MOP FAIR

Some Elegant Extracts from the Private Correspondence of Lady Viola Drumcree, the Fatherless Daughter of Feodorovna, Countess of Chertsey

BY

ARTHUR M. BINSTEAD

Otherwise known as "PITCHER" of the Pink 'Un

SANDS & CO. EDINBURGH: 13 BANK STREET LONDON: 23 BEDFORD STREET, STRAND, W.C, 1905

"'Everyone does it,' is the excuse made by all. Our public standard of morality, our code of honour, our national pride, seem to be gradually wiped out."

—THE LADY TATTON SYKES.

"The girl of the Twentieth Century, even if she smokes a cigarette and talks slang, seems to me an infinitely more capable being than her grandmother was."

—THE COUNTESS OF WARWICK.

"Many insects are in a state of maturity thirty minutes after their birth, and at seventy minutes begin to put their grandsires through their facings."

—ZOOLOGICAL GARDENS NOTE.

EPISTLES

FIRST SECOND THIRD FOURTH FIFTH SIXTH SEVENTH EIGHTH NINTH TENTH ELEVENTH TWELFTH

MOP FAIR

EPISTLE I

EATON SQUARE, Tuesday, June 16th.

Dearest Patricia,—

Yesterday was the nineteenth anniversary of my unhappy birth, and I am going to open my heart to you chiefly because it was during that white-violet epoch of innocence and virtue, the few days prior to my being bundled off to the same continental boarding-school as yourself, dear kid, that I remember some countrified wiseacre with rather less reverence than all the rest for the holy tradition beginning:

"God bless the Squire and his relations And keep us in our proper stations"—

remarking that it didn't greatly matter what companionships a girl formed at a Swiss pensionnat de demoiselles since her own self-respect and her shame at the remembrance of the fun in the dormitories would impel her to drop all such participes criminis with electric promptitude on her return to England—a fatuous piece of prophecy which our continued friendship flatly disproves. So, between you and me, dearest, I frankly admit that mine has been a joyless birthday by reason of my impotent yearnings after that which I have never known—paternal love; for I feel quite sure that I told you on that interesting night when at the Foire au Pain d'Epices we first tasted créme de menthe, I came into the world many years before the Countess of Chertsey, my mother, entered into a matrimonial alliance with Mr Cecil Contango, since when her social obligations and engagements have been so numerous and engrossing that she has never yet found time to tell me even my father's name. In my childhood I was alluded to merely as "Féo's Indiscretion," and as her photographs of that

day represent her as being extremely fascinating and beautiful, it may even be that she herself got twisted in her bookkeeping. I have a vague remembrance of her coming to see me at the tiny cottage at Harrow where I vegetated with Nurse Knapper, on one Sunday afternoon when the trees were all yellow with laburnum and the bushes all lavender with lilac, and most probably the tall, military Romeo in the dark cutaway, who accompanied her, was He. For as my mother kissed me at parting, she turned to Romeo and said, "Surely you can spare me an hour or so to-morrow to do a little shopping for her?"; at which he shuddered dreadfully and gasped out, "Me in the streets on a Monday in the daytime? Féo, you must be mad! Didn't I tell you coming down that if only Fortnum and Mason would trust me for a couple of raised pies and a case of old brandy I intended hiding in the crypt of St Paul's till the bookies had forgotten all about the City and Surburban?"

I saw Romeo once again later in the year when I was dreadfully ill—I had been many days delirious through drinking rain-water; not that all delirium is incurred in that way, but country children commonly romp until they can drink a rain-barrel dry, and—well, as Sarah says in the song, "That was the ruin of me!" When next I saw Féo (as I have been trained ever since that period to address my dam; and to-day I draw hush-money of her to call her "Sister!") it was not Romeo who brought her down, but a spruce and elderly military buck with a hot eye and a Ceylon breath, who obviously dyed his hair and probably kept at least three different vintages of purple morning mouth-wash on his dressing-table: the kind of man who involuntarily rubs his hands together and waxes eloquently conversational on entering the room in which the cloth is laid, and the red hock glasses punctuate the cutlery at regular distances. At setting eyes on me (then six years old) he stroked my hair and, turning round, kissed Féo, which struck me as a strangely odd proceeding, not knowing, as

I do to-day, that nothing more delights the elderly than to be accused of paternity.

