Chapter V: Front Matter (5)

“My dear,” returned the Duchess, shaking her beautiful head, “the terms employed in the contract were precisely those I have quoted.... The specialist laid the foundations, and carried the contract out. Momma’s appearance delighted everyone, except Poppa, who has old-fashioned notions, and complained of feeling shy in the presence of a stranger. Fortunately their Silver Wedding eventuated just then, and his conscience—Poppa’s conscience is, for a corn speculator’s, wonderfully sensitive—ceased to annoy him.”

“And your mother?”

“Momma wore her new face for six months with the greatest satisfaction,” said the Duchess. “Of course, she had to lay up for repairs pretty often, but the specialist was there to carry them out. Unluckily, he contracted a severe chill in the N’York winter season and died. His wife put his tools and enamels and things in his coffin. She said she knew business would be brisk when he got up again, and she didn’t wish any other speculator to chip in before him.” The Duchess sighed. “Then came Momma’s great trouble.”

“There was no other operator to—take up the—the contract?” hinted Lady Sidonia.

“There were dozens,” said the Duchess, “and Momma tried them all. My dear, you may surmise what she looked like.”

“A heterogeneous mingling of styles.”

“It was impossible to conjecture,” said the Duchess confidentially, “to what period the original structure belonged. By day Momma resorted to a hat and voile.”

“Even in the house?”

“Even in the house. By night—well, I guess you’ve noticed that a human work of art, illuminated by electric light, isn’t seen under the most favorable conditions.”

“There is a pitiless accuracy!”

“An unmerciful candor about its revelations. After one unusually brilliant reception, Momma retired from society and took to spiritualism. She persevered until she had materialized that demised face-specialist, and extracted some definite raps in the way of advice.”

“And what did he advise?”

“He suggested, through the medium, that Momma should apply to the Milwaukee Mentalists.”

“A Society of Faith Healers?”

“‘Occult Operatists,’ they call themselves on the prospectuses. As for the cult of the Society,” said the Duchess pensively, “one might call it a mayonnaise of Freemasonry, Theosophy, Hypnotism, Humbug, and Hoodoo. But the humbug, like salad oil in the mayonnaise, was the chief ingredient.” The Duchess stopped to draw breath.

“And into this vortex Mrs. Van Wacken was drawn?” sighed Lady Sidonia.

“Sucked down and swallowed,” said the Duchess, who had been Miss Van Wacken. “They undertook to make Momma right over again, brand new, by prayer and faith and—a mentally electrified bath. For which treatment Momma was to pay ten thousand down.”

“Pounds!” shrieked the horrified Lady Sidonia.

“Dollars,” corrected the Duchess.

“In advance?” cried the listener.

“In advance, after a demonstration had been given which was practically to satisfy Momma that the Milwaukee Mentalists were square,” said the Duchess. “My word! when I remember how they bluffed that poor darling—I should want to laugh, if I didn’t cry.” She dried another tear.

“Do go on!” entreated her friend.

“The High Priestess of the Community was a woman,” went on the Duchess, “just as cool and ca’am and cunning as they make ’em.”

“I guessed as much,” said Lady Sidonia.

“It takes a woman to know and work on another woman’s weak points,” rejoined the Duchess. “The High Priestess pretended to be in communication with a spirit. ‘The Mystikos,’ they called him, and he resided, when he was at home, in a crystal ball; but bullion was the real totem of the tribe. Well—but it’s getting late——”

“I shall not sleep a _wink_ until I have heard the _whole story_,” said Lady Sidonia.

“And Cull and your husband are comparing notes about their wives in the smoking-room,” said the Duchess.

“Well, the Theologa——”

“The—the—what?”

“The Theologa—that was the professional title of the High Priestess—whose or’nary name was Mrs. Gideon J. Swale,” her Grace went on, “talked a great deal to Momma, and made some passes over her, and got the poor dear completely under her thumb. Momma wasn’t the only victim, you must know. There were four other ladies, all wealthy, and each one, like Momma, the leader of a fashionable society set——”

“And—no longer young?”

“And past their first bloom,” amended the Duchess. “And each of ’em had agreed to plank down the same sum in cold dollars.”

“Fifty thousand in all,” said Lady Sidonia with a sigh. She could have done so much with fifty thousand dollars, even though American money was such beastly stuff. “Worth——”

“Worth riskin’ a term in a N’York State prison for—I guess so!” said the Duchess. “Well, Momma and the other ladies signed on to the terms, and went through a cer’mony of purification—which included learnin’ a kind of catechism used in admittin’ a new member into the Occult Operatists’ Community—an’ several hymns. That was to make them worthy to receive the Revelation from the Mystikos, I guess. At least, the Theologa——”

“Mrs. Gideon J. Swale?”

“The same. The Theologa said so. In a week or so—durin’ which period they lived at the house of the Community—chiefly on nuts an’ spring-water——”

“For which entertainment they paid——” Lady Sidonia hinted.

“Delmonico rates!” said the Duchess. “Well, it was settled that the Demonstration was to come off, with the Mystikos’ consent.”

“What sort of——”

“Demonstration? Cur’us,” said the Duchess, “and inter_est_ing. There was a woman—a Mrs. Gower, English by birth, Amurrican naturalized—who was to be the Subject. She was a widow—her husband having met his death in an explosion at an oil-gas producin’ factory. Stoker to the gas-generator he was, and his wife had brought him his dinner—fried steak in a tin pail—when the hull kitboodle blew up. Husband was killed—wife was saved, though so scarred and disfigured about the face as to be changed from a pretty woman into a plain one.”

“And she—this scarred, disfigured woman—was to be made pretty again by the Occult Operatists?” hazarded Lady Sidonia.

