Chapter VI: Part 6

They found him in his cell at Brixton, sprawling in a wooden chair in a Martin Harvey attitude, but not wholly broken in spirit--indeed, he had only recently passed some remarks about the administration of the civil law in England, of such a character that the head warder had resigned his long-coveted office simply in order to avoid future contiguity to Middlesex debtors in general. Though Féo tearfully addressed Contango by his pet name, he only stared at her vacantly and bit his nails. Then his wandering eyes fell, for the first time ever, upon the old attorney, and the result of their brief inspection was clearly unfavourable. His first glance of scornful indifference quickly hardened into a deeply interested stare, and the debtor even raised himself upon his elbows and finally inclined his body forwards, the closer to continue his scrutiny. Tinge by tinge the passion rose in his face till at last he sprang from his seat. In a burst of fury he turned upon the octogenarian from the Temple.

"Strike me up a plum tree, this is too, too thick! You may have taken advantage of my temporary incarceration to supplant me in the affections of my wife, you hoary remnant of sin and senility!" he shrieked, "but I'll be eternally damned if you, or any other man, holds successional rights in my best umbrella! Come on!"

With that he literally showered blows--roughly estimated by a visiting J.P. who was slowly recovering from the jumps--at 300,000 in number, but probably less, since Mr Coke's prostrate body was recovered, minus the umbrella, within nine or ten minutes; whereas, even if the punches came at the rate of 250 a minute, which is quick work----

But I am not sure that I do not prefer to run downstairs to lunch, and leave the problem, if they care to solve it, to the bright young mathematicians of the seventh page of the _Daily Mail_, who, given three figures and a bit of chalk, can be backed to figure the knocker off the front door at any time.

Au revoir, ma chère,
VIOLA.

EPISTLE XII

EATON SQUARE, _Friday, May_ 12_th._.

DEAREST PATRICIA,--

The postmark on your cheery little note to hand this morning throws a lurid light on the cat-like sneak you executed out of Charbonell's last Friday afternoon, after positively insisting that I should drink a dish of tea with you. As I told you at the time, I once swore to a relative, since dead, never to touch tea until I wanted it; but I had no idea that you contemplated wolfing three chocolate eclairs and a buttered scone and proceeding direct to Paris, even though, as you aver, you acted upon a sudden impulse to write a Rita-like series of articles for _The Gentlewoman_ entitled "What I saw in Montmartre." A graphic description from a capable pen of what you did not see in Montmartre would be far more likely, I think, to increase the circulation of any newspaper. I had meant asking you on which three nights of this week you could make use of our box at the Opera, but as your letter is headed merely "Wednesday," which I didn't seem to think would find you in a big place like Paris, I simply couldn't--as the fair candidate for the chorus of the new musical-comedy remarked on observing that her mother had put out a pink flannelette set for her to go and have her voice "tried" in. Anyway, I hope that you may have an exciting and adventurous time in Lutetia, a desire which I express with increased confidence since reading in this morning's newspapers, that bands of impoverished but resourceful Parisians are earning a precarious livelihood by throwing young women, ostensibly of the unfortunate class, into the Seine, and then rescuing them under the eyes of the benevolent.

I have, by the way, something more than a fanciful and fantastic notion that Paris may hold me within the next forty-eight hours, for our household is at the moment as intolerable to me as was that of the ambitious young gentleman who, in defence of his alleged want of family pride, pleaded that it was expecting too much of one whose father was in Dartmoor, whose sister was in Regent Street, and whose mother was going about London with a wen as big as a diving-bell. As usual, Mr Contango is at the bottom of the spasm. But while the brilliancy and variety of that man's errors throw a reflected glory upon his inventive genius and effectually preclude the possibility of his turning over a new leaf without investing in an entirely fresh book, his repeated backslidings are surely undermining the nerves, and consuming the very molecules and corpuscles of Féo's delicate physical adjustment. No sooner is one epoch of recidivation bottled up by a sickening course of vespertinal canoodling than another severe slump, calculated to cause the entire building to vibrate, is ripening in some other quarter, until it really seems that the only domain in which Mr Contango could be confidently relied upon to keep out of trouble, would be an iron-barred niche high on the face of the most inaccessible peak of Popocatapetl.

