Chapter I: Part 1

MOP FAIR

Some Elegant Extracts from the Private
Correspondence of Lady Viola Drumcree,
the Fatherless Daughter of Feodorovna,
Countess of Chertsey

BY

ARTHUR M. BINSTEAD

Otherwise known as "PITCHER" of the Pink 'Un

SANDS & CO.
EDINBURGH: 13 BANK STREET
LONDON: 23 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C,
1905

"'Everyone does it,' is the excuse made by all. Our public standard of morality, our code of honour, our national pride, seem to be gradually wiped out."

--THE LADY TATTON SYKES.

"The girl of the Twentieth Century, even if she smokes a cigarette and talks slang, seems to me an infinitely more capable being than her grandmother was."

--THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK.

"Many insects are in a state of maturity thirty minutes after their birth, and at seventy minutes begin to put their grandsires through their facings."

--ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS NOTE.

EPISTLES

FIRST
SECOND
THIRD
FOURTH
FIFTH
SIXTH
SEVENTH
EIGHTH
NINTH
TENTH
ELEVENTH
TWELFTH

MOP FAIR

EPISTLE I

EATON SQUARE, Tuesday, _June_ 16_th._

DEAREST PATRICIA,--

Yesterday was the nineteenth anniversary of my unhappy birth, and I am going to open my heart to you chiefly because it was during that white-violet epoch of innocence and virtue, the few days prior to my being bundled off to the same continental boarding-school as yourself, dear kid, that I remember some countrified wiseacre with rather less reverence than all the rest for the holy tradition beginning:

"God bless the Squire and his relations
And keep us in our proper stations"--

remarking that it didn't greatly matter _what_ companionships a girl formed at a Swiss _pensionnat de demoiselles_ since her own self-respect and her shame at the remembrance of the fun in the dormitories would impel her to drop all such _participes criminis_ with electric promptitude on her return to England--a fatuous piece of prophecy which our continued friendship flatly disproves. So, between you and me, dearest, I frankly admit that mine has been a joyless birthday by reason of my impotent yearnings after that which I have never known--paternal love; for I feel quite sure that I told you on that interesting night when at the Foire au Pain d'Epices we first tasted _créme de menthe_, I came into the world many years before the Countess of Chertsey, my mother, entered into a matrimonial alliance with Mr Cecil Contango, since when her social obligations and engagements have been so numerous and engrossing that she has never yet found time to tell me even my father's name. In my childhood I was alluded to merely as "Féo's Indiscretion," and as her photographs of that day represent her as being extremely fascinating and beautiful, it may even be that she herself got twisted in her bookkeeping. I have a vague remembrance of her coming to see me at the tiny cottage at Harrow where I vegetated with Nurse Knapper, on one Sunday afternoon when the trees were all yellow with laburnum and the bushes all lavender with lilac, and most probably the tall, military Romeo in the dark cutaway, who accompanied her, was He. For as my mother kissed me at parting, she turned to Romeo and said, "Surely you can spare me an hour or so to-morrow to do a little shopping for her?"; at which he shuddered dreadfully and gasped out, "Me in the streets on a Monday in the daytime? Féo, you must be mad! Didn't I tell you coming down that if only Fortnum and Mason would trust me for a couple of raised pies and a case of old brandy I intended hiding in the crypt of St Paul's till the bookies had forgotten all about the City and Surburban?"

I saw Romeo once again later in the year when I was dreadfully ill--I had been many days delirious through drinking rain-water; not that all delirium is incurred in that way, but country children commonly romp until they can drink a rain-barrel dry, and--well, as Sarah says in the song, "That was the ruin of me!" When next I saw Féo (as I have been trained ever since that period to address my dam; and to-day I draw hush-money of her to call her "Sister!") it was not Romeo who brought her down, but a spruce and elderly military buck with a hot eye and a Ceylon breath, who obviously dyed his hair and probably kept at least three different vintages of purple morning mouth-wash on his dressing-table: the kind of man who involuntarily rubs his hands together and waxes eloquently conversational on entering the room in which the cloth is laid, and the red hock glasses punctuate the cutlery at regular distances. At setting eyes on me (then six years old) he stroked my hair and, turning round, kissed Féo, which struck me as a strangely odd proceeding, not knowing, as I do to-day, that nothing more delights the elderly than to be accused of paternity.

But why should I bore you, dear, with this melting tale of "my salad days when I was green in judgment," as Cleopatra, Marc Antony's Alexandrian daisy, observes; why inflict upon you these uninteresting details of my girlhood--that flabby stage of existence in which one is principally conscious of growing out of one's underclothes? It may give you some idea of my detestation for the beings with whom I live in dependence and--then is my ink not wasted.

Yesterday was a day of storm and stress--for Féo. For once the gods on high Olympus heard my prayer and dealt "Cecil's little honey-bun" as big a bit of retributive justice as she will digest in the next six weeks. It came about in this way.

