THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR BY E. F. BENSON THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR THE TORTOISE MICHAEL THE OAKLEYITES DAVID BLAIZE ARUNDEL GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY NEW YORK THE FREAKS OF MAYFAIR BY E. F. BENSON AUTHOR OF '^THE TORTOISE," "MICHAEL," "DODO," dc. ILLUSTRATED BY GEORGE PLANK NEW YORK GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY n^^ 7 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA DEDICATED TO FRANK EYES AND KINDLY EARS THE LIST OF CONTENTS I. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS II. AUNT GEORGIE .... III. QUACK-QUACK .... IV. THE POISON OF ASPS V. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE VI. THE ETERNALLY UNCOMPROMISED VII. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS . VIII. CLIMBERS: I. THE HORIZONTAL . IX. CLIMBERS : II. THE PERPENDICULAR X. THE SPIRITUAL PASTOR . XI. 'SING FOR YOUR DINNER' XII. THE PRAISERS OF PAST TIME . page 13 . 31 49 71 85 107 125 143 161 183 199 217 THE LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS reproduced from drawings by George Plank 1. THE COMPLEAT SNOBS ., . Frontispiece 2. AUNT GEORGIE .... page 36 3. QUACK-QUACK .j . . . . 52 4. POISON OF ASPS 70 5. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE . . 98 6. THE GRIZZLY KITTENS .... 132 7. CLIMBERS: I. THE HORIZONTAL . . I48 8. CLIMBERS: II. THE PERPENDICULAR . 164 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER ONE THE COMPLEAT SNOBS THERE IS NO MORE JOYOUS COUPLE in all Mayfair than Sir Louis Marigold, Bart., M.P., and Lady Mary Marigold, and whether they are at Marigold Park, Bucks, or at Homburg, or in their spacious residence in Berkeley Square, their lives form one unbroken round of pomp and successful achievement. She was the daughter of an obscure Irish Earl, and when she married her husband was still hard at work building up the business of Marigold & Sons. Those were strenuous days, and the profession of money-getting made it necessary for him to indulge his snobbishness only as a hobby. But she, like the good wife she has al- ways been to him, took care of his hobby, as of a stamp-collection, and constantly enriched it with specimens of her own acquisition, being a snob of purest ray serene herself. She is the undoubted descendant of Arrahmedear, king of Donegal, in which salubrious county her brother, the present Earl, is steadily drinking himself to death in the intervals of farming his fifty-acre estate. When he has succeeded in completely poisoning him- self with whisky, she will become Countess of Ballamuck herself, since the title descends, in 13 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS default of male heirs, in the female line, and there will be what I hope it is not irreverent to call high old times in Berkeley Square and Marigold Park. When first they married her husband always playfully called her ' The Princess ' (being the hneal descendant of that remarkable monarch King Arrahmedear), and what began in play soon sobered into a habit. But when she is a real contemporary peeress, it is probable that he will drop the appellation derived from legendary kings, and call her Countess. There will be no hint of badinage about that: Countess she will be, and the papers will be full of little para- graphs about the movements of Sir Louis Mari- gold, Bart, M.P., and the Countess of Balla- muck. . . . There is just the faintest suggestion of Ouida-ism and impropriety which gives such announcements a peculiar relish. Now there is no snob so profound as the well-born snob, especially in the female line. She (in this case Lady Mary Marigold) knows about it from the inside, and is aware of all it means to be the daughter of earls, not to mention kings. Her husband therefore, having been born of an obscure commercial family, was not originally so gifted as his wife, but by industry and study H THE COMPLEAT SNOBS he has now practically caught her up, and they run together in an amicable rose-coloured dead- heat. Like all the finer endowments, as that of poetry, pure snobbishness is born not acquired, and lowly as was his birth, the fairy-godmother who visited his infant cradle brought this golden gift with her, and with the same instinct for what is worth having that has always distinguished him, he did not squander or dissipate her bounty, but hoarded and polished and perfected it. When he was quite a little boy he used to dream about marquises, and, if a feverish cold added a touch of daring to his slumbers, about kings and queens; now with t;he reward that waits upon childhood's aspirations, it has all come true. Already his son (the first-born of the future countess) has married the Lady Something Something, daughter of a marquis, and there are great hopes about a widowed Bishop for his daughter. It might seem that this episcopal anchorage was but a poor fulfilment of the prayers of her papa, but any who think that can form no ade- quate impression of the completeness of Sir Louis's snobbishness. For the real snob is he who worships success and distinction whether that success is hall-marked with coronets, wealth, 15 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS or gaiters. To achieve success in the eyes of the world is to him the greatest of human accom- plishments, and to be acquainted, or better still, connected with those who have done so, and best of all to be identified with them, constitutes the joy of life. Sir Louis has a profound ad- miration for his wife, his son, his son's wife, but he perhaps reserves his levels of highest com- placency for himself, and with all his busy loving glances at the dazzling objects round him, he never really diverts his gaze from his own career. It is for his own success in life that he reserves his most sincere respect. While his wife and he are thus in every sense perfect snobs, as far as perfection can be at- tained in this tentative world, they, like all other professors in great branches of knowledge, spe- cialize in one particular department, and theirs is Birth. It is, of course, a great joy to Lady Mary Marigold to see the wife of a Cabinet Minister, of an African explorer, of an ambas- sador pass out of her dining-room at the con- clusion of dinner, while she stands by the door and, shaking an admonitory finger at her hus- band till her bracelets rattle, says, ' Now, Sir Baronet, don't be too long ' ; it is a joy also to him to move to the other end of the table i6 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS between the ambassador and the Cabinet Minister and say, ' My lady won't grudge your Excellency time to drink another glass of port and have a small cigar ' ; but most of all they love the hour when these manoeuvres are enacted with mem- bers of the aristocracy, or, as has happened sev- eral times in this last year or two (for they are really among the tree-tops), with those for whom, to the exclusion of themselves and other guests, finger-bowls are provided. On these occasions, that is when Royalty is present, a sort of seizure is liable to come upon them, and for a minute or two one or other sinks back in his chair in a dazed condition consequent upon so much happi- ness. A foretaste of the bliss of Nirvana is theirs, and Sir Louis's eyes have been known to fill with happy, happy tears on seeing a Prince show my lady how to eat a cherry backwards, stalk first. In the early days of their marriage, when, as Mr. Marigold, he came back tired with his day's work to his modest dwelling In Oakley Street, Birth was his hobby, and instead of relaxing his tired brain over the perusal of trashy novels or the playing of fruitless games of patience, like so many who have no sense of the value of time, he and she would sit tranquilly, one on each side of 17 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS the fireplace, with a reading-lamp conveniently placed between them, and dive into the sunlit waters of the Peerage. One happy Christmas Day they found that the present of each to the other was a copy of this beautiful book, and after this delicious coincidence, they kept the pleasant custom up, and always presented each other with Peerages at Christmas, so that now they have both of them a complete set for the last twenty-three years. Their son, Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot, was true to parental tradition and tendency, and rapturous was the day when, at the age of fourteen, after hours of careful work, he gave his mother on her birthday the gift he had been secretly preparing for her, namely the roll of his own ancestry, neatly il- luminated. It was somewhat lop-sided, for very few Marigolds had been discoverable, but away, away back went the other line of the descent through Earls and coronets innumerable till it reached the original and unique King Arrahme- dear of Donegal, above whose glorious name he had illuminated a royal crown. It was entirely Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot's own idea, and when he became engaged to the daughter of a marquis, his mother felt that she had known it would happen for years. i8 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS Owing probably to the large number of Jews and journalists and brewers and pawnbrokers who have been ennobled during the long Liberal tenure of office, this particular brand of snob- bishness has rather fallen into neglect, and many of the brightest snobs of Mayfair consider the cult of the mere peerage a somewhat Victorian pursuit. But the more earnest practitioners, like Lady Mary and Sir Louis Marigold, remain un- affected by such shallowness. They argue that the conferring of a peerage is still a symbol of success, and, loyalist to the core, consider that those who are good enough for the King are good enough for them. Besides, they have found by experience that they actually do feel greater raptures in the presence of Royalty than in that of subjects of the realm, and among sub- jects of the realm they like dukes better than marquises, marquises than earls, earls than vis- counts. It is not implied that the pleasurable- ness of their internal sensations would indicate to them the rank of a total stranger whose name they were ignorant of, but knowing his name and his rank, they find that their delight in converse with him Increases according to his precedence. Many pleasures are wholly matters of the im- agination, and this may be one, but the hal- 19 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS lucination is in this case, as in that of other nervous disorders, quite complete. And when a year or two ago Lady Mary was dangerously ill with appendicitis, her husband sensibly as- suaged the deep and genuine anxiety he felt for her, by going through, day after day, the cards of the eminent people who had called to make enquiries. A prince (a very eminent one) was so condescending as to call twice, once on a Mon- day and once on the following Thursday. To this day Sir Louis cannot but believe that the better news the doctor gave him about my lady on that happy afternoon, was somehow connected with the magic of the repeated visit. It has been mentioned that Sir Louis is in the habit of calling his wife 'Princess'; it has also been hinted that she alludes to him as ' Sir Baronet.' There is a touch of badinage, of play- fulness in both these titles, but below the play- fulness is a substratum of seriousness. For she is descended from kings so ancient that nobody knows anything about them, and he is a real Baronet, and since his title in ordinary use is that of a mere knight, she and others of their in- timates