Read Ebook: The Slaves of Society: A Comedy in Covers by Upward Allen

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 1047 lines and 26299 words, and 21 pages

"Your ladyship may leave it to me," said the eager alderman. "I will take it on myself to point out to Mr. Hammond the--the--"

"Political situation," suggested Despencer.

The marchioness threw a smile of admiration at the wise and candid friend.

"The very thing!" she exclaimed, with a fine assumption of having been taken entirely by surprise. "No one else could do this so well. I have no doubt that a few judicious words from you will be sufficient to open Mr. Hammond's eyes. Ahem! Have the--er--the rumors about this young woman reached you?"

"What rumors, my lady? I haven't heard anything about her."

The marchioness raised her eyebrows, and then appealed by an eloquent look to Mr. Despencer. Despencer shook his head with the air of a good man whose righteous soul was vexed by the bare recollection of others' iniquity.

"I see you don't know the worst," he remarked, gravely. "If there were nothing more against Miss Yorke than the mere fact of her being on the music-hall stage it would not matter so much. But--"

Another head-shake completed the sentence, and told the horrified alderman far more than any words could have done.

"Poor girl! let us hope it is not all true," murmured the marchioness, with Christian compassion.

A minute or two later she rose to go. The alderman, aware from sundry creaking sounds overhead that his wife was hurrying through a frantic toilet up-stairs, remonstrated.

"Won't your ladyship stay and have a cup of tea? I expect Mrs. Dobbin to come in every minute."

Mr. Despencer added his testimony that it was very like the Marquis of Severn's place in Worcestershire--indeed it was, for there were grass and laurel-bushes in both.

The visitors tore themselves away at last, and disappeared, a vision of varnished panels and gleaming harness and tossing horses' heads and flying dust. And what did Alderman Dobbin do when they were gone?

He did what every other well-conducted alderman in his situation would have done. He went forth into the town and bought a peerage.

Then he shut himself up in his counting-house, and sat down to write a letter.

SCENE VI

WHAT PEOPLE SAID

"Mr. Hammond!"

Thus proclaimed the machine stationed outside the door of the principal drawing-room in Berkeley Square. It was the night of the marchioness's concert, and a stream of splendidly clad dames, rustling in silk and velvet, and flashing in pearls and diamonds, and of meanly clad men, disguised as waiters, except for an occasional red or blue ribbon, slightly suggestive of that worn by a pet cat, was flowing up the stairs, and through the doorway, where the machine checked them off one by one like an automatic turnstile. And the proclamations were by no means a mere empty ceremony, for without them the marchioness would have been quite ignorant of the names of at least half of those with whom she was shaking hands on the other side of the threshold.

The hygienic regulations by which every Board-School child is entitled to a fixed number of cubic feet of space do not apply to the guests of marchionesses, and it was becoming difficult to move through the concert-room without inflicting physical injury on others. The wiser of the late arrivals, or those more familiar with the locality, backed out as soon as they had mumbled the necessary formula of greeting to their hostess, and took refuge in a smaller drawing-room, where the Lady Victoria was holding a levee of her own particular friends. It was to this room that Hammond made his way after bowing over the marchioness's hand.

Directly he lifted the curtain which screened the open doorway, Lady Victoria, clad in white, with a string of turquoise forget-me-nots round her bared neck, deserted a group of half a dozen other admirers, and came towards him with a frankness which would have jarred harshly on her mother's notions of finesse.

"That is right, Mr. Hammond. I am so glad you have come into this room. It is cool, it is comfortable, and, what is better, you can't hear a note of the music."

"You have forgotten to mention that you are in this room," replied Hammond. "But I share your views about the music. If we have got to pretend to enjoy art, why can't it be painting or poetry, or something that won't positively annoy us?"

"Surely you kodak?" Hammond pleaded.

Before Lady Victoria could clear herself from the charge, the voice of the machine sounded through the curtain:

Hammond turned pale.

"Whatever is the dean doing here?" he gasped.

Victoria shrugged her shoulders.

"My mother likes to have the higher clergy at her parties. She thinks their costume gives variety."

"Whenever I meet that man he asks me for a subscription," Hammond was beginning, when the dean himself, forewarned by some preternatural intuition, turned aside from the reception-room and came through the curtain.

A glad light beamed out on his face as he bore down upon the pair.

"And how is Lady Victoria? I need not ask. Mr. Hammond, this is fortunate!"

Hammond gave a smile, like that of Mr. Charles Hawtrey on the stage when his stage mother-in-law enters and announces that she has come to spend a stage-day with him.

"How much this time, dean?"

The Dean of Colchester drew back; then he put his head on one side and smiled indulgently on his victim.

"He is too bad, isn't he?" This was to Lady Victoria. "But, do you know, I really was going to write to you this week."

"How much?" Hammond repeated, drearily.

"Lady Victoria, I appeal to you. I am sure you must think me quite mercenary."

"Hadn't you better tell him?" suggested the matter-of-fact Victoria.

The dean shook his head in protest.

"I am actually silenced. The fact is that we are just raising a fund to restore the north tower of the Cathedral, and I thought that, as you had been so generous before, you might possibly see your way to give us some assistance."

"How much?"

"No, really! But if you did feel disposed to do something, however small--"

The voice of the machine was again heard in the offing:

"You had better make haste," said Victoria to the dean.

The dean cast an imploring look at Hammond.

"I am so ashamed! May I really throw myself on your generosity?"

"How much?"

"I couldn't possibly--" The curtain was lifted from outside. "Well, fifty pounds?" Hammond took out a pocket-book and began to scribble a memorandum in it. "This is too good of you. I assure you I never expected it."

The curtain had admitted a pale youth, with light-colored hair, parted in the middle, who held a pair of gloves furtively in one hand, having plainly just made the discovery that no one else had brought gloves, and being distracted in consequence by a desire to smuggle them into a pocket unperceived.

Victoria greeted him with suspicious cordiality.

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet