meets has turned out such particularly sour pickles on her, fatuously
imagined that a woman who could hold her own with the bookmakers upon
a racecourse would be more than a match for a lazy, feminine,
Carlylean boy who falls asleep directly after dinner whenever he has
been out in the fresh air during the afternoon, and she took him
against everyone's advice. At Lincoln they were closer than onions
on a string; but between the Grand National and the Guineas', her
infatuation waned to comparative boredom, and, by Epsom, boredom had
given way to positive loathing. At Ascot he proved a hopelessly
out-of-date dervish; and she brought him to the London Cup at
Alexandra Park only because she had lately discovered a particularly
smart cabman, called "Mint-sauce Fred," on the Wilton Road rank, and
the man seemed inclined to get too pally. But the climax came at
Goodwood, where Hilda had looked forward to a very big week, not only
because tips to servants are expected to be lavish, but by reason of
the subsequent draining month's "rest," in which nerves and glands
and organs and muscles have to be renewed, while one is not winning a
single steever.
The mid-day sun had spurred back the morning haze peculiar to the
Southdowns, as Hilda and her marital incubus drove up the hill to
Goodwood, from where Lavant lay buried in the quiet bosom of the
woods. To any woman whose cheval-glass had spoken as eloquently on
the subject of white serge as Hilda's had done, it should have been a
day, if not of triumph, still of heavenly peace; yet the rapturous
song of the lark and the happy droning of the bees only served to
accentuate the misery of her merciless matrimonial mistake and dangle
it before her eyes. It was maddening only to think of what she must
endure during the next four days with the highly-necessary bookmakers
on the one hand and the utterly unprofitable mature male suckling on
the other. When the carriage drew up at the wicket-gate, Hilda was
at boiling point, and, turning to the right and leading the way into
the plantation of elms and beeches, beneath the boughs of which full
half a thousand powdered lackeys unpacked huge hampers of damask
napery and shimmering glass and glistening silver, she cried aloud
with withering scorn to the lord and master she despised:
"Now, dog, which tree will you sit under while I go and get you your
living?"
Stung to the quick, whatever that may be, Percy, like Cambronne,
hissed but a single word; the next instant strong but servile hands
were hauling him out of the wreck of the Duke of Ravensbury's cold
collation, and five score of astonished onlookers realised that if a
hand only does take 5¾ in white suede gloves, it is astounding how
hard and how straight it can hit. By what subterfuge he, being
practically penniless, contrived to return to town is not known, but
as he was last seen entering a small calico tent on which was legibly
inscribed "ACCOMMODATION," it is reasonable to assume that he had
recourse to these nomadic, but extremely convenient, financiers of
the racecourse for the purpose of raising upon his gun-metal watch a
small sum sufficient to pay his railway fare to London; meanwhile, as
"language" is constructive "cruelty" in the eye of the law, Hilda
will probably pursue Percy on the first day when there is no racing,
and hit him again.
But, speaking of nomads, what an extraordinary vogue the Bond Street
fortune-tellers are enjoying! Clairvoyantes is, perhaps, the more
acceptable term, though no two of the visionists acknowledge the same
denomination nor pursue the same mystic methods. Thus, Madame Hagar,
of Grafton Street, poises a crystal ball upon a flower vase, while
Madame la Moravie, of Bruton Street, toys only with the subject's
finger-tips. Again, Madame Belisardas Brown, of Clifford Street,
psychometrises over a lady's glove, whereas Madame Teresona Topping,
of Cork Street, her sister--(and many believers in the
"blood-thicker-than-water" aphorism readily allow Belisardas and
Teresona to be thicker than both put together)--has been known to
call loudly for, and even detain, a gentleman's trousers. It is,
after all, the observant and intelligent crossing-sweeper at the
corner who crystallises all the clairvoyancy that has come under his
notice into, "'Ere, it's this way: Laidy arrives in a
bro'um--Interval o' two minnits--Toff drives up in an 'ansom.
'Cleer-voyancy' yer calls it? Well, I'm---tongue-tied!"
