EPISTLE IV

HOTEL VASISTAS, DINARD, Septembre 4re.

Dearest Patricia,—

I am pencilling these lines to you while eating strawberry ices under a warm sun in a perfectly idyllic garden full of royal roses, and within two rods and a bittock of a turquoise sea from which, just across a toy estuary, rise the imperishable crested beauties of St Malo. Here are aromatic breezes, American bars, health, vigour, culture, Parisian revue stars sea-bathing in picture hats and passionate silk stockings, the loveliest crevettes imaginable, well-aired beds, comely female servants strictly engaged without characters, petits-chevaux and the musical glasses; and still I am not happy. Since your two most prominent characteristics, next to your cheekbones, are curiosity and love of listening, I will tell you why. If there be any bottom to the theological dogma of that profound, albeit prolix, metaphysician, Bhikku Ananda Maitriya, of Rangoon, there was a new star born in the Middle Way on Monday night, for during the small dog watches, Evelyn Godolphin Mountprospect, fourth and youngest son of the Earl of Atholbrose, passed in his dinner pail.

He met his end in the shape of the new regimental mess waistcoat, or rather in his suicidal efforts to get into it: he died of tight lacing. Poor little Evelyn! In fancy I can see the flush of anger on his cheeks, the contemptuous coiling of his spiral nostrils as he struggled vainly with the conquering corset, breaking a whalebone here or rending the broché-batiste there, but never quite succeeding in completing the frightful misplacement of the internal clockwork of the body which only the anatomist can fully describe, and the War Office is absolutely oblivious to. Sad indeed it is to see the very flower of military chivalry stagger and fall, not on the battlefield but the parade ground, there to lie prone with its staylaces cut, the while the Army Medical Corps burns a feather.

That I ever really felt up to breaking home ties for the boy's own sweet sake is extremely problematical. Society is an over-girled community and the debutante whose female parent cares nothing for decking her out and putting her where she will be well seen is apt to have her head turned by coach-panels as richly emblazoned as are the Atholbrose's; they are cream and gold, you may remember, with the figure of a roysterer, rampant, in a restaurant, bar sinister, above the family motto "One more won't hurt us!" But Evelyn himself was something of a featherweight; the clinging vine rather than the sturdy oak, and the direct antithesis to what a society schoolgirl designates a hummer. Though art-gallery and shop-broke, he was more fitted to become the dog Tray of a young married woman than the money-getter to a fashionable bride of his own; and his three brothers had been much the same.

For instance, Caedmon, the eldest, who in a previous state of existence had probably been a lowing white Chillingham bull-calf, had been reared side by side with a pretty chocolate-red Hereford cow with whom (to cut the bovine metaphor) he had made love from his perambulator in Kensington Gardens. Her name was Lorna Porter, and her family tree was every bit as genteel and starchy as the acacia itself. From Eton Caedmon had sent her pretty little weekly notes enclosing buttercups and daisies privately picked from les plancher des vaches—(Pray overlook it for once, dear. Phyllis Waring, just off to gather champignons, is chattering at my elbow, and the French language is so infectious!)—and from Oxford he consigned further fickle screeds and fritillaries—need I explain that I allude to the wild flowers which abound at Abingdon and not to any kind of lingerie?

Miss Porter's people, however, entertained other matrimonial views concerning her, and eventually betrothed her to a South African person who proposed to settle something like forty-thousand a year on her for fencing foils and skipping ropes—indispensable articles in the daily pursuit of flexibility and youthfulness—alone. She being a Warwickshire beauty, her sacrificial outfit was built in Birmingham and her passage was booked to the Cape, whither she was shortly to proceed in the keeping of all manner of stern relations. To Caedmon, who suddenly made the belated discovery that years of propinquity had meant something more than mere lukewarm amusement, it was an overwhelming blow, nor could he discern the slightest prospect of ever again squeezing her velvety paws or treading delicately beneath the table on the only footwear in London which would have had Cinderella beaten to pulp. The thought was maddening; yet in Lorna's impending departure Caedmon could see nothing but his own finish—a year of reckless drinking, a month's disinheritance, a family reconciliation, and a hateful future with a homespun consort.

Gold—red gold which will achieve almost anything in existence save immunity from gout to the devotee of sparkling ales—was at length accountable for Miss Porter finding on her window-sill one morning, an impassioned petition from Caedmon, in which he attempted to pour forth the left lobe of his soul, but only ran to about one composing-stick of third-class seaside-novelette dead-weight. Nevertheless his burning plea to be granted one brief evening of her society ere she passed out of his blighted life for ever, was expressed with sufficient clarity to appeal to any woman's inherited and cultivated love of playing with fire, and Lorna Porter inwardly and instantly resolved upon making the concession. No matter on how transparent a subterfuge, her last night in England should be given to Caedmon; her own hungering heart no less than her love for burning incense dictated it. She sent an unsigned wire to warn Caedmon that he might get his wish at any moment; after which she stood in front of her mirror and changed her jewellery six times while wondering what on earth could have first given her the idea that he was a sort of modern St Anthony at about five-stone-seven!

Now, waiting many days for a telegram in a West-end club which has been given over to the pail-and-brush mechanic for autumn renovation is not an ideal pastime for an epicure and a man of fashion. To be compelled to sit and yawn in an atmosphere of size and varnish, in halls temporarily tenanted by voluble and irascible artisans to whom one's very presence in the month of holidays and deserted streets is sufficient evidence of one's constitutional bent for shifting the cut on the working classes, is singularly tortuous. Blobs of whitening are apt to fall in perilous proximity to one's coat; jets of slopwash descend suddenly in hazardous contiguousness to one's hat, until one grows in time to jump aside for one's very life out of the line of a swinging platform, or the range of a falling trestle, at the faintest echo of "Stan' by the sidebar rope, Josh!" or "Lower your endabit, Bill!"; yet for more than half a week Lord Caedmon bravely faced it all.

Then at last there came a wire. It was coded from the fair town whose name is so unpleasantly suggestive of cannibalistic intolerance of chastity—"Nuneaten, 5.24 P.M."—and it ran:

"Little parcel will arrive Euston to-night, 8.30, legibly inscribed Fragile."

It bore no signature, not another word; that was all. Yet Caedmon, as he read it forty times, felt the sunshine penetrate his soul anew. There arose before his eyes a vista of a refined and beautiful girl in white Mechlin lace and orange-blossoms, turning from a chancel filled with tulips and palms and begonias and white hyacinths, on all of which the soft rose light filtered in through a great stained east-window, to—to cast all aside for a vulgar assignation at a railway station! "Fragile" was not the word for it: it was frail beyond the limit of human comprehension.

With Lorna's self-reproachful adjective inscribed upon his brain, Caedmon jumped into a cab and drove to the most intensely respectable hotel in Berkeley Square, an establishment so finnickingly exclusive that its maitre would hardly look at gold and lands unless tendered by one who had previously submitted references; and ordered dinner. Surely, he reasoned, if Lorna, for the old love's sake, were willing to incur this peril, she should be dragged to no ostentatious Palm Room, nor exposed to the leers of hoi polloi in the best-accredited "smart" restaurant. "Fragile!" Sweet vestal! Though she clearly realised the ineffable jeopardy in which the promptings of her heart involved her, her innate sense of culture made her shrink from the use of the meaner, but more appropriate vulgarism, "risky!"

Long before his time, and with the stealthy step of an ogre on his way to rob a cradle, Lord Caedmon alighted from a muffled brougham, passed beneath the frowning arch of Euston Station, and awaited the coming of the restaurant train from Warwickshire. And no sooner had it slidden silently in, than the door of a reserved-first opened, and Lorna Porter, apparently in evening dress, but completely enveloped in a travelling cloak and hood of soap-sud grey, stepped out. Caedmon positively pounced upon her.

"How fearfy good of Twee-est to come!" he cried, taking both her hands in his.

"Oh, not so vewy fearfy, my twee," answered Lorna, for she too was an adept in the pidgin; adding with a wicked wistfulness in her great brown eyes, "though Twee-est would get awfy, awfy ratin' if pals found out, and Twee-est is scary of ratin'!"