Despite her unflagging efforts to keep him strictly to quarters, Féo's polished, sin-worn, stockbroking old fragment is distinctly and extravagantly flighty. All girls of one-and-twenty look alike to him; or, as the Saturday-to-Monday hussy said of the M.C. of the seaside dancing-rooms, "he's a bit partickler, but not what you might call nasty partickler." From the Regent Street barmaid with the yellow hair to the Dover Street cloak-model with the thirty-six bust "All are Welcome." And perhaps after all, the only people in the world who are truly virtuous--the few remaining savages--are only so because they do not know any better. Poor things! In any event Mr Contango is an indecisive wobbler, as his cuffs constantly covered with illegible addresses of unknown peeresses abundantly prove; and yesterday morning one of the maids of the bedchamber brought to Féo a telegram which she had found under Mr Contango's pillow. It was a hot bobsworth and had evidently been delivered to him at the club at which he dined on the previous evening. In the ardent language of omnibus-love, it began by assuring the addressee of the sender's constancy and devotion, and concluded by arranging a meeting for "seven to-morrow under the clock at Charing Cross"--plebeian Strephons being as incurably addicted to love-making "under the clock" as patrician ones are under the table.

In an aggressive state of hysteria and tears, Féo burst into my morning-room, but as the vapours are absurdly out of fashion and the woman who is on the verge of flopping is worthy only of the most pitying contempt--as, moreover, I had already laughed heartily over the telegram with the maid who found it--I manifested no emotion.

"Read this, read this!" she hissed, thrusting the pink slip into my hands. "Am I--am I to believe my eyes?"

"A telegram can be repeated," I suggested, remembering the legend on the back of the form, "at one-half the charge for transmission, any fraction of one penny less than one half-penny being reckoned as one halfpenny. At the same time the Postmaster-General will not be liable for any ----."

"Have you no pity for me, Viola?" she whined. "Mr Contango has forsaken me to go out girl-hunting."

"If so venerable a kernel, once encased in a prickly shuck--the development of a towering spike-bloom--could arouse my compassion, I should be compelled to lament the fact that I had become hopelessly dippy," I replied, "but since your mental calibre is so low that you choose to look after one man instead of being looked after by a hundred, I must not deny you my counsel and assistance."

At this she blubbered afresh and kissing me on the forehead--ugh, how I rubbed the spot with Piesse and Lubin later on!--she took my hand in hers and cried:

"And you shall find me so grateful, child; for instance, to-morrow you shall have that lovely chinchilla stole on which you set your heart."

"Doesn't the granny muff go with it?" I asked with apparent indifference.

"Y--yes, the muff as well," she stammered.

"Better put it down in black and white," I suggested, setting my _écritoire_ before her. Bargains driven with difficulty are too often the last to be complied with. "Now then," said I, as I folded the voucher and locked it in my desk, "_quo vadis_, madame? Are you steering this craft with your heart or your head? Is the philanderer to be reclaimed in accordance with the rest of your belated theories, or is he to be gaffed and subsequently landed in the Court in which men and women are put asunder? The first is the semi-colon, the second is the climax."

"Vi, dear," she said, as I had all along foreseen she would do, "the semi-colon, please."

"That means," I interpreted, barely succeeding in suppressing my disgust, "that we include ourselves in the Charing Cross assignation. Very good, I will be ready for you at half-past six;" and I left her. Poor fool! Small wonder that every nation in the world agreed upon the point of woman's folly long, long ago; and what manner of creature is this, that, finding herself disesteemed by her mate, buys a love philtre and introduces it furtively into his evening beverage to try and bring him back? Pah! Excuse me, dearest Pat, if I abandon the subject--it overcomes me!

By half-past six Féo had cried herself hideous; nevertheless she was dressed to go out, and, indeed, desired nothing more than to fall upon the sinner's neck and weep afresh. Possibly there are faults on both sides--as the Southend shell-fishmonger said to the bean-feasters when they complained that they couldn't keep his pickled cockles down. Possibly (again) I was wearing a more than ordinarily militant expression as I stood there, for Féo next said, with characteristic vacillancy:

"On reflection, child, I have decided to go alone. A _confrontation_ of this kind is not a spectacle for your young eyes."

"And pray how are you going?" I asked, instantly perceiving the manifest advantages of being there myself, unhampered and alone.

"The landaulette is already at the door," she said. It, or some other kind of car, invariably has been ever since she took to introducing these things to her friends, and paying such of her debts as no woman, however brazen, could continue to owe with complacency, with the resultant "commissions."

"Just as I imagined!" I rejoined, with an acid sneer. "And with James and William in powder and smart liveries on the box--'Royalty-visiting-Royalty' personified--I'll be bound! A pretty way indeed to play Paul Pry--hanged if I don't think you'd go deerstalking accompanied by Sousa's band! Oho! see, just across the burn, yon big black stag feeding low down with five-and-twenty hinds: will you kindly have the goodness to strike up _The Washington Post-office_! Really, Féo, you are almost too absurd for human toleration. No; you will go to the Embankment on the Underground, and, turning up Villiers Street, will mount the wooden stairs and enter Charing Cross station by the side door. Six paces diagonally to the left will give you a position from which you will command an unobstructed view of the entire platform-approach from behind Smith's bookstall: you will thus face the clock as well as every door by which the guilty pair can enter. So now, good-bye. I am, by the way, fiscally crippled till the end of the month; what sugar have you?"

Helping myself to a few sovereigns from her proffered purse, I dutifully kissed her hand and followed her to the hall doors, waiting there--to the no small wonderment of the footmen--until I saw her turn the corner into Belgrave Place, when I promptly slipped out also.

