Chapter IV: Part 4

"Pray allow me to finish--more especially since dear Lady Brandon seems to have so accurately divined your necessities. It fortunately happens that, being seldom out of town, I have recently given up my 12 h.p. De Dion world-beater and gone in for a landaulette; but her ladyship no sooner mentioned your old pony than I sent the De Dion to Barker's, who have refitted it with a delightful custard-coloured brougham body precisely in Lord Lonsdale's style, and therefore just the very thing to carry you about a hunting country. It should be here this very evening, and if you will do me the honour to accept----Good gracious, the poor gentleman is overcome! Clearly the tension of the past five weeks has been too much for him. Hi, there--without; come to your master's assistance, somebody! Here, you, my good woman, apply the usual restoratives and--and I will see him at some other time!"

Like the gentle, medicinal soul that she was, possessing an infallible cupboard-remedy for everything between moths and malaria, the doctor's housekeeper got the old boy round again by the evening and sent him to the "Lamb" to stand round at bottle pool as fit as hands could get him, but he wandered up to the station instead and got there just in time to see the yellow De Dion being unloaded from a trolley, under the personal supervision of the husky old stationmaster who had not taken a day off duty in thirty-four years. Privileged by long acquaintance, this venerable youth got off one or two satirical cracks about cert'in people a-goin' ahead lately, and it allus was them as had it as pleaded poverty the loudest--neither of which vulgar personalities would have made the least impression on the amiable healer had not the man in blue and braid wound up with, "An' only this afternoon, when the 4.57 stopped here, His Grace the Duke o' Croxton himself calls me to the carriage-door to ask me whether you calls your house 'Oakham Lodge' or 'Oakham Villa,' as he wants to write to yer to go and see him!"

The mere idea that a live Duke was pining for an audience with him caused Austin Moxon to stop growing for several minutes. He had no reason whatever to suspect that the Duke was even aware of his presence on earth, and he thought it equally unlikely that his Grace had, after a quarter of a century, discovered who it was that, for sheer sports sake had kept chi-iking "Lou-der!" during the ducal effort at the local political meeting in '79. Musing on these things and the gratifying fact that the stationmaster was too hopelessly a fool to be guilty of a joke on any subject, Austin Moxon sought counsel in the excellent old brown brandy at the "Lamb"; though with grateful memories of his pippin-faced visitor and his agitated entreaties, he went not to bed until he had seen the yellow "toothache" car housed safely in his stables and had bestowed upon it the fitting cognomen "ODONTALGIA."

* * * * * * *

"I ask your Grace to pardon my unpunctuality," stammered the overwhelmed doctor, on being shown, two days later, into the cream and gold library at Croxton Castle at exactly three minutes after the hour named in the Duke's summons, "but a slight accident detained me on the way. I earnestly hope that my lateness has caused no inconvenience?"

"It has so seriously disturbed my arrangements, not to mention my peace of mind," replied the Duke, pleasantly, "that I had not yet noticed it. But I hope that it was but a slight accident, doctor?"

"So colourless and conventional an affair, your Grace," Doctor Moxon hastened to say, "that--er--that it is difficult, if not impossible, for me to imagine its parallel, I assure you."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the Duke, impressed by this comprehensive disavowal, "then pray what may it have been?"

"My horse put his foot into a rabbit-hole, fell, broke his neck, and died upon the spot, sir," blurted the doctor.

No sooner did he hear his own words than Dr Moxon realised the absurdity, the incongruity of his previous denial; but he was wholly unprepared for the remarkable effect which they produced upon the Duke. That illustrious person twisted his body so suddenly in his chair that his pince-nez fell to the floor, and, staring excitedly at the doctor with an utterly incomprehensible expression of delight tempered by solicitude, he cried:

"Splendid! Couldn't have been better! What a singularly opportune and fortunate circumstance!"

This was a poser! What could the Duke mean? Did he design to chide nonsensical servility by an assumption of supreme irony, or had his mental balance really been upset by such a juxtaposition of dissimilars coming from a presumably responsible medical man?

"Forgive my exuberance, doctor," continued the Duke, more seriously, "and be good enough to draw your chair a little more this way. That's it. Now, you were sent for the other day by a--ahem, a valued tenant of mine, whose horse had given her a rather bad fall in the hunting-field and bruised her pretty severely----"

"I have no recollection of the case whatever!" interposed Moxon, innocently enough.

"Probably not, sir, probably not," the Duke added, with a broad smile and a distinctly plebeian wink, "but as a gallant gentleman you will, I feel sure, permit my diagnosis to supersede your own. You would, I am firmly convinced, cheerfully die in defence of the austere morality, the impeccable reputation, the obdurate purity of any one of the adorable creatures who periodically grace these parts during the hunting season, and in whose fair hands St Anthony himself would have been as potter's clay. We will, therefore, please, say it was a severe, uncompromising bruising which lately affected Lady Winifred Brandon----"

"Number four!" gasped Moxon beneath his breath.

"But that is not the point, which rather is that although, like the immortal Gilpin, you rode with speed--the best of which your grey dobbin, whose loss I formally deplore, was capable--there was necessarily far more delay than if you had driven over on a motor-car. This reflection, and a sense of gratitude to you for your care of my--er, my valued tenant--yes, yes, my valued tenant, impel me to ask you to accept as a little present, a very pretty four-cylinder Darracq, just come from Suresnes, which----"

But Dr Moxon had staggered to his feet, his brain reeling with the drawing of many psychological conclusions, and he moved in a dazed way and emitting choking noises towards the open French window. A few turns round the Italian garden served to revive him; but how could he go back? How could he ever face the Duke after making such an irrational exit? Thus absorbed, he crept through the quickset hedge, and took the route through the woods to his home, arriving with burrs in his hair and garter-snakes in the folds of his trousers. Next day there arrived the bruise-blue Darracq, now known as "ECCHYMOSIS"; since when the overstocked doctor has assiduously advertised the machines on the thirteenth page of the _Telegraph_ as duplicate wedding presents with all the familiar allurements--Sacrifice, Unused, Approval before Payment, etc.--and much against the advice of his prudent housekeeper, who sanguinely predicts a transference to London and a garage in Long Acre, if only Lady Winifred hunts from Melton for another season.