"Twee-est let ratin' go hang; Twee give Twee-est deevie ickle dinnie, and Twee-est buck-up!" said Caedmon, consolingly; by which time they were mercifully at the brougham. But the same conversational fog enveloped his intellect throughout a long and elaborate dinner, and it was not until Lorna, who was quite a red-corpuscled person when she wished to be, had waited for it to lift until the coffee and liqueurs came, that she wondered whether it might be that he was squiffy. Not that such was the case at all, dear. In reality, he had brooded over her password "Fragile" until he had brought on a series of neurotic attacks which the French would call collectively le petit mal. At Market Harboro, two years ago, I had a hunter, a rare fleabitten grey, similarly affected. The unfortunate beast remembered having one day staked himself on a thickset hedge, so that ever afterwards when he came to one, he dropped his ears, screwed his head slightly to the right, and, with wide-open eyes and tail erect, squatted. Caedmon's bleat was mild and vapid, but nevertheless regular so long as he prattled of the extraordinary vogue that pendie (appendicitis) was having; of the new restaurant being awfully deevie (delightful) but deucedly expie; of Lord Jimmie being fearfully diskie at finding his wife giving him some anti-drink stuff in his coffee at brekker, simply because he occasionally got so frightfully moppie; but whenever through Lorna's omission to utter a weary, or an acid, "Really?" there came a pause, he caught sight of the one word "FRAGILE!" emblazoned on the wall, and, like my old grey, he died away behind the saddle, and tried to swallow his palate.

Dinner over, Lord Caedmon led Lorna to the Billiard Room where nobody ever went. The place was, as usual, empty and shadowy, whereupon Caedmon instantly—rang loudly for the marker. Neither this servant or Caedmon observed any peculiarity in the demeanour of Miss Porter as she opened the game in effective style by stringing together 17, nor did she pass any remark when she broke down at her next stroke through using the jigger at a very simple, single-cushion cannon. As Caedmon went to the table, however, Lorna left the room, presumably to chalk her cue or something, and—well, that was the last that was seen of her!

His lordship, suspecting nothing, waited five minutes after taking an ineffective shot, and then lit a cigarette. After ten minutes he grew uneasy; after twelve, a second footman came in and mentioned the fact that "her ladyship" had been gone some little time, in a hansom! As the man ceased speaking and walked away, the dreaded word appeared in letters of fire upon the wall, and the future lord of Atholbrose gasped for breath and clenched his fists.

"I beg y'r lordship's pardon, but is y'r lordship feelin' faint; the room is somewhat 'ot?" asked the marker.

"Naw, naw," groaned Caedmon in tones strangely Irvingian, "b-b-but tell me, man, what is your personal conception of the meaning of 'fragile'?"

The man went as pink as a lobster cutlet at Hampton Court, but parleyed, politely:

"Y'r lordship's pleased to be facetious, but probably y'r lordship's 'eard 'ow I've got the sack over it?"

"Over what, pray?"

"The new spirit-glasses, y'r lordship. I've been shockin' unlucky with 'em I'll admit, y'r lordship, but oh! they are fraygile an' no kid! That word was stencilled on the case as they arrived in, an' William, the carver, he says to me at the time, y'r lordship, 'Henry,' he says, 'every time as you handles these glasses,' he says, 'bear that word in mind—Fraygile. It's French,' he says, 'an' it means, "Bound to be Broke, Anyway,"' he says, an' it's my humble opinion, y'r lordship——"

"Enough! My hat and stick, at once!" shouted Caedmon, and strode out of the place. "Of course, of course, fool that I am, I see it all now!" he wailed as he strode up Mount Street; "she referred to her promise to that damned South African!"

Plunging his fists into his breeches pockets and pulling out two brimming handsful of gold and silver, he thrust them upon an Italian murderer who, though curfew had long sounded, stood churning from an automatic piano the symphony to—

and plunged into the velvet darkness of Grosvenor Square.