Being fortunate enough to pick out a really good hansom, I was probably the first from _our_ stable to reach the battle-ground, and, ensconcing myself behind an abutting corner of the Continental Parcels Office, I endeavoured to decide in my own mind which of the many casual Eves present was the other runner. My ultimate fancy rested between two. The first of these was a tall blonde, in a heel-tipping skirt and mess-jacket of blue herring-bone, with torquoise velvet cuffs and _empiècements_ and gilt studs. The cab-man who set her down and received a bare shilling for his fare, asked her--very kindly, I thought--if she really felt she could spare it, at which she told him she would gladly have made it more, but she had only a penny left, and might need that herself. The second was a decided brunette in a daring blending of pink chiffon and pale yellow silk, worn with a mauve Tam-o'-Shanter with a gold quill, and patent-leather boots with white cloth tops. Omitting the white cloth tops, she was the living ideal of the persecuted heroine of _Under the Red Macintosh, or the Toque-Builder's Typewriter_, which, of course, you remember quite well. I often take it up, for there has always seemed to me to be such a genuine touch of human nature about "Gwendolyn's" landlady who was partial to a little drop of gin, and used to drink it out of a footless egg-cup which she carried in her reticule whilst tramping the streets with "Gwendoleyn" in search of an honourable theatrical engagement, such as a lady could accept.

It was at two minutes past seven, or thereabouts, that Mr Contango appeared. He passed by the blonde in the blue herring-bone with the wig-wag walk unnoticed, nor did he pay the least attention to "Gwendoleyn" in the pink and yellow: you may well imagine my surprise! As he approached the bookstall--and there were so many people about that my eyes followed him only with great difficulty--blundering madly towards the spot where the warmest panther in the Peerage lay crouching for a spring, there burst from the swing doors of the Ladies' Cloak Room a tall, fair girl in grey, her nostrils dilated, and her Rembrandt-red hair crowned by a black beaver Toreador, with a pink vulture's pom-pom introduced jauntily on the left side! She saw Mr Contango, as she thought, departing, and ran towards him; but while there still remained a good ten feet of platform--and thrice ten solid strangers hurrying across it--between herself and her lover, she suddenly arrested her progress as the infuriated Féo dashed from her ambush, and, with a small but firm gloved hand, gripped her lawful incubus by the right coat-sleeve!

"Pray, Mr Contango, what brings you here at this unusual hour?"

The coward quailed beneath her infuriated glare, and struggled as fiercely as he dared without incurring public resentment, to wrench his imprisoned arm free. Féo, however, clung like a barnacle to a ship's keel. But she couldn't give the weight away. His superior avoirdupois enabled Mr Contango to tug her steadily through the unsympathetic crowd, and, wilfully and deliberately--though Féo, poor fool! did not realise it--into the route or pathway down which a grimy railway-porter was pushing an iron-wheeled trolley, burdened with two-score of sooty and malodorous carriage-lamps.

"My leave, please, my leave; mind 'er grease!" growled the fellow, shoving the corners of the truck into the just and unjust alike.

A strange light shone in Mr Contango's eyes: it was a beam of inspiration. As the cumbrous hand-waggon with its glittering but grimy cargo passed by him, he very adroitly wiped his right palm along the oil-blacked tops of the lower tier of smoking lamps; then closed that hand and kept it for a moment behind him. Féo, meanwhile, finding the pulling growing gradually more feeble, fatuously imagined that the fish was spent, and getting out the conversational gaff to despatch it, reiterated:

"Mr Contango, I demand to know where you were going?"

"Certainly, dearest. Straight into the lavatory. Just look at this, as Serpolette says----" and he stuck out the paw that literally reeked with oily blackness.

"Been shaking hands with one of your city friends, I presume?" sneered Féo, stepping back to avoid contact with the paw, for, to do her justice, Féo is always so daintily, unimpeachably turned out that even the flies wipe their feet before alighting on her.

"Alas!" replied Mr Contango in a melodramatic way, espying an exit from his dilemma, "there is one friend at least whose honest hand I ne'er may grasp again--(here he improved his market by covering his eyes with his hand, thereby transferring much soot to his face)--I fly to his bedside now--now, er--by way of the lavatory. Do not further detain me, dear heart."

"I release you that you may perform your much-needed ablutions," stipulated Féo, loosening her grip, "but I still await you, and your explanation, here. Go, and return quickly;" and Mr Contango slunk away as meanly as did Theseus when he gave poor Ariadne the slip on the "front" at Naxos.

Down the stone steps went Mr Contango, and into the palatial marble dungeon on whose atmosphere the all-pervading odour of scented-soap has a firm half-Nelson, and whose echoing walls magnify the hiss of the half-minute rushes of water into the roars of Niagaraic torrents. At least that is how such an apartment was once described in the report of an inquest upon a defaulting attendant who had committed suicide on being told after the quarterly stocktaking that he was two-hundred-and-fifty-four wash-up's, ten roller towels, and eight gold fish short.

As he descended the stairs, Mr Contango's concernment was less for his lawful than for his unlawful partner, but his lucidity returned on the instant of his setting eyes on a middle-aged postman who was dallying at the wash-basins, the traditional fidelity of the postman being readily apparent to anyone who has looked over some of the continental postcards which he, in spite of all temptations, has faithfully surrendered to the addressees. Therefore Mr Contango went up at once to the postman and said:

"I have two little commissions for you to execute; they will not occupy you more than five minutes, and the pay is one shilling a minute. First of all, go to the booking-office and purchase me a first-single to some station a little way down the line; no matter where. Take this half-sovereign and bring me the change."