When I went to her boudoir this morning to execute a quick touch for the price of some long-coveted green tourmaline pendants, Féo was reclining on the sofa, like the gentleman who sat down "unbeknownst" on the box of fusees, face downwards, and sobbing her very heart out. A torn blue envelope, inscribed in the familiar hand of our hired Sherlock, which lay upon the floor, told me instantly that the dreadful Contango had once again been weighed in the balances and found several hundredweight against the purchaser; but with the "Festina lente" of the Onslows ever before me, I contented myself by inquiring the interesting nature of the poor wretch's vapours--and that in the most frigidly cucumberish fashion.

It appeared that on a not very remote evening she was being driven across Piccadilly Circus towards the Strand, when a block in the traffic caused the carriage to pull up almost directly in front of the Criterion Bar. At first Féo scarcely noticed the stoppage, the pleasant tide of her thoughts running on the recent, self-instituted moral reformation of Mr Contango, he having begun, according to his own account, to make "great gobs of the wherewith" by following financial journalism in the City. Than this nothing in the world could be likelier, since he really has a most persuasive literary style and, indeed, once wrote a letter of condolence to the widow of a bookmaker (killed in a sort of paper-chase by a blow from a bottle) which was so convincing that no sooner had the anguished relict read it than she put off her mourning, took a couple of phenacetin tabloids, and went out to a music-hall. Mr Contango's further assurances that he had absolutely renounced the use of hot and rebellious liquors, Féo more readily believed, she told me, since she had only that very morning poured him out seven tumblers of cold water before rising. As the period of her detention in the middle of the Circus by the rozzer in the rubber overalls became unreasonably prolonged, however, she lowered the carriage window and--did so just in time to behold a most sickening spectacle. The glazed doors of the American Bar were suddenly thrown open by an unseen force, and Mr Contango was projected violently into the road! So vigorous was the propelling power behind him, said Féo, that he cleared the pavement as if he had been dynamited horizontally, and he would have bitten the dust but that his nose seemed to be in the way. As he arose with bleeding proboscis and hurled at his projector a string of sunset adjectives, which it was quite impossible for her to hear in the presence of servants, Féo saw clearly that Mr Contango had vineleaves in his hair, so, sinking back upon the cushions of the carriage, she was borne to her destination in the collapsed condition so graphically described by Dr Harris Ruddock as "the engine with the fly-wheel gone."

Not until the following afternoon did Mr Contango return to Eaton Square, when (although Féo has since ascertained that he ate a soothing, if vulgar, supper of tripe and onions in a kitchen in Pimlico) the explanation he gave of his damaged family feature was that he had been trying a bicycle in the street and got a flat wheel--fortunately just outside the hospital into which the bystanders carried him. With unusual wisdom Féo expressed no comment, but instituted the inquiries to which the torn blue envelope had brought the sequel. Crystallised, it was as follows:

There is, so say Féo's sleuth-hounds, no art known to moderns (save that of the subdolous Somerset Street _passé_ face-fakirs who remove crow's feet, beetling eyebrows, and double chins, and restore and preserve youthfulness in ten successive ninety-minute "treatments" at one-guinea-and-a-half per) which is netting more money for its artificers than the art of "telling the tale," and in a branch of this industry which he has made peculiarly his own, has Mr Contango been reaping the golden results erroneously attributed by Féo to honest literary labour. In the buffet-bars, the music-halls, and "other places where they sing" in the wide world of cheap flutter, Mr Contango (in whose family, Féo now remembers having been told by a palmist, poverty has predominated over honesty from pre-historic times) has been in the habit of encountering the young gentlemen best adapted to his purpose. Féo's inquiry-agents describe these individuals as "the juvenile jays of convivial commercialdom," but I prefer to preserve an impartial lukewarmth in the matter. In their proper sphere they are, I feel convinced, quite genuine persons though of the unfortunate kind that cannot get away in the afternoon, and are therefore the more likely to be entrapped when dolled up and out for the evening. It is a lamentable but incontrovertible solecism, I am told, that many young men who are highly moral--almost German-Reed--at heart, are inwardly never happier than when suspected of disreputable tendencies.

