nominee arrived before we were up. He is at this moment gridironing
a kipper at the kitchen fire and reading aloud to our small servant
the more mirth provoking paragraphs from the "They say" column of
_Stubbs's Mercantile Gazette_. Please have the spare bed well aired.
I can walk up from the station, and leave my trunk in the cloakroom
till later, since you say that old Snowdrop is nearly due to foal.
Since Louisa took it to Southend it only fastens with a hairpin, but
lord knows there's nothing in it to shock a married railway man. So
no more, with love and kisses,
HENRIETTA."
And here must I break off, for the first bell has gone, and to-night
dinner is to be followed by that fine old country-house frolic which
has been the beginning of so many flourishing society
divorces--snapdragon with the lights out.
Thine,
VIOLA.
EPISTLE IX
EATON SQUARE, _Tuesday, February_ 15_th._
MY DEAR PATRICIA,--
How extremely dead are the pretty customs of St Valentine's Day!
Time was when the bright, lively girl who for two or three seasons
had been, as it were, a rag on every bush, used to look forward to
the 14th of February to "get the office" to become the whole garment
to some deserving young bachelor who had been reared with care. For
such, St Valentine was a sort of last chance for late chickens, as
the incubator persons say; but youths do not seem to take seriously
to matrimony now, and if by chance one proposes to a girl in a
conservatory or on the stairs, he calls round in the morning to
apologise. And valentines--the earliest of which, dear, a red brick
engraved with "Only one girl in the world for me," in cuneiform
characters, which was handed by King David, the first royal
co-respondent, through the transom in Uriah's roof, you still may see
in the British Museum--are quite things of the past. Lovesick swains
do not give, but expect to receive, valentines in these days; and
only yesterday Lady Mabel Smoothleigh was telling me how her latest
"boy" had importuned her to "send me something you have kissed." But
Mabel acted rather meanly, I think, in sending him her great athletic
husband, a person of biceps rather than a beau, and one who while
paying Mabel little attention himself is most handy at rushing up and
sticking his knee in the pit of a weakling's stomach, if he catches a
weakling even looking at Mabel on the rare occasions when he takes
her out. I have quite frequently noticed that these burly, impetuous
bridegrooms who, before marriage, exact the most definite promises
that ducksie will never, never leave their sides--not even to go to
the bathroom by herself--are the first to tire of propinquity and to
yearn to get back to the mud of the football field on Saturday to see
the Kensal Green Hotspurs lay out the Brompton Cemetery Uniteds. The
unfortunate "best boy" is dreadfully damaged, I fear, and principally
through his not putting himself, as the old-fashioned Methodists used
to say, "in a suitable attitude to receive the blessing," but really
these light-weight Josephs should make fuller inquiries.
Yesterday, let me tell you, I came perilously near falling into a new
and insensate hobby: to-day I am happily again as free and unfettered
as the yellow heathen who, getting no answer to his latest prayer,
pitches his Joss out into the back yard and dances a wild fandango on
its breast. Yesterday I hung for awhile over the yawning chasm in
which are immured "the Fancy": to-day I resume my former belief that
the toy dog, with its asthma and its silk coat, and its velvet pad
and its chronic snuffles, amounts to a public calamity. Write down
in wine upon a rose-leaf scroll, as old Omar says, that I have had a
very close shave of Caniolatry, but have got out.
I had strolled round to Grosvenor Place to carry a message from Féo
to the widowed Lady Steyning, whose only daughter is so vitiated by
having always been given her own way that she positively breeds
Blenheim spaniels in the cream-and-gold drawing room which her
anguished mother had specially modelled on that of the Viscountess
Hayashi, in "the Gardens," lower down. But Io Venusta Falconrouge
Mayleigh--a rather ancient and honourable name to be giving a
pug-nosed tyke a carbolic bath with--simply exists for her dogs; she
reads and writes and talks and dreams of nothing else--indeed she
told me in confidence she veritably believed that the fascinating
animal who tempted Eve was a fabled but unattainable ideal "cross"
between the Schipperke and the Redwillow Airedale. Such a contention
would surely have entangled even Solomon himself--though, to be sure,
the scriptural embodiment of wisdom who admitted that "the way of a
man with a maid" had him beaten out of his boots would not take much
losing nowadays. I felt dreadfully sorry for poor Lady Steyning,
however, when the last little animal to receive its ablutions
precipitated the complete outfit--basin, unguents, brushes,
everything--partly over her lovely new oyster-blue moire and
liberally upon the equally beautiful green Wilton pile carpet, for
her nerves are not strong and she suffers from a rheumatic affection
of the eyes which constant weeping only aggravates.
