I
Once upon a time in London there was a young gentleman who had nothing
better to do one afternoon, so what should he do but take a walk? Now he
did not set out as one on pleasure bent, but with an air of
determination that would have surprised his friends, saying between his
teeth: “I have always heard that walking is good exercise. I will try a
bit.” However, he had not walked far before circumstances compelled him
to abate his ardour, for it was an afternoon in July and quite warm for
the time of the year.
Eastward our young gentleman strode, by Sloane Street, through
Knightsbridge, across Hyde Park Corner, he strode even from Chelsea to
Mayfair; for he was by way of being a writer and lived in Chelsea,
whereas his people lived in Mayfair and understood nothing.
Now while we are about it we may as well add that the young writer’s
father was a baronet who had for some years been a perfect martyr to
bankruptcy, and had called his son to him on this afternoon to impress
upon him the fact that in future he, the young writer’s father, could
not and would not be a victim to his, the young writer’s, extravagances.
So much, then, for the young writer’s father; but with himself we must
continue yet a while, although what this tale is really about is a hand
and a flower.
For that is what he chanced to see on the afternoon we tell of, a hand
and a flower; and since it was inconceivable that the hand could belong
to a man, so white and delicate it was, he put two and two together and
decided that it could only belong to a lady. Further, there was that
about the droop of the hand which fired him to think of it as the hand
of an unhappy heart. While as for the flower, it was scarlet, and of the
sort that anyone can buy at any florist’s by just going in and saying:
“I want some carnations, please, but not white ones, please, thank you,
good-day.”
Now the sun was so high and bright over London that day that the voices
of Americans were distinctly heard rising above the polished tumult of
the Berkeley Hotel, crying plaintively for ice; and when at last our
young writer came into Mayfair he was grateful for the cool quiet
streets, but being still at some discomfort from the effects of the heat
on his person, he thought to turn into Mount Street Gardens and rest a
while beneath the trees.
This, however, he was not to do that afternoon; for it chanced that he
had not walked far towards that pleasaunce when, at that point of the
pretty quarter of Mayfair where South Street becomes North Street and
Grosvenor Square is but a step in the right direction, he was drawn to
admire a great house that stood in a walled garden. Quite a
country-house this looked like, and right in the heart of the town, so
that our young gentleman thought: “Now I wonder whose house that is. Ah,
to be rich! Or, at least, to be so attractive that rich people would
take one to their hearts on sight!”
In this wise relishing the deplorable charms of money, he had stared
long over the wall at the house in the garden had not something happened
which instantly gave his fancies a prettier turn: for what should he
suddenly espy through the curtain of leaves but a hand drooping from one
of the upper windows, and what should he espy in the hand but a scarlet
flower?
Now that made a delightful picture of innocence, of dreaming youth and
fond imagining, and not at all the sort of thing you see every day,
especially in Mayfair, where motor-cars grow from the cracks in the
pavements and ladies recline in slenderness on divans, playing with
rosaries of black pearls and eating scented macaroons out of bowls of
white jade.
Presently a policeman happened by, and the young gentleman thought to
turn from the wall and greet him in a friendly way with a view to
further conversation.
“And what,” he asked, “is the name of the lady who lives in the house
with the garden?”
“Young sir,” said the policeman severely, “that will do from you.”
“I beg your pardon!” said the young writer with spirit.
“Granted,” said the policeman severely.
“But this is absurd! I am an honest man and I have asked you an honest
question.”
The policeman unbent his expression so far as to say, with a significant
look at the great house in the walled garden: “Young sir,” said he,
“there danger lies for the likes of you. For the likes of her is not for
the likes of you.”
“Oh, nonsense!” cried our young gentleman. “This is a free country. This
is not America!”
“Is it swearing at me you are?” said the policeman severely. “Now move
on, young man, move on.”
“I will not!” cried our hero.
“Well, I will!” said the policeman, and walked away, while the young
gentleman turned away from this unsatisfactory conversation just in
time, alas, to see the scarlet flower drop from the white fingers; and
the hand was withdrawn.
Now such was the effect of the hand and the flower on the young writer’s
susceptible mind that he quite forgot to go and see his father, who
thereupon cut him off with a shilling, which he sent to the young writer
in the form of postage stamps. But the occasion was not without some
profit, albeit of the spiritual sort, to the young man; for that very
night he dreamed he was kissing that very hand, and who shall say that
that was all he dreamed, for surely he is a sorry young man who cannot
kiss more than a lady’s hand in a dream.