So the postman went. He was an unconscionable time gone, the delay mainly arising out of his ingenuous consideration for his employer's pocket. With praiseworthy economy he selected "Spa Road, Bermondsey," at the ticket-window, and, as first-singles to that fashionable promenade are seldom or never asked for at Charing Cross, the booking-clerk had to fake one with a typewriter. The joy of the simple letter-carrier at having nine-and-sixpence to return in change was so real, however, that Mr Contango checked his angry impatience, and hurriedly proceeded to instruct the postman in his second errand.

"Upstairs, just over by the big slate on which they chalk up the Channel weather report and the number of baggages on the Folkestone boat," he said, "you will see a young lady--tall and fair, with lavishly large brown eyes; wearing a grey frock, and a black hat with a pink feather in it. Hand her this card, and----ah, yes, here are the five shillings I promised you;" and he placed in the postman's hand the silver and one of his visiting cards, inscribed:--

+------------------------------------------+
| |
| "_Fly. Pray pardon this seeming but |
| unintentional despotism, Queen of the |
| Human Race, but_ PLEASE _fly: we are |
| observed. Will pick you up later on. |
| You and you only, the entire time |
| for_ CECIL." |
| |
+------------------------------------------+

From half-way up the lavatory steps, with his keen eyes on a level with the platform, Mr Contango watched the postman single out the tall girl in grey, and deliver his message. He saw her smile sadly--tall women have not the vital force of little women--as she turned to leave the station by the arched exit through which the cabs pass, and, sticking the railway ticket conspicuously in his hatband (an unusual proceeding, but a desirable one in the circumstances), he sallied forth to rejoin his wife with as brave a show of unconcern as ever a man returning to a life of irksome chastity carried.

"And now, dear Féo," he said blandly, as he rejoined the surmising simpleton who was fully prepared to submit to a mild remonstrance on the more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger, or deplorable-pity-of-a-man-marrying-a-woman-who-never- seems-to-understand-him lines, as the price of her victory, "is your stirring little farce at an end, and am I to be permitted to smooth the pillow of my poor friend who lies at the point of death at--at, er--Tunbridge Wells?"

"Tunbridge Wells!" she echoed, half acquiescing only for the reason that her brain was reeling at her utter inability to reconcile the proposition to the telegram still in her pocket; "I presume that, without an atom of luggage, you would return to-night?"

Strolling aimlessly across the station as they talked, they had by this time reached the open door of the glaring refreshment-bar, and as Mr Contango raised his eyes he caught an instantaneous reflection in the oblong mirror, just ahead, of a group of three persons of which he and his wife were but two.

The third was the faithful postman!

Straight up came the blundering idiot and roared as if into a megaphone:

"I give the laidy the note as you wrote downstairs, sir, an' she said All-right; she'll go straight up to Verrey's an' wait in the restarong till you join her!"

* * * * * *

Féo and Mr Contango returned to Eaton Square in eloquent silence and a four-wheeler, and ascended at once to their respective rooms to sulk, Féo first going to the very nadir of narrow-minded littleness by locking the street door and taking the key upstairs with her--which proceeding on the part of a countess so shocked Andrews, our head butler, that he handed Féo his portfolio when he passed the matutinal mocha and the vesper rashers this morning. How it will all end I little know and care considerably less. Quite possibly Féo will once again act the upper and the nether millstone by the essentially materialistic man who seems not to worry about little inconsistencies so long as he leads the life dictated by the senses: probably he will tardily give her his word of honour to leave undone the things which he finds himself unable to do; also to be seen at church between drinks on a Sunday. The only certainty about these squabbles is that, whenever this excessive hammering in of the old, well-settled nail is going on, the burden of supporting existence in the company of the two most morose and splenetic mortals in London falls upon me. How truly has Ben Jonson said, "Apes are apes, though clothed in scarlet!"

Have you heard, by the way, what a fearfully narrow squeak dear Lady Invernairne had the other day? Her marriage to the middle-aged Earl was, of course, a terrible error--though not in the sense intended by the Parisian restaurateur whose consort's arithmetic as practised on the customers' bills was so distinctly "against the consumer" that Monsieur once assured one of his intimates, "Jules, mon vieux, I would not take fifty thousand francs for the errors committed by madame, my wife, this season alone!" No, dear, it was a mistaken business in the sense that while she was--and still is--positively irresistible to any right-thinking bachelor in any part of Christendom, he soon returned to his old life of club, and race-meeting, and card table. Naturally she has had to console herself, and--well, the other day she was sitting at her tiny writing table, penning a note that commenced with "My very naughty, but delightful darling," and concluded with "Yours and yours alone, I swear," when she became suddenly aware that the Earl had entered the room and was standing immediately behind her, looking over her shoulder, and doubtless reading sentences which were warm enough to have caused growing wild flowers to droop their heads and wither. Without an instant's hesitation she dipped her pen deep into the ink pot, signed the letter in a bold hand "Jane Huggins," and arose with the remark:

"There, that's done! But who in the wide world could have foreseen the domestic servant problem reaching the point of compelling a Countess to write her illiterate, but in all other senses desirable, parlour-maid's love-letters?"