I am so pleased to hear, dear, that your sister Aenid's baby is going on so nicely, though, never even having had the sinister finger of suspicion directed at me, let alone possessed a baby of any kind, I have not even a passing notion of what they should endure and what escape before appearing in public. Reports of cases presenting specially interesting symptoms usually are concealed by publication in the "Mother's Corner" of the _Kennel Gazette_, I believe; the mothers themselves being mysteriously counselled with regard to their dietetical errors in feeding their offspring, in such cryptic sentences as "Stop the B.F. diet and report in a month," or, "Give baby the shredded pin-feathers of a young onion before retiring, and lie her on her other side." Nor can I express an opinion as to whether your sister's nurse's panacea for the pain in your sister's baby's stomach was good or otherwise, since, on reference to the huge old book of pasted-in recipes for every ill allied to maternity, which Féo once conscientiously kept up, I find that the point was raised, but not settled, in the celebrated Salisbury Baby Claimant case some years ago. As you may or may not have read, a witness named Jane Lawrence deposed that after the birth of the child she gave her sister some weak brandy and water. She also gave the baby some butter and sugar (laughter). It was the usual custom, she said, to do so.

Mr Justice Hawkins asked Mr Jelf whether that was so.

Mr Jelf appealed to his learned friend, Mr Dickens, whether that was _not_ so.

Mr Dickens had received no instructions upon the point; in fact, he protested that he knew nothing about it.

Thereupon Mr Justice Hawkins said that the case must clearly be adjourned till eleven o'clock on the following morning.

Immediately beneath this cutting there appears in pencil: "Gt. Eastern Handicap, Amandier, Missal, Royal Mask. Twelve ran"; not that any affinity could possibly exist between the two events.

Marshall has just brought to me an imperious command to join Lady Thursa Rosacre at Lowndes Square in twenty minutes' time to mote to Brighton, her husband, probably considering his freedom cheap at the sacrifice, having lent her his car for the week on condition that she drives it herself. An atmosphere of steam is a daily necessity of life to the Rosacres; and I daresay you remember how, when the Zoological Society proposed to send its leading elephant on tour to help expenses, how Thursa drove straight off to the offices in Hanover Square, and offered to ride the dear pachyderm three times round Regent's Park on the Saturday afternoon before Ascot, attired as Lady Godiva--purely in the cause of charity, of course. She reckoned it would bring in, she said, enough money to keep the Zoo out of the hole for two hundred years at least, if, indeed, it didn't create such a stampede at the turnstiles that such points as Gloucester and Clarence Gates would be over a week burying their dead.

But motoring in December is too dishevelling, and the bud who has ridden fifty-two miles in the teeth of a dust-storm and held her life in her hands one-hundred-and-twenty-seven distinct times between Piccadilly and Pyecombe, makes about as effective an entrance into Brighton as the last stone-bruised idiot in the shopboys' annual walk. And while Reginald Rosacre is none too deft in handling his own car, one really needs, to ride beside Thursa, nerves equal to those of the racing gentleman who, on his way back from the Slough railway accident, shot seventeen pigeons running in a £5 sweepstakes, but was partially paralysed and completely prostrated by shock when the railway company's doctor called on the following morning to ascertain the extent of his injuries. Why, was not it only in August last, dear, that she and he and the dandy chauffeur sustained their memorable break-down on this very road? Did not they start out, on one of those gummy, thunder-laden evenings, when the ceaseless ambition for sleep is only thwarted by the pestiferous attentions of the insects which everywhere abound, and fiercely attack all unprotected flesh with their little spiked shoes, to run down to Brighton and empty their lives of everything but petrol until Doncaster? And what happened?

Along about the middle watches of that night, when only a white streak marked the road and the travellers were exchanging the luscious dews of Surrey for the first suggestions of the salt sea-fret of Sussex, that car, which was popularly supposed not to know what a hill was, even if you showed it one, gave three spits and a conquassative tremor and came to a sudden stop. All in vain did the dapper stoker key-up this and tighten that, and pour fresh bituminous drinks carefully over the thing's appalling thirst; to no effect did Lord Reginald Rosacre unload the astounding anthology of profanity which he had at great pains acquired from one of the most celebrated of the three hundred million professors of the art in Asia; as a vehicle of progression that car was 99 in 100 behind a crippled goat.

Through a hole in a hedge that hemmed about a redskin-flourball pasture, the two men pushed and butted the inoperative box of cylinders, Thursa, with her skirts held knee-high to elude the agile and amatory potato-bug, looking on with an air of persecuted resignation. She was elegantly dressed, as all women whose beauty is due more to art than inheritance invariably are; and Balzac's crude old line which, sterilised and disinfected, says that men love not the woman, but the woman's clothes, arose with unpleasant suggestiveness in Reginald's mind whenever he thought of going in search of succour, and leaving the chauffeur to look after Thursa. Equally impracticable did it seem to send forward Balzac's compatriot of the cigarette-fingers and the steering-wheel, since he spoke no language but his own; so ultimately the fair, over-dressed child-wife had to be left at the mercy of the bugs with many misgivings, but definite instructions to sound a loud horn should danger seem impending.

Four miles and a quarter further on, there reposed in a Sleepy Hollow ten cottages, a baker's, a harness shop, and a Georgian inn; but Reginald Rosacre died ten deaths in reaching it. The first streaks of dawn were coming from between the quaint old sixteenth-century bungalows on Hogg's Hill and falling on his lordship's left cheek, all grimy and grey with dust, as he staggered up to the tavern's oaken door and rapped upon it with a long steel monkey-wrench. A horse and trap--no matter at what cost--would still get them into Brighton ere most folks were up.

"Oho, there! Within, within!" he cried, lambasting the brave ilexian door with his puny implement.

A window sash, immediately above his head, was raised noisily, and a red-faced, half-awakened man looked out and asked what the future torment was the matter.

"Say, have you any flys heah?" cried Lord Rosacre.

"Millions an' millions of 'em, damyer!" roared the irate innkeeper, really using a much coarser objurgation. "But we don't buy our fly-papers in the middle o' the gory night! Take that!"

And, catching up two huge flower-bowls, or something, in the liquid contents of which some such pungent stalks as those of mignonette or wallflower had been stagnating for a week or more, he drenched his unexpected visitors as freely and liberally as, in the wild old days on the Euphrates, the magnificent Lucius Verus did his guests when he emptied murrhine vases filled with nard upon their heads before being carried up drunk to bed in a coverlet of camel-hair.

No, Marshall, say please that I have gone to Turkey to gather arum lilies.

Thine, dear,
VIOLA.

EPISTLE VIII

BUCKTHORN MANSE, SURREY, _January_ 6_th._

MY DEAREST PATRICIA,--

When you ingenuously asked in your refreshingly-conventional Yuletide rigmarole whether I duly suspended my stocking on Christmas Eve and, if so, what I got out of it, you were actuated more, I believe, by a vapid desire to appear "seasonable" than by a spirit of idle inquiry as to whether I had sensibly cloven the continuity of a ghastly practice; but in either case it cheers me greatly to be able to inform you that, though my shins are still covered with woven brown silk to a point that is defiant of criticism, I really _did_ find it convenient to hang up my enamelled garters for a tenner, and, thanks to subsequent investments at the Buckthorn Park New Year's Hunt Meeting, that sum has been multiplied sevenfold. A hunt meeting _per se_ would mean less than nothing to you, dear, but when one is staying, as I am, with the people who are the breath in the nostrils of the whole thing, one becomes a part of the meeting itself and appreciates with a new perception the points which previously were unseen or unrecognised. Unlike such foxy fixtures as Ascot and Epsom and Goodwood, where the roguery of the owner is too often reflected in the reluctance of the racehorse, an atmosphere of probity and rectitude envelops the hunt meeting and inspires its votaries to pursue the same policy of frank, unbuckled integrity and veracious candour by which alone it sternly silences the ever-ready tongue of scandal. Not as in flat-racing, where all is whispered and inscrutable, there is no concealment here from first to last--from the titled stewards meeting in the lavatory regularly before each race to equitably arrange the rates of betting; the humane trainers giving their horses a refreshing bucket of water apiece before sending them to the starting-post; the returning jockey of the winner pulling up without dismounting at the paddock bar and taking three large, courage-giving drinks and a pork pie before going in to scale; and finally the principal bookmaker driving off the course in a dogcart behind the hot favourite who was so unfortunately left at the post in the opening event. To me the whole thing is completely bewitching, for though, in the absence of trains reserved exclusively for the use of "Club" members, one may have to travel in the company of persons whose knowledge of attenuated English classics is limited and whose conversations, even when ostentatiously suppressed, are distinctly not anæmic, there is ample compensation to be had in the overheard narrative of the drinking of strong wines from reeking gourds, to say nothing of the conversational "pointers" which accompany it. How I should _love_ to stay in the dining-room with the men to-night whence all (the petticoats) but I had fled, to, like a gramophone, repeat this memoir of my journey down:

"Did ye 'ear about Bill Willis an' Tom Reeder a-goin' to Plumpton, George?"

"Which Bill Willis d'ye mean, 'Arry; him as set the old woman on the fire at Doncaster?"

"No, no; not him. The Bill Willis what the doctor in the Sunday paper told to eat a raw inion at each meal--him as they used to call 'Ev'ry-Morn-I-Bring-Thee-Vi'lets'?"

"Oh, _him_! Why, what happened to 'em?"

"They set out about a week ago to carry on the noble work at Plumpton Steeplechases, an', as both felt as they could do with a bit of a change, they arranges to stop 'private' in Brighton, at a little case in Black Lion Street where Tom Reeder annually took his old woman every August. It's not by no means a fash'nable lodgin' for society ducks--in fact, as showin' that the lan'lady wasn't expectin' winter lodgers, Bill and Tom found as she'd been snowballin' the layout, or in other words, stuffin' all the settin'-room furniture, with that chemical moth-stuff what looks like candles but hums like as if the gas was turned on. There was only one bedroom, too, but it had a brace o' kips in it as well as a big double wardrobe for to 'ang yer clothes in; in every respec' as good a place as a man need want, and all comin' at a figure that didn't compel ye to give the lan'lady the frozen face on the last day o' the meetin' unless things went _extra_ kerteever. You follow me, George?"

"Abso-pleadin'-lutely, 'Arry. Well?"

