EPISTLE VI

EATON SQUARE, Tuesday, Novr. 3rd.

Dearest Patricia,—

Though there mercifully exists for all who like yourself lack brains, the consolation of religion, you have too long denied yourself the diversion of consulting Mother Hagar, for the police called upon her yesterday; and all that is to be seen in her deserted room to-day is the ivy garland which she sometimes wore, smiling in pathetic significance from the dirty hearthstone upon which it fell when the rough-and-tumble started. When Hagar assumed her flame-coloured robe this morning it was, alas! her final assumption; the taking down of her raven locks, her antepenultimate take-down. None know definitely who "put her away"; probably her own recklessness, born of undreamt of success, was the chief cause. Her sugared impertinences went down well enough for a while but she should have been more careful to master the art of walking on eggs without breaking them before the gin began to tell on her. Quite likely is it that her dissolution was brought about through her foolishly promising some billowy-bosomed barmaid enjoyments and sensations which are dogmatically denied to the working-classes; or she may have carelessly given to some married woman being sued by her dress-makers, the address of a millionaire who had been three months dead and buried; or there is yet one other possibility:

I daresay you remember (for the sequel is too long to go into the preceding sentence) the celebrated cause of Smith versus Smith and Dounecastle, the reports of which caused more than one bursting society bud of three seasons ago to recant Rosetti and embrace the Evening Standard? Also how, as soon as a long-empanelled jury, that was fading visibly for want of fresh air and red meat with gravy, had recorded its verdict and, rising as one man, had warmly complimented Mr Smith on regaining his freedom from wedlock with a woman with whom marriage was so entirely superfluous, the simple old peer bigamously married Mrs Smith at a registry office, foolishly committing perjury for the purpose? Well, he has since become the father of two girl babies—at least, so their mother says, but you never can tell—and as a son and heir was more ardently to be desired and something of the kind was daily imminent, he last week sought to ease his mind by consulting Madame Hagar.

Much that she told him—as, for instance, that he would go to the Empire and meet a tall "spade" girl who had been insulted by her landlady and was going to move round into Winchester Street as soon as she could afford it; that, in another large building, of Moorish architecture, he would speak to a "heart" girl with blue eyes, who would look ten years worse for wear than when he last saw her in '99, and she also would allude to money matters, being urgently pressed for a sufficient sum to bury her deceased mother, to send her invalid little sister on a sea voyage, and to replace eight pounds belonging to another girl which the slavey had stolen from the vase on the mantelpiece; finally, that while riding in a public, white conveyance towards an al fresco entertainment with military bands and boats, he would pinch the knee of a perfect stranger and ultimately undertake a journey with her—was doubtless true, but highly irrelevant; it is the nature of necromancers, however, to prevaricate. Eventually she discerned within the crystal a fleeting current event, and cried:

"Yes, yes! All is over—thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen; the gods on high Olympus have once more frosted you from head to foot—seventeen, eighteen, nineteen; it an another girl!"

"Too bad to be true! Too bad to be true!" gasped the peer, with a dreadfully dished look in his eyes as he collapsed into a curule chair made out of a beer-stand. "For heaven's sake have another look, missis?"

In mute obedience, the harridan burnished the crystal globe with her flannel sleeve and peered into it again, but she only shook her head dolefully. Then did a none too opulent son of a marquis, whose future seemed to consist mainly in populating the burlesque stage of 1922, steer straight for his club, there to wallow in old brandy as only one can whose simple faith in all mankind has been mercilessly arm-locked and thrown clear off the mat.

Judge, then, of the Earl's great joy next morning when the club servant who restored him to consciousness with prussic acid, showed him in the Times the announcement of the birth of a son! Imagine also the righteous ire, unequalled even by that of the pious, but somewhat deaf, old lady who threw a water-bottle at Nansen for speaking jokingly of the Equator, with which he started out for Grafton Street to rate the specious charlatan who had clumsily condemned him for four-and-twenty hours to alcohol and blank despair! Nor would the obstinate old thing admit that she was miffed. Being without a servant, she said, her globes had not been properly polished that morning, and, the crystal becoming somewhat finger-marked and mottled, must account for her making one or two trifling miscues. It is not surprising if at boiling point old Dounecastle petitioned the police to blue-pencil Hagar vigorously.

