the bell on the whole proceeding; but
I fortunately picked up in the promenade of the hall quite a nice
girl, who, like myself, had given her chaperon the slip. She was
dressed in a skin-tight scarlet cutaway, with a double row of
half-sovs, saved by herself out of her cigarette allowance from her
trustee, she said; white camel-hair felt hat with emerald osprey
plume, and skirt of dove-coloured zibeline with strappings and
applique of satin in the same soft tint. Although she insisted on my
calling her "Hilda," I could find it in my heart only to give her my
name as "Jane," a piece of churlishness for which I readily made
atonement to my conscience by advancing "Hilda" the two sovereigns
without which, she said, her "beast of a landlady" was going to give
her in charge for pawning her sheets!
Though I discerned the wild generosity which led "Hilda" to assume
this recklessness in order to put me at my ease, I really laughed so
vulgarly at her irresistible drolleries that I shook one of my
garters loose, and in a desperate dive for the silver buckle and a
despairingly vicious tug at the pink silk, I drew the wretched thing
so tight that I temporarily suspended the circulation of the blood,
and put my limb in such a state of numb paralysis that I talked what
the Teutons call "gab fest," and ultimately fled in confusion. Like
the Virginienne in Vitechapelle, "whose beauty and whose black blood
alike invited insult," any sort of exit was the way out for me;
though it seemed good, when I reached home, to lie awake and go over
it all again. And I especially remembered that "Hilda" solicited me
to be sure to go to the Music Hall Sports; also that when, thinking
of dear Evelyn, I asked if I should bring a gentleman, she replied
enthusiastically, "Ray-ther! or his blooming scalp!" Moreover, she
gave me the appended programme of the various events, adding that she
herself would have been a pretty hot pigeon for the third race, but
that her "boy" was a bit of a blossom in some matters, and didn't
wish it:--
AUTHORISED PROGRAMME OF EVENTS. ONE PENNY.
1.0 p.m. ONE MILE HARE AND HOUNDS RACE.--Proprietors pursued by
Disengaged Artistes. Hares (proprietors) to receive 120 yards start,
and each Hound pulling down a Hare to receive a fortnight's
engagement at his, or her, highest West End salary. 11,473 subs.,
all Hounds. Three Hares to enter, or no race.
1.30 p.m. COMIC EXIT COMPETITION (to be won three years in
succession). The Cup, a valuable piece of Royal Porcelain with two
handles, suitable for any Leading Lady's dressing-room, is at present
held by _Mr Alec Blinkers_, who, in his highly successful sketch
entitled "Penny-a-Saucer, Pick-where-you-like," catches an imaginary
white cabbage-moth, flying above a pot of musk on the back cloth,
swallows it, falls over a coffee-stall, and goes into the wings with
a head-spin. There are five entries, as follows:
_Ben Brill_, who does the side-splitting wrassle with the dummy
policeman in "The Rozzers Club Raid";
_Harry Tee_, whose "Melodious Ironfoundry," in which he so feelingly
renders "The Blind Boy," on an engine bedplate weighing 20 cwt.,
heads the hanger at Wigan next week;
_W. Higgs_, who carries on the trunk in the first act of "The Horse
Doctor";
_Fred Hipoleon_, hind legs of the Blondin Hippopotamus; and
_The Luggage Man at Oldham_ (entered by wire).
2.0 p.m. THROWING THE CHAIRMAN'S HAMMER.--This long-popular event
has had to be abandoned, owing to the decadence of these once
flourishing officials, the last one of which has, we regret to say,
just gone off his dip in St Giles's Workhouse from a surfeit of
gin-and-water; but a prize for lady series has been substituted,
entitled:
SLINGING THE BLUE WHEEZE.--First Prize, A Gallon of Sunburn Lotion,
donated by the Southend Chemist that sees to the Sons of the
Phœnix; Second Prize, a Nansen Ice Pick and a Sealskin Mandoline,
sent by King Oscar of Sweden; Third Prize, a Japanese Pot Fern and a
Dish of Hops, by the landlord of "The Three Thugs," Lambeth Walk.
2.30 p.m. HOUSE-EMPTYING HANDICAP (Standing Record, 1 min. 11 secs.,
by the Three Brothers Mucus, the Men Toad's, at Bolivar's Varieties,
Battersea, June 27th, 1898):
Singing Navvies with "The Larboard Watch" .... Over ½ min.
Musical Clowns playing "Carnival de Venise" .... Over ¼ min.
Perpetrators, male or female, of dud ballad alluding to Ireland as
"the brightest gem in the Empire's crown" .... Scratch
Stinkerini's Performing Dogs and Monkeys .... Rec. 15 secs.
Male Quartette in "Man the Lifeboat" Rec. 20 secs.