"Well--but you know what Brighton is, George; the wettest part o' the glorious place lies north o' the beach, not south. You stroll along the front fully intendin' to give yer old liver a good washin' in Schilling's beautiful natural sel'zer water, an', before you're half way to the Metropole, you've done eight or ten splits, a pint o' stout along o' the oysters what you've 'ad at the little shop behind the Star an' Garter, so many gins-an'-bitters that yer stomach, originally humbugged into believin' it was a-goin' to have a square meal, refuses to take any further notice of 'em, a stray slosh o' bay rum where you got shaved in Ship Street, two or three drops o' that stuff as you took when the doctor told yer to do all as you could to be sick--

"Ver-mooth."

"Aye, ver-mooth; an' by the time you oughter be half way to the racecourse you're still a-lookin' for a conveyance round about Castle Square, an' a-gapin' to such an extent that street boys comes up to you an' offers to show yer the chemist's shop in East Street where they sells the infallible yawn drops. But there's one thing I _will_ say for the Brighton atmosphere: you seem to pull yerself round again just as quick as you seemed to get oiled--consequently Bill Willis an' Tom Reeder spent a thoroughly enj'yable an' int'lectual week of it."

"I'm sure!"

"Any'ow, on the Saturday mornin' just about nine o'clock, Bill marches into the 'Swan' in Ship Street with his tongue a-feelin' like a ash-heap an' literally a-gaspin' for his mornin's mornin'. Now the 'Swan' in Ship Street is a sort of 'ome-from-'ome for families an' sportsmen visitin' Brighton, an' from goin' there so frequent like, both Bill an' Tom had come to know the manager. So, as Bill glides softly in, lookin' as if he'd just seen Hell in a nightmare, the manager wishes him good-mornin' an' asks him if he hadn't slep' well last night. 'Fact is, mister,' said Bill, 'I've only a hazy remembrance of 'ow I got to bed at all, an' it certainly wasn't till close on four this mornin' in any case. That gentleman-friend o' mine an' me had two other gents to dinner at our lodgin's--I dessay you remember we took eight bottles o' Scotch away from here with us?--an' I must have had the devil's own luck at cards, for although I seemed to get whacked every time as I went the bundle, jiggered if I didn't wake up this mornin' with close on twelve quid in my kick--a state o' things that whistles aloud for a bottle o' the best. Give us yer wine list, an' set out one tumbler for yerself.' But the manager, though producin' the wine list, says he makes it a rule never to drink so early; besides he's jest had one; also it's the brewery traveller's day for comin' down, an' that'll mean another. So Bill Willis, with that glorious feelin' of affluence that comes from a well-lined kick--when one feels matey with all the world, an' seriously considers why he don't write to the brewery an' ask for special terms for a wholesale order--sings a bottle o' something extra sec at fourteen-an'-a-tanner, an' takes it from a half-pint tumbler. 'Drink 'earty, boy!' he says to himself aloud as he fills his second glass, an'--well, just as he said the words, in rushes Tom Reeder!"

"Just in time, eh?"

"No, a wee bit late. Tom's awfully hot-under-the-collar about something or other, for he no sooner sets eyes on Bill, than he bellers out, 'Gawdstroth, Bill, I've run half over Brighton to find yer!' 'Well, you should have took a fly,' says Vi'lets, bold with the booze; 'but what's the matter?' 'Matter enough!' shouts Tom, 'when you went to that ruddy wardrobe this mornin' you put on _my_ trahsers!"

It may not have been a very convincing _argumentum ad judicium_ (as they said at Weatherby's when a certain racing countess wanted to register "Haste to the Wedding" as the name of a gelding) for one so well posted to have purchased before the eyes of all men a shilling card from a racecourse tipster, whose wardrobe would have precluded his obtaining employment at delivering coals, but I stood by the rails to listen to the engaging story of how he never failed to find the winner, but that it was his fearful thirst which seemed to keep him broke; how he should "be 'aving something very 'ot" for the last race, cabled straight to him by Slod Toan, who was at present schooling yearlings for President Roosevelt in the Phillypeanut Islands, on to which he wanted us to get our money into action quick, tear up our return briefs, and ride 'ome in an airship. Up to now, he continued, the Ring didn't even know that such an 'orse existed; but owner, trainer, and jockey had tried it to give two stone to Pretty Polly, and were surprised to find it even so much better than _that_, that they had wired to Coutts's to reserve room in their new premises for another scuttleful. All that he asked us to do was to get on before the Ring rumbled, and show his card to our friends afterwards.

Oh yes, dear; to anticipate your inevitable inquiry, I "done it," as my tipster would have said, but it did not finish in the first eight. The horse that won was owned by the brother-in-law of the authorised printer of the official racecard, was bedded in the jockey's ambulance room on dried seaweed, patented and sold on commission by the handicapper, and came up and ate loaf-sugar out of the hand of the clerk-of-the-scales. Nevertheless, no sooner had "All right!" been called, than the preposterous horse-watcher was peacocking up and down the course in front of the lawn, closely followed by an all-night souse without shoes or socks and blackballed in perpetuity at the Rowton Residences, but shouting, with well assumed enthusiasm, "Brayvo! He's bin an' done it agen. Brayvo!" If only the poor thing had realised his possibilities, and taken a short, graduating course in one of the advertisement-concocting colleges (as the clerk of the course, who took half the profits on the tipster's cards as the price of giving permission to sell them, observed, as he stood beside me and checked the man's sales) what couldn't he have torn off the public with some more refined thimble-game, such as a new sawdust health-food, a heal-the-blind "institute," or a dud encyclopedia?

