Mike Fletcher Part 26

"I beg your pardon, Miss Slater. Don't you remember when Peggy Praed got on the table and made a speech?"

"No, I don't; you saw _me_ on the stage and you paid your money for that. What more do you want?"

"I a.s.sure you--"

"Well, that's all right, now's your chance to lend me a fiver."

"I'll lend you a fiver or a tenner, if you like, Miss Slater."

"You could not do it if you tried, and now the roast pork's off."

The witticism was received with a roar from her admirers, and satisfied with her victory, she said--"And now, you girls, you come and have drinks with me. What will you have, Kitty, what will you have? give it a name."

Kitty protested but was forced to sit down. The courtesans joined the comic vocalists, waiting to do their "turns." Lord Muchross and Lord Snowdown ordered magnums, and soon the hall was almost deserted. A girl was, however, dancing prettily on the stage, and Mike stood to watch her. Her hose were black, and in limp pink silk skirts she kicked her slim legs surprisingly to and fro. After each dance she ran into the wings, reappearing in a fresh costume, returning at length in wide sailor's trousers of blue silk, her bosom partially covered in white cambric. As the band played the first notes of the hornpipe, she withdrew a few hair-pins, and forthwith an abundant darkness fell to her dancing knees, almost to her tiny dancing feet, heavy as a wave, shadowy as sleeping water. As some rich weed that the warm sea holds and swings, as some fair cloud lingers in radiant atmosphere, her hair floated, every parted tress an impalpable film of gold in the crude sunlight of the ray turned upon her; and when she danced towards the footlights, the bright softness of the threads clung almost amorously about her white wrists--faint cobwebs hanging from white flowers were not more faint, fair, and soft; wonderful was the hair of this dancing girl, suggesting all fabled enchantments, all visions of delicate perfume and all the poetry of evanescent colour.

She was followed by the joyous Peggy Praed (sweet minx), the soul and voice of the small back streets. s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up her winsome, comical face, drawling a word here, accentuating a word there, she evoked, in an illusive moment, the was.h.i.+ng day, the quarrel with the mother-in-law (who wanted to sleep in the house), tea-time, and the trip to the sea-side with all its concomitant adventures amid bugs and landladies. With an accent, with a gesture, she recalled in a moment a phase of life, creating pictures vivid as they were transitory, but endowing each with the charm of the best and most highly finished works of the Dutch masters. Lords, courtesans, and fellow-artists crowded to listen, and profiting by the opportunity, Kitty touched Mike on the shoulder with her fan.

"Now we had better go."

"I'm driving to-morrow. Come down to Brighton with us," said d.i.c.ky the driver. "Shall I keep places for you?"

Rising, Kitty laid her hand upon his mouth to silence him, and whispered, "Yes; we'll come, and good-night."

In the soft darkness of the brougham, gently swung together, the pa.s.sing gaslights revealing the blueness of the cus.h.i.+ons, a diamond stud flas.h.i.+ng intermittently, they lay, their souls sunk deep in the intimacy of a companions.h.i.+p akin to that of a nest--they, the inheritors of the pleasure of the night and the gladness of the morrow.

Dressing was delirium, and Kitty had to adjure Mike to say no more; if he did she should go mad. Breakfast had to be skipped, and it was only by bribing a cabman to gallop to Westminster that they caught the coach. Even so they would have missed it had not Mike sprung at risk of limb from the hansom and sped on the toes of his patent leather shoes down the street, his gray cover coat flying.

"What a toff he is," thought Kitty, full of the pride of her love.

Bessie, whom dear Laura had successfully chaperoned into well-kept estate, sat with d.i.c.ky on the box; Laura sat with Harding in the back seat; Muchross and Snowdown sat opposite them. The middle of the coach was taken up by what Muchross said were a couple of bar-girls and their mashers.