From the Far East there returned yesterday, torn and seared, Lieutenant Percy Brancaster, who a year or so ago was betrothed to the Honourable Mrs Attie Alderney, the young Meredithian widow of his once dearest chum--at least they were at Harrow together, and Attie never set eyes on Percy without soundly punching his head, even if he had to run a hundred yards to do it. Percy, as you doubtless are aware, was deeply in love with Phyllis Postance long before Attie Alderney came along and took her, after which, poor thing! he was like the solitary prisoner who had nothing to do and nowhere to go when they took him out of the Bastille and destroyed it. Having left the Navy through a breach of regulation number two-million-eight-hundred-and-ninety-seven, concerning the method of parting the eyebrows across the top of the nose, he became imbued with a somewhat Quixotic and reasonless desire to go and fight on behalf of the little yellow Japs, but had no sooner arrived in the Ping Yang Inlet on the Ta-Tong River than a Russian torpedo-boat handed him the distressing injury which, I am told, disqualifies him for any active service save the compilation of some such work of personal observation as "With Neither Side in the Late War." So luckless a person, prematurely aged, his cheeks hollowed by long suffering, his once golden-brown hair all etiolated and falling, compels one's sympathy, yet one cannot quite blame Phyllis for absolutely declining to receive, let alone resume courtship, with one who as a husband would be completely incapable of ever making up any little domestic disagreement which would be sure to arise from time to time. For when the torpedo exploded, so Phyllis tells me (and she is an advanced student of Phrenology), it carried poor Mr Brancaster's bump of forgiveness entirely away! And yet we are continually being told that the "horrors of war" are much overstated!

But my hand grows cramped, so, dearest, adios.

Your affectionate friend,
VIOLA.

EPISTLE II

EATON SQUARE, _Thursday, July_ 2_nd._

DEAREST PATRICIA,--

For three very good reasons, each in itself sufficient, I am about to tell you a profound secret. Firstly, I feel quite sure that absolute secrecy is completely impossible from you; comparative secrecy where you are concerned, dear, is only a matter of degree; so that in a week at most my news will be all over London; Secondly, I well know how hopelessly remote my matrimonial prospects have seemed to you, because everyone has told me how sympathetically you have stated your views on the subject; Thirdly, I feel it my duty as an old schoolfellow to rekindle the spark of expectancy in your own bosom by imparting the news that there is now one girl the less to oppose you in the marriage market--and though, dear, I would far rather see you develop into a sour and parchment-skinned old maid than frighten you into making a hasty and perhaps unhappy alliance, every competitor to disappear from the betting should inspire new life in the poor crocks still unprofitably swelling the handicap, and especially those whose roses are beginning to look faded, and who are, broadly speaking, becoming manifestly frayed and shop-worn. Men, who are largely optimists, tell us that marriage will never lose its popularity, because if there were no marriages there would be no married women, and if there were no married women, who would there be for the men to make love to? But we--I should of course, say you--know differently. Fish will not rise at bait that has been on the hook time after time, and girls lose their bloom by being slobbered and mauled by many triflers. In her translation of the dressing-room-guide of the Baroness Staffe, Lady Colin Campbell flatly stated that much kissing was extremely bad for the complexion, so though as you say--with monotonous frequency, by the way--"we weren't doing a thing but having a good time," it really was your trifler of the moment who (according to his low-flash lights, poor booby!) was having the "good time" and you who were "not doing a thing," I can feel for you. At the bottom of that lane lies the Discard, dear Patricia.

It was on the box seat of a regimental coach at Ascot, while Botfly was delaying the start for the Wokingham Stakes, that I accepted a proposal of marriage from Lord Evelyn Godolphin Mountprospect, youngest son of the Earl of Atholbrose. Being of our house party at Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush's, at Wargrave, he had been addressing me in rather wild superlatives all the week, but it was not until we sat side by side upon the coach, and every head but his and mine was turned towards where the delightful Botfly was playing the goat, that Evelyn permitted his right arm to reconnoitre. And Evelyn--my Evelyn--is as _svelte_ and refined as his name suggests; personally, I have no desire to be pursued and hugged by a hairy monster, and Plato tells us how the early athlete goes to pieces. Imagine the loathsome lot, Patricia, of the unhappy girl united in holy matrimony with an athlete who has unexpectedly gone to pieces! Owing to the exercise of influence in high quarters, Mrs Mortimer-Toddpush says, Evelyn's military duties are considerably lightened, and consist chiefly of writing the prologues and epilogues to the plays presented by the dramatic club and showing the general's lady guests where to wash their hands. Contrast my Ascot, spent under these halcyon conditions, with my only previous experience of a racecourse; when I was driven down to Sandown Park by Mr Contango, who, being heavily in debt to the Ring, had to get under the dogcart whenever a bookmaker looked across the course!

Speaking of this terrible person moves me to relate to you an adventure into which he precipitated Féo, poor wretch! only a week ago. Mr Contango's City affairs were, I may tell you, in a very parlous state, and what he vulgarly terms the "Carnegie-library-compound" was very scarce. He had applied frequently to Féo for one hundred pounds to keep his tailor quiet, but as Féo had some months previously entrusted him with a similar amount to pay a dressmaker's bill, and he had dishonestly expended it in taking a ballet girl to Brighton--a positively dreadful creature who, biting the wrong end of the asparagus at the table d'hôte (so Noser's Detectives ascertained) cried to the waiter, "Hoy, cully, these muddy bluebells aint half done!"--she very naturally declined. Moreover, her health has of late been so indifferent as to have soured her temper, and her physician despotically said that if she did not go at once to a more genial climate, she would before long be investigating the surprises of a future state.