But I must on no account omit to tell you of an ingenuous incident which followed the decision of the antepenultimate event--"A Handicap Hurdle Plate of 30 sovs. (to quote the card), for the produce of mares that have never thrown a winner under any rules; gentlemen riders, Members of the Postman's Knock Hunt who have touched twice over one race to carry 7 lb. extra; the winner to be sold for 40 sovs. Two miles, over eight flights of hurdles. Six subs."

This valuable prize had just been taken by a ten-to-one shot, ridden most admirably by the acquitted co-respondent of the noble horseman who had bunkered the favourite down the wrong course, and we all filed round to the back of the stand to see the winner bought in. It was about the only thing there was to do for ten minutes or so, wherefore all but the tactiturn, the tired, and the tight-booted trapesed round to the rostrum with a Cleopatra-going-to-meet-Antony hopefulness. Round and round a small railed-in grass plot, a stable lad paced a still panting mare, whose sides were pinked by the spur, and whose knees were so far ahead of her toes, that when she stood still she looked as though she were getting ready to make a jump. There would surely be a vitriolic battle-royal to possess her, and, anticipating much spirited bidding, and being anxious not to begin till all were assembled, the rural auctioneer stood in his pulpit rubbing his hands together like the handkerchiefless person who eats prawns in a race-train, and grinning as if he had suddenly contracted gas on the brain. Nor was he disappointed. Opposed by a venal bunch of leather-legginged get-rich-quick's, Bronzewing's owner had to go to sixty-five guineas to retain her; and then, for a moment, we looked like languishing again, for even the excitement attaching to the attempted dispersal of a sensational stud of one soon dies down. "But don't go away, please," cried the auctioneer, to our intense relief, "I've one here that also ran. Williams, bring in Little Breeches."

And Williams did. Little Breeches, a nine-year-old gelding, standing about 17.2, came into the ring sideways like a one-eyed ghost reluctantly winging its way to heaven. Little Breeches had been given a pint and a half of the celebrated "Flying Hornet" preserving whisky before going to the post, and had tried three times to hang himself in the starting-gate; now that the first effects of the powerful stimulant were working off, there remained only a splitting headache, whose mission it was to beat it into him that he had been played, and, still too doped to show resentment, he walked round and round as though in a trance.

"Now, gentlemen," cried the auction person, "I claim your attention to Little Breeches, by Gumsucker out of Sewing Girl, by Gozo, by Wild Oats. A nice, handy animal, gentlemen, and one that is sure to pick up a perfect roll of money this winter. He's in the Sluggard's Plate at Sandown Park next Tuesday at a nice weight, and only needs keying up to concert pitch; now what may I say for him?"

But answer there came none.

"Come, gentlemen, come," rated the auctioneer, in a tone of astonished reproach, "it only wants one of you to give me a start; may I put him in at five guineas? Walk him round again, Williams. A great, slashing colt like this--he was fairly on terms with the winner at the last hurdle--and five guineas only bid! Five--five in two places--six, thank you, sir. Six guineas only for Little Breeches! About a tenth of what he'd fetch to pull an omnibus! Seven, seven--against you, sir, at seven--eight. And eight I'm only offered; have you all done at--nine, thank you, nine; may I make it ten for you, sir? Ten--going at ten----"

But even as the auctioneer hung upon his own words there came running from the inner recesses of the refreshment room a burly, fatherly man of fifty, who had the hansom-cab industry stamped indelibly all over him. He seemed amazed to find that the sale had progressed so far, while he had been painting the future of cabbing in rosy colours and bottled stout, and he pushed and elbowed his way through the throng as though eager to retrieve lost opportunities. Ducking beneath the railings and entering the sale-ring, he stooped and ran his critical right-hand fingers up and down the forelegs of Little Breeches.

"What's this one, mister?" he asked the auctioneer.

"Little Breeches, sir, by Gumsucker out of Sewing Girl," replied the alert salesman, and added, "and it is against you at ten. Now have you all done at ten----"

"AND SIX!" advanced the representative of the Shoful Trust, with the guileless air of one who hails from near to Nature's heart; and in two ticks he was being roughly hustled towards the bleak high road by a posse of the pantomimic pensioners done up in football pads, known as the racecourse police.

But there are more takedowns at this game of racing than are suspected by those who "do" their Derby dryfooted at their favourite music-hall--even if one gives them in the takedown by the exhilarated gentleman who is so pleased with himself at having worn dark blue and yellow braces, that he enters the stalls with them dangling at his heels for the racegoers in the pit to see and applaud. Though these stallites, after seeing St Amant spring from somewhere underneath the orchestra, execute a few wild buck and wing steps in Barnard's Ring, and then shoot bodily over the top of Mr Sherwood's cottage, may say of the sporting press what David said in his haste of all concerned, the dark thought and aching heart of desperation and despair are as often seen in racing, as the black eye and splitting headache of delirious joy. For instance, estimate if you can, the weight of anguish that is but faintly shadowed in the following letter, picked up by me from the platform at Victoria:

"PEAVINE VILLA, NEW YEAR'S NIGHT.

"MY DEAR FATHER AND MOTHER,--

Having cried over your sympathetic letter of yesterday until I have started my nose a-bleeding, I have now hypothecated my wedding ring and keeper, as you advised, and propose to stack my drapery and return to dear old Saffron Walden to-morrow by the 10.25 from Liverpool Street. Heav'n knows I have loved James Henry (who has again recently lost his voice in formally applying for a rise in his salary) as ardently as any woman could; but the accursed Yellow Card has come between us. How little did I dream when, nine months ago, James Henry offered me his heart, his hand, and whatever was left in the weekly envelope after sweetening Topping and Spindler; and I promised that even if he could not make me completely happy no other should ever try to do so; that he entertained no thought of forsaking the double-your-stake-but-stick-to-your-martingale system!