“Guessed it first time,” nodded the Duchess. “The cer’mony took place in a temple belonging to the Community, all painted over red and yellow triangles and things like T-squares. At the upper end was an altar, raised on three steps, and on this was the ground glass ball in which the Mystikos lived when he wasn’t somewhere else, and an electric light was fixed over it, so that it just dazzled your eyes to look at. Below the altar was a seat for the Theologa, and, you bet, Mrs. Gideon J. Swale came out strong in the costume line. Momma was reminded of Titiens in _Norma_, she said.”

“I want to hear about the Demonstration,” pleaded Lady Sidonia plaintively.

“My! you’re in a hurry,” said the Duchess. “But it was to be brought off in a bath—if you must know!”

“A _bath_?”

“A bath that was full of water and boiled herbs, and had been properly incanted over by the Theologa,” explained the Duchess. “There were incense-burners all round, and not far off a kind of tent of white linen, all over red triangles and T’s. And the five candidates for renovation—I mean Momma and the other ladies—sat on a form, in bloomers, each with a little purse-bag containing bills for ten thousand dollars, and her heart full of hope and joy.”

“_Oh!_ go on,” cried Lady Sidonia.

“The temple was circular, something like the Mormon Tabernacle at Salt Lake City,” said the Duchess, “and the Occult Operatives—a round hundred of ’em—occupied the forms, to assist with the prayers and hymn-singin’. Of course, the proceedings began with a hymn sung in several different keys. I surmise the effect was impressive.”

Lady Sidonia elevated her eyebrows.

“Momma said it was wailful, and made her feel as though live clams were crawling up and down her back. But then the bloomers may account for that,” said the Duchess, “and I guess the temple registers were out of order. Then—the lights were suddenly turned out!”

“O-oh!” shivered Lady Sidonia.

“Except the electric stars over the Mystikos’ crystal ball,” went on the Duchess, “so that all the light in the temple seemed to come from the altar. Momma said that made her feel those crawling clams worse than ever.”

“Could one see plainly what was going on?” asked Lady Sidonia.

“It was a religious kind of dimness,” said the Duchess, “but most everything showed plainly. For instance, when the hideous woman who was to be the Subject of the Demonstration came out of the linen tent in a suit of bloomers like Momma’s and the others, she appeared to be plain enough. Do you keep a cat, dear?” whispered the Duchess.

“Why? No!” said Lady Sidonia.

“I thought I heard a scratching at the door,” explained the Duchess, with her mouth close to Lady Sidonia’s ear. “Don’t open it.... I’d rather—— Where was I?”

“The Subject was in bloomers,” said Lady Sidonia.

“Oh, well! Momma and the other ladies were asked to look at her earnestly, to fix her features in their minds, so that they couldn’t but recognize her again if they saw her. She was a slight woman, Momma said, about thirty-five, and but for her scarred face would have been pretty, with her pale complexion, brown wavy hair, and large gray eyes with black lashes.... She had one peculiarity about the left hand, which no one who ever saw it could forget. What are you listening for?”

“_I_ hear something at the door,” faltered Lady Sidonia in a nervous undertone.

“Fancy. You don’t keep a cat. Well, the Subject went up to the altar and knelt, and the Theologa—Mrs. Gideon J. Swale—invoked the Mystikos in a solemn kind of conjuration, and the crystal ball on the altar began to hop up and down.”

“No!”

“Fact! Then it rose right off the altar and hung suspended in the air, and the hymn broke out worse than ever, and the Theologa led the Subject down the altar steps and put her into the bath.”

“Well?” gasped Lady Sidonia.

“The Theologa threw incense on the burners round the bath, and perfect clouds rose up all round it, completely hiding the Subject,” explained the Duchess.

“Then she——”

“She began to scream.”

“To scream?”

“As if she was in absolute agony; and Momma and the four other ladies nearly fainted off their form, they were so perfectly terrified.”

“And—what happened?”

“There was a scream more piercing than any of the others.”

“Oh!”

“The clouds of incense became so thick that you couldn’t see your hand.”

“And——”

“The Occult Operatives sang more loudly and less in tune than ever, and the crystal ball kept on jumping up and down. Then the clouds of smoke cleared away, and the lights went up, and——” The Duchess paused provokingly.

“Go on, go on!”

“And the Subject got out of the bath.... And she had been ugly and scarred when she went in, but now she was young and pretty!”

“Impossible!”

“It was the same woman to all appearances, but changed—wonderfully changed. The same pretty brown hair, the same eyes, gray, with long curly black lashes, and the same strange malformation of one finger of the left hand. But no cicatrices, none of the seams and marks that made the other frightful.”

“The other!”

“Did I say the other?”

“Certainly!”

“Then I guess I let the cat out of the bag.”

“Ah, I begin to understand!”

“I thought you’d tumble.”

“There were two women—exactly alike!”

“No, goosey! One woman younger than the other, and looking exactly like her, as _she_ looked before the injury to her face.”

“Sisters?”

“No. Mother and daughter.”

“And the change in the bath?”

“Managed with a false bottom and trap exit. The sort of trick one sees exposed at the Egyptian Hall.”

“And the daughter took the mother’s place?”

“Under cover of the incense—and the singing. The tent held _two_, you understand.”

“But Mrs. Van Wacken?”

“Momma and the other ladies—once the thing had been proved genuine—were only too anxious to plank down their money and hop into the wonderful bath. So they went up to the Theologa, and she blessed them and laid the five money-bags on the altar, and then——”

“Then——”

“Then all the lights went out,” said the Duchess, “and there was a kind of stampede, and Momma and the four other ladies found themselves alone in the temple. The Theologa and the Subject and the hundred members of the Community who’d sat round on the seats and helped with the hymns were gone—and the dollar bags had vanished. The doors of the temple were locked, and Momma and the four other victims had to stop there until the morning. An express man heard their cries for help, broke in the door, and took them to an hotel in his wagon. Dear, I’m going to toddle to by-by!”

