EPISTLE II

EATON SQUARE, Thursday, July 2nd.

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:

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.

Handbell Ringers, Sword Swallowers, and Harness Turns .... Rec. 25 secs.

Comic Singers alluding to the pulex irritans, the mother-in-law, or to Nausea-Marina .... Rec. 30 secs.

3.0 till 5.15 p.m. STANDING JUMPS (Habitual Patrons of Matinee Performances only)—First Prize, The Basket of Flowers nightly passed up by the Musical Conductor to Miss —— —— (and haven't the Property Masters of the metropolis fairly nursed it!). The jumps are to be acquired on the crude grain spirit invariably sold as whisky and brandy at certain variety theatres. Competitors taking soda or seltzer water to carry 7 lb. extra; youthful scions of the aristocracy who can truthfully say—betwixt you and me, man to man, pal to pal, 'and to 'and, and 'eart to 'eart—that they have within the past month knocked a stranger's glass over and then flatly declined to apologise, allowed one gill.

As in this practical and prosaic time, when a peninsula in Manchuria can be rendered perfectly untenable by a protracted rain of cast-iron kitcheners filled with the most objectionable explosives and fired across six miles of the Yellow Sea, it makes deuced little difference, I think, whether you are elbowed by the makings of to-morrow's red-hot divorce case at an athletic meeting in the afternoon, or sit next the weekend's flash suicide at the Opera in the evening, I fully intend going.

I am too pressed for time just now to discuss with you the matter of a suitable background for your little French friend's prospective photograph, but I do not endorse the close-clipt yew, the lichened wall, the white-stoled lilies' bending stalks, idea; surely an expectant attitude on the kerb-stone outside the County Fire Office would be more akin to accuracy; but in the matter of Lavinia Rowbotham's ailment, pray tell her I have seen Dr Morbus Brighteye, and he does not consider that a floating kidney is any bar to early matrimony, especially in the case of a debutante with fifteen hundred a year. Of course, from a medical point of view, it should be stitched down, and it would quite depend on Lavinia herself whether the stitches showed. Even if they did, she could have them finished off with some silk cords and tassels (which are still enjoying a truly remarkable vogue) or a couple of chiffon bows of some bright shade; but the point is probably quite unimportant to a bridegroom who has long ceased wondering what bread-and-cheese is like to live on, and whose dress clothes are so shiny that he can see to shave in them. It was not a heroic act of his when declaring his passion to magnify his captaincy into a majority, although had Lavinia been passing the St James's several hours later, as I was, when he was being thrown out after celebrating her acceptance, she would have had to admit that he was drunk enough for a Field Marshal, at least! As one of the buds of Flying Fox's year, she is probably none too squeamish, however; I confess that I never set eyes on her without calling to mind those frayed and worn, but still unpunctured, rubber tyres which they show in the windows of the cycle shops on Holborn Viaduct ticketed "Been in constant use for five years!" She compels one to admit at last that she has not carried a plain gold wedding ring in her purse for sixty months for nothing!

And so adieu for to-day, kid; Mars in conjunction with the Sun attracts me to the park.

Yours always, VIOLA.