are accustomed to call him Sir Baronet, in order to mark the difference between him and such people as provincial mayors or eminent 20 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS actors and musicians. It must be supposed, too, that he is far from discouraging this, since he has printed on his cards, ' Sir Louis Marigold, Bart, M.P.,' in full. It may be unusual, but then there are, unfortunately, not many Baronets who take a proper pride in the honours with which their Sovereign has decorated them or their ancestors. Marquises and earls put the degree of their nobility on their cards instead of just calling themselves ' Lord,' and surely a Baronet cannot go wrong in following so august an example. But there is another custom of his to which per- haps exception may be taken, for it is his habit when entertaining a luncheon-party at which mere commoners are present (this is not a fre- quent occurrence) to step jauntily along in his proper precedence to the dining-room, leaving the less exalted persons to follow. He does it in a careless, unconscious manner, and this manner is by no means put on : he walks in front of low- lier commoners instinctively: he does not think about it: his legs just take him. It is perhaps scarcely necessary to add that instinct is not so strong with him as to go in before any lady, even if she were his own washerwoman, for the ob- ligations of chivalry outweigh with him even those of nobility. It has always been so with the 21 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS true aristocrat, and it is so with him. Perhaps if a Suffragette were present he might go on ahead, for he considers that all women who hold any views but his on that subject have unsexed themselves. In his more indulgent moments he alludes to them as ' deluded wretches.' His politics are of course Tory. A Tory Prime Minister honoured himself by recommending the King to honour Sir Louis, and much time and a good deal of money spent in the Tory cause make it quite likely that a further honour will some time he conferred upon him when (and if) his party ever gets back into power. It is sig- nificant, anyhow, that he has made several visits lately to the Heralds' College, where the shape of Viscounts' coronets seemed to interest him a good deal, for since the motto of his business life, which has proved so successful, was * Pre- pare well in advance,' it is likely that it will apply in such matters as these as well, and it may safely be assumed that on that happy day his spoons and forks will be found to be already engraved with the honour conferred on him. To be sure, should this happen before Lady Mary's brother finally succumbs to the insidious bottle, she will find herself a step lower than her previ- ous rank had been, by becoming a Viscountess 22 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS instead of remaining an Earl's daughter. But, on the other hand, this will be but a temporary eclipse, for it cannot be so very long before she comes from under her cloud again on the demise of the dipsomaniac, and shines forth as an inde- pendent Countess. The whole affair, moreover, has been talked out so constantly by them that they are sure to have come to a wise decision based on the true principles of snobbishness. Snobbishness is no superficial thing with them, or indeed with anybody; it springs from fountains as deep as those of character or reli- gion. Now that between them they have got the Peerage practically by heart, its study, though they often read over favourite passages together, no longer takes them much time or conscious thought, it merely permeates them like Chris- tianity or the moral qualities. It tinges all they do, and they do a great many very kind and con- siderate and generous things. Sir Baronet is the most liberal giver; no appeal made for a deserving and charitable object ever came to him in vain, but deep in his heart all the time that he is signing his munificent cheque, the thankful cries of the poor folk he has succoured sound in his ears, as they murmur, ' Thank you. Sir Baronet!' * Bless you. Sir Baronet!' Lady 23 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS Mary is equally open-handed, especially when children and dumb animals are concerned, and she declares she can almost hear the thumping of the dogs' tails as they strive to say, ' Thank you, my lady! ' ' Bless your ladyship's kind heart.' Occasionally, out of mere exuberance, Sir Baronet sounds an insincere note. He wrote once to Oswald bidding him bring his wife to dinner in these terms: 'Bring my lady along to dinner on Tuesday week, my boy. No party, just ourselves, and I think the Princess told me the French Ambassador and the Duchess of Mid- dlesex were to take their cutlets with us.' . . . But all the time his pen was so trembling with gratification that for the moment Oswald thought his father must have a fit of shivering, till the truer explanation dawned on him, and he realized that the usually neat and careful handwriting was blurred with joy. But perhaps this little insin- cerity is but the mark of the most complete snob of all, who affects to make light of the attainments towards which his holiest and high- est aspirations have been ever directed. Any- how, one would be sorry to think that Sir Baronet was sincere over this, for it would imply that he was getting used to Ambassadors and Dukes, that he was becoming blase with a surfeit of aris- 24 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS tocracy. That would be too tragic a fate for so thoroughly amiable an ass. There is nothing more stimulating in this drab world than to look at those who intensely enjoy the prosperity which surrounds them, and to see Sir Baronet stepping along Piccadilly with his springy walk, and his ruddy face ready to be wreathed in smiles as he takes off his hat to some social star, is sufficient to reconcile the cynic and the disappointed, if they have any touch of humanity left in them, to a world where some people have such a wonderfully pleasant time. Perhaps if cynics were a little simpler, a little more alive to the possible joys of existence, they would share some of those raptures themselves. A princely fortune is no necessity to the snob: it is possible to taste his joys on a modest com- petence. But character and thoroughness are needful: he must read his Peerage till the glam- our grows about the pages, and must value aright the little paragraphs in newspapers which record the doings of the mighty. Unless men are born with this gift, it is true they will not enter the highest circle of the Paradiso, but they should at least be able to leave the Inferno far below them. And as a matter of fact, most people have a touch (just a touch) of the snob innate in them, 25 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS If they will only take the pains to look for it. They may not have the peerage-mind, but prob- ably there is some sort of worldly success before which they are willing to truckle. It is worth a httle trouble, in view of the spiritual reward, for the snob always has an aim in life: he never drifts along a purposeless existence. The chronicler is tempted to linger a little over these happy and prosperous persons, and forecast the further glories that inevitably await them. At present a certain number of the Vera de Veres turn up their patrician noses when Mari- golds are mentioned, which is exceedingly foolish of them, considering that it is out of Marigolds that the very best Vere de Veres have been made. The Marigolds will win eminence and renown by their industry, their riches, and their colossal respectability. That was how the Vere de Veres became the cream of the country, and instead of calling the Marigolds ' those tradesmen,' they would be wiser to hail them as cousins who will buttress up some of their own tottering lines (if their sons and daughters can only manage to marry into the Marigolds) by reinforcing them with their own vigorous blood, their wealth, and not least, their respectability. In the next gen- eration Oswald Owen Vivian Lancelot will be 26 THE COMPLEAT SNOBS Earl of Ballamuck and Viscount Marigold, and his children, of whom he has only eleven at present, will be Members of Parliament, and hard-working soldiers and diplomatists, with peeresses for sisters. When a few more years have rolled, the Vere de Veres will have to re- spect them, for they will be Vere de Veres, good, strong, honest Vere de Veres, the pick of the bunch, for with their healthy bodies, active brains, and, above all, their untarnished respec- tability, they are precisely the folk on whom honours pour down in spate. And what is the use of affecting to despise a family that in a hun- dred years will number bishops and ambassadors and generals among its collaterals, and will cer- tainly have a family banner in St. George's chapel ? AUNT GEORGIE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER TWO AUNT GEORGIE AUNT GEORGIE'S CHRISTIAN NAME as bestowed by godparents with silver mugs at baptism was not Georgiana but simply George. He was in fact an infant of the male sex accord- ing to physical equipment, but it became per- fectly obvious even when he was quite a little boy that he was quite a little girl. He played with dolls rather than lead soldiers, and cried when he was promoted to knickerbockers. These peculiarities, sad in one so young, caused his par- ents to send him to a boys' school at the early age of nine, where they hoped he might learn to take a truer view of himself. But this wider experience of life seemed but to confirm him in his delusions, for when he quarrelled with other young gentlemen, he did not hit them in the face with his fist, but slapped them with the open hand and pulled their hair. It was observed also that when he ran (which he did not like doing) he ran from the knees instead of striding from the hips. He did little, however, either in the way of running or of quarrelling, for he was of a sedentary and sentimental disposition, and formed a violent attachment to another young lady, on whom Nature had bestowed the frame 31 AUNT GEORGIE of a male, and they gave each other pieces of their hair, which were duly returned to their real owners when they had tiffs, with inexorable notes similar to those by which people break off engage- ments. These estrangements were followed by rather oily reconciliations, in which they vowed eternal friendship again, treated each other to chocolates and more hair, and would probably have kissed each other if they had dared. Their unnatural sentiments were complicated by a streak of odious piety, and they were happiest when, encased in short surplices, they sang treble together in the school choir out of one hymn- book. Public-school life checked the outward mani- festation of girlhood, but Georgle's essential nature continued to develop in secret. Publicly he became more or less a male boy, but this was not because he was really growing into a male boy, but because through ridicule, contempt, and example he found it more convenient to behave like one. He did not like boys' games, but being tall and strong and well-made, and being forced to take part in them, he played them with con- siderable success. But he hated roughness and cold weather and mud, and his infant piety de- veloped Into a sort of sentimental rapture with 32 AUNT GEORGIE Stained-glass windows and ecclesiastical rites and church music. His public school was one where Confession to the Chaplain was, though not in- sisted on, encouraged, and Georgie conceived a sort of passion for this athletic young priest, and poured out to him