Only yesterday I received a lengthy epistle from Mrs Mortimer Toddpush, who left town about a week ago in order to witness the Passion Play at Horitz, but sidetracked at Zermatt after hearing in Paris how Eve, a hussy who also made shell boxes at Bohmerwald, had secretly married Adam, who also stoked a steamer on the Po, while on tour in the provinces some seven months back, and would now be quite unable to appear for a few weeks. Eve's friend, too, a big shield-tailed python, had been in a state of torpor for an usually prolonged period after swallowing a tourist from the Highlands, so that the whole show was, if the accurate expression is admissible, clear out of plumb. Beyond the fact that a Reverend Mr Somebody, who was staying at the famous Smearkase Hotel half way up the Matterhorn, had stepped through a back door in the dark and fallen a mile, more or less, down the glacier (though the more pious of the guides assured the rest of the party that the old gentleman would have earned his harp three times over before striking the bottom) there seemed to be nothing doing at Zermatt, more particularly since the chubby bridegroom and touch-me-not bride in whom local interest mainly centred, were not speaking to one another when the post left, having quarrelled as to which loved the other the more, and each being afraid to give in for fear of offending the other.

But this sort of fever usually subsides, I am told, within a month, man's inborn nature being to philander, often to the dire distress of the trusting young wife who fondly imagines that a husband to be constant should be frequent. I remember hearing (no matter how) when last I was in Brighton—that very stamping ground for honeymooners and others who carry their happiness about with them—of a certain old gentleman who was ventilating, in the smoking-room of one of the hotels, his views upon a current cause célèbre. Incidentally he averred that it was all very well for a man to go into the witness-box and swear that he had never under any circumstances been untrue to the partnership entered into at the altar rails; it was better still if he could induce the jury to believe him; yet no married man could absolutely prove that he never had sinned—on that point he would freely wager a thirty-shilling hat!

Then there arose from a corner seat a young gentleman who had Percy literally stamped upon him, and who had been unable to keep his cigarette alight for yawning, and he claimed that hat.

"And I invite you to substantiate your claim, sir," rejoined the pleasant old gentleman.

"Oh, it's an absolute walk-over!" cried Percy, with another yawn, "my wife and I were married only yesterday afternoon, and—er, well, we've only just come down to breakfast!"

Highly interesting as this explanation may seem, it was, after all, mere baby food compared to the diverting details which each of the other twenty-seven gentlemen had to invent at a moment's notice when asked by his wife why he had not instantly and peremptorily laid claim to the thirty-shilling hat.

Speaking of winning wildly sporting wagers, I suppose that all will admit that Society contains no more beautiful or accomplished woman than Lady Ellaline Dives, yet I hate her with a great personal hatred, if only for the mean way in which she welshed—that is the hard but accurate appellation—me out of a fiver at the Cossie's Club only a week before I left England. You know the Cossie's, of course? It was of the parent club of them all that Io Mayleigh (who has emptied her Philistine life of everything but dogs) wrote:

Well, in the course of an impersonal discussion at the Cossie's on the mistakes of anatomy, I, who have fed up on the subject, offered to bet anyone in the room a fiver that she had a vermiform appendix, and Ellaline Dives took me on. And as soon as the money was posted and covered, we adjourned to the Gazing Room, where she showed us the scar where she had had it removed!