"For many months past James Henry, whose views on the true methods of banishing poverty lend themselves felicitously to the purposes of the vigilant humorist, has been strenuously endeavouring to choke a firm at Flushing (postage 2½d.), and take it away from them. Meantime the rent has fallen two quarters in arrear, and our butcher has had the immortal rind to stop supplies entirely. The wretched grocer has followed suit, and--from the quires of circulars telling how an eighty-shilling income should carry a £200 bill-of-sale, which are dropped into our letter-box--has mentioned the matter more than once across his counter. The climax came on Tuesday evening, when, during Henry's absence, the landlord called. He had a bunch of bananas, a bottle of whisky, and six mince pies in a paper bag; and, saying he would rather meet me than a mowing machine any day, he chased me thirty-three times round the sitting-room sofa, and nearly forgot that he was a gentleman. I judged it better, however, to tell James Henry that Mr Groundrent's demeanour was extremely frigid and bitterly threatening; for no wreck of matrimony can destroy its high ideals or take from her, who was judicious while it lasted, the gain to her own soul of unselfishly endeavouring to preserve peace at any sacrifice; whereupon James Henry wrote as follows:

"'Look here, Groundrent, dear old soul; it galls me like sin to have to hand you the ice-bowl once again, but all my stocks are falling--Bath Tramways, Allsopp's Ordinary, Cotton Spinners' Deferred, and Schweppe's Pref.--and I can't even book a date till one of them goes up. Knowing, however, that you occasionally make out a little bit of paper when you hear of any goods of an extra-superior quality, I want you to keep your mouth shut and absorb the following right straight into your system: You must have a pony each way to-morrow, Broiled Bird in the Hardware Plate, and when it has rollicked home, just pay yourself the two quarters' rent due, and act honourably by dropping a little cheque for half of the diff. remaining into any pillar-box, addressed to--Yours and so forth.'

"The occasional charwoman's little boy took the letter round, and was unreflectingly detained in the hall--I say unreflectingly for the reason that the youth was sucking a heavy line in paregoric lozenges at the time--while Mr Groundrent penned the following reply:--

"'Sir, you omit, intentionally, or otherwise, the Turf alias of the bug-eyed slanderer who averred that I occasionally pricked the garter; but I respect your confidence, and even beg to slip you a bigger cert than changing a shilling for a blind man. I want you to take the cotton batting out of your ears and let the good thing soak right in--Bum Bailiff for the Man in Possession Stakes, first thing in the morning. Act honourably, as he has imperative orders to nail anything to the floor if he catches you trying to shift it--Yours and all, N. G.'

"Broiled Bird did not, I regret to say, connect; but Mr Groundrent's nominee arrived before we were up. He is at this moment gridironing a kipper at the kitchen fire and reading aloud to our small servant the more mirth provoking paragraphs from the "They say" column of _Stubbs's Mercantile Gazette_. Please have the spare bed well aired. I can walk up from the station, and leave my trunk in the cloakroom till later, since you say that old Snowdrop is nearly due to foal. Since Louisa took it to Southend it only fastens with a hairpin, but lord knows there's nothing in it to shock a married railway man. So no more, with love and kisses,

HENRIETTA."

And here must I break off, for the first bell has gone, and to-night dinner is to be followed by that fine old country-house frolic which has been the beginning of so many flourishing society divorces--snapdragon with the lights out.

Thine,
VIOLA.

EPISTLE IX

EATON SQUARE, _Tuesday, February_ 15_th._

MY DEAR PATRICIA,--

How extremely dead are the pretty customs of St Valentine's Day! Time was when the bright, lively girl who for two or three seasons had been, as it were, a rag on every bush, used to look forward to the 14th of February to "get the office" to become the whole garment to some deserving young bachelor who had been reared with care. For such, St Valentine was a sort of last chance for late chickens, as the incubator persons say; but youths do not seem to take seriously to matrimony now, and if by chance one proposes to a girl in a conservatory or on the stairs, he calls round in the morning to apologise. And valentines--the earliest of which, dear, a red brick engraved with "Only one girl in the world for me," in cuneiform characters, which was handed by King David, the first royal co-respondent, through the transom in Uriah's roof, you still may see in the British Museum--are quite things of the past. Lovesick swains do not give, but expect to receive, valentines in these days; and only yesterday Lady Mabel Smoothleigh was telling me how her latest "boy" had importuned her to "send me something you have kissed." But Mabel acted rather meanly, I think, in sending him her great athletic husband, a person of biceps rather than a beau, and one who while paying Mabel little attention himself is most handy at rushing up and sticking his knee in the pit of a weakling's stomach, if he catches a weakling even looking at Mabel on the rare occasions when he takes her out. I have quite frequently noticed that these burly, impetuous bridegrooms who, before marriage, exact the most definite promises that ducksie will never, never leave their sides--not even to go to the bathroom by herself--are the first to tire of propinquity and to yearn to get back to the mud of the football field on Saturday to see the Kensal Green Hotspurs lay out the Brompton Cemetery Uniteds. The unfortunate "best boy" is dreadfully damaged, I fear, and principally through his not putting himself, as the old-fashioned Methodists used to say, "in a suitable attitude to receive the blessing," but really these light-weight Josephs should make fuller inquiries.