But necromancy is not the new fad you think it, indeed, I have wondered for years how a sensible old gentleman like Victor Hugo, the greatest lyrical poet that France has seen (though some of the more stiff-necked of the Immortals never could forgive his singing "I'm living with mother now" at one of their banquets, and then excusing himself on the ground that the girl looked old enough to be, anyway), ever could have been a wizard's dupe. But it now transpires that he was a mere tool in the hands of the fascinating Comtesse de Camembert, who, detecting in him unmistakable signs of fatty degeneration of the cerebrator, got him at the planchette, and, between the Comte, her husband (compelled by his wife to wear a galvanic belt, and wrathfully attributing it to the poet's recommendation) pulling in front, and herself shoving behind, they had poor Victor at loggerheads with his dearest friends nearly all of the time. The charming Comtesse, of whom contemporary writers speak as having been "all there and full measure," and whom the jealous Comte would probably have divorced had she not been the only woman in Paris who understood how to cut his corns properly, obtained such complete control over the cheery old poet that, whenever he received his quarterly envelope from his publisher, his only way of reserving it for his own use was to bury it behind the shrubbery, or leave it in his locker at the Turkish Bath. Otherwise the delightful lady, whose great-grandfather (more to the shame of her great-grandmother) was of royal blood, thought nothing of sending to the Rue de la Paix for a new lilac Samedi-à-Lundi turn-out, and then crying scornfully to Victor, as she shoved Virot's bill under his nose, "Have you got the sand to endorse that?" Nine times out of ten he did so, for the Comtesse, tall and slender as a young poplar, was an imposing figure, when well frocked, for a struggling man of letters to be seen about with after the bright-lights had dawned and cab fares were doubled; moreover, the couple had an amiable and economical understanding between themselves by which she invariably chalked up their little dinner at Paillard's to her husband, while Hugo's own visiting-card was always good for two fauteuils at any of the houses where they were not playing to over much money.

All this was long, long ago, dear, yet many persons believe to this day in the planchette as a means of increasing the value of handwriting from a scientific standpoint; indeed, only last July young Monty Clondalkin (who got his troop at Hounslow after heroically suppressing a civilian riot, caused by an electric car conductor's refusal to allow an elderly native lady to ride as far as Twickenham, without paying full fare for a hive of live bees which she was carrying in her lap; the man contending that the hive should have occupied a seat, even if the bees had been left to select their own seats, or stand; but who, with countervailing misfortune, had to retire on half pay after being dangerously hit in the antipodes of his face by a paleozoic boulder from a jingal during the firing of a feu de joie by our allies at Thibet) was telling us at dinner one night of a very striking manifestation which he himself had witnessed. Knowing that he could catch nothing which he hadn't had about twice already, he boldly visited in a one-roomed cellar somewhere off the Euston Road, a certain Madame Ingomar, and, having straddled the ante, asked how to gain the lasting affection of the girl he loved and was to meet at Henley. The reply from the other world, via planchette, ran: "Win a million on Egyptian Beauty at Alexandra Park, and let her look at it"; and, though he had to lay eight millions to one on, dear, he brought it off!

This so impressed me with the virtues of the little board that, in the week before Goodwood, being sick of the sweet sisterhood which sticks to the Plantation, and yet needing the golden pinions with which to fly to the Ring, I hunted up dear old Phyllis Waring, who has made it up with Eustace, and is living in Knightsbridge in a delightful flat whose back windows overlook the Park, and begged her to get a planchette between us. Neither she nor I had the faintest notion where such things were sold, but after much searching, Phyllis found one in a small bric-à-brac shop in that queer neighbourhood which lies between the Royalty and Palace theatres, where Madonna-like ladies, attired chiefly in white tarlatan chemisettes, peep out of upper windows, and where black bearded men loll about the doorways of little pink and gold restaurants as though perpetually waiting for something to happen. Did not the Reverend Somebody, of the Church and Stage Guild, once have a chapel here in which the choristers appeared in tights? I fancy so.

