"Oh, Geraldine! Oh, Geraldine!
You are the loveliest heroine!
I never read about one before
That made me want to write more
Poetry. And your Venetian eyes,
They must have been an awful size;
And black and blue, and like your hair,
And your nose and chin were a perfect pair."
and so on for ages.
The other letters were all saying what a beautiful chapter "Beneath the
Doge's Home" was, and how we liked it better than the other chapters
before, and how we hoped the next would be like it. We found out when
all too late that H.O. had called it the "Dog's Home." But we hoped this
would pass unnoticed among all the others. We read the reviews of books
in the old _Spectators_ and _Athenaeums_, and put in the words they say
there about other people's books. We said we thought that chapter about
Geraldine and the garters was "subtle" and "masterly" and
"inevitable"--that it had an "old-world charm," and was "redolent of the
soil." We said, too, that we had "read it with breathless interest from
cover to cover," and that it had "poignant pathos and a convincing
realism," and the "fine flower of delicate sentiment," besides much
other rot that the author can't remember.
When all the letters were done we addressed them and stamped them and
licked them down, and then we got different people to post them. Our
under-gardener, who lives in Greenwich, and the other under-gardener,
who lives in Lewisham, and the servants on their evenings out, which
they spend in distant spots like Plaistow and Grove Park--each had a
letter to post. The piano-tuner was a great catch--he lived in Highgate;
and the electric-bell man was Lambeth. So we got rid of all the letters,
and watched the post for a reply. We watched for a week, but no answer
came.
You think, perhaps, that we were duffers to watch for a reply when we
had signed all the letters with fancy names like Daisy Dolman, Everard
St. Maur, and Sir Cholmondely Marjoribanks, and put fancy addresses on
them, like Chatsworth House, Loampit Vale, and The Bungalow, Eaton
Square. But we were not such idiots as you think, dear reader, and you
are not so extra clever as you think, either. We had written _one_
letter (it had the grandest _Spectator_ words in it) on our own
letter-paper, with the address on the top and the uncle's coat-of-arms
outside the envelope. Oswald's real own name was signed to this letter,
and this was the one we looked for the answer to. See?
But that answer did not come. And when three long days had passed away
we all felt most awfully stale about it. Knowing the great good we had
done for Albert's uncle made our interior feelings very little better,
if at all.
And on the fourth day Oswald spoke up and said what was in everybody's
inside heart. He said--
"This is futile rot. I vote we write and ask that editor why he doesn't
answer letters."
"He wouldn't answer that one any more than he did the other," said Noel.
"Why should he? He knows you can't do anything to him for not."
"Why shouldn't we go and ask him?" H.O. said. "He couldn't not answer us
if we was all there, staring him in the face."
"I don't suppose he'd see you," said Dora; "and it's 'were,' not 'was.'"
"The other editor did when I got the guinea for my beautiful poems,"
Noel reminded us.
"Yes," said the thoughtful Oswald; "but then it doesn't matter how young
you are when you're just a poetry-seller. But we're the discerning
public now, and he'd think we ought to be grown up. I say, Dora, suppose
you rigged yourself up in old Blakie's things. You'd look quite twenty
or thirty."
Dora looked frightened, and said she thought we'd better not.
But Alice said, "Well, I will, then. I don't care. I'm as tall as Dora.
But I won't go alone. Oswald, you'll have to dress up old and come too.
It's not much to do for Albert's uncle's sake."
"You know you'll enjoy it," said Dora, and she may have wished that she
did not so often think that we had better not. However, the dye was now
cast, and the remainder of this adventure was doomed to be coloured by
the dye we now prepared. (This is an allegory. It means we had burned
our boats. And that is another.)
We decided to do the deed next day, and during the evening Dicky and
Oswald went out and bought a grey beard and moustache, which was the
only thing we could think of to disguise the manly and youthful form of
the bold Oswald into the mature shape of a grown-up and discerning
public character.
Meanwhile, the girls made tiptoe and brigand-like excursions into Miss
Blake's room (she is the housekeeper) and got several things. Among
others, a sort of undecided thing like part of a wig, which Miss Blake
wears on Sundays. Jane, our housemaid, says it is called a
"transformation," and that duchesses wear them.
We had to be very secret about the dressing-up that night, and to put
Blakie's things all back when they had been tried on.