“It was an awful—awful swindle,” said Lady Sidonia, as she and the Duchess kissed good-night.

“And the exposure!” The Duchess shrugged her shoulders. “Momma and the other ladies wanted it hushed, but the police went into the matter.”

“Were the swindlers arrested?”

“The Theologa was caught at Amsterdam, and extradited. The Community got off. Nobody could prove any of them had had any of the money. I guess,” said the Duchess, yawning, “Mrs. Gideon J. Swale knows where it is. But she’s in prison, now, dear. And I hope she likes it. As for the woman and her daughter, whose likenesses to each other had been made use of by Mrs. Gideon—they’re still at large. Good-night.”

“Do tell me,” pressed Lady Sidonia. “That peculiarity of one finger of the left hand possessed by both mother and daughter—what was it?”

“It was,” said the Duchess, “a double nail.”

“_How_ odd!” said Lady Sidonia. “My maid has the same queer deformity, and it is the only thing I don’t like about her.... She hates to have it noticed.”

“I guess she does,” said the Duchess.

“Look at her hand to-morrow,” said Lady Sidonia. “It’s awfully queer. Don’t forget.”

“I won’t,” said the Duchess. “But she won’t be here to-morrow!”

Lady Sidonia’s eyes opened to their widest extent. “Won’t—_be here_?”

“No. She is the girl who got out of the bath!”

“Good heavens!” cried Lady Sidonia. “How do you——Are you——”

“I had been shown her photograph by the police—recognized her the moment I saw her,” said the Duchess. “I’m not mistaken any, you may be sure. But you needn’t trouble about her. She’s gone!”

“Gone!”

“She was listening at the door, and heard the whole story. When _you_ spoke about the cat, she made tracks. She’s clear of this house by now, you may bet your back teeth. Don’t worry about her,” said the Duchess. “I’ll send my own maid to you in the morning. Good-night!”

THE BREAKING PLACE

_Being a letter from Miss Tossie Trilbina, of No. 000, Giddingham
Mansions, W., to the Editor of “The Keyhole,” an illustrated Weekly
Journal of Caterings for the Curious._

DEAR SIR,

Since reserve and reticence can be carried too far by a lady, I drop the present line of explanation, the newspapers having took so kind a interest in the differences between me and Lord Wretchingham. And if poets ask what’s in a name, the experience of me and many another young lady whose talent for the Stage, developed by application and go-aheadness, not to say good luck—for that there is such a thing must be plain to the stubbornest person—has made her friends from the Orchestra—(you’d never guess how the Second Violin can queer you in an accomp. if you hadn’t experienced it!)—to the highest row in the Threepenny Gallery at The Druids, or the shilling one at The Troc.—would answer, _more than people think for_!

My poor dear mother, who has been pretty nearly crazy about the affair, in that shrinking from publicity which is natural to a lady, told the young gentleman from _The Keyhole_, who dropped in on her at her little place at Brixton, to fish and find out for himself why the marriage-engagement between her daughter and his lordship should have been broken off on the very verge of the altar.

Of course, I don’t assume his lordship’s proposal wasn’t a compliment to a young lady in the Profession; but lordly roofs and music halls may cover vice or shelter virtue, as one of the serio characters so beautifully said in the autumn show at dear old Drury Lane, the name of which has slipped me. And I don’t pretend that my deepest and holiest feelings were not wrenched a bit by me having to say in two words, after mutual vows and presents of the solemnest kind had been exchanged between me and Lord Wretchingham: “All is over between you and me for ever, Hildebrand; and if you possess the mind as well as the manners and appearance of a gentleman, you will not force me to give you the definite chuck.”

He went on awfully, grinding the heels of his boots into a brand-new Wilton carpet, and telling me over and over that I had no heart and never loved him, concerning which I prefer to keep myself to myself. There are those that make as much noise when things go wrong with ’em as a one-and-fourpenny sparking-plug, and there are others that keep theirselves to theirselves and suffer in silence, of which I hope I am one. Even supposing my ancestry did not toddle over with Edward the Conkeror, which they may, for all I know.

It was on the very first night of the production of _The Pop-in-Taw Girl_, by the Trust or Bust Theatrical Syndicate, at the Hiram P. Goff Theatre, W., that Lord Wretchingham caught my eye. Musical Comedy is my strongest weakness, for though a principal boy’s part, with heaps of changes, and electro-calcium with chromatic glasses for every song and dance touches the spot, pantomime is not so refined. Perhaps you may recall the record hits I made in “Freddy’s Flannel Waistcoat Wilted in the Wash,” and “Lay Your Head on My Shoulder, Dear.” Not that it’s my habit to refer to my successes, but the street organs alone will rub it in when you happen to be the idol of the hour.

He sat with his mouth wide open—of course, I refer to Lord Wretchingham—all the time yours truly was on the stage, and I will say no gentleman could have a more delicate regard for a young lady’s feelings than his lordship did in sending a perfect haystack of the most expensive hothouse flowers addressed to Miss Tossie Trilbina, with a diamond and turquoise muff-chain twined round the moss handle of the basket, and not a speck of address on the card for my poor dear mother to return the jewelry to, her being over and above particular, I have often thought, in discouraging attentions that only sprang from gentlemen’s appreciation of the performance, and masked nothing the smallest objections could be taken to.

She quite warmed to Lord Wretchingham, I will say, when him being respectfully presented by the Syndicate, and me being recommended fresh country air by the doctors when suffering from tonsils in the throat, his lordship placed his motor-car at my disposal. With poor dear mother invariably in the glass compartment behind, the tongue of scandal could not possibly find a handle, and her astonishment when she discovered that Hildebrand regarded me with a warmer feeling than that of mere admiration gave her quite a turn.