Anyhow, Phyllis no sooner got it home than she summoned me to inspect it—a small wooden disc, dear, resembling nothing so much as an artist's palette. For an alleged novelty, it struck me as being rather soiled and dusty, but Phyllis assured me that we had the veritable thing; that the ancients knew it well, the two best remembered apothegms of Terence being "You can always make a market with a bear planchette," and Actum ne agas, or, "Don't overdo it." Upon a small table placed in the centre of the room, Phyllis deposited the little board and switched off the electric light. For several minutes an awful and oppressive stillness reigned, broken only by a faint, half-stifled feminine voice exclaiming, "You will marry me, won't you?" which Phyllis said came from the Park at the back, and was no part of the séance whatever. Slowly, very slowly, the moments dragged along; then presently there came a slight sound as of a penholder tapping on a pill box, and Phyllis said, hoarsely and in sepulchral tones:

"The spirit of Madame Rachel asks the loan of an ear. She might as well bowl her hoop without wasting our time, I think; what with electric rollers and frown plasters we've got her ticketed as a mummy?"

I nodded assent, and many more moments of silence elapsed, followed by a grating noise as of the run down of a musical box.

"According to the old woman at the shop," said Phyllis, "the spirits notify that it's up to us to tilt back to them."

"Do they take this for a jackpot?" I asked, quite inoffensively.

"Never mind what they take it for," snapped Phyllis, "let us get them to give us an option in something on the Stock Exchange that is going to go a bit higher."

"Oh, fiddles to that!" said I, having no more desire to know anything of the kind than How-to-tell-the-gas-meter, illustrated by diagrams. "Rather get them to slip us the winner of the Steward's Cup?"

Sullenly, Phyllis amended her pleadings and submitted my question. In about five minutes, during which period the low plumbean purring of a marking-pencil was distinctly audible, there came the click which denotes the termination of a message, and Phyllis, snatching up the prize, carried it out into the light. Bristling with joyous anticipation, I followed, but only in time to hear her swear and see her smash the wooden thing across her knee and pitch it out of the window on to the moonlight prowlers in the Park.

"You were quite right about that dust, Vi," she said, sourly. "I have been lumbered on to a fake that was timed to strike seventeen years ago. The thing napped 'Crafton, win and shop!'"

Did I tell you, I wonder, in my last how those awful people, the Invernairne's, had fallen out again? Everyone is saying how worn and rundown she is beginning to look, and how much better it would be if only she could go away for a time. I don't mean to one of those dreadful places where seemingly intelligent old gentlemen caterwaul and hide themselves in mignonette beds, and perfectly blameless old ladies disrobe suddenly at the dinner-table and weep copiously into the soup tureen, because they are not as pure and unsullied as new milk-cans, but to some nerve-restoring retreat where she could recuperate without having strangers stare holes in her. Poor Maisie! when she married the middle-aged Invernairne she was quite one of the wits of the smart set, and, if not exactly a belle of letters herself, she had received many and many a bushel from the beaux of literature, principally respecting appointments. Never an ardent advocate of the tied-house system, her cultured soul and innate good taste had rebelled against the constant and vulgar propinquity of matrimony, which she had endeavoured to vary by bolting on seven different occasions with men who were all that could be desired, socially. Her prosaic husband had followed her up on each occasion, however, and, begging her to give marriage a fair and dispassionate trial, had brought her back again and again, until her once pellucid spirit became crushed and broken, and she was no more fun to talk to than a Trappist.

Quite lately she imported from Lausanne a tall, dark Swiss maid who had repented of some early rashness, and vowed that her future life should be one unending struggle against the promptings of nature. Gowned demurely in some simple clinging material which, as the Family Herald says, accentuated rather than hid her graceful outline, Fanchon flitted lightly and swiftly up and down the Invernairne staircases, save when the Earl detained her on a landing to tell her how nicely her new bodice fitted her.