But maternal tears have no effect upon Io; she has long accustomed
herself to criticise her hysterical mother with considerable
precision and an utter absence of sympathy; so, with a brusque but
not unkindly "There, there, chop out the twaddle and turn off the
tears and Vi and I may come back from the Dog Show in time to take
lunch with you," she dragged me downstairs, bundled me into a hansom,
and almost before I had realised it we were bowling along the
newly-made roads inside Buckingham Gate and traversing a perfect
forest of labourers, all swinging their picks and shovels and other
armorial bearings of the fine old Brassey family.
"I confess that her eyes give her some trouble," remarked IO, as she
drew her suede gloves on in the cab, "but she's a jolly sight too
fond of calling her soul her own. The amount of 'footle,' as Mr
Crosland calls it, that my brother Bill and I put up with from her
exceeds human belief. _I_ invariably talk back at her, but Bill,
male-like, is more compassionate: he usually says nothing, taps the
butler for a tenner---that's the best of paying servants regularly:
you can always touch them for a bit if you run short--and then comes
back in three days to see how the land lies. He'd have gone to
Australia years ago, but for transportation being abolished and an
idiotic system called 'passage-money' substituted. Aha! here's
Piccadilly Circus; what do you say to a sherry and curacoa at the
Cri.; north of this point all alcohol is outside the pale of
Christian toleration?"
She has quite lost the girlishness that took Girton by storm, dear,
and the charmingly confident way in which she entered the wine bar,
and, sitting down at a small table and summoning a waiter, cried
"Small elevens for two shareholders, and get a gait on you; we're
keeping a 'fresh' horse waiting," would have compelled your
admiration. Nor was she one whit less at home at the Dog Show
itself. In her long tweed coat, cut loose enough in the back to give
play to her gathered short skirt, and the high, tan, laced boots
which only the neat-footed can wear with absolute confidence, she
strutted up and down the sawdust aisles, disinterestedly accepting a
saddle-soap or hound-glove catalogue here and criticising a "nicked"
or "trimmed" ear there, or declaring to some sister enthusiast that
fish-biscuit manufacturers were every bit as mendacious as
restaurateurs--stick to them for a month or two, and you are well
done; after that you must hunt up somebody new who has got a name to
make. I felt such an unqualified novice in dog matters that I could
have screamed out of sheer exasperation; although I feel sure that I
seemed quite deeply "in it" to Io by the hearty way she laughed when
I told her how "we"--(it was an old, old story of Mr Contango's which
I fortunately remembered)--won the Waterloo Cup with a dog who was
trained exclusively on '48 brandy, and to whose tail a firework was
adroitly attached at the psychological instant of the starting-gate
going up.
We returned to Grosvenor Place to find Lady Steyning still tearful
and distinctly not making the most of the placid middle age which
should be her welcome portion. "I do wish you had been here an hour
ago, Io, instead of dallying with your everlasting dogs," she
bleated, "Sir David Fenner, from Harley Street, has been and he
associates my _iritis_ with the gouty diathesis--_arthritic iritis_,
I think he called it. And I grieve to tell you--" (here the
inevitable weeping started)--"he made no secret of the
pro-bab-b-b-bility--" (here she broke down piteously)--"of my
becoming stone b-b-blind before very long!"
For a moment Io was manifestly embarrassed. She did not weep, but
strolling mechanically to the piano, upon the music rack of which
stood an autographed first copy of _Get Your Hair Cut_, she struck a
few treble chords to regain her composure. Then, turning, she went
and laid her right hand kindly on her mother's shoulder.
"Never mind, old sportie," she said, "you have always hated my
'everlasting' dogs; now, perhaps, you will discover the utility of
them. With 'Spotty,' or 'Dearie,' or 'Flossie' on the end of a bit
of string, and a stick to tap the pavements with, you can still
toddle round Belgravia for many years to come!"
Suiting the action to the suggestion, Io closed her eyes and,
shuffling across the room, cried in an assumed and whining voice,
"Buy a box o' lights, sir, pity the poor blind, the poor blind!" For
some reason or other, Lady Steyning burst into tears and rushed from
the room: probably, as Io hazarded, "That blessed brother of mine has
been bothering her again: he's _constantly_ upsetting her."