We were formally engaged—me and Lord Wretchingham. We kept the thing so dark I cannot think how the newspapers managed to get hold of it. But a public favorite must pay the price of popularity in having her private affairs discussed by the crowd. My poor dear mother felt it, but there! what can you do? With interviewers calling same time as the milk, and Press snap-shotters lurking behind the laurel bushes in the front garden, is it to be wondered at that Hildebrand’s family were apprised of our betrothal not only by pars., but by the publication of our photographs, taken hand-in-hand on my poor dear mother’s doorstep, with a vine climbing up behind us, Hildebrand’s motor car, an 18.26 h. p. “Gadabout,” at the bottom of the doorsteps, with the French _chofore parley-vousing_ away a good one to the three Japanese pugs, and poor dear mother, looking a perfect lady, at her fancy-work, in the front parlor window. How the negative was obtained, and how it found its way into all the Illustrated Papers, and particularly how it got upon the postcards, I don’t pretend to guess. It’s one of those regular mysteries you come across in real life.

Hildebrand, or, possibly, as all is over, I should say Lord Wretchingham’s family, went into perfect fits when the news of our betrothal leaked out. The Earl of Blandish, his father, raged like a mad bull; and the Countess, his mother, implored him on her knees to break the engagement.

“Oh,” she said, with the tears in her eyes, “my own boy,” she said, “do not, I beg of you,” she said—for, of course, I got it all out of Hildebrand afterwards—“show yourself to be of so weak and unoriginal a cast of mind as to follow the example of the countless other young men of rank and property,” she said, “who have contracted unequal and unhappy unions with young women on the boards,” she said—and like her classy cheek! Upon which Lord Wretchingham calmly up and told her that his word was his bond, and that I had got both; my poor dear mother having insisted from the beginning that things should be set down in black and white, which the spelling of irrevokable almost proved a barrier the poor dear could not tackle, his education having been neglected at Eton to that extent.

Me and my poor dear mother being—I don’t mind telling you on the strict—prepared for a struggle with Wretchingham’s family, was more than surprised when, after a Saturday to Monday of anxious expectancy, a note on plain paper with a coronet stamped in white from Lady Blandish informed us that her ladyship had made up her mind to call. And she kept the appointment as punctual as clockwork, driving up in a taxi, and perfectly plainly dressed; and when I made my entrance in the dearest morning arrangement of Valenciennes lace and baby ribbon you ever saw, I will say she met me like a lady should her son’s intended, and said that Lord Blandish and her had come to the determination to make the best of their son’s choice, and invited me down to stay at Blandish Towers, in Huntshire, when the run of _The Pop-in-Taw Girl_ broke off for the autumn holidays.

“Oh,” I said, “Lady Blandish,” I said, “of course, I shall be perfectly delighted,” and let her know how unwilling I felt as a lady to make bad blood between Lord Wretchingham and his family. “But, of course,” I said, “my duty to the man who I have vowed to love and honor leaves me no choice.”

“My dear Miss Tossie Trilbina,” she said, “your sentiments towards Wretchingham do you the utmost credit,” she said, and I explained to her that though the surname sounds foreign, there is nothing of the Italiano-ice-creamo about yours truly.

“Oh!” she said, in that sweetly nasty way that the Upper Ten do seem to have the knack of, “do not trouble to explain, my dear Miss Trilbina. Lord Blandish and myself are quite prepared,” she said, “to accept the inevitable,” she said, and kissed me, and smiled a great deal at my poor dear mother, who was explaining to her ladyship that her family did not regard an alliance with the aristocracy as anything but a match between equals, and that my education had been of the most expensive and classy kind you can imagine. And smiled herself into her taxi, and motored away.

That was in the middle of the summer season, and I bespoke my costumes for my visit to my new relations next day. Of course, I expected a house-party of really hall-marky, classy swells, and meant to do the honors and help Lady Blandish to entertain as was my duty bound. And my shooting and golfing and angling costumes, and motoring get-up and riding-habit, and tea-gowns and dinner-dresses and ball-confections, were a fair old treat to see, and did Madame Battens credit.

Wretchingham drove me down in his 18.26 h.p. “Gadabout,” with my dresser-maid in the glass case behind, and an omnibus motor from the garage behind us with my dressing-baskets, and I thought of poor dear mother at home, I don’t mind telling you, when the Towers rose up at the end of an oak avenue longer than Regent Street, and Wretchingham’s two sisters came running down the steps to hug their brother and be presented to their new sister, and the white-headed family butler threw a glass door open and Wretchingham led me in between six footmen, bowing, three on each side.

What price poor little me when I heard there wasn’t any House-Party? Cheap wasn’t the word, with all those costumes in my dress-baskets. However, I faked myself up in a frock that I really felt was a credit to a person of my rank and station, and swam down to what her ladyship called a “quiet family dinner.”

The Earl of Blandish came in, leaning on his secretary’s arm, with a gouty foot, and did the heavy father, calling me “my dear.” I sat on his lordship’s right hand, and certainly he was most agreeable, telling me the black oak carvings in the great hall were by Jacob Bean, and that the walled garden with a separate division for every month in the year and a bowling alley in the middle had been made by a lady ancestor of his who lived in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, and was a friend of the person who wrote Shakespeare.

“Oh!” I said, “I suppose,” I said, “in those days bowls were not considered a low form of amusement. Though if ever my poor dear mother and father did have to call words, it would be over his weakness for bowls and skittles as a waste of time and leading to betting and drink. And as for Shakespeare, I call it all very well for literary swells with nothing else to do,” I said, “but what the Halls cater for is the business gentleman who drops in with a pal to hear the popular favorite in a ten-o’clock turn over a cigar and a small Scotch. And gardening never was much in my line,” I said, “though when a child it was my favorite amusement to grow mustard and cress on damp flannel. Hunting is my passion,” I said, “and as Wretchingham has told me you keep a first-class stable of hunters and hacks, besides carriage beasts, I hope to show your lordship that I shan’t disgrace you,” I said, and asked him when the next meet would be?