week by week a farrago of pale and bloodless peccadilloes, and thought how wonderful he was. Eventually the embar- rassed clergyman, who was of an ingenious turn of mind, but despaired of ever teaching Georgie manliness, invented a perfectly new penance for him, and forbade him to come to confession, un- less he had really something desperate to say, more frequently than once every three weeks. Otherwise, apart from those religious flirtations, Georgie appeared to be growing up in an ordi- nary human manner. But, if anyone had been skilful enough to dissect him down to the marrow of his soul, he would have found that Georgie was not passing from boyhood into manhood, but from girlhood into womanhood. He went up to Oxford, and there, under the sentimental influence of the city of spires, the last trace of his manhood left him. His father, who, by one of Nature's inimitable conjuring tricks, was a bluff old squire, rather too fond of port now, just as he had been rather too fond of 33 AUNT GEORGIE the first line of the Gaiety Chorus in his youth, longed for Georgie to sow some wild oats, to get drunk or gated, to get entangled with a girl, to do anything to show that virility, though sadly latent, existed in him. But Georgie continued to disappoint those unedifying wishes: he pre- ferred barley-water to port, and was always working in his room by ten in the evening, so that he would not have known whether he was gated or not, and he took no interest in any choruses apart from chapel choirs, and never got entangled with anybody. Instead he became a Roman Catholic, and a mixture of port, passion, and apoplexy carried off his father before he had time to alter his will. Georgie stepped into his father's shoes, and continued his own blameless career. He had an income of some three thousand a year, and a small place in Sussex, and at the conclusion of his Oxford days, turned over the place in Sussex to his step-mother and his three plain sisters, reserving there a couple of rooms for himself, and took a small neat house in Curzon Street. He was both generous and careful about money, made his sisters ample allowances, and pro- ceeded to spend the rest of his income thought- fully and methodically. He had an excellent 34 AUNT GEORGIE taste in furniture and decorations, though an essentially feminine one, and the house in Cur- zon Street became a comfortable and charming little nest, with Chippendale furniture in the drawing-room and bottles of pink bath-salts with glass spoons in the bath-room. He had a pri- vate den of his own (though anything less like a den was never seen), with a looking-glass over the fire-place into which he stuck invitation-cards, a Chesterfield sofa, on the arm of which there often reposed a piece of embroidery, a writing- table with all sorts of dainty contrivances, such as a smelling-bottle, and a little piece of soft sponge in a dish, over the damp surface of which he drew postage-stamps instead of licking them with his tongue, and by degrees he got together a collection of carved jade, which was displayed in a vitrine (vulgarly, a glass case) lined with velvet and lit inside by electric light. He had a brougham motor-car, driven by a handsome young chauffeur, whom, if he took the wrong turning, he called a ' naughty boy ' through the tube, and was personally attended by a very smart young parlour-maid, for though he did not care for girls in any proper manly way, he liked, when he was sleepy in the morning, to hear the rustle of skirts. His cook, whom he saw every AUNT GEORGIE day after breakfast in his den, was an artiste, and he had a good cellar of light wines. After lunch and dinner he always made coffee himself, in Turkish fashion, for his guests, and passed round with it odd, syrupy liqueurs. His bedroom was merely a woman's bedroom, with a blue quilt on the bed, a long cheval-glass on the floor, silver- backed brushes on the toilet-table and no razors, for a neighbouring barber came to shave him every morning. In cold weather, when his mauve silk pyjamas were hung out to warm in front of the fire, the parlour-maid inserted into his bed a hot-water bottle, jacketed in the same tone of blue as his quilt. On that Georgie put his soft pink feet, and always went to sleep im- mediately. Here he lived a kind and blameless life, but the life of a sprightly widow of forty, who is rich and childless, and does not intend to marry again. In the morning, after seeing his cook, he wrote a few letters (he did not use the telephone much because it tickled his ear, and he disliked talking into a little box where other people had talked and breathed) and these he generally sealed with a signet belonging to his step-mother's grand- mother, which had a coronet on it. He was a little snobbish in this regard, in a Victorian old- 36 Q**n^ "^pOSSj^ AUNT GEORGIE fashioned way, for though his step-mother was no sort of relation to him he took over her re- lations as cousins, and hunted up the most remote connections of hers, for adoption, in the Peerage. His letters being finished he took his soft hat and sat at his club for half an hour reading the papers. Generally he walked out to lunch, and was called for by his car about a quarter to three. Some- times he had a little shopping to do, and if not, went for a drive, sitting very upright, much on the look-out for acquaintances, and returned home for tea. After tea he sat on his sofa work- ing at his embroidery, had a hot bath, and except when, about twice a week, he had a few people to dine with him, went out to dinner. He did not play bridge but patience and the piano, both of which he manipulated with a good deal of skill. When he entertained at his own house, his guests were chiefly young men with rather waggly walks and little jerky movements of their hands, and old ladies with whom he was always a great success, for he understood them so well. He called them all, young men and old ladies alike, * my dear,* and they had great gossips to- gether, and they often said Georgie was very wicked, which was a lie. He had considerable musical taste, as well as 37 AUNT GEORGIE proficiency on the piano, and very soon his life became a busy one in the sense, at any rate, that he had very little time for his embroidery. He built out a big room at the back of his house, and gave tinkling little modern musical parties, at which he introduced masses of young geniuses to the notice of his friends. Also he took to practising his piano with some seriousness, and would often forgo his walk to the club and his perusal of the morning papers in order to work at his music, and sat at his instrument for two hours together, with his rings and his handker- chief on the candle-brackets. His taste was modern, and he liked the kind of piece about which you are not sure if it is over or not, or what has happened. He paid quantities of country-house visits to the homes of his old-lady friends and his step-mother's cousins, where he would sit in the library reading and writing his letters till half-past twelve, and take a little stroll with a brown cape on his arm till lunch- time. He sketched too, and produced rather messy water-colours of churches and beech-trees, and made crayon-portraits of his hostess or her boys, which he always sent her with his letter of thanks for a most pleasant visit, neatly framed. His portraits of elderly ladies had a certain re- 38 AUNT GEORGIE semblance to each other, being based on a formula of a lace cap, a row of pearls, and a thoughtful expression. He had a similar formula for young men, of which the chief ingredients were a cricket-shirt and no coat or Adam's apple, long eyelashes, and a girlish mouth. He was not good at eyes, so his sitters were always looking down. After lunch at these most pleasant visits he went out for a drive in a motor to see some neighbour- ing point of interest or to call on some adopted cousin whom he had discovered to live somewhere about. He rested in his own room after these fatigues and excitements for an hour before dinner, with his feet up and a dressing-gown on, and afterwards would work on a crayon-sketch, play the piano, or make himself agreeable to anybody who was in need of gentle conversation. Often he would settle down thus in a friend's house for a fortnight at a time, in which case he brought his embroidery and his car with him, and was most useful in taking other guests out for drives, or bringing home members of a shooting-party. Occasionally, for no reason, he roused violent antagonism in the breasts of rude brainless men, and after he had left the smoking- room in the evening, one would sometimes say to another, ' Good God! What is it? ' 39 AUNT GEORGIE Georgie lived in this whirl of pleasant pur- suits for some ten years. The only disagreeable incident that occurred during this time was that his attractive chauffeur married his attractive parlour-maid, and for a little, surrounded by hateful substitutes, he was quite miserable. But he wooed the selfish pair back again by taking a garage with a flat above it, where they could keep house, raising Bowles's wages, and getting in another parlour-maid when the curse of Eve was on Mrs. Bowles, and when he was now about thirty-five, Georgie definitely developed auntish- ness. As seen above, there were already many symptoms of it, but now the disease laid firm and incurable hold on him. His auntishness was of the proverbial maiden- aunt variety, and was touched with a certain acid and cattish quality that now began to tinge his hitherto good-natured gossipy ways. As usually happens, he tended to detect in his friends and acquaintances the defects which he laboured under himself, and found that Cousin Betty was getting so ill-natured, and Cousin John had spoken most sarcastically and unkindly to him. His habits became engrained, and when he went out to dinner, as he continued to do, he took with him a pair of goloshes in a brown paper 40 AUNT GEORGIE parcel, if he meant to walk home, in case the crossings might be muddy. He was faithful enough to his old friends, the waggly-walking young men of his youth, and such of his old ladies who survived, and still went out with them on sketching-parties when they stayed together in the country, but otherwise he sought new friends among young men and young women, to whom he behaved in a rather disconcerting manner, sometimes, especially on sunny morn- ings, treating them like contemporaries, and wishing to enter into their ' fun,' sometimes pet- ting them, as if they were children, and some- times, as if they were naughty children, getting cross with them. He wanted in fact to be a girl still, and yet receive the deference due to a middle-aged woman, which is the clou to maiden- auntishness. He had little fits of belated and senile naughtiness, and would take a young man to the Gaiety, and encourage him to point out which of the girls seemed to him most attrac- tive, and then scold him for his selfishness If he did not appear eager to come back home with him, and sit for an hour over the fire until Georgie felt inclined to go to bed. Or, having become a sort of recognised chaperone in Lon- don, he would take a girl-cousin (step-mother's 41 AUNT GEORGIE side) to a ball, and be vexed with her because she had not had enough dancing by one oVlock. It must not be supposed that it was his habit to appear in so odious a light, but it sometimes happened. To do him justice, he was repentant for his ill-humour next day, and would arrange a little treat for a boy and a girl together, driving them down in his car to the Mid-Surrey golf- club, where they had a game, while he sat and sketched the