Last Thursday, therefore, she and Mr Contango, followed by the luggage brake piled high, set out for the Riviera, their destination being Hyères, the sheltered little city which nestles beneath the friendly Maurettes. The train by which they proposed to travel was the eleven o'clock first-class boat express from Victoria, but scarcely had they entered that station and alighted from their brougham than the unexpected--by Féo, anyway--happened.

Out from the refreshment buffet rushed two big men who pounced upon Mr Contango and grabbed him by each arm. One of them said something about "handcuffs," but the other ruled it out as being unnecessary; in less than twenty minutes they would be at Brixton, he said, meanwhile if the prisoner resisted they could put him on the floor of the cab and sit on him. As Mr Contango did naught but roll his eyes in misery and groan quite audibly, Féo had to interplead.

"What--what do you want of my husband?" she demanded.

The elder of the two men took a blue document from his breast pocket and replied:

"Two hundred an' forty-one pound thirteen an' fourpence."

"And what for pray?" inquired Féo.

"Judment an' costs, Copthall _versus_ Contango--Stock Exchange differences," answered the bailiff with an air almost of personal resentment.

For a moment or so Féo gazed with scornful disgust at the wretch who stood cowering between his captors.

"You shambling, sheep-faced exile from Hell!" she cried, "how much more are you going to cost me? Fade, fade, ye roses! Is it for this that----"

But the men cut her brutally short by saying it was high time they were moving, as they had got to fetch "another one" from Kennington before dinner; consequently Féo realised that it was up to her to get busy with her little oblong grey-green cheque-book or let her consort go--Inside! Like the fool that she is, she couldn't bear to see him buckled--indeed even as she gazed at him she was secretly longing to throw her arms around him. All intense natures quarrel with those they adore.

"Where can I write a cheque?" she asked of the man with the warrant.

"Come into the bar, lady," replied the bailiff, and led the way.

"To whom shall I make it payable?"

"Flight and Dobell, ma'am, Serjeants-at-Mace to the Sheriffs of London, at your service. But it must be an open cheque to 'bearer,' please, and my mate will remain with the gentleman while I fetch the cash."

Féo certainly squirmed a little at the prospect of remaining in the company of the bailiff and his prisoner while the tipstaff went to Coutts's and returned, but there was no help for it; Mr Contango's iron devotion to backsliding would assuredly land him in some fresh muddle if he were left alone; meanwhile the eleven o'clock train had passed on its way, and there was no other until nine that night.

"Please take a cab both ways," said Féo, as she handed her cheque and a small gold coin to the officer, "and bid the driver not to spare his cattle."

Never did ten minutes go so slowly; with the conventional splitting-headache demanded by the occasion, Féo endeavoured to still her nerves with tea in the buffet, but to no purpose. Eventually the man came back, grinning his satisfaction.

"Is this wretched business ended now, pray?"

"Quite, ma'am; everythink's all-Sir-Garnet," replied the bailiff, "of course it's not perticklarly pleasant, but we've only done our duty and I hope, ma'am--and you too, sir--will admit as we've not exceeded it. Should you do so, sir, this is our firm's address--pardon the envelope but I haven't got a card about me. Good day, ma'am, and good day to you, sir:" and they departed.

Poor fool--if only she had known! For the dirty grubby envelope which Mr Contango instantly thrust into his pocket contained fresh clean bank notes to the value of eighty pounds--Contango's "corner," or third share, in the most disgraceful conspiracy ever conceived to victimise a wealthy wife. Mr Contango had planned the whole thing. The imaginary "bailiff" who spoke about the handcuffs is well known in the neighbourhood of the Haymarket as Posh Peters, "the Panton Street Plunger," while the counterfeit "tipstaff" who smashed the cheque is a dog-fighting publican who runs a pothouse for sports called "The Shepherd and Flock" in Golden Square--our retained detective pointed him out to me on the course at Ascot; he was dressed in a yellow suit with scarlet stripes, with a leather satchel at his waist, and a mauve opera-hat on his head; he was standing on an upturned wine-box and bellowing, "This an' the next! The old firm! This an' the next!"

Yet Féo has forgiven all. A blubbered promise to sin no more, and a written first-charge on the stock of a brace of Kentish coal-mines as innocent of the possession of a scrap of inflammable fossil as a pickled onion, have more than made peace, and Féo and her Cecil are slowly stewing in the balsamic sunshine in the tropical gardens of the Hotel des Palmiers at Hyères.

By this mention of "the proscenium of the Riviera" I am reminded, by the way, that, walking down Bond Street the other afternoon, I encountered Gertrude Viney, now a confirmed invalid through sheer worry. In good health, however, she was always a trifle too florid, so that she really looks awfully well when in fact she is dreadfully ill. As I daresay you remember, dear, she went, about eighteen months ago, to stay with a married sister during a certain interesting period, and became so hopelessly involved with her own brother-in-law that the young mamma on her first day out, drove straight to her solicitor and had a petition put on the file. The decree nisi which resulted was made absolute only in April, the erring Gordon Peter and Gertrude being united the self-same afternoon. But now come the complications. Muriel proves to be in a rapid decline and as her death alone would bring the happy pair within the operative scope of the Deceased Wife's Sister's Bill--this on the word of folks, male and female, married and single, "wives, widows, or whatnots," as the Woman's Suffrage orator put it--they are nursing her assiduously, and are about to give a bill-of-sale on their guilty home in order to raise sufficient funds to give the wronged woman the full course of the celebrated curds-and-whey cure at Hyères. Experiencing the divine afflatus at times, poor Gertrude has put her life's romance into a poem, an autographed copy of which she gave me, and which I would, in turn, put before the whole world were it not for the fact that it seems rank sacrilege to place such pretty penmanship in the soiled hands of the practical printer. You may form an opinion of its beautiful sentiment, however, from the opening lines:

"As Gordon dried my tears which flowed with unabated force,
Up in the lift our lawyer rode to hand us our divorce."