It was as late as half-past eight the other evening, when all the
world was supposed to be at dinner, that Captain Throatlash, the
gallant society playwright who, should his country suddenly require
his presence, would be quite prepared to tread the icy Steppes of
Russia in his dress pumps, ascended Madame Hagar's little dark
staircase in Grafton Street, and awaited with some impatience the
arrival of Lady Constance Edenhall. Each wished, from perfectly
innocent and dissimilar motives, no doubt, to consult the oracle; the
Captain, possibly, because he had an appalling access of dramatic
work to get through in which the present state of affairs in the Far
East constituted a perpetual menace to his personal peace; Lady
Constance, perhaps, because she feared to order a new evening frock
before ascertaining if it be true that, according to all the bibles,
vedams, and alcorans of the Rue de la Paix, the waist-line is shortly
to vanish entirely. But Lady Constance was shockingly late; indeed
it was not until 8.49 that the noble Captain, hearing the stairs
squeak, arose quickly from his chair, and pulling open the door
beheld--Lord Huntley Edenhall!
"Hullo, Reggie, old sportsman!" cried his lordship, genuinely
surprised, "why, what the blazes attracts a chap like you to such a
peep-show as this?"
"Fact is, dear lad," replied Reginald Throatlash, "my little woman
left her--er--_umbrella_ either here or elsewhere this morning and I
called in on the off-chance of hearing of it. Same time I'd have
laid a million to one against meeting you here?"
"Yes--er--well," drawled Lord Huntley, wondering if the kid from
Daly's could possibly have been such a silly little devil, after his
most explicit instructions, as to go to the _other_ Grafton Street in
the wilds of Fitzroy Square; "it's a dam funny coincidence, don't ye
know, but my little missis was here this morning, too, in order
to--er--er, see if the--er, magic ball, could indicate the present
whereabouts of her long lost--er, lucky pig--yes, yes, her _lucky
pig_, and I just dropped in to inquire in what manner the--er,
miraculous crystal had acquitted itself of the mandamus of confidence
she had given it. But, of course, it's all tommy-rot, isn't it?"
"With all deference, I think _not_," replied Throatlash, with the
impudent reassurance of one who has suddenly spotted the way out of
the maze, "I may, indeed, tell you, quite soberly and seriously, that
I not only believe in, but actually practice, these occult sciences,
and I have already attained sufficient power in them to compel at
will--mark me, Huntley, I say again, compel--the attendance of any
living person within the salt boundaries of the British Isles. Let
me give you a demonstration: name somebody?"
"G'wan! You don't mean it, surely?"
"Never was more in earnest in my life: come, name somebody?"
"Right oh, old sporty; take your pick--Hackenschmidt--Tolstoi--that
little girl that keeps the humming-top stall at the Exhibition--the
captain of the _Pinafore_--Marie Corelli--Sunny Jim----"
"Tut, tut!" ejaculated Throatlash, pettishly "I did not invite you to
play the fool."
"Nor did I invite you to take me for one, Throatlash, please remember
_that_!" retaliated Lord Edenhall, hotly.
"I have done nothing of the kind. I shall proceed, as I said, to
demonstrate----"
"Nonsense, nonsense!" cut in Edenhall. "You are talking as though
you were the birdcage-man at the music-halls. Is it intoxication or
indigestion: drink or only a dressed-crab? Because----"
"It is neither, sir, neither!" shouted Throatlash, "I mean to make
you admit----"
"Don't shout at me, sir," interposed Edenhall, imperiously.
"Remember never to raise your voice to a gentleman unless your house
is on fire."
"I ask your pardon," apologised Throatlash, with magnificent
bitterness; then swallowing his choler with all the desperation of an
emu taking down a football, he bowed like any shopwalker and humbly
begged that, as a parting favour, his erstwhile friend would answer
him one question--one only. Was the admirable Lady Constance at
present at home at Grosvenor Gardens?
"Not this evening," laughed Edenhall, with amused contempt.
"H'm. Is it too much of me to ask where she may be?" continued
Throatlash, mildly, yet not without confidence.
"It's twice as much as you had permission to ask," replied Lord
Percy, wearily, "but I don't mind gratifying your vulgar curiosity:
Lady Constance is presiding over a Watercress Mission, at Battersea."
"IS she?" screamed Reginald Throatlash, his bloodshot eyes flashing
their resentment as, throwing up his arms and becoming a human ikon,
he executed a rapid series of cabalistic calisthenics as though he
were drawing from the ceiling itself the invisible fishing-nets of
Wynken, Blynken, and Nod. Then in dramatic tones he cried,
"Approach, Constance Isobel Bobitwell Edenhall!" and before the echo
of his voice had time to die away, or Mother Hagar could withdraw her
affrighted countenance from between the curtains which masked the
inner chamber, a familiar footfall sounded on the creaking stairs
and--in strode the Lady Constance Edenhall!