blue-bells in Kew Gardens. By this time his step-mother was dead (Georgie did a lovely crayon of her after death), and two out of his three plain sisters had mar- ried. The other used often to stay with him in London, and often he would bring quite a large party of young people down to the house in Sussex, where they had great romps. Georgie was quite at his best when entertaining in his own house, and he liked nothing better every now and then than a pillow-fight in the passage, when, emitting shrill screams of dismay and rapture, and clad in a discreet dressing-gown over his mauve silk pyjamas, he laughed himself speechless at the * fun,' and bore the breakage of the glass of his water-colour pictures with the utmost good-humour. But when he had had enough himself, he expected that everybody else 42 AUNT GEORGIE should have had enough too, therein disclosing the fell features of Aunt Georgie. Georgle did not, as the greyer seas of the forties and fifties began to engulf him, fall into the er- rors of grizzly kittens, but took quite kindly to spectacles when he wanted to read the paper or write his letters, and made no secret of his annual visit to Harrogate, to purge himself of the gouty tendencies which he had inherited from his father. He did not, of course, announce the fact that he had had a fresh supply of teeth, or that he had instructed his dentist to give a studied ir- reguUrity to them, and it is possible that he used a little hair-dye on his moustache which he clipped in the new fashion, leaving only two small tufts of hair like tails below his nostrils, but he quite dropped pillow-fights, though keeping up his music and his embroidery, and more than keeping up the increasing ill-nature of his tittle-tattle. He made great pets of his chauffeur's children, who in their artless way sometimes called him * Daddy ' or * Grandpa.' He did not quite like either of these appellations, and their mother was instructed to impress on their infant minds that he was ' Mister Uncle Georgie.' But * Miss Auntie Georgie ' would have been far more ap- propriate. 43 AUNT GEORGIE It IS perhaps needless to add that he has never married and never will. Soon the second set of girl-friends whom he chose when he first devel- oped auntlshness will be middle-aged women, and as, since then, he has made quantities of new young friends, his table will never be destitute of slightly effeminate young men and old ladies. Those are the sections of humanity with whom he feels most at home, because he has most in common with them. He makes a fresh will about once every five years, leaving a good deal of his property to the reigning favourites, who are prob- ably cousins (of his step-mother's). But most of them are cut out at the next revision, because they have shown themselves * tarsome,' or in some way inconsiderate. But probably it will be a long time before anybody reaps the benefit of these provisions, for apart from his gout, which is kept in check by his visits to Harrogate, Georgie is a very healthy old lady. He lives a most wholesome life with his little walks and drives, and never, never has he committed any excesses of any sort. These very ageing things, the passions, have never vexed him, and he will no doubt outlive most of those who from time to time have been beneficiaries under his will. After all he has done less harm than most 44 AUNT GEORGIE people in the world, for no one ever heeded his gossip, and even if he has not done much good or made other people much happier, he has al- ways been quite good and happy himself, for such malice as he impotently indulged in he much en- joyed, and he hurt nobody by it. It would be a very cruel thing to think of sending poor Georgie to Hell; but it must be con- fessed that, if he went to Heaven, he would make a very odd sort of angel. QUACK-QUACK CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER THREE QUACK-QUACK UNDYING INTEREST IN THINGS AB- struse, experimental, or charlatanish keeps Mrs. Weston perennially young. She has a small pink husband, who desires nothing more of life than to be allowed a room to himself, regular meals, a little walk after lunch followed by a nap at his club, and a quantity of morning and evening papers to read. Indeed it may be said of him that the morning and evening papers were his first day and will certainly be his last, for he is the sort of person who will die suddenly and quietly after din- ner in his arm-chair. All those simple needs are easily supplied him, for when, for reasons to be subsequently mentioned, he cannot get regular meals at home he procures them at the Carlton grill-room. The two have no children, and her husband being so simply provided for, Mrs. Weston has plenty of leisure to pursue her own weird life. She began, as most students of the faddish side of life do, by using her excellent physical health as a starting-point for hypochondria, and proceeded to cure herself of imaginary ailments with such ruthless ferocity that if she had not stopped in time, she might really have become ill. As it was, 49 QUACK-QUACK she arrested her downward course of healing be- fore it had done anything more than make her thin, and took to another fad. But she resumed her pleasant plumpness when she embraced spirit- ualism, for spiritualism for some obscure reason almost invariably causes people to lay on flesh. To begin at the beginning of her quackings, she was about thirty when the shattering conviction came over her, after reading a little book about gout, that she entirely consisted of uric acid. This painful self-revelation caused her husband to be- come a regular habitue of the Carlton grill-room, for he was not strong enough to stand the ideal regime which blasted his once comfortable home. For a day or two he insisted on continuing his suicidal diet, but he found it impossible to enjoy his cutlet when his wife told him that all he ate turned the moment he had swallowed it, into waste products, and that his apparent appetite was merely the result of fermentation. Such news when he was at lunch quite spoiled his pleasure and stopped his fermentation. For herself, she proceeded to obtain body-building materials out of nuts and cheese, and calorics out of the oil with which she soaked the salads that were hoary with vegetable salts. All tea and coffee were, of course, forbidden, since they reeked of purins, 50 QUACK-QUACK while If you drank anything at meals, you might just as well have a glass of prussic add then and there, In order to get It over quicker. Probably If anyone had told her only to eat between meals, she would have tried that too. But all day the kitchen boiler rumbled with the ebullition of the oceans of hot water that had to be drunk In the middle of the morning and the middle of the afternoon, and before going to bed. It had to be sipped, and since at each sitting a quart or so must be lodged within her, the process was a lengthy one, and she could not get out of doors very much. But exercise and air were provided for by courses of stretchings and bendings and flicklngs and klck- ings done by an open window In front of a chart and a looking-glass, followed by spells of com- plete relaxation (which meant lying down on the floor) . Then there were deep-breathing exercises, in which Mrs. Weston had to draw in her breath very slowly, hold It till she got purple In the face and the veins stood out like cords on her benig- nant forehead, and emit it all In one hurricane- puff. The dizziness and queer sensations that sometimes followed she took to be a proof of how much good It was doing her. Strange hungry- looking visitors used to arrive at queer hours, and talk to their enthralled pupil in an excited manner 51 QUACK-QUACK about arterio-sclerosis, and chromagens, and pro- duce out of their pockets little packets of tough food, tasting of travelling-bags, which they masti- cated very thoroughly, and which in the space of a square inch contained the nutritive value of eight mutton chops and two large helpings of apple tart. Fortified by this they launched into the functions and derangements of the principal organs of the body, with an almost obscene wealth of detail, while Mrs. Weston used to sit in rapt attention to those sybils and long for dinner time to come in order that she might thwart her uric acid again. She pursued her meatless course for several weeks with fanatic enthusiasm, and having been perfectly well before, found that, apart from a slight falling away of flesh, her iron constitution stood the strain remarkably well. Then while the nuts were yet in her mouth, so to speak, it struck her that she ought to go in for breathing exercises more thoroughly, and found that they led straight into the lap of the wisdom of the Yogis. This philosophy instantly claimed her whole attention, and she steeped herself in its manuals, and ad- vertised in the Morning Post for a Guru. An individual in a turban answered this in person, but as, after his second visit she found that a 52 olu^t^. dk^acA: QUACK-QUACK valuable ring was missing, which at his bidding she had taken off her finger in order to be less trammelled by material bonds, she decided to be her own Guru, and with the chapter on * Postures ' open before her, practised tying herself into knots. Her abstinence from meat came in useful, since a light diet was recommended by her new ideal in life, so also did her practice in deep- breathing, for Pranayama was entirely concerned with that, and when you had mastered Postures and Pranayama you would live in perfect health and vigour, as long as you chose. Again her superb physical health stood her in good stead, and she neither dislocated her limbs from Pos- tures, nor had a single stroke of apoplexy from holding her breath. During the Yogi attack her husband ceased to take his meals at the Carlton grill-room, for he was allowed meat again in moderation. But he always used to go out for a walk when the great breathings began in the middle of the morning, since he hated the idea that in the next room Jane was sitting cross- legged on the floor, exhaling her long-held breath through one nostril while she closed the other with her finger, muttering ' Om ! Om ! ' Long periods of absolute silence alternated with these mutterings, and it gave him an uncomfortable 53 QUACK-QUACK feeling to know that Jane was holding her breath all that time. Away from Chesterfield Street the image of her was less vivid, and when he returned for lunch Postures were over too, and though rather stiff and tired, she would declare that she never had known before what real health meant. This was always a pleasant hearing, and he would congratulate her on her convalescence, and instantly repent of his cordiality, because she urged him just to do a couple of Postures a day and see how he felt. Then a misfortune which within a couple of days she temporarily called the turning-point of her life, befell Mrs. Weston, for she caught a chill (manifestly from posturing on a cold damp day in front of an open window) which indicated its presence by a simultaneous attack of lumbago and a streaming cold in the head. This latter made the inhalation of breath through the nostrils quite impossible, and the former. Postures. So shut out from the practice of Pranayama and Postures, she came winging it back from the East, and, happening to come across a copy of the Christian Science Journal, flew to the bosom of Mrs. Eddy. Her only regret was that she had not left the heathen fold in time to frustrate the false claims of her indisposition, which had taken 54 QUACK-QUACK a firm and painful hold of her, but she had scarcely learned by