Part 23

“If I proposed to jot down the small events of my insignificant private life, dear fellers, or had the gift—supposing I did commit ’em to paper—of makin’ ’em interesting ...” said Hambridge, raising his eyebrows to the edge of his carefully parted hair and letting them down again, “I don’t mind telling you, dear fellers, that the resultant volume or two would mark an epoch in autobiographical literature. But, like the violet—so to put it—I have, up to the present, preferred to blush unseen. Not that the violet _can_ blush anything but purple—or blue in frosty weather, but the simile has up to now always held good in literature. Lord Pomphrey—a man appreciative to a degree of the talents of his relatives—has said to me a thousand times if one, ‘Confound you, Hambridge, why is not that, or this, or the other, so to put it, in print?’ But Pomphrey may be partial——”

“No, no!” exclaimed, in a very deep bass, a very young man in a knitted silk waistcoat and a singularly brilliant set of pimples. “No, no!”

“Much obliged, dear fellow,” said Hambridge, hoisting his eyebrows and letting them drop in his characteristic manner. “Some of my views may possess originality—even freshness when expressed, as I invariably express ’em, in a perfectly commonplace manner.”

“No, no!” again exclaimed the pimply-faced owner of the deep bass voice.

“As to the Ethics of the Crinoline, now,” went on Hambridge, “I observe that an energetic effort is being made—in a certain quarter and amongst a certain _coterie_—to revive the discarded hoops of 1855–66. They did their best to impart a second vitality to the Early Victorian poke-bonnet some years ago. Why did the effort fail, dear fellers? Because, with their accompanying garniture of modesty, blushes were considered necessary to the feminine equipment at the date I have mentioned. And because blushes—I speak on the most reliable authority—are more difficult to simulate than tears. Also because, looking down the pink silk-lined tunnel of the poke-bonnet of 1855–66, it was impossible for you, as an ordinary male creature, to decide whether the rosy glow invading the features of the woman you adored—we adored women, dear fellows, at that period—was genuine or the reverse. There you have in a nutshell the reason why the poke-bonnet was not welcomed at the dawn of the twentieth century. Modesty and blushes, dear fellers, are out of date.”

Hambridge leaned back in his chair with an air of mild triumph, running his movable eye—the left was rigidly fixed behind his monocle—over the faces of the listeners.

“Will the woman of the Twentieth Century willingly enclose her legs—they were limbs in 1855–66—once more in the steel-barred calico cage, fifteen feet in circumference, if not more, that contained the woman of the Early Victorian Era? Dear fellers, the question furnishes material for an interestin’ debate. In my young days there was no sittin’ in ladies’ pockets, no cosy-cornering, so to put it. You invariably kept at a respectful distance from the young creature whom you, more or less ardently—we could be ardent in those days—desired to woo and win, simply because you couldn’t get nearer. You didn’t approach her mother for permission to pay your addresses-her mother was encased in a similar panoply. You went to her father, because you could get at him—there you have the plain, simple reason of the custom of ‘askin’ Papa.’ And if you were reprehensibly desirous of eloping with another fellow’s wife, you didn’t express your wish in words. You wrote a letter invitin’ her to fly with you—we called it flying in those days—and dropped it in the post. If the lady disapproved, she dropped you. If not, she bolted with you in a chaise with four or a pair—and even then her crinoline kept you at a distance. You were no more at liberty to put your arm round her waist than if the eye of Early Victorian Society had been glued upon you.

“To put forward another reason _contra_ the reacceptance of the crinoline by the Woman of To-day, dear fellers, the Woman of To-day can swim. Therefore, the advantage of being dressed practically in a lifebuoy, does not appeal to her as it did early in the previous reign. I could quote you an instance of an accident which occurred to the Dover and Calais paddle-wheel steam-packet, on board which I happened to be a passenger, which, owing to the negligence of the captain, ran ashore upon a sandbank half a mile from the pier. The first boat which was lowered was filled with lady passengers, all in crinolines. It was swamped by a wave which washed over the stern. The steersman and the sailors who were rowing were unluckily snatched to a watery grave, poor fellows. Not so the women passengers of the swamped boat, dear creatures, who simply floated, keeping hold of one another’s scarves and bonnet-strings, and so forth, until they could be picked up and conveyed ashore. Not one of ’em could swim a stroke—and all were saved, thanks to the crinoline in which each was attired. But, useful as under certain circumstances the birdcage may be, the Twentieth Century Woman will never be tempted back into it. She has learned what it is to have muscles and to use ’em, dear fellers! and the era of languid inertia is over for her.