But why should I bore you, dear, with this melting tale of "my salad days when I was green in judgment," as Cleopatra, Marc Antony's Alexandrian daisy, observes; why inflict upon you these uninteresting details of my girlhood—that flabby stage of existence in which one is principally conscious of growing out of one's underclothes? It may give you some idea of my detestation for the beings with whom I live in dependence and—then is my ink not wasted.

Yesterday was a day of storm and stress—for Féo. For once the gods on high Olympus heard my prayer and dealt "Cecil's little honey-bun" as big a bit of retributive justice as she will digest in the next six weeks. It came about in this way.

Despite her unflagging efforts to keep him strictly to quarters, Féo's polished, sin-worn, stockbroking old fragment is distinctly and extravagantly flighty. All girls of one-and-twenty look alike to him; or, as the Saturday-to-Monday hussy said of the M.C. of the seaside dancing-rooms, "he's a bit partickler, but not what you might call nasty partickler." From the Regent Street barmaid with the yellow hair to the Dover Street cloak-model with the thirty-six bust "All are Welcome." And perhaps after all, the only people in the world who are truly virtuous—the few remaining savages—are only so because they do not know any better. Poor things! In any event Mr Contango is an indecisive wobbler, as his cuffs constantly covered with illegible addresses of unknown peeresses abundantly prove; and yesterday morning one of the maids of the bedchamber brought to Féo a telegram which she had found under Mr Contango's pillow. It was a hot bobsworth and had evidently been delivered to him at the club at which he dined on the previous evening. In

the ardent language of omnibus-love, it began by assuring the addressee of the sender's constancy and devotion, and concluded by arranging a meeting for "seven to-morrow under the clock at Charing Cross"—plebeian Strephons being as incurably addicted to love-making "under the clock" as patrician ones are under the table.

In an aggressive state of hysteria and tears, Féo burst into my morning-room, but as the vapours are absurdly out of fashion and the woman who is on the verge of flopping is worthy only of the most pitying contempt—as, moreover, I had already laughed heartily over the telegram with the maid who found it—I manifested no emotion.

"Read this, read this!" she hissed, thrusting the pink slip into my hands. "Am I—am I to believe my eyes?"

"A telegram can be repeated," I suggested, remembering the legend on the back of the form, "at one-half the charge for transmission, any fraction of one penny less than one half-penny being reckoned as one halfpenny. At the same time the Postmaster-General will not be liable for any ——."

"Have you no pity for me, Viola?" she whined. "Mr Contango has forsaken me to go out girl-hunting."

"If so venerable a kernel, once encased in a prickly shuck—the development of a towering spike-bloom—could arouse my compassion, I should be compelled to lament the fact that I had become hopelessly dippy," I replied, "but since your mental calibre is so low that you choose to look after one man instead of being looked after by a hundred, I must not deny you my counsel and assistance."

At this she blubbered afresh and kissing me on the forehead—ugh, how I rubbed the spot with Piesse and Lubin later on!—she took my hand in hers and cried:

"And you shall find me so grateful, child; for instance, to-morrow you shall have that lovely chinchilla stole on which you set your heart."

"Doesn't the granny muff go with it?" I asked with apparent indifference.

"Y—yes, the muff as well," she stammered.

"Better put it down in black and white," I suggested, setting my écritoire before her. Bargains driven with difficulty are too often the last to be complied with. "Now then," said I, as I folded the voucher and locked it in my desk, "quo vadis, madame? Are you steering this craft with your heart or your head? Is the philanderer to be reclaimed in accordance with the rest of your belated theories, or is he to be gaffed and subsequently landed in the Court in which men and women are put asunder? The first is the semi-colon, the second is the climax."

"Vi, dear," she said, as I had all along foreseen she would do, "the semi-colon, please."

"That means," I interpreted, barely succeeding in suppressing my disgust, "that we include ourselves in the Charing Cross assignation. Very good, I will be ready for you at half-past six;" and I left her. Poor fool! Small wonder that every nation in the world agreed upon the point of woman's folly long, long ago; and what manner of creature is this, that, finding herself disesteemed by her mate, buys a love philtre and introduces it furtively into his evening beverage to try and bring him back? Pah! Excuse me, dearest Pat, if I abandon the subject—it overcomes me!