The Earl’s old eyebrows went up to the top of his aristocratic bald forehead as he said not until October, and then only for cubbing, and the two girls flushed up red, trying not to laugh, and wriggled in their chairs, and Lady Blandish said in her nice nasty way that every day brought innovations, and one might as well ride to hounds in August as skate on artificial ice in May.

“And if you are fond of sport,” Lord Blandish said, “we could possibly find you some fishing. Don’t you think so, my dear?” and he looked at his wife.

“I have my salmoning costume with me,” I said, just to let them know, “and a rod, and everything. And I suppose Wretchie won’t object,” I said, giving the poor thing a smile, “to prompt me if I am fluffy in the business.”

“Dear me!” said Lady Blandish, “how stupid of me not to have explained before,” she said, “that this is a trouting County and not a salmon County, and that such trout as there are run very small.” And the two girls choked again in the most underbred way I ever.

I said I’d fall back on golf, having a killing get-up in my basket, but there wasn’t a links within miles, Lady Blandish said, and how sorry she was. All the hot-weather entertainment she had it in her power to offer me in their quiet country home, she said, was an occasional flower-show, or County cricket-match, or a garden-party, or a friendly dinner with people who were not _too_ exacting. In September there would be the birds, but then I would not be there. It was too unfortunate, she said. Not that her saying so took me in much.

I thought the top of my head would have come off with yawning that evening, I really did; and when I remembered that there were three weeks more of it before me I could have screamed out loud. Me and Wretchingham went for a spin in his T-cart next morning before lunch, and that drive settled me in deciding to off it on the next chance.

“Tossie darling,” said the poor dear thing, “it has gratified my father exceedingly to ascertain,” he said, “that you are fond of the country; because a condition of the provision he is willing to make for us when we are married,” he said—and he would have put his arm round my waist only the trotter shied—“is that we reside at the Dower House,” he said, “twenty miles from here, and lead a healthy life in accordance with his views as regards what is appropriate for future land-owners who will one day hold a solid stake in the County. Of course, you will leave the Stage forever, my darling,” he said, “as a future Countess of Blandish cannot figure upon the Lyric Boards,” he said, “without in some degree compromising her reputation and bringing discredit upon the family of which,” he said, “she has become a member. My father will allow us two thousand a year at first,” he said, “which will enable us to keep a couple of motor-cars and a hack or two, and with an occasional week-end in Town, I have no doubt,” he said, “that our married life will be,” he said, “one of ideal happiness for both of us. You observe,” he said, pointing with his whip straight over the trotter’s ears, “that rather low-pitched stone building of the Grange description down in that wooded hollow there? The house is quite commodious,” he said. “You will appreciate the exceptional garden; and as there is a good deal of arable land comprised,” he said, “in the estate, I shall take up farming,” he said, “with enthusiasm.”

“You may take up farming,” I said haughtily, “with enthusiasm, dear old boy; but what I say is, you will not take it up with yours truly! Do you suppose in cold blood that Tossie Trilbina is the sort of girl to sit down in the middle of a ploughed field and lead a life of ideal happiness with a farming husband in gaiters,” I said, tossing my head, “telling me how the turnips are looking every evening at dinner, and taking me up to Town for a week-end,” I said, “every now and then as a treat? No, Hildebrand,” I said, “clearly understand, much as I regret to say it, that I am not taking any; and unless the old gentleman can be brought to see the reason,” I said, “of a flat in Mayfair, all is over betwixt me and you, and I shall go back to my poor dear mother by to-night’s express,” I said, “if the lacerated state of your feelings does not permit,” I said, “of your taking the steering-wheel.”

Of course, the poor dear thing was dreadfully upset, and did his little best to bring Lord Blandish to weaken on his spiteful old determination; and Lady Blandish said heaps of nice-sounding nasty things, and the two girls tried to be sympathetic and not to look as if they were really ready to jump for joy. But the Earl remained relentless, and Lord Wretchingham is free. I must now close. Hoping you will accept this explanation in the spirit in which it is made,

I remain, dear Sir, yours respectfully,
TOSSIE TRILBINA.

A LANCASHIRE DAISY

One of the giant police-constables on duty outside the Cotton Hall, Smutchester, upon the occasion of the Conference of the National Union for the Emancipation of Women Workers, was seized with the spirit of prophecy when he saw Sal o’ Peg’s borne in, gesticulating, declaiming, carried head and shoulders above an insurging wave of beshawled and rampant factory-girls.

“Theeaw goes th’ Stormy Pettrill, Tum!” he roared to a fellow guardian of the public peace. “Neeaw us be sewer to ha’ trooble wi’ theeay——” He did not add “tykes.”

“Thee mun be misteeawken, mon,” urged Tum, who had newly joined the Smutchester City Division. “’Tis boh a lil’ feer-feaced gell aw cud braak between ma finger an’ thoomb lig a staalk o’ celery.” The great blue eyes of the “lil’ feer-feaced gell” had done execution, it was plain, and the first speaker, who was a married man, snorted contemptuously. Sal o’ Peg’s had completely earned the disturbing nickname bestowed on her. The courts and alleys of the roaring black city would vomit angry, white-gilled, heavy-shod men and women at one shrill, summoning screech of hers. The police-constable upon whose features she had more recently executed a clog war-dance was not yet discharged from the Infirmary, though the seventeen years and fragile proportions of his assailant had, for the twentieth time, softened “th’ Beawk” into letting Sal o’ Peg’s off with the option of a fortnight or a fine, and the threat of being bound over to keep the peace next time, if she insisted in being “so naughty.”

With these blushing honors thick upon her, Sal o’ Peg’s attended the Conference, and became, before the close of the presidential address, an ardent convert to the cause of Female Suffrage. During the debate she climbed a pillar and addressed the meeting, and when, with immense difficulty, dislodged from her post of vantage, she took the platform by storm.