Mightily close to sharping, don't you think? I felt much inclined to have her up before the committee; yet, poor thing, she needs the fiver more than I do, for, owing to the fabulous prices paid by our Army in South Africa for petits fours and plovers' eggs, her income will be sorely depleted for the next century or so. I know quite well, dear, that her sweet but small house in South Audley Street—squeezed in between the wine merchant's and the coachbuilder's it looks just about a convenient size for a convivial tomtit—holds so many "auctioneers," as she calls them, that she and Sir Edward habitually sit on the stairs, owing to the men-in-possession occupying all that remains of the crested saddlebag suite. Even their faithful butler resigned with a curse after jabbing a hole about as big as Pimlico in his left hand, whilst endeavouring to open a sevenpenny tin of sheep's tongue, though Lady Ellaline adroitly arranged with the hospital authorities to inform the Press that it was gastrodynia, induced by a surfeit of foie gras. To repair all these ravages, Lady Ellaline lately accepted a roving commission from Messrs Outsize and Squeale, the distinguished hosiers; for if, as she truly says, Lady Barnhowrie can accept an appointment to sell cod liver oil, and the Countess of Barcalwhey can turn her impoverished self into a limited company—oho! Bankers: the Hole Under the Hearthstone!—to supply all who will buy with fresh eggs and butter (which she delivers daily in her own motors), then "why not your little Ellaline?" Nowanights therefore at the small dance, the man who gets a polka with her must breathe a couple of dozen of silk socks or blue gridiron singlets into her shell-like ear; she will not grant even a galop under twelve fine flannel shirts with tucked or pleated fronts and necks, finished with French muslin collars for six guineas, which (next to her reliable bullet-proof travelling nighties for co-respondents) is her "star" line. It must be anything but the pleasantest of work, however, for I am told that the Duchess of Whitehall handed her a fearful dab in the eye on the Stand on the Champagne Stakes day at Doncaster, simply because she had asked, incautiously but purely in a business way, "Aren't those pink silk pants of the dear Duke's getting woefully shabby?"

Excepting only the two or three English theatrical hussies who purposely return from the water to the wrong bathing tents—Number 12 instead of Number 21, and so on—with the deliberate intention of being suddenly discovered by some brilliantined and bearded fool of a Frenchman, whom they then send to fetch from their rightful disrobing places, garments which are supposed to have no public career before them, we do not bathe at Dinard: rather do we diligently "sand." To actually enter the dishevelling surf is to display an excess of zeal only equalled by the cock who crowed himself overboard from the bowsprit of Lord Dufferin's yacht in his frantic attempts to salute the rising sun in Scandinavia; but I think if only you could have seen me walking the plank promenade on the plage this morning in a skin-tight silk suit of bereavement violet, with silk stockings to match and chrome strapped shoes with paste buckles, you would have admitted, in disagreement with the passé soprano who budded too late, that there are other ways of securing public attention besides giving lessons on the posthorn from the top of Nelson's monument. For a girl to simulate a pretence of using the hot sea-water footbath which is brought to her from the beach-cauldron on returning to her cabinet de bain is surely less fuzzy than the male Berkshire pretence of kissing all the pretty women and extorting silver from the men under the name of "Hocktide tutty" (and you can safely bet a level pony if the custom had been to get the money out of the women and kiss the men, it would have been entombed with Alumid, whose last favourable Press notice appeared in the Domesday Book!); and neither puritanical flam nor structural imperfections need stand in the way of her extending the joyous mitt to her pals to join her in a cigarette in her machine, since the floor and the seats are never, like those of the archaic Margate article, so soaking wet that you cannot sit down without ruining your création. Unfortunately the French jump too precipitately at conclusions, and, though it takes a pretty good deal at any time to create surprise at a Gallic watering-place, a distinctly false and an altogether too comprehensive impression of pudic British maidenhood has been indelibly stamped on the minds of the irrepressible gommeux here through one of their number having politely inquired of one of the copper-haired drabs on the steps of her obscure hotel the other morning if there was anything that he could do for her, and received the reply:

"Oh, it's very sweet of you, old dear, but if you'd give us a kiss, stand us a bottle, tell us an easy blue story, and take us into the Casino to show us how to play those 'little horses,' I should take it pal-ish, for what with your croupiers speakin' so quick and usin' their rakes so handy, all as I seem to do is to plank down my quid and take up nothing!"

Not that they really are ignorant of petits-chevaux and roulette, of the conventions of continental hotel life or—anything else! for, only yesterday, having received but few visitors, one of them took a camel-hair brush and a bottle of boot-varnish, and deftly inscribed upon her door the double-zero, and, within the next five minutes——

But the tiny red-brown fishing-boat which has been threading its way between the pygmean rocky islets in the bay, now touches the beach, whither I fly to glean new schemes of colour from the glint of the dying mackerel.

Tiens, kid, VIOLA.