“I will add, dear fellers, that in these drab and uncommonly dismal days of early December, the dash of color now perceptible in the clothes of the best dressed men present at social functions of the superior sort, adds largely to the cheeriness of the scene. _Cela me fait cet effet_, dear fellers, but of course I may be wrong. And the first man to adopt and appear in the newest style in evenin’ dress—a bright blue coat of fine faced cloth, with black velvet collar, velvet cuffs, and silk facin’s, worn with trousers of the same material, braided with black down the side seams, and a V-cut vest of white Irish silk poplin-has realized a fortune through it.

“A well-known man, dear fellers, connected with two old Tory families of the highest distinction, educated at Eton, popular at the University-where he did not allow his love of study to interfere with the more serious pursuit of sport—d’ye take me? Suppose we call him Eric de Peauchamp-Walmerdale. His marriage took place yesterday at St. Neot’s, Knightsbridge, the sacred edifice bein’ decorated with large lilies and white chrysanthemums, and the gatherin’ of guests surprisingly large—the biggest crush of the Season as yet. There were six little girl-bridesmaids in pale blue, with diamond lockets, and the bride’s train was carried by four pages, also in pale blue, with gold-headed canes. As for the bride, considerin’ her age—a cool seventy—surprisin’, dear fellers! Only daughter and heiress of an ex-butler, who invented a paste for cleanin’ plate, patented it, and became a millionaire, Isaac Shyne, Esq., M.P., of The Beeches, Wopsley, and 710, Park Lane, deceased ten years ago at the ripe age of ninety.

“De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s married sister lived next door to the rich Miss Shyne, who practically went nowhere, and only received her Nonconformist minister, and a few whist-playin’ friends of the same denomination on certain specified evenin’s. House absolutely Early Victorian—walnut-wood drawing-room suite, upholstered in green silk rep, mahogany and brown leather for the dinin’-room. Berlin woolwork curtains, worked by the mistress of the house, at all the front windows. Three parrots, two poodles, and a pair of King Charles spaniels of the obsolete miniature breed. Maid-servants—all elderly, butler like a bishop, uncommon good cellar of gouty old Madeiras and sherries, laid down by the defunct Shyne, awful collection of pictures by Smith, Jones, Brown, and Robinson, splendid plate, too heavy to lift. And a fortune of one hundred and fifty thousand in the most reliable Home Rails and breweries, besides an estate of sixty thousand acres in Crannshire, and the title deeds of the Park Lane house.

“It came—the idea of bringing Miss Shyne and De Peauchamp-Walmerdale together—like a flash of inspiration—as the dear feller’s sister, Lady Tewsminster, told me yesterday when people had struggled up after the Psalm, and yawned through the address, _not_ delivered by a Nonconformist, but by the Bishop of Baxterham; and while the choir were singin’, ‘O Perfect Love!’ She was frightfully cast down when she discovered through her maid, who had scraped, under orders, an acquaintance with Miss Shyne’s elderly confidential attendant, that her lady objected to young gentlemen—couldn’t endure the sight, so to put it, of anything masculine under fifty, or without a bulge under the waistcoat, and a bald top to its head. Further inquiries elicited that Miss Shyne had had a disappointment in early life, and wore at the back of an old-fashioned cameo brooch, representin’ the ‘Choice of Paris,’ the portrait on ivory of a handsome young man with fair hair, the livin’ image of Eric de Peauchamp-Walmerdale, in a light blue tail-coat, with a black velvet collar and gold buttons, holding a King Charles spaniel of the miniature breed under his arm.

“Dear fellers, Lady Tewsminster, the evening upon which she received this item of information, knew no more than a newly-born infant what she was going to do with it. As happens to most of us, she mentally filed it for further reference, and getting into her gown, her diamonds, and her evening _coiffure_—those Etruscan rolled curls are extremely becoming to a woman of pronounced outlines, and there’s only one place in London, she tells me, where they can be bought or redressed—went down to the drawing-room.