I think that if I were Io I should take a firmer hand with a brother
than she does. For a younger child he enjoys too many
privileges--and naturally abuses them. Lady Steyning (whom he
greatly shocked one night at the Opera by shouting out to Edouard de
Reszke, during his greatest scene in _Faust_, "Dy'e mind singing a
bit slower, old man; my French is a bit rusty and I'm blowed if I can
follow you!") thinks, for instance, that by encouraging him to go to
all the best theatres and recitals, his better nature may eventually
be appealed to and his baser propensities subdued. To this end she
has given him _carte blanche_ to ring up on the telephone her
box-office agents in Bond Street, and to have put down to her account
whatever seats he needs. He may be slowly assimilating music--and Io
says she will back him to make more noise at a music-hall bar than
Handel and Mozart and Rossini rolled together--but it is scarcely in
accordance with old-fashioned views of propriety that a firm of
high-standing in the musical world should have to render such a bill
as the following to--
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF STEYNING.
_In account with_ ---- and ----
157A Old Bond Street, W.
_To_
Feb. 10th. 1 Stage Box. Red Barn Varieties, Kilburn
(Grand "Corder" Night) . . . . . . . . . £2 2 0
" 11th. 10 Resvd. Fauteuils. Peckham Parthenon
(Testimonial to "Pills," head waiter) . 3 15 0
" 12th. 4 Dress Circles. Tabnab's Tottenham
Empire (First night of "Toffy's Trotter, or
Tannhauser in Ten Minutes") . . . . . . 0 8 0
Feb. 13th. 2 Sofa Stalls. Poplar Pavilion (Wrestling
Matinee, Acton Jim _versus_ Gunnersbury
Joe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 15 0
" 14th. Grande Loge. Bow Tivoli (Compy. Benft.,
Widow and Childn. of Fireman Gaspipe) . 3 3 0
" 15th. 2 Standing Rooms. Club Row Parthenon,
Brick Lane, E. ("Pearly" King's Select
Dog Fight) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0 0
--------
£14 3 0
And it is made all the more mortifying by the unctuous leer of the
shopman in Bond Street, who, when poor Lady Steyning (not having
perused the account) calls in to change a book or get a new piece of
music, remarks:
"Might we ask yer leddyship to favour us with yer leddyship's orders
for theatre tickets a little earlier, if possible? We very nearly
missed the four dress circ's for 'Toffy's Trotter' last Wen's'dy
through Tabnab's Empire not bein' on the telephone."
Pray what _do_ you think that preposterous girl, Euphemia Hulcot, has
just done? Being still under the impression that the "rich military
blood of Uncle Joseph" flows in her veins, she has procured an
appointment as a field-nurse in this Russo-Japanese unpleasantness,
positively! In truth, Uncle Joseph's military record was so
conspicuously unbloody that, like Dod Grile's hero, his friends
sought for him the Humane Society's leather medal for saving life;
nor did he lose his leg at Inkerman, but in the Marylebone Road while
spending the evening at the house of a man who was not at home
himself, though his wife was. Uncle's involuntary host came home
quite unexpectedly, however, and, thinking the place seemed too
crowded, picked up the blunderbuss with which his ancestor fought (on
both sides, by the way) at Naseby, and put about twelve ounces of
buckshot, some old garden nails, and various other marine stores into
Uncle Joseph's left leg just as Uncle Joseph was doing
Follow-the-man-from-Cook's out of the window--"a Joseph never was a
stayer!" as Mrs Potiphar remarked when she cast the coat-tail into
the rag-bag. Six of the smartest surgeons in all England received
Euphemia's kinsman at St Mary's Hospital, and, an hour later, when he
recovered consciousness, they told him not to worry over his lost
limb, but to consider it as a contribution to his mashing record.
To her fugitive knowledge of surgery, gathered from the four corners
of _Hahnemann Undone, or How I Spiked Homeopathy's Battery_, she has
added a course of campaign training, chiefly consisting of sleeping
on a seaweed palliasse out in the bicycle shed, and now she is
literally bursting to ring the bell on the Red Cross League. Nothing
but the Rembrandtesque hue of her tresses secured her the official
permit to join the fighting line. Said the extremely exalted Jap
person who gave it, "Every time I look at that ginger nut of yours,
puss, I think of a little bit of stuff that I left behind in
Nagasaki, and for her sweet sake alone I will slip you the trysting
place of the 10th Osaka Mounted Assassins. Hand this to their
Colonel"--here he presented her with a Chinatown washing bill--"and
he will give you the put-and-call of the field coffee-stall, such as
it is. Fare you well!"
