by A. A. Milne
* * *
Those little ones come crawling abroad in the sunshine, to the annoyance of the beadles, and the horror of a number of good people in the street. They will bring up the rear of the procession anon, when the grand omnibus with the feathers, and the line coaches with the long-tailed black horses, and the gentleman's private carriages with the shutters up, pass along to Saint Waltheof's.
* * *
You can hear the slow bell tolling clear in the sunshine already, mingling with the crowing of "Punch," who is passing down the street with his show; and the two musics make a queer medley.
* * *
Not near so many people, I remark, engage "Punch" now as in the good old times. I suppose our quarter is growing too genteel for him.
* * *
Miss Bridget Jones, a poor curate's daughter in Wales, comes into all Hunkington's property, and will take his name, as I am told. Nobody ever heard of her before. I am sure Captain Hunkington, and his brother Barnwell Hunkington, must wish that the lucky young lady had never been heard of to the present day.
* * *
But they will have the consolation of thinking that they did their duty by their uncle, and consoled his declining years. It was but last month that Millwood Hunkington (the Captain) sent the old gentleman a service of plate; and Mrs. Barnwell got a reclining carriage at a great expense from Hobbs and Dobbs's, in which the old gentleman went out only once.
* * *
"It is a punishment on those Hunkingtons," Miss Clapperclaw remarks: "upon those people who have been always living beyond their little incomes, and always speculating upon what the old man would leave them, and always coaxing him with presents which they could not afford, and he did not want. It is a punishment upon those Hunkingtons to be so disappointed."
* * *
"Think of giving him plate," Miss C. justly says, "who had chests-full; and sending him a carriage, who could afford to buy all Long Acre. And everything goes to Miss Jones Hunkington. I wonder will she give the things back?" Miss Clapperclaw asks. "I wouldn't."
* * *
And indeed I don't think Miss Clapperclaw would.
* * *
SOMEBODY WHOM NOBODY KNOWS.
* * *
That pretty little house, the last in Pocklington Square, was lately occupied by a young widow lady who wore a pink bonnet, a short silk dress, sustained by a crinoline, and a light blue mantle, or over-jacket (Miss C. is not here to tell me the name of the garment); or else a black velvet pelisse, a yellow shawl, and a white bonnet; or else--but never mind the dress, which seemed to be of the handsomest sort money could buy--and who had very long glossy black ringlets, and a peculiarly brilliant complexion,--No. 96, Pocklington Square, I say, was lately occupied by a widow lady named Mrs. Stafford Molyneux.
* * *
The very first day on which an intimate and valued female friend of mine saw Mrs. Stafford Molyneux stepping into a brougham, with a splendid bay horse, and without a footman, (mark, if you please, that delicate sign of respectability,) and after a moment's examination of Mrs. S. M.'s toilette, her manners, little dog, carnation-colored parasol, &c., Miss Elizabeth Clapperclaw clapped to the opera-glass with which she had been regarding the new inhabitant of Our Street, came away from the window in a great flurry, and began poking her fire in a fit of virtuous indignation.
* * *
"She's very pretty," said I, who had been looking over Miss C.'s shoulder at the widow with the flashing eyes and drooping ringlets.
* * *
"Hold your tongue, sir," said Miss Clapperclaw, tossing up her virgin head with an indignant blush on her nose. "It's a sin and a shame that such a creature should be riding in her carriage, forsooth, when honest people must go on foot."
* * *
Subsequent observations confirmed my revered fellow-lodger's anger and opinion. We have watched Hansom cabs standing before that lady's house for hours; we have seen broughams, with great flaring eyes, keeping watch there in the darkness; we have seen the vans from the comestible-shops drive up and discharge loads of wines, groceries, French plums, and other articles of luxurious horror. We have seen Count Wowski's drag, Lord Martingale's carriage, Mr. Deuceace's cab drive up there time after time; and (having remarked previously the pastry-cook's men arrive with the trays and entrees), we have known that this widow was giving dinners at the little house in Pocklington Square--dinners such as decent people could not hope to enjoy.
* * *
My excellent friend has been in a perfect fury when Mrs. Stafford Molyneux, in a black velvet riding-habit, with a hat and feather, has come out and mounted an odious gray horse, and has cantered down the street, followed by her groom upon a bay.
* * *
"It won't last long--it must end in shame and humiliation," my dear Miss C. has remarked, disappointed that the tiles and chimney-pots did not fall down upon Mrs. Stafford Molyneux's head, and crush that cantering, audacious woman.
* * *
But it was a consolation to see her when she walked out with a French maid, a couple of children, and a little dog hanging on to her by a blue ribbon. She always held down her head then--her head with the drooping black ringlets. The virtuous and well-disposed avoided her. I have seen the Square-keeper himself look puzzled as she passed; and Lady Kicklebury walking by with Miss K., her daughter, turn away from Mrs. Stafford Molyneux, and fling back at her a ruthless Parthian glance that ought to have killed any woman of decent sensibility.