“A small but select party had been invited for the evenin’, including, on the feminine side, an American heiress on the lookout for a husband with a title—or, at least, the next heir to one-a handsome widow with a fairly decent jointure, and a couple of marriageable girls with almost quite respectable _dots_. From these, carefully collected on approval by a devoted sister, De Peauchamp-Walmerdale might, who knows? have selected a life partner, and sunk into the obscurity of moderate means for ever, had it not occurred to him upon that particular evening—do you take me, dear fellers?—to array himself in the latest cry of modern masculine evening dress.

“He was standing on the hearthrug when Lady Tewsminster entered, a tall, slim, youthful figure, fair-haired and complexioned, and quite uncommonly handsome, in his light blue coat with the black velvet collar, braided accompaniments, and pearl-buttoned, watch-chainless, white silk vest.

“‘How do you like me, Ju, old girl?’ he said, coming to kiss her. ‘I’ve come to dine in character as our great-grandfather. Awful fool I feel, but my tailor insisted on my wearin’ ’em, and as I owe the brute a frightful bill I thought I’d best appease him by givin’ in.’

“The gilded Early Victorian frame of the high mantel-mirror behind De Peauchamp-Walmerdale had the effect of being a frame, if you foller me, out of which, the figure of the dear feller had stepped. A cameo brooch shot into the mind of Lady Tewsminster, above it the long narrow face and dowdy black lace bonnet of the heiress, Miss Jane Ann Shyne. A plan of campaign was instantly formulated in the mind of that surprising woman. She stepped to one of the windows commandin’ Park Lane, drew aside the blind, and saw, paddlin’ up and down on the rainy pavement outside, the waterproofed figure of Miss Shyne’s confidential maid, taking the King Charles spaniels and the poodles for their customary evenin’ ta-ta. Instantly she touched the bell, sent for her maid and said to her in a rapid undertone, ‘Johnson, ten pounds are yours if you can steal one of Miss Shyne’s pet King Charles spaniels while their attendant is not looking. There is no risk—I shall send the creature back in ten minutes. Will you undertake this? Yes? Very well, go and get the beast.’

“The maid, Johnson, departed swiftly, the area-gate clicked, and Lady Tewsminster, feverish with the great project boiling under her transformation, paced the drawing-room until she heard the second click of the gate. She swept down the stairs to meet Johnson, in whose black silk apron struggled the smallest of the King Charles spaniels. ‘Did the woman see?’ whispered the mistress. ‘Not a bit of her, my lady,’ returned the maid. ‘She was gossiping with the District Police-Inspector about a burglary they’ve had three doors away. So I got Tottles—that’s his name, my lady-quite easy, not being on a lead.’

“Telling the maid the promised ten pounds should be hers that night, Lady Tewsminster snatched the struggling ‘Tottles’ from the enveloping apron and swept back to her drawing-room to carry out her plan. ‘Peachie dear,’ she said as she entered, ‘it would be frightfully sweet of you if you would run in next door and carry this little beast to its owner, Miss Shyne. Insist on seeing her; do not give the animal into any other hands; do not wear your hat or an overcoat. I am firm upon this; and remember,’ she fixed her large, expressive eyes full upon her brother’s face, ‘remember, she has _nearly two hundred thousand pounds, and your fate is in your own hands!... Go!_’

“Rather bewildered by Lady Tewsminster’s almost tragic address, De Peauchamp-Walmerdale took the wriggling Tottles, left the house, and carried out his instructions to the letter. The loss of Tottles had been discovered. Miss Shyne’s establishment was topsy-turvy when he arrived, servants tearing up and down stairs, the confidential attendant in tears on a hall chair, Miss Shyne in hysterics in her Early Victorian boudoir, the remaining dogs harking their heads off, and the very devil to pay. But the arrival of De Peauchamp-Walmerdale, dear fellers, caused a lull in the storm. Faithful to his instructions, he refused to give up the dog, except to its mistress, and after a feint or two of departure, Miss Shyne gave in and ordered her fate, as it turned out to be—d’ye foller me?—to be shown upstairs.

“The Early Victorian drawing-room, with the green rep furniture and the Berlin woolwork curtains—a pattern of macaws and dahlias, I understood—was in partial darkness. Only the wax candles in the crystal candelabra on the marble mantelshelf were alight, no electric illuminations bein’ permitted on the premises.