“Why, it’s a child!” chorused the delegates from the different branches of the Union, whose ramifications extend over the civilized globe, as the small, slim, light-haired young person in the inevitable shawl, print gown, and clogs climbed over the brass platform-rail, and, folding cotton-blouse-clad arms upon a flat, girlish bosom, stood motionless, composed, even cheerful, in the full glare of the electric chandelier, and under the full play of a battery of some two thousand feminine eyes.

“Do let the little darling speak,” begged the Honorary Secretary of the Chairwoman, who, as a native of Smutchester, had her doubts. But Sal o’ Peg’s had not the faintest intention of waiting for permission.

“Ah’m not bit o’ good at long words, gells,” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Mappen ah’ll be better ondersteawd wi’oot ’em.”

The thunder of clogs in the body of the hall said “Yes!” She went on: “Wimmin sheawd ha’ th’ Vote. ’Tis theear roight.” (Tremendous clogging, mingled with shrieks of “Weel seayd, lass! Gie us th’ Vote!”) She hitched her shawl about her with the factory-girl’s movement of the shoulders, and went on. “Yo’ll noan fleg me wi’ yo’re din. Ah’m boh a lil’ un, boh af ha’ got spunk. If you doubt thot——” A hundred strident voices from the body of the hall sent back the refrain, “Ask a pleeceman!” A roar of laughter shook the roof.

“Ought we to interfere?” whispered the Honorary Secretary.

“My dear, why should we?” said a London delegate, leaning forward to answer. “The girl has got them in the hollow of her hand. A born leader of women—a born leader. She voices in her untaught speech the heart-cry of thousands of her dumb and helpless sisters. She——”

The born leader of women continued:

“Ah dunno whoy ah niver thout o’ it before, but ’tis a beawrfeaced robbery neawt to gie us th’ Vote. Oor feythers has it, an’ sells it fur braass.” (Screams, shrieks, and clogging.) “Oor heawsbands has it, an’ sells it fur braass.” (Tempestuous applause.) “Oor lads, theay has it, an’ sells it fur braass. Whoy shouldna’ we ha’ it, an’ sell it for braass tew?”

The enthusiasm with which this brilliant peroration was received nearly wrecked the Cotton Hall. No more speeches were heard that night, though several were delivered in dumb show, and Sal o’ Peg’s awakened upon the morrow to find her utterances reported in the newspapers. To the sarcasm of the leader-writer Sal o’ Peg’s was impervious. She “mun goo t’ Lunnon neixt,” she said, “an’ leawt them tykes at the Hoose o’ Commeawns knaw a bit” of her mind. She wasn’t afraid of Prime Ministers—not she. She called at the branch office of the Union twice a day, imperatively requesting to be forwarded as a delegate to the Metropolis. When her services were declined with thanks, she harangued the populace from the doorstep. When politely requested to move on, she broke a window with one clog, and patted the office-boy violently upon the head with the other. Then she burst into tears and retired, supported by a dozen or so of sympathizing comrades of the factory.

“’Tis a beeawrnin’ sheame!” they said, as they fastened up their chosen representative’s loosened flaxen coils with hairpins of the patent explosive kind, contributed from their own solid braids. “But donnot thee fret, Sal o’ Peg’s, us’ll ha’ nah dollygeat but thee, sitha lass!” And they sent the hat round among themselves with right goodwill. They were not quite sure what a “dollygeat” was, but thought it was something that could walk into the House of Commons, defy a Minister to his nose, dance a clog-dance in the gangway of the Upper House, and receive in chests and bagsful all the good money that women had been defrauded of since the masculine voter first plumped for a consideration; of that they were “as sure as deeawth.”

So Sal o’ Peg’s gave notice at the factory that, being thenceforth called to figure upon the arena of political life, she could not tend frames any longer. She bought a black sailor straw hat with a portion of the subscribed fund, and tied up the most cherished articles of her wardrobe in a blue-spotted handkerchief bundle. She traveled express to London, choosing a “smoking third,” as affording atmospherical and social conditions less remote from her lifelong experience.... The journey was purely uneventful: a young man of unrestrained amorous proclivities receiving a black eye, and a young woman who sneered too openly at the blue-spotted handkerchief bundle suffering the wreck of a bandbox and sustaining a few scratches. The guard—alas! for the frailty of man—being all upon the side of the blue eyes and flaxen coils of hair....

I suppose the reader knows Pelham’s Inn, W. C., where are the headquarters of the National Union for the Emancipation of Working Women? There is no padding to the armchairs, cocoanut matting of a severe and rasping character covers the Committee-room boards; the Committee inkstand is of the zinc office description (the Committee are not there to be comfortable—just the reverse). They are busy women of small spare time and narrow spare means; but when they found Sal o’ Peg’s sitting on the doorstep, they found leisure to be kind. They looked at the clogs with pity, unaware of the _pas seul_ they had performed upon the countenance of a policeman still in bandages, and the great blue eyes yearning out of the small pale face, and the ropes of fair hair tumbling over the shabby shawl that enfolded the childish figure of the little factory-girl who had traveled up to London for the sake of the Cause, won them to practical expression of the sympathy they felt.

“So different a type to the brawling, violent creature,” they said, “who nearly caused a riot at the Smutchester Conference. Her one dream is to see the House of Commons and speak a word in public for her toiling sisters of the factories.” And those of them who wore glasses found them dimmed with the dews of sympathetic emotion. It was such a touching story, they said, of faith and enthusiasm and courage.