heart the True Statement of Being when the severity of the symptoms began sensibly to diminish. In point of fact within three days she was perfectly well again, as she might have been all along if she had only known in time that there was no such thing as lumbago. Neither was there such a thing as uric acid or chro- magens, and in consequence, since there was noth- ing to fear from disorders that had no existence, she ordered an excellent dinner that evening, and over ox-tail soup and fish and a roast pheasant, of all of which she ate heartily, she discoursed to her husband on the new truth that had risen like dawn over her previously benighted horizon. But, such is the ingratitude of man, he felt that he would sooner have eaten his dinner in silence at the grill-room than at home to the accompani- ment of such preposterous harangues. And when, after dinner, just as he was settling down to a game of patience, Jane asked him to join with her in the recital of the True Statement of Being, he replied with some asperity that a True Statement of Balderdash was a fitter name for such nonsense. Christian Science made Mrs. Weston brighter and younger and more robust than ever. Being 55 QUACK-QUACK quite convinced that there were no such things as discomfort or evil or disease or death, she recognised with increased vividness that the world was an exceedingly pleasant place, and went about all day with a brilHant smile. This smile became rather hard and fixed when small false claims put in their appearance, as, for in- stance, when a fish-bone seemingly stuck in her throat, or when, reciting the True Statement of Being as she went upstairs, she forgot the last step and tumbled rather heavily on to her knees. Thus, in the semblance of choking or of agonising pain in the knee-cap, it was necessary to tie the smile on, so to speak, lest the false claim should get a foothold. What made the house more uncom- fortable for her husband was that his false claims were ignored also, so that if his study fire was found not to be lit, and the room in consequence like an ice-house, Instead of sympathising with him over the carelessness of the housemaid, Jane continued to assure him that there was no such thing as cold, though her teeth were chattering in her head. She got Into touch with other sufferers from these cheerful delusions, who seemed to him to resemble gargoyles with their fixed inflexible smiles, and their attitudes of de- termined hilarity, and the house became a perfect S6 QUACK-QUACK Bedlam of invincible cheerfulness, which was de- pressing to the last degree. He had a moment of reviving hope when Jane woke one morning with a very plausible claim in a wisdom-tooth, which the uninitiated would have called a raging tooth- ache, and which he hoped might convince her. But learning, by telephone, from a healer that though the pain would certainly vanish with ab- sent treatment, it was permissible to go to a dentist in order to save time, for mere manipula- tion (in other words having the tooth out), his hopes faded again. Mrs. Eddy herself, it ap- peared, had consulted a dentist in such cir- cumstances, and Mrs. Weston did the same, and came home, brighter than ever, having had the tooth extracted quite painlessly under laughing- gas. The last thing she had said to herself, so she triumphantly announced, before she went off was that the extraction wouldn't hurt at all, and it didn't. The True Statement of Being had scored one triumph the more in completely anni- hilating not only the sense of pain, but common- sense also. Now the insidiousness of fads Is that they are invariably based on something which is true and reasonable, and thus have an appeal to reasonable persons. In this they are unlike superstitions, for 57 QUACK-QIJACK superstition is in its essence unreasonable, and Mrs. Weston would no more have bowed to the new moon (seen not through glass) or turned her money, than she would have been made miserable by breaking a looking-glass. She knew perfectly well that the fact of her seeing the new moon could not affect the prosperity of her investments, while if that amiable satellite had any power over her money it would certainly exercise it whether she curtsied or not. But her embrace of the vegetarian and Christian Science faith was undoubtedly based on reason: it was true that fleshless foods contained less uric acid than sirloin of beef: it was true also that if she or anybody else had a slight headache, that headache would in all probability efface itself quicker if she oc- cupied herself in other matters, and, instead of sitting down to think about her headache denied it in principle by disregarding it. But it is easily possible to stretch a reasonable proposition too far, and make it applicable to things to which it does not apply, and it is exactly here that the faddist begins to differ from reasonable people. A sufficiently excruciating pain cannot be ban- ished from the consciousness, and it is not the slightest use asserting that it does not exist. At this point, with regard to her wisdom-tooth, she 58 QUACK-QUACK became momentarily reasonable again, and had it out with laughing-gas like a sensible person. But then her mind rushed back again, like air into an exhausted receiver, into the vacuum of fad- dishness, and she became happier and more ridicu- lous than ever. The effect must never be denied: the faddist while convinced of her fad is ex- tremely cheerful, as is natural to one who has found out and is putting in practice the secret of ideal existence. It made poor Mr. Weston very uncomfortable, but since one of the strongest characteristics of Christian Scientists is their in- human disregard of other people, she did not take any notice of a little thing like that, and pro- ceeded to make home unhappy with utter callousness. But it was not her way to attach herself for very long to one creed: she flew, like a bee gathering honey from every flower, to suck the sweetness out of every fad, and presently she turned her volatile mind to the study of the un- seen world that she suddenly felt to be surround- ing her. Christian Science no doubt had its basis in the unseen, but in its application it was chiefly concerned with bodily ailments and discomforts, and the True Statement of Being harnessed itself, so to speak, to a congested liver or a sore 59 QUACK-QUACK throat. But now she went deeper yet, and took the final plunge of the faddist and the credulous into the sea of spiritualism. Now in this highly organised city of London, if you want anything you can always get on the track of something of the sort by a few enquiries, and one of Mrs. Weston's discarded vegetarians introduced her to the celebrated medium, and general fountain-head in the matters of table- turning, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, ma- terialisation, seances, planchettes and auras, the Princess Spookoffski. Nobody could produce positive proof that she was not a Russian Prin- cess, for Russia is a very large place, and has probably many princesses, nor that her com- panion, a small man with a chin-beard and a positive passion for going into trances, was not a Polish refugee of high birth. This august lady was beginning to do very good business in town, for London, ever Athenian in its desire for some new thing, had just turned its mind to psychical matters, and held seances with quenched lights in the comfortable hour between tea and dinner, and had much helpful converse with the spirits of departed dear ones, and discarnatc intel- ligences, that were not always remarkably intelligent. 60 QUACK-QUACK Mrs. Weston accordingly went by appointment to the Princess's flat In a small street off Charing Cross Road, and was received by the Polish refugee of high birth, who conducted her through several small rooms, opening out of each other, to the presence of the sybil. These rooms had a lot of muslin draped about them, and were dimly lit with small oil lamps in front of shrines con- taining images or portraits hung with faded yellow jasmine of the great spiritual guides from Moses down to Madame Blavatsky, and a faint smell of incense and cigarettes hung about them. In the last of these the Princess was sitting lost in profound meditation. She wore a blue robe, serpents of yellow and probably precious metal writhed up her arm, and she had a fat pasty face with eyebrows so black and abundant as to be wholly incredible. Eventually she raised her head, and with a deep sigh fixed her beady eyes on Mrs. Weston. Then in a throaty voice she said: * My child, you 'ave a purple 'alo.' This was very gratifying, especially when the Princess explained that only the most elect souls have purple halos, and the man with the chin- beard, whom the Princess called Gabriel dear, said that the moment he touched Mrs. Weston's 6i QUACK-QUACK hand he knew she had power. Thereupon the Princess's fingers began to twitch violently, and Gabriel dear, explaining that Raschia, the spirit of an ancient Egyptian priestess, possessed her, brought a writing-pad and a pencil, and the Princess, with Raschia to guide her, dashed off several pages of automatic script. This was written in curious broken English, and the Prin- cess gaily explained that darling Raschia was not very good at English yet, for she was only learning. But the message was quite intelligible, and clearly stated that this new little friend, Mrs. Weston, was a being of the brightest psychical gifts, which must instantly be cultivated. It ended ' Ta, ta, darlings. Raschia must fly away. God bless you all.' It was not to be wondered at that after so cordial a welcome, Mrs. Weston joined Princess Spookoffski's circle, and went there again next day for a regular seance, price two guineas a head. There were four other persons beside the Princess and Gabriel and they all had purple halos, for the Princess was so great an aristocrat in the spiritual world (as well as being a Princess on the mortal plane) that she only ' took ' purple halos. The room swam with incense, a small musical-box was placed in the middle of the table, 62 QUACK-QUACK and hardly had the lights been put out and the circle made, when Gabriel, who was to be the medium, went oft into a deep trance, as his ster- torous breathing proved, and the musical-box began to play ' Lead, kindly Light/ On which the Princess said — ' Ah, perhaps the dear Cardinal will come to us. Let us all sing.' Thereupon they all began helping the Cardinal to come by joining in to the best of their powers, with the gratifying result that before they were half-way through the second verse, a stentorian baritone suddenly joined in too, and that was the Cardinal singing his own hymn. He had a quantity of wholly edifying things to say when the hymn was over, such as ' beyond the darkness there is light,' and ' beyond death there is life,' and ' beyond trouble there is peace.' Having de- livered himself of these illuminating truths, he said ' Good-bye, Benedictine, my children,' and left the mortal plane. Thereupon there was dead silence again, except for Gabriel's stertorous breathing. A perfect tattoo of raps followed, and amid peals of spiritual laughter. Pocky announced that he was coming. Pocky was a dear naughty boy, the Princess explained to Mrs. Weston, so full 63 QUACK-QUACK of fun, and so mischievous, and had been, when on earth, a Hungarian violinist. Pocky's pres- ence was soon announced by a shrill scream from the lady on Mrs. Weston's right, who said the naughty boy had given her such a slap. Then he pulled the Princess's hair, and a voice close to Mrs. Weston said ' 'UUo, 'ullo, 'ere is a new friend. What