By half-past six Féo had cried herself hideous; nevertheless she was dressed to go out, and, indeed, desired nothing more than to fall upon the sinner's neck and weep afresh. Possibly there are faults on both sides—as the Southend shell-fishmonger said to the bean-feasters when they complained that they couldn't keep his pickled cockles down. Possibly (again) I was wearing a more than ordinarily militant expression as I stood there, for Féo next said, with characteristic vacillancy:

"On reflection, child, I have decided to go alone. A confrontation of this kind is not a spectacle for your young eyes."

"And pray how are you going?" I asked, instantly perceiving the manifest advantages of being there myself, unhampered and alone.

"The landaulette is already at the door," she said. It, or some other kind of car, invariably has been ever since she took to introducing these things to her friends, and paying such of her debts as no woman, however brazen, could continue to owe with complacency, with the resultant "commissions."

"Just as I imagined!" I rejoined, with an acid sneer. "And with James and William in powder and smart liveries on the box—'Royalty-visiting-Royalty' personified—I'll be bound! A pretty way indeed to play Paul Pry—hanged if I don't think you'd go deerstalking accompanied by Sousa's band! Oho! see, just across the burn, yon big black stag feeding low down with five-and-twenty hinds: will you kindly have the goodness to strike up The Washington Post-office! Really, Féo, you are almost too absurd for human toleration. No; you will go to the Embankment on the Underground, and, turning up Villiers Street, will mount the wooden stairs and enter Charing Cross station by the side door. Six paces diagonally to the left will give you a position from which you will command an unobstructed view of the entire platform-approach from behind Smith's bookstall: you will thus face the clock as well as every door by which the guilty pair can enter. So now, good-bye. I am, by the way, fiscally crippled till the end of the month; what sugar have you?"

Helping myself to a few sovereigns from her proffered purse, I dutifully kissed her hand and followed her to the hall doors, waiting there—to the no small wonderment of the footmen—until I saw her turn the corner into Belgrave Place, when I promptly slipped out also.

Being fortunate enough to pick out a really good hansom, I was probably the first from our stable to reach the battle-ground, and, ensconcing myself behind an abutting corner of the Continental Parcels Office, I endeavoured to decide in my own mind which of the many casual Eves present was the other runner. My ultimate fancy rested between two. The first of these was a tall blonde, in a heel-tipping skirt and mess-jacket of blue herring-bone, with torquoise velvet cuffs and empiècements and gilt studs. The cab-man who set her down and received a bare shilling for his fare, asked her—very kindly, I thought—if she really felt she could spare it, at which she told him she would gladly have made it more, but she had only a penny left, and might need that herself. The second was a decided brunette in a daring blending of pink chiffon and pale yellow silk, worn with a mauve Tam-o'-Shanter with a gold quill, and patent-leather boots with white cloth tops. Omitting the white cloth tops, she was the living ideal of the persecuted heroine of Under the Red Macintosh,

or the Toque-Builder's Typewriter, which, of course, you remember quite well. I often take it up, for there has always seemed to me to be such a genuine touch of human nature about "Gwendolyn's" landlady who was partial to a little drop of gin, and used to drink it out of a footless egg-cup which she carried in her reticule whilst tramping the streets with "Gwendoleyn" in search of an honourable theatrical engagement, such as a lady could accept.

It was at two minutes past seven, or thereabouts, that Mr Contango appeared. He passed by the blonde in the blue herring-bone with the wig-wag walk unnoticed, nor did he pay the least attention to "Gwendoleyn" in the pink and yellow: you may well imagine my surprise! As he approached the bookstall—and there were so many people about that my eyes followed him only with great difficulty—blundering madly towards the spot where the warmest panther in the Peerage lay crouching for a spring, there burst from the swing doors of the Ladies' Cloak Room a tall, fair girl in grey, her nostrils dilated, and her Rembrandt-red hair crowned by a black beaver Toreador, with a pink vulture's pom-pom introduced jauntily on the left side! She saw Mr Contango, as she thought, departing, and ran towards him; but while there still remained a good ten feet of platform—and thrice ten solid strangers hurrying across it—between herself and her lover, she suddenly arrested her progress as the infuriated Féo dashed from her ambush, and, with a small but firm gloved hand, gripped her

lawful incubus by the right coat-sleeve!

"Pray, Mr Contango, what brings you here at this unusual hour?"

