Y~ u *v7 l^, \J$T2#?~J . ^ J WAS HANDED A LETTER IN A STRANGE HANDWRITING. IP- 55. MY FLIRTATIONS BY MARGARET WYNMAN WITH IS ILLUSTRATIONS BY J. BERNARD PARTRIDGE PHILADELPHIA J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 1893 PRINTED BY > B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA, U. 8. A. LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS I WAS HANDED A LETTER IN A STRANGE HAND- WRITING Frontispiece FACE HE IS A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN 9 'THERE IS A LITTLE TOWN IN ITALY WHERE I MUST TAKE YOU ONE DAY, MARGUERITE* ... 19 I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME HE CAME IN WITH FATHER 25 HAVING A PROLONGED ALTERCATION WITH THE AT- TENDANT 41 VAL REDMOND 59 HIS MEDICAL SKILL WAS IN CONSTANT REQUEST . . 73 MR. CARSON RIPPLED A FEW CHORDS OVER THE KEYS 87 FATIGUED, EXPRESSIONLESS FEATURES . . . . 105 MR. MORRIS WAS A PERSON OF IMPORTANCE . . 115 WE DON'T BEGIN TO HAVE ANYTHING LIKE THIS IN NEW YORK' 133 HE WAS HARDLY A TYPICAL FRENCHMAN . . -145 HE WAS NOT QUITE UGLY . . . . , '-173 ** MY FLIRTATIONS MY FLIRTATIONS CHAPTER I THE first one the very first one ? Well, I almost think it was a sallow, under- sized Italian with hand- some ox-eyes, who used to give us violin lessons ; or else it was a cousin, a boy with sandy hair, who stammered, and who was reading for the army ; but, no, I rather think it was the anxious young doctor, who came when I had the measles anyhow, 9 HE IS A ROYAL ACADEMICIAN. io MY FLIRTATIONS he, the primeval one, is lost in the mists of antiquity. . . . A great many people come to our house, and they have always done so as long as I can recollect. Father is a Royal Academician, and paints shocking bad portraits, but the British public is quite unaware of the fact. The British public likes to be painted by a Royal Academician, so it pays large prices and is hung on the line in the big room at Burlington House. They all come ; red-faced, red-coated M.F.H.'s, the bejewelled wives of Manchester millionaires, young beauties, heads of colleges, the celebrities of the day they all sit, with the same fixed eyes and the same tight smile, on the dais in our gorgeous studio. The studio is an imposing room. Father likes me to sit in the alcove with the golden mosaics, on a peach-coloured divan, with tur- quoise-blue cushions ; and on Show Sunday Christina is seen in a little white gown in the oaken gallery, playing dreamy voluntaries on the organ. ... It looks idyllic, and nobody knows that there has usually been a family row shortly before the people begin crowding in. Christina is tart of tongue, and is not to be put MY FLIRTATIONS n down by a mere parent. But I was speaking of the studio. There is a perfection of detail about the vast apartment which is impres- sive ; indeed, so fascinating a workshop has father fashioned for himself, that I have seen a dozen people inspecting the brocades and spindle-legged tables, and forgetting to look at the pictures on the easels. The over- worked critics, too, about the beginning of April, are apt to gush inordinately over a Nankin bowl full of daffodils, while they turn their backs on a portrait that has taken the best part of a year to paint. We live in a nest of artists. Next door they paint Oriental subjects, and hire a dusky Arab more or less genuine who wears a turban, and opens the front door at tea-parties. A dozen yards farther up the street they supply the thor- oughly English idyl young ladies in white muslin sitting on September lawns ; young gentlemen in riding-breeches, who are either accepted or rejected. Just opposite they do sea-pictures the old woman shading her eyes with her hand ; the young woman in despair, with the careless infant at her knee. And all the houses are of red brick, with gables and 12 MY FLIRTATIONS white-wood balconies, and queer little windows in unexpected places. Our front doors are painted a pale sea-green, with brass knockers and bell-handles. On Show Sunday the British public wanders in and out, sublimely ignorant of whether it is in the house of Smith, R.A., or Robinson, A.R.A. And yet ours is the only studio with an Organ. During the season we give Sunday dinner- parties, followed by an open evening, and we also entertain the ' sitters ' at lunch. Some of the sitters have been known to want to hear me play the violin. I play execrably, but they are too polite to say so. All this rather bores Christina, whose latest hobby Socialism takes up most of her time. Christina can be, on occasion, almost brutally cynical ; but then she is clever, and when I want to get out of a scrape I go to her. Mother would not be of the faintest use under such circumstances. She would get pink and flurried, and tell me 'that she married my father at seventeen, and settled down after that,' and would further inform me that she had ' no patience with such philandering.' Poor mother, I really pity her limited experience. My FLOTATIONS 13 . . It must be like eternally dining off roast mutton to marry at seventeen, and settle down dully and respectably for the rest of your natural life ! I was christened Margaret, but most people call me Peggy. It is a curious fact that all my friends call me by different names. Some call me Miss Wynman, others