Dora did Alice's hair. She twisted up what little hair Alice has got by
natural means, and tied on a long tail of hair that was Miss Blake's
too. Then she twisted that up, bun-like, with many hairpins. Then the
wiglet, or transformation, was plastered over the front part, and Miss
Blake's Sunday hat, which is of a very brisk character, with half a blue
bird in it, was placed on top of everything. There were several
petticoats used, and a brown dress and some stockings and hankies to
stuff it out where it was too big. A black jacket and crimson tie
completed the picture. We thought Alice would do.
Then Oswald went out of the room and secretly assumed his dark disguise.
But when he came in with the beard on, and a hat of Father's, the others
were not struck with admiration and respect, like he meant them to be.
They rolled about, roaring with laughter, and when he crept into Miss
Blake's room and turned up the gas a bit, and looked in her long glass,
he owned that they were right and that it was no go. He is tall for his
age, but that beard made him look like some horrible dwarf; and his hair
being so short added to everything. Any idiot could have seen that the
beard had not originally flourished where it now was, but had been
transplanted from some other place of growth.
And when he laughed, which now became necessary, he really did look most
awful. He has read of beards wagging, but he never saw it before.
While he was looking at himself the girls had thought of a new idea.
But Oswald had an inside presentiment that made it some time before he
could even consent to listen to it. But at last, when the others
reminded him that it was a noble act, and for the good of Albert's
uncle, he let them explain the horrid scheme in all its lurid parts.
It was this: That Oswald should consent to be disguised in women's
raiments and go with Alice to see the Editor.
No man ever wants to be a woman, and it was a bitter thing for Oswald's
pride, but at last he consented. He is glad he is not a girl. You have
no idea what it is like to wear petticoats, especially long ones. I
wonder that ladies continue to endure their miserable existences. The
top parts of the clothes, too, seemed to be too tight and too loose in
the wrong places. Oswald's head, also, was terribly in the way. He had
no wandering hairs to fasten transformations on to, even if Miss Blake
had had another one, which was not the case. But the girls remembered a
governess they had once witnessed whose hair was brief as any boy's, so
they put a large hat, with a very tight elastic behind, on to Oswald's
head, just as it was, and then with a tickly, pussyish, featherish thing
round his neck, hanging wobblily down in long ends, he looked more
young-lady-like than he will ever feel.
Some courage was needed for the start next day. Things look so different
in the daylight.
"Remember Lord Nithsdale coming out of the Tower," said Alice. "Think of
the great cause and be brave," and she tied his neck up.
"I'm brave all right," said Oswald, "only I do feel such an ass."
"I feel rather an ape myself," Alice owned, "but I've got
three-penn'orth of peppermints to inspire us with bravery. It is called
Dutch courage, I believe."
Owing to our telling Jane we managed to get out unseen by Blakie.
All the others would come, too, in their natural appearance, except that
we made them wash their hands and faces. We happened to be flush of
chink, so we let them come.
"But if you do," Oswald said, "you must surround us in a hollow square
of four."
So they did. And we got down to the station all right. But in the train
there were two ladies who stared, and porters and people like that came
round the window far more than there could be any need for. Oswald's
boots must have shown as he got in. He had forgotten to borrow a pair of
Jane's, as he had meant to, and the ones he had on were his largest. His
ears got hotter and hotter, and it got more and more difficult to manage
his feet and hands. He failed to suck any courage, of any nation, from
the peppermints.
[Illustration: OSWALD SAW THE DRIVER WINK AS HE PUT HIS BOOT ON THE
STEP, AND THE PORTER WHO WAS OPENING THE CAB DOOR WINKED BACK.]
Owing to the state Oswald's ears were now in, we agreed to take a cab at
Cannon Street. We all crammed in somehow, but Oswald saw the driver wink
as he put his boot on the step, and the porter who was opening the cab
door winked back, and I am sorry to say Oswald forgot that he was a
high-born lady, and he told the porter that he had better jolly well
stow his cheek. Then several bystanders began to try and be funny, and
Oswald knew exactly what particular sort of fool he was being.
But he bravely silenced the fierce warnings of his ears, and when we got
to the Editor's address we sent Dick up with a large card that we had
written on,
"MISS DAISY DOLMAN
and
THE RIGHT HONOURABLE MISS
ETHELTRUDA BUSTLER.