It is upon the Records of the Nation that the events I have to relate took place in the Central Hall of the sacred fane of Westminster between four and five o’clock in the afternoon, when twenty or thirty ladies, well-known adherents of the Cause, appeared upon the scene and asked for Suffrage. It was an act of presumption, almost of treason, bordering on blasphemy. Still, the arguments that were not drowned were sound. They were all householders, taxpayers, earners, and owners of independent incomes one daring female said, and as the drunken husband of her charwoman possessed a vote, she thought she had a right to have one also. The Sergeant-at-Arms instantly directed a constable to quell her. Another audacious creature asked for the Vote Qualified. She demanded that the Suffrage should indeed be given to women, but only to those women who should, by passing a viva voce examination on the duties of citizenship, prove themselves fit to discharge them.... She was listened to with some attention until she suggested that male voters should be subjected to a similar weeding-out process; upon which a portly inspector bore down upon her, clasped her in a blue embrace, and carried her, protesting loudly, down the hall, amidst demonstrations of intense excitement. Members cried, “Shame!” Members cried, “Serve her right!” Passing peers put up eyeglasses and stayed to see the fun. Hustled women shrieked, “Cowards!” Pushed women cried, “Let us alone!” Punched women only said, “Owch!” ... It was freely translated “Wretch!” for the occasion. The middle-aged and advanced in years met the same treatment as the younger and more excitable.... All were unceremoniously expelled by the stalwart beings in blue from the sacred precincts where such inviolable order is habitually maintained, and where all the Proprieties find their permanent home. Crushed headgear, scattered handbags, and strange derelict fragments of feminine attire bestrewed the scene of the one-sided fray; the crowds of sympathizers outside cried, “Boo!” and waved white flags in defiance as a dozen arrests were made in a dozen seconds.... And a young woman in a brown plaid shawl and brass-bound clogs danced with shoutings upon the pavements of St. Stephen’s Porch, and while her long, light coils of hair came down and her hairpins were scattered to the winds of Westminster, she asked, in the Lancashire dialect, for admittance to the Bar of the House; for justice for the oppression and downtrodden; for the blood of Ministers, Peers, and Members; and for the viscera of the officials who were their tools. She told the Chancellor of the Exchequer to come out and bring the Treasury with him; and when he did not come, she knocked off one policeman’s helmet and smote another with one of her clogs—_toujours_ those clogs!—upon the nose. Also she relieved a third of half a whisker, bit another in the hand, kicked them all in the shins, and generally made history as six police-constables bore her, shrieking at the full pitch of excellent lungs, to Blunderbuss Row Police Station.

There were newspaper headlines next day—“Bedlam Let Loose!” “The Shrieking Sisterhood!” “The Termagant Spirit!” “No Choice but to Use Force!” The arrested demonstrators were paraded at the police-court; the damaged policemen made an imposing show. Tears choked the utterance of Mr. Vincent Squeers, presiding magistrate, as he asked: “Were thee, indeed, women who had abraded the features, discolored the eyes, bruised the shins, and plucked the whiskers from the gallant constables who stood before him? Nay, but Mænads, Bacchantes, priestesses of savage rites, unsexed Amazons—in two words, emancipated females!” He found a melancholy relief in imposing a fine that had no precedent in cases of brawling, or fourteen days’ imprisonment. He should not be surprised to hear that these hunters after vulgar notoriety preferred to go to Holloway, to luxuriate on prison fare, enjoy calm, undeserved repose on straw beds, and clothe their unregenerate limbs with the drab garments generously provided by the nation.

“But there is one among you,” cried Mr. Vincent Squeers, “who has been innocently led away by your pernicious example, but whom the spirit of Justice, that dwells in the bosom of every Englishman, that hovers, genius-like, above this Bench to-day”—the chief clerk hastily produced a white handkerchief, and the reporters shook freedom into the flow of their Geyser pens—“will stretch forth a hand to protect and to aid. I speak of this simple, artless child....” A police-constable felt his nose, and another groped for his missing whisker as Sal o’ Peg’s stood up in the dock. “Lured from her humble home, from her laborious employment, from her upright-minded, honest associates, by these immodest and unwomanly women, cast a stranger upon the streets of London, this simple country blossom, wilting in the atmosphere tainted by habitual vice and common crime, appeals to the chivalry of every honest man who ever had a mother”—the chief clerk was carried from the court in hysterics—“ay, to the pity of every woman who is not bereft of that heavenly attribute.”

“Sheawt opp, thee donowt owd hosebird!” said Sal o’ Peg’s. “Dosta think ah niver weur in a teawzle in th’ streeawts or a skirmidge wi’ th’ police afeore? Dustha see th’ pickle theam girt big cheawps is in? If theay saay theay got theawee scratts an’ sogers fra’ eany wench but Sal o’ Peg’s, they be leears aw! Sitha? An’ as to yon weumen an’ lasses, yo ca’ baad neams, I ha’ nowt o’ truck wi’ they. I coom to Lunnon as a dollygeat fra myseln. Sitha?”

“The child speaks only the roughest dialect of her native Lancashire,” continued Mr. Vincent Squeers, “which, I own, I am unable to comprehend. How could the hapless young creature understand the poisonous shibboleth poured into her ears by the abandoned sisterhood whose leading evil spirits are now before me? They have denied all knowledge of or connection with her”—(as indeed they had)—“her who stands here—oh, shame and utter disgrace!—in the dock of a police court as a result of their vile and treacherous usage in dragging her from her home. She is sufficiently punished by this outrage upon that innate modesty which is as the bloom upon the peach, the—er, ah!—dew upon the daisy. Fined three-and-sixpence, and I will order that the same be discharged out of the Court poor-box. The Missionary will now take charge of the poor young creature, who will, I trust—ah!—be returned to her sorrowing family in the course of the next twenty-four hours. Good-day, my dear child—good-day!”