Please the pigs and she's not pinched, Euphemia will leave Western
barbarians and the Albert Docks on Wednesday next, wearing a loose
shirtette of wax-red pongee girded to the ear-lobe with whalebone,
and confined at the waist by a gold and matrix buckle. A plain gold
necklet with topaz collets and a lucky pig charm, Harris tweed
knickerbockers held in place by orange silk galluses, and pegamoid
putties with hand-painted chrysanthemums, will complete the toilette.
She will carry a somewhat darker blouse for evening wear, and cricket
shoes, in the full expectation of having to stand in some slippery
places before she gets back; also a silver whist-register and marking
pencil, a "Little Wonder" printing-press for marking her linen,
combination purse and card-case, glove-fastener, and a small
wrist-bag containing loose change for 'bus fares, etc. Thus equipped
she will travel with every confidence, and is not a bit afraid of
falling in with Cossacks since she is quite an adept at climbing a
telegraph pole. As her aged Uncle Joseph says, she will be more in
touch with life than he was at eighteen, when he swarmed up the
lightning rod at the Girls' High School and then found the window
fastened.
On Tuesday evening, Féo having promptly gone out to play Bridge, on
being told by our housekeeper that the cellar needed re-coaling--and
as it is only when she revokes that she wins, her winning is never in
doubt--I put into practice the theory of that one of the saints who
said that, if people only knew it, there were bushels of fun to be
got out of being good, by "observing" Lent at the delightful Shrove
Tuesday Ball at Covent Garden; and the only living being that knows
how I returned at daybreak on Ash Wednesday is the obliging market
porter who drove my car home, my chauffeur having been laid out
during a misunderstanding with the coachman of the brougham
immediately in his rear concerning the smell of his escaping petrol.
Our chauffeur, I have heard Mr Contango say, entertains the idea that
he can "go a bit with his fly-dusters," in which case the man from
the brougham must have been a veritable specialist, for our
white-mackintoshed servitor went out like an egg-shell caught in a
whirlwind. Even when the police recovered all that was left of him,
there was no place to lay it out, so many dancing couples from the
country having turned up quite unexpectedly, that the limited
accommodation of the Bijou Temperance Hotel was dreadfully
over-taxed--indeed, the last Earl and Countess to arrive, yawning
like craters, had, I am told, to put up with the boot cupboard on the
lower landing.
This particular Ball was promoted, I imagine, in a purely devotional
spirit, Messrs Rendle and Forsyth believing, with some accuracy, that
men fast more willingly and spontaneously after an all-night tag;
though it differs, I am also informed, from the dramatic annuals of
other days in that the gentlemen who come chiefly to fight are never
allowed to get in the way of the dancers. Save that, in the
grand-circle, Lord Staffa of Iona (who is said to be so deeply
interested in the dramatic career of Miss Elfie Delorme, of Daly's,
and who was giving supper to a small party) dealt out a black eye to
the Viscount Tynwald, one of his guests, for facetiously passing the
Chateau Lafitte to a lady who had only asked for the vinegar; and
that, in the corridor, two gentlemen from the Stock Exchange had a
lightning mix-up on one remarking on being introduced to the other's
lady, that formalities were a bit superfluous seeing that he had been
fairly rancid on the bird himself some seven years ago; one might
have been in almost any Belgravian drawing-room.
Oh yes! there was one other gentleman who drew a Jonah ticket. For
the moment I forget his name, but it was in all the papers some few
months ago, when he staggered humanity by marrying his mother's maid
instead of strangling her; and on Tuesday night he suddenly
recognised her, though dominoed and masked, by the exceptional colour
of her silk hose when she fell down during the Lancers. Of course,
she was under the escort of her husband's oldest and dearest college
chum (just as, in lower circles and the popular ballad, it is always
that fun-loving economist "the lodger"); and, in order to plaster the
walls of their private box on the second tier with the brains of the
guilty pair, the wretched youth borrowed a hatchet from a fireman and
ascended the stairs. He hammered on the box door; but, even as it
flew open, his courage failed him, and murmuring, "No, no, I still
love her too much to kill her," would have retired, axe and all, but
for the numerous cohort of disappointed dancers that had followed for
the express purpose of seeing that he did not do so. No sooner
therefore did the guilty woman, grasping the situation, ask the crowd
what it meant by this intrusion, since the cavalier at her side was
the kindest friend she knew, and a real good old thing while he
lasted, than an athletic young stranger who had been handling iron
bridges on the Upper Nile, stepped out and gave hubby one on the
submaxillary gland and two on the bugle before he could exclaim,
"Ooch!" and they took him away, I am told, on a hooded stretcher.