Yesterday, let me tell you, I came perilously near falling into a new and insensate hobby: to-day I am happily again as free and unfettered as the yellow heathen who, getting no answer to his latest prayer, pitches his Joss out into the back yard and dances a wild fandango on its breast. Yesterday I hung for awhile over the yawning chasm in which are immured "the Fancy": to-day I resume my former belief that the toy dog, with its asthma and its silk coat, and its velvet pad and its chronic snuffles, amounts to a public calamity. Write down in wine upon a rose-leaf scroll, as old Omar says, that I have had a very close shave of Caniolatry, but have got out.

I had strolled round to Grosvenor Place to carry a message from Féo to the widowed Lady Steyning, whose only daughter is so vitiated by having always been given her own way that she positively breeds Blenheim spaniels in the cream-and-gold drawing room which her anguished mother had specially modelled on that of the Viscountess Hayashi, in "the Gardens," lower down. But Io Venusta Falconrouge Mayleigh--a rather ancient and honourable name to be giving a pug-nosed tyke a carbolic bath with--simply exists for her dogs; she reads and writes and talks and dreams of nothing else--indeed she told me in confidence she veritably believed that the fascinating animal who tempted Eve was a fabled but unattainable ideal "cross" between the Schipperke and the Redwillow Airedale. Such a contention would surely have entangled even Solomon himself--though, to be sure, the scriptural embodiment of wisdom who admitted that "the way of a man with a maid" had him beaten out of his boots would not take much losing nowadays. I felt dreadfully sorry for poor Lady Steyning, however, when the last little animal to receive its ablutions precipitated the complete outfit--basin, unguents, brushes, everything--partly over her lovely new oyster-blue moire and liberally upon the equally beautiful green Wilton pile carpet, for her nerves are not strong and she suffers from a rheumatic affection of the eyes which constant weeping only aggravates.

But maternal tears have no effect upon Io; she has long accustomed herself to criticise her hysterical mother with considerable precision and an utter absence of sympathy; so, with a brusque but not unkindly "There, there, chop out the twaddle and turn off the tears and Vi and I may come back from the Dog Show in time to take lunch with you," she dragged me downstairs, bundled me into a hansom, and almost before I had realised it we were bowling along the newly-made roads inside Buckingham Gate and traversing a perfect forest of labourers, all swinging their picks and shovels and other armorial bearings of the fine old Brassey family.

"I confess that her eyes give her some trouble," remarked IO, as she drew her suede gloves on in the cab, "but she's a jolly sight too fond of calling her soul her own. The amount of 'footle,' as Mr Crosland calls it, that my brother Bill and I put up with from her exceeds human belief. _I_ invariably talk back at her, but Bill, male-like, is more compassionate: he usually says nothing, taps the butler for a tenner---that's the best of paying servants regularly: you can always touch them for a bit if you run short--and then comes back in three days to see how the land lies. He'd have gone to Australia years ago, but for transportation being abolished and an idiotic system called 'passage-money' substituted. Aha! here's Piccadilly Circus; what do you say to a sherry and curacoa at the Cri.; north of this point all alcohol is outside the pale of Christian toleration?"

She has quite lost the girlishness that took Girton by storm, dear, and the charmingly confident way in which she entered the wine bar, and, sitting down at a small table and summoning a waiter, cried "Small elevens for two shareholders, and get a gait on you; we're keeping a 'fresh' horse waiting," would have compelled your admiration. Nor was she one whit less at home at the Dog Show itself. In her long tweed coat, cut loose enough in the back to give play to her gathered short skirt, and the high, tan, laced boots which only the neat-footed can wear with absolute confidence, she strutted up and down the sawdust aisles, disinterestedly accepting a saddle-soap or hound-glove catalogue here and criticising a "nicked" or "trimmed" ear there, or declaring to some sister enthusiast that fish-biscuit manufacturers were every bit as mendacious as restaurateurs--stick to them for a month or two, and you are well done; after that you must hunt up somebody new who has got a name to make. I felt such an unqualified novice in dog matters that I could have screamed out of sheer exasperation; although I feel sure that I seemed quite deeply "in it" to Io by the hearty way she laughed when I told her how "we"--(it was an old, old story of Mr Contango's which I fortunately remembered)--won the Waterloo Cup with a dog who was trained exclusively on '48 brandy, and to whose tail a firework was adroitly attached at the psychological instant of the starting-gate going up.

We returned to Grosvenor Place to find Lady Steyning still tearful and distinctly not making the most of the placid middle age which should be her welcome portion. "I do wish you had been here an hour ago, Io, instead of dallying with your everlasting dogs," she bleated, "Sir David Fenner, from Harley Street, has been and he associates my _iritis_ with the gouty diathesis--_arthritic iritis_, I think he called it. And I grieve to tell you--" (here the inevitable weeping started)--"he made no secret of the pro-bab-b-b-bility--" (here she broke down piteously)--"of my becoming stone b-b-blind before very long!"

For a moment Io was manifestly embarrassed. She did not weep, but strolling mechanically to the piano, upon the music rack of which stood an autographed first copy of _Get Your Hair Cut_, she struck a few treble chords to regain her composure. Then, turning, she went and laid her right hand kindly on her mother's shoulder.

"Never mind, old sportie," she said, "you have always hated my 'everlasting' dogs; now, perhaps, you will discover the utility of them. With 'Spotty,' or 'Dearie,' or 'Flossie' on the end of a bit of string, and a stick to tap the pavements with, you can still toddle round Belgravia for many years to come!"

Suiting the action to the suggestion, Io closed her eyes and, shuffling across the room, cried in an assumed and whining voice, "Buy a box o' lights, sir, pity the poor blind, the poor blind!" For some reason or other, Lady Steyning burst into tears and rushed from the room: probably, as Io hazarded, "That blessed brother of mine has been bothering her again: he's _constantly_ upsetting her."