A clog whizzed from the dock and hit the paneling behind the Bench. The Magistrate looked another way, the constables coughed behind their large white gloves as Sal o’ Peg’s, weeping bitterly, was led away by the Court Missionary, a bearded person in rusty black, with a felt pudding-basin hat and a soiled white necktie. Robbed of the glory of battle, denied her meed of acknowledgment for doughty deeds achieved, bereft of her Amazonian reputation, Sal o’ Peg’s felt that life was “scarcelin’s weath livin’.” And the afternoon newspapers administered the final blow. Every leader-writer shed tears of pure ink over the child lured from home, the “daisy with the dew upon it” sprouted in a dozen paragraphs. Only in Smutchester there was Homeric jest and uproarious laughter. The girls of the cotton-mills, the policemen of the Lower Town—these knew their Sal o’ Peg’s, and were loud in their appreciation of the satiric humor of the London newspapers. The Missionary did not see his precious charge into the train for Smutchester; a clergyman’s daughter, who had come into accidentally compromising relations with an American gentleman’s diamond evening solitaire and “wad” of bank-notes, urgently required his ministrations. So a burly police-constable, with one whisker and a sore place on the denuded cheek, performed the charitable office. In the four-wheeler, turning into the Euston Road, Sal o’ Peg’s said suddenly:

“Thoo wastna’ sheaved this mearnin’, lad?”

“I ’adn’t no time, for one thing,” said the police-constable sulkily; “an’ for another, I ’ad to keep this whisker on as evidence that you’d pulled out the other. And a lot o’ good evidence does when Old Foxey”—this was the nickname bestowed upon Mr. Vincent Squeers by the staff of the Court—“’as made up ‘is mind not to listen to it.” He rubbed the remaining whisker thoughtfully.

“Eh, laad, laad!” cried Sal o’ Peg’s, bursting into tears and falling upon the neck of the astonished police-constable, “but theaw knows ah did it. Theaw said sa just neaw. Eh, laad, laad!”

“Are you a-crying?” asked the police-constable, over whose blue tunic meandered the heavy twists of fair hair which invariably tumbled down under stress of Sal o’ Peg’s emotion. “Are you a-crying because you’re sorry you pulled out my whisker, or glad as that you did it? Which?”

Sal o’ Peg’s lifted radiant, tearful blue eyes to the burly police-constable’s, which were little and piggish, but twinkling with something more than mere reproof.

“Ah be gleawd,” said Sal o’ Peg’s simply.

“Very well,” said the police-constable, who was not only a man after all, but a bachelor. He put a large blue arm round the slim little figure of the war-goddess. “You’ve ’ad my whisker; _I’ll_ ’ave a kiss.”

“Teawk it, laad,” said Sal o’ Peg’s.

Hitherto, in her short but vivid experience of life, policemen had occupied a different plane, moved in another sphere. They were beings to dodge, defy, jeer at, and punch when you could get them down. Flowerpots were kept on window-sills of upper floors expressly for dropping on their helmets. She had danced upon the upturned face of one, given another a swollen nose, distributed bites and shin-kicks impartially among others. This Lunnon one had kissed her for pulling out his whisker. She looked at him with melting eyes. The hitherto impregnable bastion of her heart was taken—and by a member of the Force.

“When tha dost sheave, laad, send tha whisker to Ah by peawst. Th’ address be Sal o’ Peg’s, Briven’s Buildin’s, Clog Ceawrt, East Side, Smutchester!”

“I won’t _send_ it, you pretty little bit o’ frock,” said the enamored police-constable. “I’ll wait till my next leave an’——”

“Breng it _then_, laad,” sighed Sal o’ Peg’s.

A PITCHED BATTLE

The great Maestro sat at the piano, a small, square instrument. Upon it were piles of music, a bottle of Rhine wine, half emptied, a cup of black coffee, a plate of sliced garlic sausage, and a roll of black bread, peppered outside with aniseed. A bottle of ink was balanced on the music-desk, a blotted scroll of paper obscured the yellowed keyboard. As the great composer worked at the score of his new opera, he breakfasted, taking draughts from the bottle, bites of sausage and bread, and sips of coffee at discretion. He was a quaint, ungainly figure, with vivacious eyes, and his ill-fitting auburn wig had served him, like the right lapel of his plaid dressing-gown, for a pen-wiper for uncounted years.

The Maestro was not alone in the dusty studio to which so many people, both of the great and little worlds, sought entrance in vain. An olive-skinned youth, shabbily dressed in a gray paletot over a worn suit of black—a young fellow of sixteen, with a square, shaggy black head and a determined chin, the cleft in which was rapidly being hidden by an arriving beard—leaned against a music-stand crammed with portly volumes, his dark eyes anxiously fixed upon the old gentleman at the piano, who dipped in the ink and wrote, and wrote, and dipped in the ink, occasionally laying down the pen to strike a chord or two, in seeming forgetfulness of his visitor.

Suddenly the Maestro’s face beamed with a cheerful smile.

“There, mon cher Gladiali!” He handed the newly-written sheet of music to the boy, and spread his wrinkled fingers above the keys. “This is the great aria-solo I spoke of. Sing that at sight—your training should make such a task an easy one—and let us see what stuff you are made of. _Allons!_” And he struck the opening chord.

Carlo Gladiali turned pale and then red. He crossed himself hastily, grasped the sheet of paper, cast his eyes over it anxiously, and, meeting with a smiling glance the glittering old eyes of the Maestro, he inflated his deep chest and sang. A wonderful tenor voice poured from his boyish throat; heart and soul shone in his eyes and thrilled in his accents. Tears of delight dropped upon the piano-keys and upon the hands of the composer, and when the last pure note soared on high and swelled and sank, and the song ceased, the old musician cried: “Thou art a treasure! Come, let me embrace thee!” and clasped the young singer to his breast. “Once more, _mon fils_—once more!”

And as he seated himself at the piano, sweeping the plate of sausage into the wastepaper-basket with a flourish of the large, snuff-stained yellow silk handkerchief with which he wiped his eyes, the door, which had been left ajar, was flung open, and a little dark-eyed, fair-haired girl, who carried a Pierrot-doll, ran quickly into the room.