On rolled the coach over Westminster Bridge, through Lambeth, in picturesqueness and power, a sympathetic survival of aristocratic days. The aristocracy and power so vital in the coach was soon communicated to those upon it. And now when Jem Gregory, the celebrated whip, with one leg swinging over the side, tootled, the pa.s.sers-by seemed littler than ever, the hansoms at the corner seemed smaller, and the folk standing at their poor doors seemed meaner. As they pa.s.sed through those hungry streets, ragged urchins came alongside, throwing themselves over and over, beseeching coppers from Muchross, and he threw a few, urging them to further prostrations.

Tootle, Jim, tootle; whether they starve or whether they feed, we have no thought. The clatter of the hooves of the bays resounds through those poor back-rooms, full of human misery; the notes of our horn are perhaps sounding now in dying ears. Tootle, Jim, tootle; what care we for that pale mother and her babe, or that toiling coster whose barrow is too heavy for him! If there is to be revolution, it will not be in our time; we are the end of the world.

Laura is with us to-day, Bessie sits on the box, Kitty is with our Don Juan; we know there is gold in our pockets, we see our courtesans by us, our gallant bays are bearing us away to pleasure. Tootle, Jim, my boy, tootle; the great Muchross is shouting derision at the poor perspiring coster. "Pull up, you devil, pull up," he cries, and shouts to the ragged urchins and scatters halfpence that they may tumble once more in the dirt. See the great Muchross, the clean-shaven face of the libertine priest, the small sardonic eyes.

Hurrah for the great Muchross! Long may he live, the singer of "What cheer, Ria?" the type and epitome of the life whose outward signs are drags, brandies-and-soda, and pale neckties.

Gaily trotted the four bays, and as Clapham was approached brick tenements disappeared in Portland stone and iron railings. A girl was seen swinging; the white flannels of tennis players pa.s.sed to and fro, and a lady stood by a tall vase watering red geraniums. Harding told Mike that the shaven lawns and the greenhouses explained the lives of the inhabitants, and represented their ideas; and Laura's account of the money she had betted was followed by an anecdote concerning a long ramble in a wood, with a man who had walked her about all day without even so much as once asking her if she had a mouth on her.

"Talking of mouths," said Mike, as they pulled up to change horses, "we had to start without breakfast. I wonder if one could get a biscuit and a gla.s.s of milk."

"Gla.s.s of milk!" screamed Muchross, "no milk allowed on this coach."

"Well, I don't think I could drink a brandy-and-soda at this time in the morning."

"At what time could you drink one then? Why, it is nearly eleven o'clock! What will you have, Kitty? A brandy?"

"No, I think I'll take a gla.s.s of beer."

The beauty of the landscape pa.s.sed unperceived. But the road was full of pleasing reminiscences. As they pa.s.sed through Croydon dear old Laura pointed out an hotel where she used to go every Sunday with the dear Earl, and in the afternoons they played cribbage in the sitting-room overlooking the street. And some miles further on the sweetness of the past burst unanimously from all when d.i.c.ky pointed out with his whip the house where Bessie had gone for her honeymoon, and where they all used to spend from Sat.u.r.day till Monday. The incident of Bill Longside's death was pathetically alluded to. He had died of D. T. "Impossible," said Laura, "to keep him from it. Milly, poor little woman, had stuck to him almost to the last. He had had his last drink there. Muchross and d.i.c.ky had carried him out."

The day was filled with fair remembrances of summer, and the earth was golden and red; and the sky was folded in lawny clouds, which the breeze was lifting, revealing beautiful s.p.a.ces of blue. All the abundant hedgerows were red with the leaf of the wild cherry, and the oak woods wore ma.s.ses of sere and russet leaf.a.ge. Spreading beeches swept right down to the road, s.h.i.+ning in beautiful death; once a pheasant rose and flew through the polished trunks towards the yellow underwood. Sprays trembled on naked rods, ferns and gra.s.ses fell about the gurgling watercourses, a motley undergrowth; and in the fields long teams were ploughing, the man labouring at the plough, the boy with the horses; and their smock-frocks and galligaskins recalled an ancient England which time has not touched, and which lives in them. And the farm-houses of gables and weary brick, sometimes well-dismantled and showing the heavy beam, accentuated these visions of past days. Yes, indeed, the brick villages, the old gray farm-houses, and the windmill were very beautiful in the endless yellow draperies which this autumn country wore so romantically. One spot lingered in Mike's memory, so representative did it seem of that country. The road swept round a beech wood that clothed a knoll, descending into the open country by a tall redding hedge to a sudden river, and cows were seen drinking and wading in the shallows, and this last impression of the earth's loveliness smote the poet's heart to joy which was near to grief.