a nice lady ! Kiss me, ducky,' and Mrs. Weston distinctly felt a touch on her neck below her ear. Then after another bastinado of raps, Pocky's face, swathed in white muslin and faintly luminous, appeared above the middle of the table. They had had lovely music that day, he told them, ' on the other side,' and Pocky had played to them. If they all said 'please,' he would play to them now, and after they had all said ' please,' play to them he did on a violin. His tune was faintly reminiscent of a Brahms valse, but as it was a spirit air it could not have been that. Then with a clatter the violin de- scended on to the middle of the table, and Pocky, after blowing kisses to them all, went away in peals of happy laughter. Thereafter Mrs. Weston became a prey to psychical things. She gazed into the crystal she purchased from the Princess; she sat for hours, pencil in hand, waiting for automatic script to 64 QUACK-QUACK outline itself on her virgin paper; she took excursions into astrology; she frequented a fashionable palmist, who gave her the most gratifying information about her future, and assured her that marvellous happiness and suc- cess would attend her every step in life, so long as she regularly consulted Mrs. Jones, say once a week at seven and sixpence. The Princess and Gabriel gave a seance in Chesterfield Street, and put her into communication with her great-uncle, whose portrait by Lawrence happened to be hung in the hall. The Princess had been struck with this the moment she saw it, for the purpleness of the halo (even in the oil-picture) astonished her, and she asked who that saint was. He had not been recognised as such while on the earth, but no doubt he had learned much afterwards, for his remarks at the seance that evening equalled Cardinal Newman*s for spiritual beauty. To clinch the matter, he materialised at the next seance, and apart from his nose, which certainly did resemble Gabriel's, his great-niece found that he exactly corresponded with her childish remem- brances of him. For several months these spiritual experi- ences were a source of great happiness to Mrs. Weston, but, though encouraged to persevere, she 65 QUACK-QUACK could never see anything in her crystal except the distorted reflection of the room, nor would Raschia do anything in the way of automatic script except cover the paper with angled lines which resembled fortifications. Similarly at the seances, Pocky and Uncle Robert and Cardinal Newman did not seem to get on, but remained on their respective levels of mischievousness and saintliness, without any further revelations. Her attendances became less frequent and her crystal grew dusty from disuse, while she found that whether she consulted Mrs. Jones or not, her life moved forward on a quite prosperous course. But fortunately about this time, she encountered a disciple of the Higher Thought, and soared away again into the bright zenith of another en- thusiasm, which still at present holds her. She is one of the happiest freaks in all May- fair, with never a dull or a despondent moment. The limits of a normal lifetime are not large enough to allow her to exhaust all the quackeries with which from time immemorial the inquisitive sons of men have deluded and delighted them- selves, and if she lives till ninety, which is quite probable, she will continue to find fresh outlets for her exuberant credulity. Just now she finds that Higher Thought is much assisted by walking 66 QUACK-QUACK with bare feet through wet grass for a quarter of an hour every morning. The only sufficiently private grass in London is a small sooty patch in her own back-garden. But it is grass, and it is usually wet in the early morning, and she has her bath afterwards. THE POISON OF ASPS CHAPTER FOUR tdtic%u ^ ^jjU • CHAPTER FOUR THE POISON OF ASPS HORACE CAMPBELL HAS AN UNERR- ing gift of smudging whatever he speaks of. As he speaks most of the time, he manages to smudge a good deal, and in consequence is in great demand at somewhat smudgy houses by reason of his appropriate and amusing conversa- tion. Every decent man would like to kick him, and every nice woman would like to slap his fat white face, and so his habitats are the establish- ments of those not so foolishly particular. But though he lunches and dines without intermission at other people's houses, he is In no degree one who sings for his dinner, for he has a quite dis- tinct career of his own, and spends his mornings earning not daily bread only, but truffles and asparagus and all the more expensive foods, by teaching other people to sing. His knowledge of voice-production Is quite unrivalled, and he could probably, if he chose, turn a corn-crake Into a contralto. The enormous fees that he charges thus enable him to compress into three hours the period of his working day, and during that time he Is the father and mother of most of the beau- tiful noises that next year will be heard rising from human throats at concerts and opera- 71 THE POISON OF ASPS houses. Then, his business being over and his pocket fat, he puts on his black morning coat, and his cloth-topped shoes, his grey silk tie with the pearl tie-pin, and goes forth to cause himself as well as his pocket to grow fat, and makes a music of his own. Now his thesis, his working hypothesis, the basis of his conversation, is this. There are al- ways several possible causes which may account for all that happens in the busy little world of London, and in discussing such happenings, he invariably assumes the smudgiest and more scandalous cause. A few instances will make this clear. Example ( i ) : John Smith is engaged to Eliza Jones. Possible causes: (i.) John Smith loves Eliza Jones and Eliza Jones loves John Smith. (ii.) John Smith is after Eliza Jones's money. (iii.) It was high time that John Smith did marry Eliza Jones. Of these possible causes Horace Campbell leaves cause (i.) out of the question as not worth consideration. Cause (ii.) may account for it, but he invariably prefers cause (iii.)- Or again — 72 THE POISON OF ASPS Example (2) : Mrs. Snookes went to the opera with Mr. Snookes. Probable causes: (i.) Husband and wife went to the opera be- cause they like going to the opera. (ii.) Mrs. Snookes has an affair with the fa- mous tenor Signor Topnotari. (iii.) Mr. Snookes is paid £2:2:0 a night to applaud the soprano Signora Beeinalt. It is idle to point out which cause Horace Campbell proceeds to discuss. Example (3) : An eminent statesman goes into the country for a week-end. Possible causes: (i.) The eminent statesman needs rest. (ii.) * Somebody * goes with him. Horace Campbell's law of causation again applies. Here then is the postulate which lies at the root of his conversation, his standpoint towards life. He does not bear ill-will towards those on whose conduct he habitually places the worst con- ceivable motive, and he has no political or per- sonal objection to the eminent statesman, whom he would be very glad to know: it is merely that a nasty thing perches on his mind with greater facility than a nice one, and evokes greater sym- 73 THE POISON OF ASPS pathy there. Scandalous innuendoes seem to him more amusing than innocent interpretations, and so too, it appears, do they seem to those at whose tables he makes himself so entertaining. His stories are considered ' too killing,' whereas there is nothing very killing about the notion that Mr. and Mrs. Snookes went to the opera because they liked music. Also he has a perfect command of the French language, and often for the sake of guileless butlers and footmen he tells his little histories in French, which produces an impression of intrigue and wit in itself. Love-affairs, the theme round which he revolves, are no doubt of perennial human interest, but he has but little sympathy with a love-affair founded on or cul- minating in marriage. It must have some taint of the illicit to be worth his busy embroidering needle; the other has a touch of the bourgeois about it. Suggestlveness is more to his mind than statement, hints than assertions. To judge by his conversation you would think that he and the world generally swam in fathomless oceans of vice, but as far as conduct goes, he never swam a stroke. At the utmost he took off his shoes and stockings, and paddled at the extreme edge of that unprofitable sea. He just pruriently pad- dles there with his fat white feet. . . . 74 THE POISON OF ASPS It has been said that every decent man would like to kick him, but In justice to him It must be added that he Is not nearly so unkindly disposed towards anybody. Decent men, like such bour- geois emotions as honest straightforward love, only bore him, and he merely yawns In their faces. But though he has no direct malice, no desire to injure anyone by his petites saletes, he has. It must be confessed, a grudge against all those whom he considers collectively as being at the top of the tree. He has enough brains to know that the majority of the class Mr. and Mrs. Not- qulte-in-lt, who are his intimate circle, have not a quarter of his cleverness, but what he has not brains to see Is that the very gifts of bellttlement and scandal-scattering that make him such a tre- mendous success with them, are exactly the gifts which prevent his being welcomed In more de- sirable circles. It would be altogether beyond the mark to hint that he Is in any way under a cloud : at the most he Is, like the cuttle-fish, enveloped in an obscurity of his own making. Though per- fectly honest himself, he would certainly, if any- one remarked that honesty was the best policy, retort that successful swindling was at least a good second, and It is exactly that habit of mind that causes him to be plante la, as he would say 75 THE POISON OF ASPS himself, among the Not-quite-In-its. Humour, of which he has plenty, is no doubt the salt of life, but all his humour has gone rancid. It is there all right, but it has gone bad, and gives a healthy digestion aches. But flies settle on it, and are none the worse. Though there is no direct malice in him towards those against whom he so in- cessantly uses his little toy tar-squirt, there is a distinct trait of jealousy, that one vice that is quite barren of pleasure, for of all the command- ments there is none except the tenth the breaking of which does not bring to the transgressor some momentary gratification. That, too, accounts in large measure for the raptures he causes at the tables of the Not-quite-in-its, for they, like him, yearn to be quite in it, and not being able to manage it, applaud this dainty use of the tar- squirt against those who are. They have plenty of money, plenty of brains, plenty of artistic tastes, and they would certainly scream with laughter if they were told that it was just the want of a very bourgeois quality, namely good- nature, that bars the fulfilment of their just de- sires. Yet such is the case : they are not ' kind inside.' They are (ever so slightly) pleased at other people's checks and set-backs, and herein in the main consists their second-rateness. 