Most earnestly do I hope that no black and untoward event may mar their happiness, since it really is a most desirable alliance for Gertrude, Gordon Peter coming of a fearfully old and original Scottish family--so old, in fact, that it was his direct ancestor who died of shellfish-poisoning through eating the identical mussel that Musselburgh was named after. But before I write another line I must turn aside to tell you of the despicable way in which Lord Invernairne rang the bell on poor Lavinia over the trifling "Jane Huggins" deception of which I made mention in my last.

The elderly rake, most of whose amours are even less pretentious than were those of Zeus himself, has long been suspected by Lavinia of pursuing the beautiful in the shape of a certain hourglass-figured Maddox Street frock-hitcher--(the earlier vulgate had it "little milliner," which, through gradations of "showroom sideshrine," "Busy Lizzie the teagown model," and "Miss Never-never of the night rails," has subsided to "frock-hitcher"; though, bless your heart, what's in a name, as the little Kaffir boy observed when he explained to the missionary that he was called "Two for Tuppence" partly because he was a twin, and partly because his father was, from his mother's account, by no means a rich man)--who took less concern about the salvation of her soul than that her height remained at sixty-eight and her waist measurement at twenty inches. Well, the other morning, Lavinia had heard the postman's knock, and had just caught sight of Invernairne returning to a mauve envelope a letter which he had hurriedly perused. As Lavinia swept into the room the _billet_, with its angular feminine superscription, fell upon the tablecloth, and she asked imperatively, "Pray, who is your solitary correspondent this morning?" "Why, one of those confounded scoundrels that Labouchere is always showing up!" cried the old sinner, never batting an eyelash, never petering an inch, though the angry missive, which still lay on the white damask, was from the little "side-shrine of the showroom," to say that she was so unutterably sick of her indefinite position, that unless she received a "pony" in cash (with which to go away for a few days and forget her identity) by lunch time, she was going to put on her red hat and blue bird's-eye skirt, and come straight round to interview his "squaw," tear down his tepee, and "then set fire to the prairie."

"A dod-gasted betting circular from Brussels, my darling, an alleged state-aided raffle for a carriage and pair," he continued. "It is perfectly monstrous that such stuff is allowed to pass through the G.P.O.!" Men are never too crafty to rule by pretending to submit, well knowing that a suspicious woman who has lost her temper is the prize bunk of the universe; but it was gratuitously mean of him to kick her as she lay in a frenzy of screaming and laughing on the hearthrug, notwithstanding the pretty general agreement amongst medical men that when a person is hysterical certain portions of the body have absolutely no feeling.

Evelyn has just written to ask if he may take me on Wednesday next to the annual show of the National Sweet Pea Society, but I am far more desirous of going to the Music Hall Sports, if only I can decide how best to convey to him the fact that I am aware not only of their existence but of their proximity. And I here place it on record that my vassalage to the music hall cause dates from my perusal of the latest novelette of the enthralling "Peas-in-the-Pot Series"--_'Tween the Met and the Mogul, or Who Shared her Brougham?_--for though I can pretend neither to endorse or refute the opening chapter, in which the soulless Waterloo Road Agent, utterly unscrupulous when in search of fresh "talent," appears at the village picnic and doctors the claret cup, whereby he not only ensnares all the more beautiful of the village maidens, and precipitates an unseemly squabble between two bishops, who doff their aprons and invite each other to "settle it ahtside," but by the same mean subterfuge causes a rural dean to compromise an aged lady district visitor in a shrubbery, and a cub-curate to openly relate the story of the chimney-sweep at Epsom; the main story is obviously inspired. Again is the keen observation of the author apparent to his readers in the chapter in which the heroine, on her death-bed, her frail life ebbing slowly away, has sent for the girl who had been in the same row in the chorus with her, with an imploring request to see her ere her spirit wings its way to the skies, and the friend, having nerved herself for the trying interview, stands weeping by the melancholy bedside and asks if there is any last service she can render. "There is, there is," cries the dying girl, as a gleam lights up her poor wan features. "In the top drawer of my dressing-table you will find about a bushel and a half of somewhat sporty photographs which I shouldn't like my Charlie to get hold of when I, alas! am no more!" And then the poor head falls back, and an unutterable calm comes over the scene, broken only by the sobs of the _confidante_ as she searches among the medicine bottles to see if there isn't a solitary, but comforting, drain of gin left; it is an intensely engaging book.