Entering any bar or public place where one of these odd creatures, attired in an evening suit of eccentric cut and showing a scarlet silk handkerchief protruding from the waistcoat, chances to be lounging, deeply cogitating whether the obviously interested onlookers take him for the latest turf plunger or the French Embassy, Mr Contango immediately gives an elaborate exhibition of surprise and delight.

"Why, my dear old lad!" cries he, rushing up and taking the poseur by both fists, "this is indeed red and yellow wine for me! To think that I haven't set eyes on you since Lincoln, and last week was the Two Thousand! And you, above all others, who never by any chance missed a Newmarket? Too bad, too bad; we were a melancholy crowd without you; no little menus, no cards; to bed with the chickens, and the Rooms at midnight as soundless as a Libyan desert! Now what prevented you: something fresh in petticoats, I'll wager?"

Flattered and confused by all this, the simpleton hesitates. His sense of rectitude prompts some such reply as "You have the advantage of me," or, alternatively, "I think you are mistaken"--(see Mixitt's "Art of Polite Conversation." One Shilling. At all book-stalls)--but his vanity forbids it. To be mistaken for anybody rather than plain Tom Cobley is, in fact, the very keynote to the assumption of the funny evening kit, the ludicrous red hanky; that the conversation happens to be so much above his head is very regrettable, but still no fault of his--indeed he has not as yet uttered one single word. And if, after all, he sufficiently resembles this racing celebrity, this young blood so gifted and accomplished that his mere absence from a "First Spring" causes the whole of Newmarket to be plunged in melancholy, why should _he_, plain Tom Cobley, be under the obligation of making, in front of a score of strangers--for an audience soon gathers--the humiliating admission that, far from being "dear old lad," he is not a turfite at all but a--well, private individual from the hindquarters of Oxford Street? So, seeing no great harm in winging a little, he replies, with absolute truth:

"No, it was nothing in petticoats"--(quite probably he is in the "Ribbon and Lace," and not the "Underclothing" at all)--"but something quite different that detained me. But I must be going now."

"Lucky dog! lucky dog!" then cries Mr Contango. "For ever hammering on the anvil of passion, and drinking only, as did your illustrious forebears, out of the satin shoes of their mistresses. But--er--I really _must_ have _one_ word with you before you go: you can guess what about, eh?"

"Indeed, I can't."

"Aye, there comes your patrician breeding again, lad! A noble nature, inherited from a long line of exalted sires, confers on you the privilege of forgetting your benefices to your friends! Mean to say you have forgotten the fiver which you generously pressed upon me as we came off the course at Lincoln?"

"Absolutely," replies the youth, utterly out of his depth, but discerning no danger.

"Then let me try and recall the circumstances to your mind. I had had a dash on Merry Andrew for the last race--with what result you know: Ariosto chopped him at the start and was never headed. I was absolutely stranded for ready cash--positively without my railway fare on to Liverpool--when you--may heav'n bless you for your generous act--leapt into the breach. I have fortunately a blank cheque here----"

At this he would draw from a quilted-satin note case a green cheque form, and continue: "--and, for once, I may discharge my debt, though never my obligation. Meantime, old college-companion, pray condescend to take one parting drink with me--nay, be pleased to let me pay: 't may seem like Lazarus entertaining Dives, but no matter. Barkeeper, two special liqueurs of the Imperial O.V.H., a large 'polly divided, and--the pen and the inkhorn, quick!"