I think that if I were Io I should take a firmer hand with a brother than she does. For a younger child he enjoys too many privileges--and naturally abuses them. Lady Steyning (whom he greatly shocked one night at the Opera by shouting out to Edouard de Reszke, during his greatest scene in _Faust_, "Dy'e mind singing a bit slower, old man; my French is a bit rusty and I'm blowed if I can follow you!") thinks, for instance, that by encouraging him to go to all the best theatres and recitals, his better nature may eventually be appealed to and his baser propensities subdued. To this end she has given him _carte blanche_ to ring up on the telephone her box-office agents in Bond Street, and to have put down to her account whatever seats he needs. He may be slowly assimilating music--and Io says she will back him to make more noise at a music-hall bar than Handel and Mozart and Rossini rolled together--but it is scarcely in accordance with old-fashioned views of propriety that a firm of high-standing in the musical world should have to render such a bill as the following to--

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE THE COUNTESS OF STEYNING.

_In account with_ ---- and ----

157A Old Bond Street, W.

_To_

Feb. 10th. 1 Stage Box. Red Barn Varieties, Kilburn
(Grand "Corder" Night) . . . . . . . . . £2 2 0

" 11th. 10 Resvd. Fauteuils. Peckham Parthenon
(Testimonial to "Pills," head waiter) . 3 15 0

" 12th. 4 Dress Circles. Tabnab's Tottenham
Empire (First night of "Toffy's Trotter, or
Tannhauser in Ten Minutes") . . . . . . 0 8 0

Feb. 13th. 2 Sofa Stalls. Poplar Pavilion (Wrestling
Matinee, Acton Jim _versus_ Gunnersbury
Joe) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 0 15 0

" 14th. Grande Loge. Bow Tivoli (Compy. Benft.,
Widow and Childn. of Fireman Gaspipe) . 3 3 0

" 15th. 2 Standing Rooms. Club Row Parthenon,
Brick Lane, E. ("Pearly" King's Select
Dog Fight) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 0 0
--------
£14 3 0

And it is made all the more mortifying by the unctuous leer of the shopman in Bond Street, who, when poor Lady Steyning (not having perused the account) calls in to change a book or get a new piece of music, remarks:

"Might we ask yer leddyship to favour us with yer leddyship's orders for theatre tickets a little earlier, if possible? We very nearly missed the four dress circ's for 'Toffy's Trotter' last Wen's'dy through Tabnab's Empire not bein' on the telephone."

Pray what _do_ you think that preposterous girl, Euphemia Hulcot, has just done? Being still under the impression that the "rich military blood of Uncle Joseph" flows in her veins, she has procured an appointment as a field-nurse in this Russo-Japanese unpleasantness, positively! In truth, Uncle Joseph's military record was so conspicuously unbloody that, like Dod Grile's hero, his friends sought for him the Humane Society's leather medal for saving life; nor did he lose his leg at Inkerman, but in the Marylebone Road while spending the evening at the house of a man who was not at home himself, though his wife was. Uncle's involuntary host came home quite unexpectedly, however, and, thinking the place seemed too crowded, picked up the blunderbuss with which his ancestor fought (on both sides, by the way) at Naseby, and put about twelve ounces of buckshot, some old garden nails, and various other marine stores into Uncle Joseph's left leg just as Uncle Joseph was doing Follow-the-man-from-Cook's out of the window--"a Joseph never was a stayer!" as Mrs Potiphar remarked when she cast the coat-tail into the rag-bag. Six of the smartest surgeons in all England received Euphemia's kinsman at St Mary's Hospital, and, an hour later, when he recovered consciousness, they told him not to worry over his lost limb, but to consider it as a contribution to his mashing record.

To her fugitive knowledge of surgery, gathered from the four corners of _Hahnemann Undone, or How I Spiked Homeopathy's Battery_, she has added a course of campaign training, chiefly consisting of sleeping on a seaweed palliasse out in the bicycle shed, and now she is literally bursting to ring the bell on the Red Cross League. Nothing but the Rembrandtesque hue of her tresses secured her the official permit to join the fighting line. Said the extremely exalted Jap person who gave it, "Every time I look at that ginger nut of yours, puss, I think of a little bit of stuff that I left behind in Nagasaki, and for her sweet sake alone I will slip you the trysting place of the 10th Osaka Mounted Assassins. Hand this to their Colonel"--here he presented her with a Chinatown washing bill--"and he will give you the put-and-call of the field coffee-stall, such as it is. Fare you well!"

Please the pigs and she's not pinched, Euphemia will leave Western barbarians and the Albert Docks on Wednesday next, wearing a loose shirtette of wax-red pongee girded to the ear-lobe with whalebone, and confined at the waist by a gold and matrix buckle. A plain gold necklet with topaz collets and a lucky pig charm, Harris tweed knickerbockers held in place by orange silk galluses, and pegamoid putties with hand-painted chrysanthemums, will complete the toilette. She will carry a somewhat darker blouse for evening wear, and cricket shoes, in the full expectation of having to stand in some slippery places before she gets back; also a silver whist-register and marking pencil, a "Little Wonder" printing-press for marking her linen, combination purse and card-case, glove-fastener, and a small wrist-bag containing loose change for 'bus fares, etc. Thus equipped she will travel with every confidence, and is not a bit afraid of falling in with Cossacks since she is quite an adept at climbing a telegraph pole. As her aged Uncle Joseph says, she will be more in touch with life than he was at eighteen, when he swarmed up the lightning rod at the Girls' High School and then found the window fastened.