With these themes taking the place of the very breath in my nostrils, I slipped out after dinner the other night disguised in an old race-course coat of Féo's, and a three-cornered French feather toque, and went for the first time in my life alone to a music hall. Had Féo been at home she would probably, with the proverbial fickleness of _méres_ in July, have tolled the bell on the whole proceeding; but I fortunately picked up in the promenade of the hall quite a nice girl, who, like myself, had given her chaperon the slip. She was dressed in a skin-tight scarlet cutaway, with a double row of half-sovs, saved by herself out of her cigarette allowance from her trustee, she said; white camel-hair felt hat with emerald osprey plume, and skirt of dove-coloured zibeline with strappings and applique of satin in the same soft tint. Although she insisted on my calling her "Hilda," I could find it in my heart only to give her my name as "Jane," a piece of churlishness for which I readily made atonement to my conscience by advancing "Hilda" the two sovereigns without which, she said, her "beast of a landlady" was going to give her in charge for pawning her sheets!

Though I discerned the wild generosity which led "Hilda" to assume this recklessness in order to put me at my ease, I really laughed so vulgarly at her irresistible drolleries that I shook one of my garters loose, and in a desperate dive for the silver buckle and a despairingly vicious tug at the pink silk, I drew the wretched thing so tight that I temporarily suspended the circulation of the blood, and put my limb in such a state of numb paralysis that I talked what the Teutons call "gab fest," and ultimately fled in confusion. Like the Virginienne in Vitechapelle, "whose beauty and whose black blood alike invited insult," any sort of exit was the way out for me; though it seemed good, when I reached home, to lie awake and go over it all again. And I especially remembered that "Hilda" solicited me to be sure to go to the Music Hall Sports; also that when, thinking of dear Evelyn, I asked if I should bring a gentleman, she replied enthusiastically, "Ray-ther! or his blooming scalp!" Moreover, she gave me the appended programme of the various events, adding that she herself would have been a pretty hot pigeon for the third race, but that her "boy" was a bit of a blossom in some matters, and didn't wish it:--

AUTHORISED PROGRAMME OF EVENTS. ONE PENNY.

1.0 p.m. ONE MILE HARE AND HOUNDS RACE.--Proprietors pursued by Disengaged Artistes. Hares (proprietors) to receive 120 yards start, and each Hound pulling down a Hare to receive a fortnight's engagement at his, or her, highest West End salary. 11,473 subs., all Hounds. Three Hares to enter, or no race.

1.30 p.m. COMIC EXIT COMPETITION (to be won three years in succession). The Cup, a valuable piece of Royal Porcelain with two handles, suitable for any Leading Lady's dressing-room, is at present held by _Mr Alec Blinkers_, who, in his highly successful sketch entitled "Penny-a-Saucer, Pick-where-you-like," catches an imaginary white cabbage-moth, flying above a pot of musk on the back cloth, swallows it, falls over a coffee-stall, and goes into the wings with a head-spin. There are five entries, as follows:

_Ben Brill_, who does the side-splitting wrassle with the dummy policeman in "The Rozzers Club Raid";

_Harry Tee_, whose "Melodious Ironfoundry," in which he so feelingly renders "The Blind Boy," on an engine bedplate weighing 20 cwt., heads the hanger at Wigan next week;

_W. Higgs_, who carries on the trunk in the first act of "The Horse Doctor";

_Fred Hipoleon_, hind legs of the Blondin Hippopotamus; and

_The Luggage Man at Oldham_ (entered by wire).

2.0 p.m. THROWING THE CHAIRMAN'S HAMMER.--This long-popular event has had to be abandoned, owing to the decadence of these once flourishing officials, the last one of which has, we regret to say, just gone off his dip in St Giles's Workhouse from a surfeit of gin-and-water; but a prize for lady series has been substituted, entitled:

SLINGING THE BLUE WHEEZE.--First Prize, A Gallon of Sunburn Lotion, donated by the Southend Chemist that sees to the Sons of the Phœnix; Second Prize, a Nansen Ice Pick and a Sealskin Mandoline, sent by King Oscar of Sweden; Third Prize, a Japanese Pot Fern and a Dish of Hops, by the landlord of "The Three Thugs," Lambeth Walk.

2.30 p.m. HOUSE-EMPTYING HANDICAP (Standing Record, 1 min. 11 secs., by the Three Brothers Mucus, the Men Toad's, at Bolivar's Varieties, Battersea, June 27th, 1898):

Singing Navvies with "The Larboard Watch" .... Over ½ min.

Musical Clowns playing "Carnival de Venise" .... Over ¼ min.

Perpetrators, male or female, of dud ballad alluding to Ireland as "the brightest gem in the Empire's crown" .... Scratch

Stinkerini's Performing Dogs and Monkeys .... Rec. 15 secs.

Male Quartette in "Man the Lifeboat" Rec. 20 secs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yours always,
VIOLA.

EPISTLE III

R.Y.S. _Dido_, OFF COWES, _August_ 4_th._

DEAREST PATRICIA,--

How admirably, I must say, is everything in life ordained by prescient Kismet! Fate, for instance, clearly forsees the appalling total of torn frills which, at the close of the season, must be replaced by new ones, and with August gives the social rosebud just the time she needs by putting her into flannel--and Cowes. Then how the sea-water bath, distributed over her fagged limbs by means of a small organdie-muslin bag filled with bran and benzoin, which Aphrodite so loved, that she arose from it each morning only with the greatest possible reluctance, causes her to glow and tingle! Under its mellifluent influences I have already ceased to trouble my head about Evelyn, who, with a system of love-making so amateurish that it comes within the Colonial Secretary's definition of "unskilled labour," wishes to know the reason for my not writing to him!