By now, Cobley's entanglement is greater than his brain can compass. He has allowed his ineptitude to sink him to the level of a common swindler; yet the hard-shelled fact that the position is none of his seeking is being shouted through an unseen megaphone into his ear by an invisible Adversary of Souls. Were it not for the accursed, gaping mob, he would chance making a clean breast of it; but the truth will not bear all lights. At worst he must accept the draft and contrive to return it privately, later on.

"Here we are, dear lad," cries Mr Contango, finishing the writing (and poor Cobley's reflections) and flourishing the cheque, "I have made it for a tenner because I find that I have just run out of silver, but if you will let me have a couple or three sovereigns just to carry me home, you can send your man round to Coutts's in the morning and slip me the remainder to-morrow night, or to-morrow twelvemonth, or--well, whenever I ask you for it. Aha! I'm about as fond of asking a fellow for money as you are, dear boy!"

It is then that Mr Cobley falls slap into the net and sinks just as deeply as he has cash available--for I presume that even you, dear, are not so innocent in this "sordid and merciless age of industrialism" as to suppose that the cheque is of any more service to anybody than a stomach-ache. It is a very real lesson in the art of banking that Mr Cobley receives as the bank cashier returns him the stumer with the additional inscription of "N.E."--"No Earthly" upon it. He sees at a glance precisely how much smaller his expenditure for the year will be since his little envelope for the month of May has been put through the wringer. And what if he subsequently lies in wait for Mr Contango with a view to readjustments, I think I hear you ask? Why, frankly, that would afford him about as much real joy as secretly pinching the cork leg of a lady stranger in a crowded omnibus. Mr Contango would instantly fetch him a crack across the mazzard with a bar towel, or some similarly offensive weapon, and accuse him aloud of every sin both in and out of the decalogue, not omitting the mysterious and only unforgivable one which is barely outlined in the Book of Revelations; he would, in short, do every objectionable thing within human knowledge--short of personally summoning the police. Estimating (Féo's scouts conclude) the number of convivial commercialists put through the hoop at three per night, and averaging the sum contributed by each at fifty-seven-and-sixpence, Mr Contango has been drawing an income of close upon three thousand a year from a source previously exploited only by cheap tobacconists and abandoned barmaids!

Is not it appalling? But perhaps you do not know that the first stone of the quite considerable pile left by the late Mr Sam Lewis was laid by youthful ignorance of banking methods--not Samuel's ignorance, dear; _he_ knew all about banks, from his youth up, and quite frequently he took one. He was originally, you must know, a travelling jeweller, though upon a certain Monday morning when, instead of continuing to travel, he sent word to his firm that his liver was not acting--for all the world as though he expected that indispensable organ to go on at the Gaiety in tights and trunks, and a flaxen wig!--also that he was detained by an urgent matter of a lucrative character, likewise he was bidden to the funeral ceremonies of a very dear friend, not to mention his doctor's imperative orders about staying in the house with so serious a suppressed cold; many a conjecturing ear took a more forward inclination in the vain hope of learning something a little more definite. In reality, Samuel was occupied in raising twenty thousand spangles for a young gentleman who, after interviewing his pass-book, had come to the sickening conclusion that he had overdrawn his banking account to about that tune. The poor boy had, in a lucid interval between drinks, sent for the little parchment wallet and compared its totals in order to see how much more money, if any, he had got to spend before he died, and from even the most careless analysis of the figures there existed between the right-hand columns and the left-hand columns a discrepancy of £19,776, 11s. 7d. The very natural conclusion to which these figures, as well as a colossal ache in the back of his head (By Christmas! how it did throb, throb, throb!) resigned him, was that he must have had an even better time than it had seemed--a distinct chunk of consolation in a way, but one that dug no subway for the man who had got to find "a hundred" somehow for a real little topweight, quite the very best that the dear old "Guv'nor" had ever put on any stage.