“De Peauchamp-Walmerdale—dog under his arm—took up a commandin’ position on the hearthrug, also worked in Berlin wool, in front of a small, mysterious and palely-twinkling fire. As he did so the foldin’ doors opposite, communicating with the boudoir, slowly opened, and Miss Jane Ann Shyne, spinster, aged seventy, saw before her the long-dead romance of her youth, resuscitated from the ashes of—wherever long-dead romances are deposited, dear fellers. There was a faint, feminine scream—quite Early Victorian in character—a rustle of old-fashioned satins—an outburst of joyous barks from Tottles, a strong, bewildering perfume of lavender water (triple extract), and the old lady sank, literally sank, upon the white Irish poplin vest that added style and _cachet_ to De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s uncommonly fetchin’ costume.

“What more, dear fellers? The couple were united yesterday at St. Neot’s, Knightsbridge. Every penny is settled on De Peauchamp-Walmerdale, and Lady Tewsminster says she can now die happy, her dear boy being provided for, for life. She naturally claims the honors of the affair! Quite so, but without the clothes where would the man have been? D’ye foller me, dear fellers? In my poor opinion, the principal factor in the making of De Peauchamp-Walmerdale’s fortune was the Man Behind the Shears. Do you foller me? So glad! Thought you would.”

THE DEVIL AND THE DEEP SEA

“‘Let us be consistent,’” said Lady Pomphrey, her three saddle-bag chins quivering with emotion, “‘or let us die’—that is what I have always said. Here is my only niece, Wendoleth Caer-Brydglingbury, goes—actually goes—and marries a Liberal Member of Parliament in a red necktie—who makes speeches in townhalls and tents, and things, to masses of people, all about pulling down the House of Lords and abolishing the Peerage, and absolutely declines to allow his wife to drop her title. To you—so intimate a friend, don’t you know?—I may say in confidence I am sickened. I cannot imagine what the world is coming to. I could wish to die and leave it, were it not that Jane and Charlotte are still unmarried, and I have promised to present three of the _sweetest_ girls—well-bred Americans of the best type, without a trace of accent—at the first Drawing-room of the Winter Season. And the family diamonds are being reset in view of Rustleton’s approaching marriage—a union satisfactory from every point of view, especially a mother’s.”

Lady Pomphrey paused for breath, and the intimate friend-they had met at Bad Smellstein a fortnight previously while taking little early morning walks, and drinking little glasses of excessively nauseous waters warranted to correct the most aristocratic acidity—the intimate friend murmured something sympathetic.

“Of course, I might have _known_ one _could_ look to _you_ for comprehension and all that sort of thing,” said Lady Pomphrey, graciously bending her head, which was enveloped in a large mushroom hat of blue straw tied down all round with a drab silk veil, and patting the intimate friend upon the knee with the stick of her celebrated green silk sunshade. “One of those delightful literary creatures-was it Algernon Meredith or George Swinburne?—has termed friendship ‘the marriage of true minds.’ Ever since the Hambridge-Osts introduced us—in a thunderstorm—at the firework display in the Park in honor of the Grand Duke’s birthday—and being Sunday, I will _own_ that the nerve-shattering meteorological demonstrations that drove us to shelter in that extremely leaky Chinese pavilion seemed to me but a judgment upon German Sabbath-breakers—ours has been such a union. Cemented by your helpfulness in the matter of sandbags for a rattling window—Lord Pomphrey is completely impervious to all such nerve-shattering tortures, and will sleep happily in his cabin on the yacht in Cowes Roads through a Royal Naval Review—and your timely ministrations with soda-mint lozenges when acute indigestion virtually prostrated me after a homicidal _plat_ of eels with cranberry-sauce, of which I foolishly partook at the _table d’hôte_. The mysteriousness of it allured me. I wished for once to feel like a German. Now I feel assured their extraordinary diet accounts for much that is abstruse and metaphysical in the national character. For you cannot possibly be normal if you are fed upon abnormal things. And I am grateful that Rustleton has never shown himself in the least susceptible to the attractions of their women. I know—almost quite intimately—a Grand Duchess who has brought up every one of her nine young daughters upon red-cabbage soup, with sausage-meat balls and dumplings; and somehow it is suggested in the girls’ complexions and figures—_especially_ the dumplings.”