* * *
That wretched woman, meanwhile, with her rouged cheeks (for rouge it IS, Miss Clapperclaw swears, and who is a better judge?) has walked on conscious, and yet somehow braving out the Street. You could read pride of her beauty, pride of her fine clothes, shame of her position, in her downcast black eyes.
* * *
As for Mademoiselle Trampoline, her French maid, she would stare the sun itself out of countenance. One day she tossed up her head as she passed under our windows with a look of scorn that drove Miss Clapperclaw back to the fireplace again.
* * *
It was Mrs. Stafford Molyneux's children, however, whom I pitied the most. Once her boy, in a flaring tartan, went up to speak to Master Roderick Lacy, whose maid was engaged ogling a policeman; and the children were going to make friends, being united with a hoop which Master Molyneux had, when Master Roderick's maid, rushing up, clutched her charge to her arms, and hurried away, leaving little Molyneux sad and wondering.
* * *
"Why won't he play with me, mamma?" Master Molyneux asked--and his mother's face blushed purple as she walked away.
* * *
"Ah--heaven help us and forgive us!" said I; but Miss C. can never forgive the mother or child; and she clapped her hands for joy one day when we saw the shutters up, bills in the windows, a carpet hanging out over the balcony, and a crowd of shabby Jews about the steps--giving token that the reign of Mrs. Stafford Molyneux was over. The pastry-cooks and their trays, the bay and the gray, the brougham and the groom, the noblemen and their cabs, were all gone; and the tradesmen in the neighborhood were crying out that they were done.
* * *
"Serve the odious minx right!" says Miss C.; and she played at piquet that night with more vigor than I have known her manifest for these last ten years.
* * *
What is it that makes certain old ladies so savage upon certain subjects? Miss C. is a good woman; pays her rent and her tradesmen; gives plenty to the poor; is brisk with her tongue--kind-hearted in the main; but if Mrs. Stafford Molyneux and her children were plunged into a caldron of boiling vinegar, I think my revered friend would not take them out.
* * *
THE MAN IN POSSESSION.
* * *
For another misfortune which occurred in Our Street we were much more compassionate. We liked Danby Dixon, and his wife Fanny Dixon still more. Miss C. had a paper of biscuits and a box of preserved apricots always in the cupboard, ready for Dixon's children--provisions by the
way which she locked up under Mrs. Cammysole's nose, so that our landlady could by no possibility lay a hand on them.
* * *
Dixon and his wife had the neatest little house possible, (No. 16, opposite 96,) and were liked and respected by the whole street. He was called Dandy Dixon when he was in the dragoons, and was a light weight, and rather famous as a gentleman rider. On his marriage, he sold out and got fat: and was indeed a florid, contented, and jovial gentleman.
* * *
His little wife was charming--to see her in pink with some miniature Dixons, in pink too, round about her, or in that beautiful gray dress, with the deep black lace flounces, which she wore at my Lord Comandine's on the night of the private theatricals, would have done any man good. To hear her sing any of my little ballads, "Knowest Thou the Willow-tree?" for instance, or "The Rose upon my Balcony," or "The Humming of the Honey-bee," (far superior in MY judgment, and in that of some good judges likewise, to that humbug Clarence Bulbul's ballads,)--to hear her, I say, sing these, was to be in a sort of small Elysium. Dear, dear little Fanny Dixon! she was like a little chirping bird of Paradise. It was a shame that storms should ever ruffle such a tender plumage.
* * *
Well, never mind about sentiment. Danby Dixon, the owner of this little treasure, an ex-captain of Dragoons, and having nothing to do, and a small income, wisely thought he would employ his spare time, and increase his revenue. He became a director of the Cornaro Life Insurance Company, of the Tregulpho tin-mines, and of four or five railroad companies. It was amusing to see him swaggering about the City in his clinking boots, and with his high and mighty dragoon manners. For a time his talk about shares after dinner was perfectly intolerable; and I for one was always glad to leave him in the company of sundry very dubious capitalists who frequented his house, and walk up to hear Mrs. Fanny warbling at the piano with her little children about her knees.
* * *
It was only last season that they set up a carriage--the modestest little vehicle conceivable--driven by Kirby, who had been in Dixon's troop in the regiment, and had followed him into private life as coachman, footman, and page.
* * *
One day lately I went into Dixon's house, hearing that some calamities had befallen him, the particulars of which Miss Clapperclaw was desirous to know. The creditors of the Tregulpho Mines had got a verdict against him as one of the directors of that company; the engineer of the Little Diddlesex Junction had sued him for two thousand three hundred pounds--the charges of that scientific man for six weeks' labor in surveying the line. His brother directors were to be discovered nowhere: Windham, Dodgin, Mizzlington, and the rest, were all gone long ago.
* * *
When I entered, the door was open: there was a smell of smoke in the dining-room, where a gentleman at noonday was seated with a pipe and a pot of beer: a man in possession indeed, in that comfortable pretty parlor, by that snug round table where I have so often seen Fanny Dixon's smiling face.