76 THE POISON OF ASPS Horace Campbell is perhaps the priest of this little nest of asps, and without doubt the priestess is the amazing Mrs. Dealtry, now flaming in the sunset of her witty discontented life. She is tall and corpulent, with wonderful vitality and quan- tities of auburn hair and carmine lip salve, and mauve scarves, and when she and Horace Camp- bell get together, as they do two or three times a day, to discuss their friends, those who die, so to speak, and are dismissed by them, are the lucky ones, for the rest they drive with whips through the London streets, without a rag of reputation to cover them. She, like Horace, has plenty of humour, and if the sight of a wrinkled old woman with a painted face, and one high-heeled foot in the grave, dealing out horrible innuendoes like a pack of cards, does not make you feel sick, you will enjoy her conversation very much. Years ago she started the theory that Horace was de- votedly attached to her, and for her sake com- mitted celibacy, and though she has changed her friends more often than she changes her dress, she still sticks to the gratifying belief that she has wrecked his life. * Horace might have done anything,' she is ac- customed to say, ' but he would always waste his time on me. Poor Horace ! such a dear, isn't he, 77 THE POISON OF ASPS but how much aged in this last year or two. And I can't think why somebody doesn't tell him to have his teeth attended to.' Then as Horace entered the room she made a place for him on the sofa. ' Monster, come here at once,' she said. * Now what is the truth about Lady Genge's sudden disappearance? I am told he simply turned her out of the house, which any decent man would have done years ago.' ' He did,' said Horace, ' and she always came in again by the back door. This time he has turned her out of the back door. On dit que " Cherchez le valet." ' Mrs. Dealtry gave a little scream of laugh- ter. * Last time it was the girl's music master,' she said. ' She will never take servants with a char- acter.' 'Character for what?' asked Horace. 'So- briety?' ' She was at the opera three nights ago, but blind drunk, though you mustn't repeat that. I'm told she had her tiara upside down with the points over her forehead. Alice Chignonette, as I call her, was with her, a small horse-hair bun glued with seccotine to the back of her head. She 78 THE POISON OF ASPS hadn't got any clothes on, but was slightly distempered.' * She always is slightly distempered, except when she holds four aces and four queens, and has seen the whole of her opponent's hand so that she knows whether to finesse or not. And is it true that the Weasel has stopped her allow- ance ? ' * Yes, he gave her a coat of dyed rabbit-skins with a card pour prendre conge, and a second- class ticket to Milwaukee where he first found her on the sidewalkee. What people get into so- ciety now ! Large bare shoulders, a perpetual cold in the head and the manners of a Yahoo are a sufficient passport. One can't go anywhere without running into them. Not a soul would speak to her at Milwaukee so she came to Lon- don for whitewash.' ' And distemper.' ' She brought that with her. The Weasel car- ried it in his grip-sack.' Horace took an enamelled cigarette-case out of his pocket and lit a cigarette that smelt of musk. ' I saw Lily Broomsgrove to-day,' he said. ' She has become slightly broader than she is long,' 79 THE POISON OF ASPS ' Her conversation always was. It consists of seven improper adjectives and one expletive. That is why she is so popular. She can be easily understood.' ' She seemed to have an understanding with Pip Rippington. He was enclosed.' ' He ought to be. Haven't you heard? That golf club he started, you know. Apparently golf was a terminological inexactitude. I suppose it will all be common property soon, so I may as well tell you.' Mrs. Dealtry proceeded to tell them, and all the little asps hissed with pleasure. . . . Now there was very little truth in all that Mrs. Dealtry had been saying, and perhaps none at all in Horace Campbell's contribution, yet while each of them really knew the other was a liar, each drank it all in with the utmost avidity. Such malice as there was about them was completely impotent malice: it could not possibly matter to Pip Rippington, for instance, whoever he was, that Mrs. Dealtry and Horace had been invent- ing stories about him. That he had founded a golf club was perfectly true; that Mrs. Dealtry had not been welcomed as a member of it was true also, though there was a needless suppressio veri about this fact, as everybody present was 80 THE POISON OF ASPS perfectly aware of it. But it amused them in some rancid manner to vent spleen, just as it per- haps amuses asps to bite. Only, and here was one of Time's revenges, nobody ever cared what either of them said. To throw mud enough is proverbially supposed to ensure the sticking of some of it, but in the case of them and those like them, the proverb was falsified. They had said that sort of thing too often and too emphatically for anyone to attach the smallest importance to it; it was as if their victims had been inoculated for the poison of asps, and suffered no subsequent inconvenience from the bite. No one thought of bringing the laws about libel into play over them, any more than people think about invoking the protection of those laws against a taxi-driver who compensates himself in compliments for the tip he has not received. If they have any sense they get themselves into their houses and leave the vituperative driver outside. That is just what decent people did with Horace Campbell. He is outside still, biting the paving-stones. The pity of it all is the appalling waste among asps of brains, inventive faculty, and humour. If only their gifts were used to some laudable or even only innocent purpose, the world in general would gain a great deal of entertainment, and 8i THE POISON OF ASPS the asps of the popularity and success that they secretly crave for. As it is, some sort of moral ptomaine has infected them, some invasion of microbes that turns their wit into poison. What- soever things are loathsome, whatsoever things are of ill report, they think of those things. All their wit, too, goes to waste i nobody cares two straws what they say, and the bitten are pathetic- ally unconscious of having received any injury whatever. That fact, perhaps, if they could thor- oughly realise it, might draw their fangs. THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER FIVE THE SEA-GREEN INCORRUPTIBLE CONSTANCE LADY WHITTLEMERE lives in a huge gloomy house in the very centre of Mayfair, has a majestic appearance, and is perfectly ready for the Day of Judgment to come whenever it likes. From the time when she learned French in the school-room (she talks it with a certain sonorous air, as if she was preach- ing a sermon in a cathedral) and played Diabelli's celebrated duet in D with the same gifted in- structress, she has always done her duty in every state of life. If she sat down to think, she could not hit upon any point in which she has not in- variably behaved like a Christian and a lady (particularly a lady). Yet she is not exactly Pharisaical; she never enumerates even in her own mind her manifold excellences, simply be- cause they are so much a matter of course with her. And that is precisely why she is so perfectly hopeless. She expects it of herself to do her duty, and behave as a lady should behave, and she never has the smallest misgiving as to her complete success in living up to this ideal. That being so, she does not give it another thought, 8s THE SEA-GREEN knowing quite well that, whoever else may do doubtful or disagreeable things, Constance Whit- tlemere will move undeviatingly on in her flaw- less courses, just as the moon, without any diminution of her light and serenity, looks down on slums or battle-fields, strewn with the corpses of the morally or physically slain. And Lady Whittlemere, like the moon, does not even think of saying, ' Poor things ! ' She is much too lunar. At the age of twenty-two (to trace her distress- ing history) her mother informed her, at the close of her fourth irreproachable London season, that she was going to marry Lord Whittlemere. She was very glad to hear it, for he was completely congenial to her, though, even if she had been very sorry to hear it, her sense of duty would probably have led her to do as she was told. But having committed that final act of filial obedience, she realized that she had a duty to perform to herself in the person of the new Lady Whittle- mere, and climbed up on to a lofty four-square pedestal of her own. Her duty towards herself was as imperative as her duty towards Miss Green had been, when she learned the Diabelli duet in D, and was no doubt derived from the sense of position that she, as her husband's wife, 86 INCORRUPTIBLE enjoyed. Yet perhaps she hardly ' enjoyed ' it, for It was not in her nature to enjoy anything. She had a perfectly clear idea, as always, of what her own sense of fitness entailed on her, and she did it rigidly. ' The Thing,' in fact, was her rule in life. Just as It was The Thing to obey her governess, and obey her mother, so, when she blossomed out Into wifehood, The Thing was to be a perfect and complete Lady Whittlemere. Success, as always, attended her conscientious realisation of this. Luckily (or un- luckily, since her hope of salvation was thereby utterly forfeited) she had married a husband whose general attitude towards life, whose sense of duty and hidebound instincts, equalled her own, and they lived together, after that literal solemn- ization of holy matrimony In St. Peter's, Eaton Square, for thirty-four years in unbroken har- mony. They both of them had an unassailable sense of their own dignity, never disagreed on any topic under the sun, and saw grow up round them a copious family of plain, solid sons and comely daughters, none of whom caused their parents a single moment's salutary anxiety. The three daughters, amply dowried, got married into stiff mahogany families at an early age, and the sons continued to prop up the conservative inter- 87 THE SEA-GREEN ests of the nation by becoming severally (i.) a soldier, (ii.) a clergyman, (III.) a member of Parliament, (Iv.) a diplomatist, and they took into all these liberal walks of life the traditions and proprieties of genuine Whittlemeres. They were all Honourables, and all honourable, and all dull, and all completely conscious of who they were. Nothing could have been nicer. For these thirty-four years, then, Lady Whlt- tlemere and her husband lived together In har- mony and exquisite expensive pomposity. Had Genesis been one of the prophetical books, their existence might be considered as adumbrated by that of Adam and Eve In the Garden of Eden. Only there was no serpent of any kind, and their great house In shelter of the Wiltshire downs had probably a far pleasanter climate than that of Mesopotamia. Their sons grew up plain but strong, they all got Into the cricket Eleven at Eton, and had no queer cranky leanings towards vegetarianism like Abel, or to homicide like Cain, while the daughters until the time of their ma- hogany marriages grew daily more expert in the knowledge of how to be Whittlemeres. Three months of the year they spent in London, three more in their large property In the Highlands of 88 INCORRUPTIBLE Scotland, and the remaining six were devoted to Home Life at Whittlemere, where the hunting season and the shooting season with their large solid parties ushered in the Old English Christ- mas, and were succeeded by the quietness of Lent. Then after Easter the whole household, from major-domo to steward's-room boy, went second- class to London, while for two days Lord and Lady Whittlemere ' picnicked ' as they called it at Whittlemere, with only his lordship's valet and her ladyship's maid, and the third and fourth footmen, and the first kitchen-maid and the still- room maid and one housemaid to supply their wants, and made their state entry in the train of their establishment to Whittlemere House, Bel- grave Square, where they spent May, June, and July. But while they were in the country no dis- traction consequent on hunting