"_Now_, sir," bellowed Throatlash, rushing up to the beautiful woman
who stood, mute, pale and with dilated eyes, and grasping her chin
before her wholly unaffected stupor should turn to hysterics, "now,
sir, what about your 'drink and dressed-crabs'; now, sir, what are
the extreme odds that you offer about 'the birdcage-man at the
music-halls,' eh?"
"Marvellous! Stupendous! I am whacked to the world!" exclaimed Lord
Percy, extending his hand. "Old friend, I ask ten thousand pardons;
if you have no better place to lunch at to-morrow, will you---
"Softly, softly, do not wake her; we can talk of lunch some other
time," said the magnanimous Throatlash. "Take her home quietly and
hand her over to her maid, lest the shock affect her brain.
Good-bye."
Ever of thee,
VIOLA D.
EPISTLE VI
EATON SQUARE, _Tuesday, Novr._ 3_rd._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
Though there mercifully exists for all who like yourself lack brains,
the consolation of religion, you have too long denied yourself the
diversion of consulting Mother Hagar, for the police called upon her
yesterday; and all that is to be seen in her deserted room to-day is
the ivy garland which she sometimes wore, smiling in pathetic
significance from the dirty hearthstone upon which it fell when the
rough-and-tumble started. When Hagar assumed her flame-coloured robe
this morning it was, alas! her final assumption; the taking down of
her raven locks, her antepenultimate take-down. None know definitely
who "put her away"; probably her own recklessness, born of undreamt
of success, was the chief cause. Her sugared impertinences went down
well enough for a while but she should have been more careful to
master the art of walking on eggs without breaking them before the
gin began to tell on her. Quite likely is it that her dissolution
was brought about through her foolishly promising some
billowy-bosomed barmaid enjoyments and sensations which are
dogmatically denied to the working-classes; or she may have
carelessly given to some married woman being sued by her
dress-makers, the address of a millionaire who had been three months
dead and buried; or there is yet one other possibility:
I daresay you remember (for the sequel is too long to go into the
preceding sentence) the celebrated cause of Smith _versus_ Smith and
Dounecastle, the reports of which caused more than one bursting
society bud of three seasons ago to recant Rosetti and embrace the
_Evening Standard_? Also how, as soon as a long-empanelled jury,
that was fading visibly for want of fresh air and red meat with
gravy, had recorded its verdict and, rising as one man, had warmly
complimented Mr Smith on regaining his freedom from wedlock with a
woman with whom marriage was so entirely superfluous, the simple old
peer bigamously married Mrs Smith at a registry office, foolishly
committing perjury for the purpose? Well, he has since become the
father of two girl babies--at least, so their mother says, but you
never can tell--and as a son and heir was more ardently to be desired
and something of the kind was daily imminent, he last week sought to
ease his mind by consulting Madame Hagar.
Much that she told him--as, for instance, that he would go to the
Empire and meet a tall "spade" girl who had been insulted by her
landlady and was going to move round into Winchester Street as soon
as she could afford it; that, in another large building, of Moorish
architecture, he would speak to a "heart" girl with blue eyes, who
would look ten years worse for wear than when he last saw her in '99,
and she also would allude to money matters, being urgently pressed
for a sufficient sum to bury her deceased mother, to send her invalid
little sister on a sea voyage, and to replace eight pounds belonging
to another girl which the slavey had stolen from the vase on the
mantelpiece; finally, that while riding in a public, white conveyance
towards an _al fresco_ entertainment with military bands and boats,
he would pinch the knee of a perfect stranger and ultimately
undertake a journey with her--was doubtless true, but highly
irrelevant; it is the nature of necromancers, however, to
prevaricate. Eventually she discerned within the crystal a fleeting
current event, and cried:
"Yes, yes! All is over--thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen; the
gods on high Olympus have once more frosted you from head to
foot--seventeen, eighteen, nineteen; it an another girl!"
"Too bad to be true! Too bad to be true!" gasped the peer, with a
dreadfully dished look in his eyes as he collapsed into a curule
chair made out of a beer-stand. "For heaven's sake have another
look, missis?"
In mute obedience, the harridan burnished the crystal globe with her
flannel sleeve and peered into it again, but she only shook her head
dolefully. Then did a none too opulent son of a marquis, whose
future seemed to consist mainly in populating the burlesque stage of
1922, steer straight for his club, there to wallow in old brandy as
only one can whose simple faith in all mankind has been mercilessly
arm-locked and thrown clear off the mat.