* * *
Kirby, the ex-dragoon, was scowling at the fellow, who lay upon a little settee reading the newspaper, with an evident desire to kill him. Mrs. Kirby, his wife, held little Danby, poor Dixon's son and heir. Dixon's portrait smiled over the sideboard still, and his wife was up stairs in an agony of fear, with the poor little daughters of this bankrupt, broken family.
* * *
This poor soul had actually come down and paid a visit to the man in possession. She had sent wine and dinner to "the gentleman down stairs," as she called him in her terror. She had tried to move his heart, by representing to him how innocent Captain Dixon was, and how he had always paid, and always remained at home when everybody else had fled. As if her tears and simple tales and entreaties could move that man in possession out of the house, or induce him to pay the costs of the action which her husband had lost.
* * *
Danby meanwhile was at Boulogne, sickening after his wife and children. They sold everything in his house--all his smart furniture and neat little stock of plate; his wardrobe and his linen, "the property of a gentleman gone abroad;" his carriage by the best maker; and his wine selected without regard to expense. His house was shut up as completely as his opposite neighbor's; and a new tenant is just having it fresh painted inside and out, as if poor Dixon had left an infection behind.
* * *
Kirby and his wife went across the water with the children and Mrs. Fanny--she has a small settlement; and I am bound to say that our mutual friend Miss Elizabeth C. went down with Mrs. Dixon in the fly to the Tower Stairs, and stopped in Lombard Street by the way.
* * *
So it is that the world wags: that honest men and knaves alike are always having ups and downs of fortune, and that we are perpetually changing tenants in Our Street.
* * *
THE LION OF THE STREET.
* * *
What people can find in Clarence Bulbul, who has lately taken upon himself the rank and dignity of Lion of Our Street, I have always been at a loss to conjecture.
* * *
"He has written an Eastern book of considerable merit," Miss Clapperclaw says; but hang it, has not everybody written an Eastern book? I should like to meet anybody in society now who has not been up to the second cataract. An Eastern book forsooth! My Lord Castleroyal has done one--an honest one; my Lord Youngent another--an amusing one; my Lord Woolsey another--a pious one; there is "The Cutlet and the Cabob"--a sentimental one; "Timbuctoothen"--a humorous one, all ludicrously overrated, in my opinion: not including my own little book, of which a copy or two is still to be had, by the way.
* * *
Well, then, Clarence Bulbul, because he has made part of the little tour that all of us know, comes back and gives himself airs, forsooth, and howls as if he were just out of the great Libyan desert.
* * *
When we go and see him, that Irish Jew courier, whom I have before had the honor to describe, looks up from the novel which he is reading in the ante-room, and says, "Mon maitre est au divan," or, "Monsieur trouvera Monsieur dans son serail," and relapses into the Comte de Montecristo again.
* * *
Yes, the impudent wretch has actually a room in his apartments on the ground-floor of his mother's house, which he calls his harem. When Lady Betty Bulbul (they are of the Nightingale family) or Miss Blanche comes down to visit him, their slippers are placed at the door, and he receives them on an ottoman, and these infatuated women will actually light his pipe for him.
* * *
Little Spitfire, the groom, hangs about the drawing-room, outside the harem forsooth! so that he may be ready when Clarence Bulbul claps hands for him to bring the pipes and coffee.
* * *
He has coffee and pipes for everybody. I should like you to have seen the face of old Bowly, his college-tutor, called upon to sit cross-legged on a divan, a little cup of bitter black Mocha put into his hand, and a large amber-muzzled pipe stuck into his mouth by Spitfire, before he could so much as say it was a fine day. Bowly almost thought he had compromised his principles by consenting so far to this Turkish manner.
* * *
Bulbul's dinners are, I own, very good; his pilaffs and curries excellent. He tried to make us eat rice with our fingers, it is true; but he scalded his own hands in the business, and invariably bedizened his shirt; so he has left off the Turkish practice, for dinner at least, and uses a fork like a Christian.
* * *
But it is in society that he is most remarkable; and here he would, I own, be odious, but he becomes delightful, because all the men hate him so. A perfect chorus of abuse is raised round about him. "Confounded impostor," says one; "Impudent jackass," says another; "Miserable puppy," cries a third; "I'd like to wring his neck," says Bruff, scowling over his shoulder at him. Clarence meanwhile nods, winks, smiles, and patronizes them all with the easiest good-humor. He is a fellow who would poke an archbishop in the apron, or clap a duke on the shoulder, as coolly as he would address you and m
e.
* * *
I saw him the other night at Mrs. Bumpsher's grand let-off. He flung himself down cross-legged on a pink satin sofa, so that you could see Mrs. Bumpsher quiver with rage in the distance, Bruff growl with fury from the further room, and Miss Pim, on whose frock Bulbul's feet rested, look up like a timid fawn.
* * *
"Fan me, Miss Pim," said he of the cushion. "You look like a perfect Peri to-night. You remind me of a girl I once knew in Circassia--Ameena, the sister of Schamyl Bey. Do you know, Miss Pim, that you would fetch twenty thousand piastres in the market at Constantinople?"
* * *