or shooting parties diverted them from their mission in life, which was to behave like Whittlemeres. About two hundred and thirty years ago, it is true, a certain Lord Whittlemere had had ' passages,' so to speak, with a female who was not Lady Whittle- mere, but since then the whole efforts of the family had been devoted to wiping out this de- plorable lapse. Wet or fine, hunting and shoot- 89 THE SEA-GREEN Ing notwithstanding, Lord Whittlemere gave audience every Thursday to his estate-manager, who laid before him accounts and submitted re- ports. Nothing diverted him from his duty, any more than it did from distributing the honours of his shooting lunches among the big farmer-tenants of the neighbourhood. There was a regular cycle of these, and duly Lord Whittlemere with his guests lunched (the lunch in its entirety being brought out in hampers from The House) at Farmer Jones's, and Farmer Smith's, and Farmer Robertson's, complimented Mrs. Jones, Smith and Robertson on the neatness of their gardens and the rosy-facedness of their children, and gave them each a pheasant or a hare. Sim- ilarly whatever Highnesses and Duchesses were staying at The House, Lady Whittlemere went every Wednesday morning to the Mothers' Meeting at the Vicarage, and every Thursday afternoon to pay a call in rotation on three of the lodgekeepers' and tenants' wives. This did not bore her in the least: nothing in the cold shape of duty ever bored her. Conjointly they went to church on Sunday morning, where Lord Whittlemere stood up before the service began and prayed into his hat, subsequently reading the lessons, and giving a sovereign into the plate, 90 I INCORRUPTIBLE while Lady Whittlemere, after a choir practice on Saturday afternoon, played the organ. It was the custom for the congregation to wait in their pews till they had left the church, exactly as if it was in honour of Lord and Lady Whittle- mere that they had assembled here. This im- pression was borne out by the fact that as The Family walked down the aisle the congregation rose to their feet. Only the footman who was on duty that day preceded their exit, and he held the door of the landau open until Lady Whittle- mere and three daughters had got in. Lord Whittlemere and such sons as were present then took off their hats to their wife, mother, sis- ters and daughters and strode home across the Park. And as if this was not enough propriety for one day, every Sunday evening the vicar of the parish came to dine with the family, directly after evening service. He was bidden to come straight back from evensong without dressing, and in order to make him quite comfortable Lord Whit- tlemere never dressed on Sunday evening, and made a point of reading the Guardian and the Church Family Newspaper in the interval between tea and dinner, so as to be able to initiate Sab- batical subjects. This fortunate clergyman was 91 THE SEA-GREEN permitted to say grace both before and after meat, and Lord Whittlemere always thanked him for ' looking in on us.' To crown all he invaria- bly sent him two pheasants and a hare during the month of November and an immense cinnamon turkey at Christmas. In this way Constance Whittlemere's married life was just the flower of her maiden bud. The same sense of duty as had inspired her school- room days presided like some wooden-eyed Jug- gernaut over her wifehood, and all her freedom from any sort of worry or anxiety for these thirty- four years served but to give her a shell to her soul. She became rounded and water-tight, she got to be embedded in the jelly of comfort and security and curtseying lodge-keepers' wives, and * yes-my-lady '-Sunday-Schools. Such rudiments of humanity as she might possibly have once been possessed of shrivelled like a devitahsed nut- kernel, and, when at the end of these thirty-four years her husband died, she was already too proper, too shell-bound to be human any longer. Naturally his death was an extremely satisfactory sort of death, and there was no sudden stroke, nor any catching of vulgar disease. He had a bad cold on Saturday, and, with a rising tem- perature, insisted on going to church on Sunday. 92 INCORRUPTIBLE Not content with that, in the pursuance of perfect duty he went to the stables, as usual, on Sunday afternoon, and fed his hunters with lumps of sugar and carrots. It is true that he sent the second footman down to the church about the time of evensong, to say that he was exceedingly unwell, and would have to forgo the pleasure of having Mr. Armine to dinner, but the damage was already done. He developed pneumonia, lin- gered a decorous week, and then succumbed. All was extremely proper. It is idle to pretend that his wife felt any sense of desolation, for she was impervious to every- thing except dignity. But she decided to call her- self Constance Lady Whittlemere, rather than adopt the ugly name of Dowager. There was a magnificent funeral, and she was left very well off. Le Rot est mort: Vive le Rot: Captain Lord Whittlemere took the reins of government into his feudal grasp, and his mother with four rows of pearls for her life, two carriages and a pair of carriage horses and a jointure of £6000 a year entered into the most characteristic phase of her existence. She was fifty-six years old, and since she proposed to live till at least eighty, she bought the lease of a great chocolate-coloured house in 93 THE SEA-GREEN Mayfair with thirty years to run, for it would be very tiresome to have to turn out at the age of seventy-nine. As befitted her station, it was very large and gloomy and dignified, and had five best spare bedrooms, which was just five more than she needed, since she never asked anybody to stay with her except her children's governess, poor Miss Lyall, for whom a dressing-room was far more suitable : Miss Lyall would certainly be more used to a small room than a large one. She came originally to help Lady Whittlemere to keep her promise as set forth in the Morning Post to answer the letters of condolence that had poured in upon her in her bereavement, but before that gigantic task was over, Lady Whittlemere had determined to give her a permanent home here, in other words, to secure for herself some- one who was duly conscious of the greatness of Whittlemeres and would read to her or talk to her, drive with her, and fetch and carry for her. She did not propose to give Miss Lyall any re- muneration for her services, as is usual in the case of a companion, for it was surely remunera- tion enough to provide her with a comfortable home and all found, while Miss Lyall's own prop- erty of £ 1 00 a year would amply clothe her, and enable her to lay something by. Lady Whittle- 94 INCORRUPTIBLE mere thought that everybody should lay some- thing by, even if, like herself, nothing but the total extinction of the British Empire would de- prive her of the certainty of having £6000 a year as long as she lived. But thrift being a duty, she found that £5000 a year enabled her to pro- cure every comfort and luxury that her limited imagination could suggest to her, and instead of spending the remaining £1000 a year on charity or things she did not want, she laid it by. Miss Lyall, in the same way could be neat and tidy on £50 a year, and lay by £50 more. For a year of mourning Constance Whittle- mere lived in the greatest seclusion, and when that year was out she continued to do so. She spent Christmas at her son's house, where there was always a pompous family gathering, and stayed for a fortnight at Easter in a hotel at Hastings for the sake of sea-breezes. She spent August in Scotland, again with her son, and September at Buxton, where further to fortify her perfect health, she drank waters and went for two walks a day with Miss Lyall, whose hotel bills she, of course, was answerable for. Miss Lyall similarly accompanied her to Hastings, but was left behind in London at Christmas and during August. 95 THE SEA-GREEN A large establishment was of course necessary in order to maintain the Whittlemere tradition. Half-a-dozen times in the season Lady Whittle- mere had a dinner-party which assembled at eight, and broke up with the utmost punctuality at half- past ten, but otherwise the two ladies were almost invariably alone at breakfast;, lunch, tea, and dinner. But a cook, a kitchen-maid, and a scullery-maid were indispensable to prepare those meals, a still-room maid to provide cakes and rolls for tea and breakfast, a butler and two footmen to serve them, a lady's maid to look after Lady Whittlemere, a steward's room boy to wait on the cook, the butler, and the lady's maid, two housemaids to dust and tidy, a coach- man to drive Lady Whittlemere, and a groom and a stable-boy to look after the horses and carriages. It was impossible to do with less, and thus fourteen lives were spent in maintaining the Whittlemere dignity downstairs, and Miss Lyall did the same upstairs. With such an establish- ment Lady Whittlemere felt that she was enabled to do her duty to herself, and keep the flag of tradition flying. But the merest tyro in dignity could see that this could not be done with fewer upholders, and sometimes Lady Whittlemere had grave doubts whether she ought not to have a hall- 96 INCORRUPTIBLE boy as well. One of the footmen or the butler of course opened the front-door as she went In and out, and the hall-boy with a quantity of buttons would stand up as she passed him with fixed set face, and then presumably sit down again. The hours of the day were mapped out with a regularity borrowed from the orbits of the stars. At half-past nine precisely Lady Whittlemere en- tered the dining-room where Miss Lyall was waiting for her, and extended to her companion the tips of four cool fingers. Breakfast was eaten mostly In silence, and if there were any letters for her (there usually were not) Lady Whittlemere read them, and as soon as breakfast was over an- swered them. After these literary labours were accomplished. Miss Lyall read Items from the Morning Post aloud, omitting the leading articles but going conscientiously through the smaller paragraphs. Often Lady Whittlemere would stop her. ' Lady Cammerham Is back In town Is she?' she would say. 'She was a Miss Pulton, a distant cousin of my husband's. Yes, Miss Lyall?' This reading of the paper lasted till eleven, at which hour. If fine, the two ladles walked In the Green Park till half-past. If wet, they looked out 97 THE SEA-GREEN of the window to see if it was going to clear. At half-past eleven the landau was announced (shut if wet, open if fine), and they drove round and round and round and round the Park till one. At one they returned and retired till half-past, when the butler and two footmen gave them lunch. At lunch the butler said, ' Any orders for the car- riage, my lady?* and every day Lady Whittle- mere said, ^ The victoria at half-past two. Is there anywhere particular you would like to go. Miss Lyall?' Miss Lyall always tried to sum- mon up her courage at this, and say that she would like to go to the Zoological Gardens. She had done so once, but that had not been a great suc- cess, for Lady Whittlemere had thought the animals very strange and rude. So since then she always replied : ' No, I think not, thank you. Lady Whittle- mere.* They invariably drove for two hours in the summer and for an hour and a half in the winter, and this change of hours began when Lady Whittlemere came back from Harrogate at the end of September, and from Hastings after Easter. Little was said during the drive, it being enough for Lady Whittemere to sit very straight up in her seat and look loftily about her, so that 98 rte. Sd.^AOtK ^^C