The coward quailed beneath her infuriated glare, and struggled as fiercely as he dared without incurring public resentment, to wrench his imprisoned arm free. Féo, however, clung like a barnacle to a ship's keel. But she couldn't give the weight away. His superior avoirdupois enabled Mr Contango to tug her steadily through the unsympathetic crowd, and, wilfully and deliberately—though Féo, poor fool! did not realise it—into the route or pathway down which a grimy railway-porter was pushing an iron-wheeled trolley, burdened with two-score of sooty and malodorous carriage-lamps.

"My leave, please, my leave; mind 'er grease!" growled the fellow, shoving the corners of the truck into the just and unjust alike.

A strange light shone in Mr Contango's eyes: it was a beam of inspiration. As the cumbrous hand-waggon with its glittering but grimy cargo passed by him, he very adroitly wiped his right palm along the oil-blacked tops of the lower tier of smoking lamps; then closed that hand and kept it for a moment behind him. Féo, meanwhile, finding the pulling growing gradually more feeble, fatuously imagined that the fish was spent, and getting out the conversational gaff to despatch it, reiterated:

"Mr Contango, I demand to know where you were going?"

"Certainly, dearest. Straight into the lavatory. Just look at this, as Serpolette says——" and he stuck out the paw that literally reeked with oily blackness.

"Been shaking hands with one of your city friends, I presume?" sneered Féo, stepping back to avoid contact with the paw, for, to do her justice, Féo is always so daintily, unimpeachably turned out that even the flies wipe their feet before alighting on her.

"Alas!" replied Mr Contango in a melodramatic way, espying an exit from his dilemma, "there is one friend at least whose honest hand I ne'er may grasp again—(here he improved his market by covering his eyes with his hand, thereby transferring much soot to his face)—I fly to his bedside now—now, er—by way of the lavatory. Do not further detain me, dear heart."

"I release you that you may perform your much-needed ablutions," stipulated Féo, loosening her grip, "but I still await you, and your explanation, here. Go, and return quickly;" and Mr Contango slunk away as meanly as did Theseus when he gave poor Ariadne the slip on the "front" at Naxos.

Down the stone steps went Mr Contango, and into the palatial marble dungeon on whose atmosphere the all-pervading odour of scented-soap has a firm half-Nelson, and whose echoing walls magnify the hiss of the half-minute rushes of water into the roars of Niagaraic torrents. At least that is how such an apartment was once described in the report of an inquest upon a defaulting attendant who had committed suicide on being told after the quarterly stocktaking that he was two-hundred-and-fifty-four wash-up's, ten roller towels, and eight gold fish short.

As he descended the stairs, Mr Contango's concernment was less for his lawful than for his unlawful partner, but his lucidity returned on the instant of his setting eyes on a middle-aged postman who was dallying at the wash-basins, the traditional fidelity of the postman being readily apparent to anyone who has looked over some of the continental postcards which he, in spite of all temptations, has faithfully surrendered to the addressees. Therefore Mr Contango went up at once to the postman and said:

"I have two little commissions for you to execute; they will not occupy you more than five minutes, and the pay is one shilling a minute. First of all, go to the booking-office and purchase me a first-single to some station a little way down the line; no matter where. Take this half-sovereign and bring me the change."

So the postman went. He was an unconscionable time gone, the delay mainly arising out of his ingenuous consideration for his employer's pocket. With praiseworthy economy he selected "Spa Road, Bermondsey," at the ticket-window, and, as first-singles to that fashionable promenade are seldom or never asked for at Charing Cross, the booking-clerk had to fake one with a typewriter. The joy of the simple letter-carrier at having nine-and-sixpence to return in change was so real, however, that Mr Contango checked his angry impatience, and hurriedly proceeded to instruct the postman in his second errand.

"Upstairs, just over by the big slate on which they chalk up the Channel weather report and the number of baggages on the Folkestone boat," he said, "you will see a young lady—tall and fair, with lavishly large brown eyes; wearing a grey frock, and a black hat with a pink feather in it. Hand her this card, and——ah, yes, here are the five shillings I promised you;" and he placed in the postman's hand the silver and one of his visiting cards, inscribed:—

"Fly. Pray pardon this seeming but unintentional despotism, Queen of the Human Race, but PLEASE fly: we are observed. Will pick you up later on. You and you only, the entire time for CECIL."