Part 12

To a lady who resided in Burleigh Mansions and who, while appearing in court in a tight-fitting frock of blue silk with a white Panama pulled well down over her eyebrows, claimed the modern privilege of remaining heavily veiled and testifying as "Mrs X.," Mr Contango had given a cheque for five pounds, the only consideration being (he said) that it was to form the nucleus of a fund which "Mrs X.," and several other society ladies were promoting to purchase the penny steamboat _Citizen_, now moored off Cleopatra's Needle, and fit her up as a hospital ship for service in the Yellow Sea. Though "Mrs X.'s" family, counsel said, was a notable old Saxon one and might have altered English History had not her early ancestor, who treated Edward the Confessor for scrofula, met his death whilst cat shooting in the Royal Forest of Pimlico, owing to the bullet leaving his weapon at the butt, she undoubtedly had a brother who was at the present time a cabman. She admitted having mentioned this person to the prisoner with reference to the hospital ship, her relative, who had frequently observed that "cabbing was no conjure," having said give him a barrel of bitter and the run of a bedstead shop, and he would transform the _Citizen_ into the talk of the Thames. She had also seven sisters, six of whom were willing to leave the stage to become hospital-ship nurses, but the seventh, who had freckles and a cock eye, had permanently settled in the postal service. But the payment of five pounds had nothing whatever to do with marine matters and she didn't think any the more of the prisoner, who _called_ himself a gentleman, for trying to shift the cut on her in that way.

Meantime the cheque, having been enthusiastically dishonoured, was returned to "Mrs X.," who subsequently sold it for two shillings as a natural curiosity to another of her brothers, who, as Charlie Upham, kept a starting-price office for military turfites of approved references in Swallow Street. In this capacity Upham was quite well acquainted, and occasionally did business, with Mr Contango, up to the time when the latter had five half-dollars on Pitch Battle at Nottingham, at 100 to 12, and was offered, in settlement, his own discredited stumer, a postal for three bob, and twenty-eight half-penny stamps. It was then that he assaulted and battered Upham in his office, and was flung out of the window, amid the thunder of the captains and the shouting; and the humane C Division of police, finding him lying on his back, too frail to withstand the contamination and wickedness of the outer world, reversed him by his wrists and ankles, and carried him inside.

Féo no sooner heard of it than, with the promptitude of a Napier, she rang up that old and trusted repository of shameful secrets, our family solicitor--by which please do not misunderstand me to mean our City, or put-and-call solicitor, who is so bewitching a figure at dramatic first nights; our smart solicitor, who hangs up his red golf jacket and takes down the _Cause List_ with a large yawn; or our mere buffer solicitor, who is rude to rural benches over our furious-driving summonses; but our old family solicitor. She rang up Mr Coke and bleated that her latest needs were far too sacred to be related over the phone with Gerrard listening, but would he take the very first vehicle on the rank, no matter if it were only a dust-cart, and come to her instantly. And he did.

It was raining rather smartly as they left the house, some twenty minutes later, and the old lawyer had brought no brolly; but Féo could not possibly order the carriage for such an odious destination as Brixton Stir; she could not even suffer a hansom to be whistled to the door.

"Give Mr Coke an umbrella," she cried, as though she herself were contemptuous of the weather, and two footmen in powder instantly drew from the stand an elegant parapluie with an ebon stick, surmounted by a crutch of tortoise shell bound and heeled with eighteen-carat gold.

All through the long ride to the prison at Brixton, Féo lay back in the shadows of the four-wheeler's cushions in gloomy silence, her bosom rent by conflicting emotions. For years past she had lain her very life--she who had the figure of Diana and the beauty of an Aphrodite--at the clay feet of a man who now regarded her only as nine stone of stale cake. Against his myriad infidelities she had promulgated no decree, well knowing that it would only be disobeyed in such hearty fashion as to reduce to _débris_ the prestige of wifely authority; but her soul had sunk within her when she had heard how her Sandown badge had been worn by the kitchenmaid at the Skittle Club; she had groaned aloud when asked to believe that such a wire as "For heaven's sake send her a 'monkey' to shut up" was merely an impassioned appeal by an unknown London solicitor to a perfect stranger, on behalf of a ruined old lady litigant who only yearned for an ape to keep in confinement and make a pet of. For any woman in the throes of such woe as this, it was the refinement of torture to read of the Chinaman who believes implicitly in his wife's fidelity so long as he sneezes once in an hour, and whose wife persuades him always to wear a wet handkerchief inside his hat to keep his dear old shaved pate cool. Yet China was a cultured nation a thousand years before Britain showed the slightest sign of becoming the delightful Nonconformist poultry-yard she is to-day. Socially, no less than matrimonially, Contango was a complete fizzle. A sable evening suit he simply loathed, but took a positive pride in the frayed and unravelled "County-court" shirt in which he "appeared" before tribunals, which reduced the claims of his more importunate creditors to crossing-sweepers' doles of a crown a month, and sometimes he got judicial "orders" set aside indefinitely. He did daily homage to his judgment-summons alpaca-jacket, and bowed down and worshipped his judge-in-chambers brown billycock; but all these things were as goads and undergarments of horsehair to Féo, who, now that the miserable backslider was under lock and key, could not decide whether in view of future peace of mind it was not more desirable to keep him in than to get him out.

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!