Judge, then, of the Earl's great joy next morning when the club
servant who restored him to consciousness with prussic acid, showed
him in the _Times_ the announcement of the birth of a son! Imagine
also the righteous ire, unequalled even by that of the pious, but
somewhat deaf, old lady who threw a water-bottle at Nansen for
speaking jokingly of the Equator, with which he started out for
Grafton Street to rate the specious charlatan who had clumsily
condemned him for four-and-twenty hours to alcohol and blank despair!
Nor would the obstinate old thing admit that she was miffed. Being
without a servant, she said, her globes had not been properly
polished that morning, and, the crystal becoming somewhat
finger-marked and mottled, must account for her making one or two
trifling miscues. It is not surprising if at boiling point old
Dounecastle petitioned the police to blue-pencil Hagar vigorously.
But necromancy is not the new fad you think it, indeed, I have
wondered for years how a sensible old gentleman like Victor Hugo, the
greatest lyrical poet that France has seen (though some of the more
stiff-necked of the Immortals never could forgive his singing "I'm
living with mother now" at one of their banquets, and then excusing
himself on the ground that the girl looked old enough to be, anyway),
ever could have been a wizard's dupe. But it now transpires that he
was a mere tool in the hands of the fascinating Comtesse de
Camembert, who, detecting in him unmistakable signs of fatty
degeneration of the cerebrator, got him at the _planchette_, and,
between the Comte, her husband (compelled by his wife to wear a
galvanic belt, and wrathfully attributing it to the poet's
recommendation) pulling in front, and herself shoving behind, they
had poor Victor at loggerheads with his dearest friends nearly all of
the time. The charming Comtesse, of whom contemporary writers speak
as having been "all there and full measure," and whom the jealous
Comte would probably have divorced had she not been the only woman in
Paris who understood how to cut his corns properly, obtained such
complete control over the cheery old poet that, whenever he received
his quarterly envelope from his publisher, his only way of reserving
it for his own use was to bury it behind the shrubbery, or leave it
in his locker at the Turkish Bath. Otherwise the delightful lady,
whose great-grandfather (more to the shame of her great-grandmother)
was of royal blood, thought nothing of sending to the Rue de la Paix
for a new lilac _Samedi-à-Lundi_ turn-out, and then crying scornfully
to Victor, as she shoved Virot's bill under his nose, "Have you got
the sand to endorse that?" Nine times out of ten he did so, for the
Comtesse, tall and slender as a young poplar, was an imposing figure,
when well frocked, for a struggling man of letters to be seen about
with after the bright-lights had dawned and cab fares were doubled;
moreover, the couple had an amiable and economical understanding
between themselves by which she invariably chalked up their little
dinner at Paillard's to her husband, while Hugo's own visiting-card
was always good for two fauteuils at any of the houses where they
were not playing to over much money.
All this was long, long ago, dear, yet many persons believe to this
day in the _planchette_ as a means of increasing the value of
handwriting from a scientific standpoint; indeed, only last July
young Monty Clondalkin (who got his troop at Hounslow after
heroically suppressing a civilian riot, caused by an electric car
conductor's refusal to allow an elderly native lady to ride as far as
Twickenham, without paying full fare for a hive of live bees which
she was carrying in her lap; the man contending that the hive should
have occupied a seat, even if the bees had been left to select their
own seats, or stand; but who, with countervailing misfortune, had to
retire on half pay after being dangerously hit in the antipodes of
his face by a paleozoic boulder from a jingal during the firing of a
_feu de joie_ by our allies at Thibet) was telling us at dinner one
night of a very striking manifestation which he himself had
witnessed. Knowing that he could catch nothing which he hadn't had
about twice already, he boldly visited in a one-roomed cellar
somewhere off the Euston Road, a certain Madame Ingomar, and, having
straddled the ante, asked how to gain the lasting affection of the
girl he loved and was to meet at Henley. The reply from the other
world, via _planchette_, ran: "Win a million on Egyptian Beauty at
Alexandra Park, and let her look at it"; and, though he had to lay
eight millions to one on, dear, he brought it off!
This so impressed me with the virtues of the little board that, in
the week before Goodwood, being sick of the sweet sisterhood which
sticks to the Plantation, and yet needing the golden pinions with
which to fly to the Ring, I hunted up dear old Phyllis Waring, who
has made it up with Eustace, and is living in Knightsbridge in a
delightful flat whose back windows overlook the Park, and begged her
to get a _planchette_ between us. Neither she nor I had the faintest
notion where such things were sold, but after much searching, Phyllis
found one in a small _bric-à-brac_ shop in that queer neighbourhood
which lies between the Royalty and Palace theatres, where
Madonna-like ladies, attired chiefly in white tarlatan chemisettes,
peep out of upper windows, and where black bearded men loll about the
doorways of little pink and gold restaurants as though perpetually
waiting for something to happen. Did not the Reverend Somebody, of
the Church and Stage Guild, once have a chapel here in which the
choristers appeared in tights? I fancy so.