The friend tittered. Lady Pomphrey placed upon the seat beside her a straw handbag containing a Tauchnitz edition of the last new Mudie novel, a black fan, a large bottle of frightfully strong salts, several spare pocket-handkerchiefs, several indelible-ink pencils, and a quantity of obsolete railway tickets, and became more confidential than ever.

“Had I been consulted by destiny when the arrangement of Rustleton’s matrimonial future came _sur le tapis_ I could not—with my expiring breath I would repeat this—_could not_ be more completely satisfied. It began by his hating her.... She hit him on the nose with a diabolo in June at Ranelagh, and, ‘Mother,’ he said afterwards to me—his upper lip perfectly rigid with wounded dignity—‘I should have greatly preferred to have been born in the days of “Coningsby,” or “Lothair.” Muscular young women create in me a feeling of _positive aversion_!’ He found her agitating even at that early stage of affairs? How subtle of you to _see_ that!”

The flattered friend murmured an interrogation.

“Who is she?” repeated Lady Pomphrey. “But surely the newspapers?... You suffer too acutely from dancing spots in the field of vision ever to read when undergoing a cure?... Poor dear, I can feel for you. She is the Hon. Céline Twissing—will be Baroness Twissing of Hopsacks in her own right when old Lord Twissing dies. He insisted upon _that_ arrangement in the interests of his only child; when the intimation was conveyed from a Certain Quarter that the Jubilee Baronetcy he already enjoyed would be changed into a Peerage did he encourage the idea. Quite a bluff old English type, and I must say in hospitality Imperial. ‘Twissing’s Bonded Breweries.’... A colossal fortune, and that _sweet_ girl is to inherit nearly the whole. Shall I say that my heart went out to her from the first instant I saw her? As a mother yourself, you will understand! Here comes the young woman with the tray for our glasses. _Ja, bitte, Ich danke Sie...._ You _don’t_ mean to tell me the creature is a Cockney?... How distressing! I may be fanciful, possibly I am,” said Lady Pomphrey, “but I do prefer my surroundings to be congruous and in tone. I’m sure you feel what I convey? You do? How nice that is!...”

The friend smiled and inaudibly murmured something.

“Of course,” cried Lady Pomphrey, “you’re on thorns to hear all about Rustleton’s love-match. As I told you, Céline Twissing—the _Christian_ name has been Gallicized from Selina—and why on earth not? _Céline_ is an expert at diabolo. It’s a knack, sending these little black and red demons as high as a house, or into your neighbor’s eye; and she is a talented as well as a charming girl. With three languages, several sciences, a system of physical-culture exercises, golf, tennis, and the laws of hockey at her finger-ends, she would have gone far in these days of violent recreations and brusque manners, even without a _dot_. Masculine? Oh _dear no_! Perhaps deficient in reverence for what _we_ were taught to believe in as the superior sex. Perhaps lacking in feminine _finesse_. I _have_ heard it said that the girl of the twentieth century cannot cajole, and is ignorant how to be alluring. Perhaps it is a pity. The woman who has a gift of managing difficult people, smoothing absurd people down, and being perfectly amiable to the absolutely objectionable is practically priceless as a greaser of the social cog-wheels. Now Céline calls that sort of woman, plumply and plainly, a hypocrite.... But is it not a woman’s _duty_ to be a hypocrite, if telling the truth to everybody makes the world a place of gnashing?” demanded Lady Pomphrey, making her eyebrows climb up out of sight under the shadow of her mushroom hat.

The compliant friend assented.

“You understand, then, how dissonant was the chord Céline Twissing struck in Rustleton. With his Plantagenet dash in the blood, his hereditary intolerance of anything smacking of vulgarity, his medieval attitude of chivalry towards Woman, his Early Victorian dislike of the _outré_ and the _bizarre_, he frankly found her intolerable. ‘In a drawing-room,’ he said to me in confidence, ‘that girl reminds me of a Polar bear in a hothouse.’ Where the boy could have seen one I cannot imagine—probably it was only a young man’s daring figure of speech. Shall we walk about a little? I think I felt a twinge.”

The friend agreed, and, gently ambling up and down the Kreuzbrunnen Promenade, Lady Pomphrey continued her narrative.