As to the dresses, dear, many of them were ravishing enough to have
restored a madman to his senses! One of the most daring was,
perhaps, "Appendicitis," worn by a shapely blonde girl attired in a
mere ham-frill of aseptic nun's-veiling, caught up at the side by a
scalpel and a bistoury, crossed; completeness being secured by a
large grape-seed carried between the fair wearer's languourous red
lips. She was awarded by acclamation a huge kettle, and was told to
take it home and treasure it as it would be her last whisper in
_that_ show. Many men turned round to look a second time at "Skip
the Gutter," an ordinary champagne muslin walking-dress, the skirt of
which was carried knee high to display cochineal silk socks and opera
sandals. I wish I had been able to ascertain the name of the builder
of this striking creation, but before I could get through the crowd,
the fair wearer had disappeared--slipped out to see if the weather
seemed likely to clear up, the policeman at the door said. A
beautiful St John's Wood widow, who since her gallant young husband's
death at the front, has gone every night to some function or other,
being too nervous to sleep alone and having not a friend on earth
except the man who happens to be with her, looked perfectly
distracting in whipped cream crêpe de chine, with pink Banksia roses
and raspberry underpinning--an exceedingly rococo combination.
Much more I might have had to tell you had I not been most
effectually held up on the staircase by the Earl of Thirstington, who
had temporarily renounced everything but whisky-and-seltzer, and who,
not penetrating my disguise, would certainly have hugged me where I
stood had I not addressed him sternly by his family title and
threatened him with all sorts of dire penalties if he did not permit
me instantly to pass. Steadied somewhat by the sound of his own
name, he implored me to unmask, but finding me inflexible, he assured
me that since mating unhappily in order to please his people, about
two years ago, he had continually prayed that Death might overtake
him, in which earnest petition his inapposite spouse had frequently
joined. He had now happened to hear by the merest accident that
divorces were practically free in a place called Oklahoma, and if I
would only accompany him to some lonely island where we could live
Crusoe fashion until he got his decree and Southern Pacific's went
above 63 again, he would be a white man and make me his Countess!
Only think of it, Patricia! And it was only in October last that we
all went down to his private chapel at Drouth Park to the unveiling
of the stained glass window which he erected to the memory of his
wife who, in the previous August, died of grief at realising that he
did not kiss her as ardently as formerly!
It was a very realistic bit of acting that I put in then, Kid!
Giving him my left glove, and permitting him to kiss the tips of my
fingers only, I told him he might inscribe his tablets with the name
of "Elsie" and ring up 55793, Holborn, some time when he had a
lighter load on. Fitly humbled by this admonition, he replied that
in about ten hours he should ask me to join him at lunch at the
Imperial, and if from any cause I could not or would not turn up, I
should be performing a distinct service to his family by calling at
Vine Street, and requesting the police to have the fountain basins in
Trafalgar Square dragged.
But, like Cinderella, I must do a timely duck; besides, February is
all too short for long letters.
Thine,
VIOLA.
EPISTLE X
ROYAL YORK HOTEL, BRIGHTON, _March_ 11_th._
DEAREST PATRICIA,--
Your little note, forwarded to me from Eaton Square, came to hand
yesterday, and just as soon as I have finished my breakfast I purpose
forwarding to you in commemoration of the birthday of which you
unselfishly remind me--(I would, by the way, cheerfully send you my
breakfast also, but that a delicious kedgeree and a perfect champagne
cup would be quite thrown away on a person whose changeless morning
meal for years has consisted of a stiff brandy-and-soda and a
splitting headache)--a beautiful little sapphire and diamond
spittoon, which I fortunately saw in a shop window in King's Road
yesterday. My memory is less definite concerning the total of your
years, but considering you have had about four birthdays per annum
since you became acquainted with the fact that I possess real money
in my own right, you cannot be far short of sixty.