Anyhow, Phyllis no sooner got it home than she summoned me to inspect
it--a small wooden disc, dear, resembling nothing so much as an
artist's palette. For an alleged novelty, it struck me as being
rather soiled and dusty, but Phyllis assured me that we had the
veritable thing; that the ancients knew it well, the two best
remembered apothegms of Terence being "You can always make a market
with a bear _planchette_," and _Actum ne agas_, or, "Don't overdo
it." Upon a small table placed in the centre of the room, Phyllis
deposited the little board and switched off the electric light. For
several minutes an awful and oppressive stillness reigned, broken
only by a faint, half-stifled feminine voice exclaiming, "You _will_
marry me, won't you?" which Phyllis said came from the Park at the
back, and was no part of the séance whatever. Slowly, very slowly,
the moments dragged along; then presently there came a slight sound
as of a penholder tapping on a pill box, and Phyllis said, hoarsely
and in sepulchral tones:
"The spirit of Madame Rachel asks the loan of an ear. She might as
well bowl her hoop without wasting our time, I think; what with
electric rollers and frown plasters we've got her ticketed as a
mummy?"
I nodded assent, and many more moments of silence elapsed, followed
by a grating noise as of the run down of a musical box.
"According to the old woman at the shop," said Phyllis, "the spirits
notify that it's up to us to tilt back to them."
"Do they take this for a jackpot?" I asked, quite inoffensively.
"Never mind what they take it for," snapped Phyllis, "let us get them
to give us an option in something on the Stock Exchange that is going
to go a bit higher."
"Oh, fiddles to _that_!" said I, having no more desire to know
anything of the kind than How-to-tell-the-gas-meter, illustrated by
diagrams. "Rather get them to slip us the winner of the Steward's
Cup?"
Sullenly, Phyllis amended her pleadings and submitted my question.
In about five minutes, during which period the low plumbean purring
of a marking-pencil was distinctly audible, there came the click
which denotes the termination of a message, and Phyllis, snatching up
the prize, carried it out into the light. Bristling with joyous
anticipation, I followed, but only in time to hear her swear and see
her smash the wooden thing across her knee and pitch it out of the
window on to the moonlight prowlers in the Park.
"You were quite right about that dust, Vi," she said, sourly. "I
have been lumbered on to a fake that was timed to strike seventeen
years ago. The thing napped 'Crafton, win and shop!'"
Did I tell you, I wonder, in my last how those awful people, the
Invernairne's, had fallen out again? Everyone is saying how worn and
rundown she is beginning to look, and how much better it would be if
only she could go away for a time. I don't mean to one of those
dreadful places where seemingly intelligent old gentlemen caterwaul
and hide themselves in mignonette beds, and perfectly blameless old
ladies disrobe suddenly at the dinner-table and weep copiously into
the soup tureen, because they are not as pure and unsullied as new
milk-cans, but to some nerve-restoring retreat where she could
recuperate without having strangers stare holes in her. Poor Maisie!
when she married the middle-aged Invernairne she was quite one of the
wits of the smart set, and, if not exactly a belle of letters
herself, she had received many and many a bushel from the beaux of
literature, principally respecting appointments. Never an ardent
advocate of the tied-house system, her cultured soul and innate good
taste had rebelled against the constant and vulgar propinquity of
matrimony, which she had endeavoured to vary by bolting on seven
different occasions with men who were all that could be desired,
socially. Her prosaic husband had followed her up on each occasion,
however, and, begging her to give marriage a fair and dispassionate
trial, had brought her back again and again, until her once pellucid
spirit became crushed and broken, and she was no more fun to talk to
than a Trappist.
Quite lately she imported from Lausanne a tall, dark Swiss maid who
had repented of some early rashness, and vowed that her future life
should be one unending struggle against the promptings of nature.
Gowned demurely in some simple clinging material which, as the
_Family Herald_ says, accentuated rather than hid her graceful
outline, Fanchon flitted lightly and swiftly up and down the
Invernairne staircases, save when the Earl detained her on a landing
to tell her how nicely her new bodice fitted her.