It was, however, when dear old Sam (as those who paid up as well as those who only renewed, alike addressed him) called in with the cash and spread the bonnie crisp notes of the Bank of England all over the blessed table that the sun took on new brightness. For a single glance at the inside of the pass-book disclosed to the genial Hebrew the fact that, far from being overdrawn, the high-mettled lad, whose magnificent ignorance of ledger-accounts only increased his nobility, simply didn't know which side of the book was the other, and actually had at that moment £19,776, 11s. 7d. standing to his credit.

"Anyhow," he remarked apologetically, after telling his man to fly down to the bank and get four more cheque-books immediately, "there must be thunder in the air, or something, for I'll take my oath I had less to drink last night than I did all the rest of last week put together."

Fancy you, dear kid, not knowing that, unlike the big drapery houses of London, which think nothing of lending an overstrung divinity of the footlights who may be expecting a bed-and-breakfast visit from an old Girton chum, a silk nightie; of sending it home to the _recherché_ little flat at the top of the two-hundred-and-sixty-two stone steps, and of taking it back next morning after all the creases and crow's feet, bar its warehouse ones, have been pressed out by the great weight of some large literary work--Bunyan is about the heaviest in our language--and its pink ribbons have made their first rapid pass under a warm flat iron; the proprietors of les Grands Magasins do not cordially endorse the system of sending out their stock "on appro." Ample facilities for "appro rapide" are afforded on the premises to princesses of the blood and other noble damsels, who do not object to discrown themselves and slip into some lawn or batiste article of the _intime_ toilette at 9 f. 50 in the shadow of a festoon of organdi muslins, or a bunch of shop-soiled ostrich stoles, but the girl who cannot make up her unsettled mind until she has got into the things in her own bedroom and, with her biggest picture hat on and a chrysanthemum in her hair, has marched up and down in front of her cheval glass singing "Won't you come home now, Bill Bailey?" is invariably discouraged. The hierophants of the Louvre, who in their pudacity request even married men who are not accompanied by their own wives to be good enough to conceal their identity as far as possible, claim that the "appro Anglais" system demoralises both the goods and the customers, but especially the goods.

And, somehow, this vagrant mention of married men and their wives reminds me to tell you that the impossible Invernairnes have quite recently made it up and sworn eternal friendship again. It came about all unrehearsed and unexpectedly--at least so she told some two or three hundred women at her club, in strict confidence and on the distinct understanding that it went no further. They have lately been vegetating--in separate beds--in a sweetly rural spot called Hampstead, where the liver-pad and the footpad derive mutual benefit on Bank Holidays, and where all that one need do when one is hungry is to pull up a carrot and milk the cow. From a luxurious sleeping-saloon on the first floor, Lady Invernairne could gaze across miles and miles of the western heath; though the eastern view from the palleted box-room on a higher floor, where his lordship lay like a case of suspended animation, was less imposing, and, indeed, consisted principally of whitewashed walls punctuated by a green door with a small ace-of-diamonds window and a latch string in it.

One night a brilliant thunderstorm swept o'er the Heath, the thunder rolling noisily down the very roofs of rainwashed slate, the heavens parting to take flashlight pictures of the fertile valleys of North Middlesex. A forked blue flame played in the sky above the crematorium at Golder's Hill, a ball of living fire dropped into the lake at Hendon, and--the craven Lady Invernairne crept from her bed to stand by her window and shake with terror, her eyes half closed and her firm, fair bosom--in adaged phrase they used to "lay the table" on her--turned temporarily to gooseflesh. It is at such times, when Nature scolds, that woman needs someone to comfort her and hold her hand till daylight happens or the storm abates. Never dreaming of consequences, Lady Invernairne weakly called down from the box-room the case of "suspended animation," and manlike, he presumed----

But Féo, still a bunch of nerves, has just burst in to say that if a fiver is sufficient recompense for two hours in the Turkish and three plain dishes for dinner, I can be on.

It is.

Toujours a toi,
VIOLA.

THE END