At Three Bridges they had lunch, in an old-fas.h.i.+oned hotel called the George. Muchross cut the sirloin, filling the plates so full of juicy meat that the ladies protested. Snowdown paid for champagne, and in conjunction with the wine, the indelicate stories which he narrated made some small invasion upon the reserve of the bar-girls; for their admirers did not dare forbid them the wine, and could not prevent them from smiling. After lunch the gang was photographed in the garden, and Muchross gave the village flautist half a "quid," making him promise to drink their healths till he was "blind."

"I never like to leave a place without having done some good," he shouted, as he scrambled into his seat.

This sentiment was applauded until the sensual torpor of digestion intervened. The clamour of the coach lapsed into a hush of voices.

The women leaned back, drawing their rugs about their knees, for it was turning chilly, arms were pa.s.sed round yielding waists, hands lay in digestive poses, and eyes were bathed in deep animal indolences.

Conversation had almost ceased. The bar-girls had not whispered one single word for more than an hour; Muchross had not shouted for at least twenty minutes; the only interruption that had occurred was an unexpected stopping of the coach, for the off-leader was pulling d.i.c.ky so hard that he had to ask Jem to take the ribbons, and now he snoozed in the great whip's place, seriously incommoding Snowdown with his great weight. Suddenly awaking to a sense of his responsibility Muchross roared--

"What about the milk-cans?"

"You'd better be quick," answered Jem, "we shall be there in five minutes."

One of the customs of the road was a half-crown lottery, the winning member to be decided by the number of milk-cans outside a certain farm-house.

"Ease off a bit, Jem," bawled Muchross. "d.a.m.n you! give us time to get the numbers out."

"It ain't my fault if you fall asleep."

"The last stage was five miles this side of Cuckfield, you ought to know the road by this time. How many are we?"

"Eight," shouted d.i.c.ky, blowing the blatant horn. "You're on, Jem, aren't you? Number two or three will get it; at this time of the year milk is scarce. Pa.s.s on the hat quick; quick, you devil, pa.s.s it on.

What have you got, Kitty?"

"Just like my luck," cried Muchross; "I've got eight."

"And I've seven," said Snowdown; "never have I won yet. In the autumn I get sevens and eights, in the summer ones and twos. d.a.m.n!"

"I've got five," said Kitty, "and Mike has got two; always the lucky one. A lady leaves him four thousand a year, and he comes down here and rooks us."

The coach swept up a gentle ascent, and Muchross shouted--

"Two milk-cans! Hand him over the quid and chuck him out!"

The downs rose, barring the sky; and they pa.s.sed along the dead level of the weald, leaving Henfield on their right; and when a great piece of Gothic masonry appeared between some trees, Mike told Kitty how it had been once John Norton's intention to build a monastery.

"He would have founded a monastery had he lived two centuries ago,"

said Harding; "but this is an age of concessions, and instead he puts up a few gargoyles. Time modifies but does not eradicate, and the modern King Cophetua marries not the beggar, but the bar-maid."

The conversation fell in silence, full of consternation; and all wondered if the two ladies in front had understood, and they were really bar-maids. Be this as it may, they maintained their unalterable reserve; and with suppressed laughter, Mike persuaded d.i.c.ky, who had resumed the ribbons, to turn into the lodge-gates.

"Who is this Johnny?" shouted Muchross. "If he won't stand a drink, we don't want none of his blooming architecture."

"And I wouldn't touch a man with a large pole who didn't like women,"

said Laura. At which emphatic but nave expression of opinion, the whole coach roared;--even the bar-girls smiled.

"Architecture! It is a regular putty castle," said Kitty, as they turned out of an avenue of elms and came in view of the house.