On urgent business."
and Oswald kept himself and Alice concealed in the cab till the return
of the messenger.
"All right; you're to go up," Dicky came back and said; "but the boy
grinned who told me so. You'd better be jolly careful."
We bolted like rabbits across the pavement and up the Editor's stairs.
He was very polite. He asked us to sit down, and Oswald did. But first
he tumbled over the front of his dress because it would get under his
boots, and he was afraid to hold it up, not having practised doing this.
"I think I have had letters from you?" said the Editor.
[Illustration: HE LOOKED AT OSWALD'S BOOTS.]
Alice, who looked terrible with the transformation leaning
right-ear-ward, said yes, and that we had come to say what a fine,
bold conception we thought the Doge's chapter was. This was what we
had settled to say, but she needn't have burst out with it like that. I
suppose she forgot herself. Oswald, in the agitation of his clothes,
could say nothing. The elastic of the hat seemed to be very slowly
slipping up the back of his head, and he knew that, if it once passed
the bump that backs of heads are made with, the hat would spring from
his head like an arrow from a bow. And all would be frustrated.
"Yes," said the Editor; "that chapter seems to have had a great
success--a wonderful success. I had no fewer than sixteen letters about
it, all praising it in unmeasured terms." He looked at Oswald's boots,
which Oswald had neglected to cover over with his petticoats. He now did
this.
"It _is_ a nice story, you know," said Alice timidly.
"So it seems," the gentleman went on. "Fourteen of the sixteen letters
bear the Blackheath postmark. The enthusiasm for the chapter would seem
to be mainly local."
Oswald would not look at Alice. He could not trust himself, with her
looking like she did. He knew at once that only the piano-tuner and the
electric bell man had been faithful to their trust. The others had all
posted their letters in the pillar-box just outside our gate. They
wanted to get rid of them as quickly as they could, I suppose.
Selfishness is a vile quality.
The author cannot deny that Oswald now wished he hadn't. The elastic was
certainly moving, slowly, but too surely. Oswald tried to check its
career by swelling out the bump on the back of his head, but he could
not think of the right way to do this.
"I am very pleased to see you," the Editor went on slowly, and there was
something about the way he spoke that made Oswald think of a cat playing
with a mouse. "Perhaps you can tell me. Are there many spiritualists in
Blackheath? Many clairvoyants?"
"Eh?" said Alice, forgetting that that is not the way to behave.
"People who foretell the future?" he said.
"I don't think so," said Alice. "Why?"
His eye twinkled. Oswald saw he had wanted her to ask this.
"Because," said the Editor, more slowly than ever, "I think there must
be. How otherwise can we account for that chapter about the 'Doge's
Home' being read and admired by sixteen different people before it is
even printed. That chapter has not been printed, it has not been
published; it will not be published till the May number of the _People's
Pageant_. Yet in Blackheath sixteen people already appreciate its
subtlety and its realism and all the rest of it. How do you account for
this, Miss Daisy Dolman?"
"I am the Right Honourable Etheltruda," said Alice. "At least--oh, it's
no use going on. We are not what we seem."
"Oddly enough, I inferred that at the very beginning of our interview,"
said the Editor.
Then the elastic finished slipping up Oswald's head at the back, and the
hat leapt from his head exactly as he had known it would. He fielded it
deftly, however, and it did not touch the ground.
"Concealment," said Oswald, "is at an end."
"So it appears," said the Editor. "Well, I hope next time the author of
the 'Golden Gondola' will choose his instruments more carefully."
"He didn't! We aren't!" cried Alice, and she instantly told the Editor
everything.
Concealment being at an end, Oswald was able to get at his trousers
pocket--it did not matter now how many boots he showed--and to get out
Albert's uncle's letter.
Alice was quite eloquent, especially when the Editor had made her take
off the hat with the blue bird, and the transformation and the tail, so
that he could see what she really looked like. He was quite decent when
he really understood how Albert's uncle's threatened marriage must have
upset his brain while he was writing that chapter, and pondering on the
dark future.
He began to laugh then, and kept it up till the hour of parting.
He advised Alice not to put on the transformation and the tail again to
go home in, and she didn't.
Then he said to me: "Are you in a finished state under Miss Daisy
Dolman?" and when Oswald said, "Yes," the Editor helped him to take off
all the womanly accoutrements, and to do them up in brown paper. And he
lent him a cap to go home in.