One fine morning at breakfast, the Earl remarked that as his physicians and also his bankers had ordered him to visit a lumber camp in Norway, he feared that he might not be back until the following day, and he felt it was an excellent opportunity, he said, for Maisie to go to bed at the same hour as the canaries, and have a real good rest. Then he called loudly to his man not to forget to pack his snowshoes, his caribou gun, plenty of ground bait for the trout, and disinfectants for the riper ryper, and took his departure. That selfsame night, in about the middle watch, poor Maisie, sleeping lightly and nervously, fancied that she heard the stairs creak in a guilty way, and tremblingly got up. Slipping into a tight-fitting lace dressing-gown with three deep flounces shooting boldly from below the knees, she crept out upon the stairs in time to see a familiar form, plainly silhouetted in the moonlight, just one flight above her, and still climbing. Invernairne had clandestinely returned!

Though Maisie entertained no Victorian views regarding the fidelity of husbands, and even knew that in clubland several men who had lately allowed their hearts to be true to their Polls, had been expelled on the ground that their conduct was unbecoming gentlemen, the situation seemed so promising of advantage to herself that she instinctively followed the figure, keeping close to the wall, where stairs are quietest. Precisely at the point anticipated, the spectral Invernairne crossed a landing and laid his hand softly upon the knob of the long suspected door. As the handle slowly turned and the door, opening inwards, suffered a strong shaft of light from a cheerful, crackling fire to cleave the darkness—Maisie, poor, impulsive fool, shouted imperiously, "STOP!"

Invernairne, with man's inborn craft, stopped instantly, and accurately grasping the situation, acted without a moment's pause. Stopping dead upon the threshold of the girl's room, he shouted into it angrily:

"How dare you burn my coals in this way, you abandoned hussy? Douse that fire with your water-jug immediately, and prepare yourself for a bitter reckoning to-morrow!"

Then, turning back towards the stairs, he gasped the old Criterion gag, "My wife!"

"And pray what brings you here to-night?" Maisie asked, by this time realising how completely she had sacrificed the position to her own impetuosity.

"Economy, my love, sheer economy," replied the ready liar. "Found, when I got to Hull, that the Wilsons owned the boats and the fare was seven pounds. Far better spend the seven pounds on dear Maisie, thought I, and write to the Wilsons to send me a complimentary pass—perpetual free pass, in fact—besides, the Wilsons would never speak to me again if they ever heard of such a thing as my paying to travel by their line—preposterous! Back then I came—worn, weary, jaded, but self-satisfied—only to behold, on approaching the beloved goal, the unmistakable reflection in the clouds of a huge fire somewhere in my own dwelling. What great good fortune that I had turned back! How Providence provides! I adopted my old trapper tactics—stalking stealthily—from crest to crest—birchbark and woodcraft—aha! And blest if that Swiss hoyden of yours hadn't got a fire half way up her chimney, madam, and Cockerell's charging me thirty-five shillings a ton! Out of this house she goes to-morrow morning, mark that!"

"May the Lord have mercy on your miserable soul!" was all that Lady Invernairne could say as, trembling with suppressed agitation, she motioned him to the spare room and, a moment later, locked him in. And now the very natural question is What, oh What, will the Harvest be?

I really cannot conclude without thanking you for the hearty laugh you gave me by your humorous inquiry about my "going to the Lord Mayor's Show" next Wednesday. You have evidently not forgotten, dear soul, that the feeblest manifestation of the undying spirit of Thackeray's Jenkins never fails to move me to laughter; but really I prefer to leave to you and your sort the fragrance of the asphalte and the watermen's garments, also the fat and greasy citizens in furs and chains. Fortunately, like the pigs in France which have, since Villon dreamt he was a swine rooting in the streets of Paris, had to keep outside the fortifications, these dear old civic creatures are, like the pigs, only brought into these regions to be bled; and I will wager a fiver that when the worthy alderman who assisted Féo at her flower stall at the last bazaar is taken round to Dover Street to-morrow, he will bow to my opinion that she has not spent the last three weeks getting pinned up in fitting-rooms for nothing!

Thine VIOLA.