Margaret ; while ' Miss Peggy ' and ' Peggy ' do duty more often. One young man but he was an American always addressed me as ' Peggy Wynman ' a form of appellation, by-the-bye, which usually prefaced a lecture. Gilbert Mandell called me Marguerite. Gilbert Mandell is one of the 'dear de- parted.' Not that he is dead. Oh no ! I call them the ' dear departed ' when it is all over, and they have betaken themselves to India, or Japan, or the East End to work among the People. It is not flattering to one's vanity, but it must be frankly owned that, as a rule, my admirers ' depart ' with phenomenal celerity. Their devotion generally lasts from six weeks to three months. Why this thing should be I cannot tell. Some people say it is because I don't let them talk about themselves. i 14 MY FLIRTATIONS I really think Christina objected less to Gilbert Mandell than to any of those who have come after him. If he savoured slightly of the prig, she maintained, he was neither a knave nor a fool. Christina doesn't care for young men. My principal objection to him was that he was associated in my imagination with drains. Of course one cannot help the particular way in which one's parent has made a fortune, but, considering his son's taste for smart society and intellectual pursuits, it was thoughtless of Mandell pere to poke his ' Deodorising Pow- der' in one's eye at every turn. Poor young man, how he must have suffered ! ' Mandell's superior pink carbolic disinfectant powder' screamed at you, so to speak, at every street corner. The legend of its multifarious virtues was writ large on every omnibus. It flared, in connection with a plump lady in full ball cos- tume, from every hoarding. Of course there were lots of people, even when he was at Cambridge, who knew nothing of the Deodoriser. But it always hung, like a modern sword of Damocles, over poor Gilbert's head. It made him diffident where he should MY FLIRTATIONS 15 have been at ease ; it made him malicious when it would have been to his social advan- tage to appear kindly. But even at Cambridge he had given unmistakable signs of being a Superior Person. He could repeat, to a nicety, the shibboleth of Superior People. He knew when to let fall a damaging phrase about the poetical fame of Mr. Lewis Morris, and when to insinuate a paradox about the great and only Stendhal. In art, he generally spoke of Velasquez and Degas ; in music, only the tetralogies at Bayreuth were worth discus- sion. Mr. Mandell was a pessimist. That was what attracted me first, for at seventeen a girl is always impressed by any cynical man of the world who will notice her. And Gilbert Mandell noticed me a good deal. He said I was ' suggestive ' whatever that meant and that my mind was ' receptive.' And then he began to lend me books by Mr. Walter Pater, which I remember perplexed me very much. He also sent me George Meredith's novels ; and there was even a volume of Schopenhauer, I remember, which I used to pretend I had read. 2 1 6 MY FLIRTATIONS In appearance he was a middle-sized man of thirty-four, with rather pink cheeks, and a slightly bald forehead. His hands were fleshy and white, and had exquisitely pared and polished nails. A manicure usually attended to his hands. He always had the newest scandal ; and sometimes, when he was going to say something specially malicious, he hesitated a little in his speech, not from any false shame, but because he was so delighted with what he was going to say. For the rest, he was always beautifully dressed, and generally affected fashions which were coming in. He had two secret ambitions : to dine with a duchess, and to write an article in the Contemporary Review. Looking back at it now, it strikes me that Gilbert Mandell had quaint notions about amusing a young girl. He used to take us for long afternoons at the South Kensington Museum, where we gazed at Persian tiles, and Japanese ivories, and illuminated missals until my eyes ached, and Christina roundly declared she wouldn't stay another minute. Then Gil- bert would look at us from under his drooping eyelids with a surprised little stare. He was never tired of art. And how Christina was MY FLIRTATIONS 17 bored ! She came from a stern sense of duty, and because, as she frankly said, the ' thing wouldn't do.' Poor Christina, she was destined to see many such as Mr. Gilbert Mandell come and go. Other days it would be the National Gallery he never went inside modern exhibi- tions of pictures in London where I learnt a good deal about Velasquez and Holbein and Franz Hals. It is from that period that my suspicion dates that father does not know how to paint pictures. He came to our house a good deal. Father laughed at his clothes and his manners, but said he was a ' sharp fellow ' ; while mother was amused with his little stories about smart society, into which, by great assiduity, he had managed to effect a sort of entrance. In Mayfair they knew nothing of the Deodoriser. Mandell senior lived in a mansion in Surrey, where he cultivated orchids and pineapples, and the world knew nothing of him. The son, on the other hand, had charming rooms in St. James's, where he gave frequent tea-parties, which were sparsely attended by a handful of modish women, interlarded with thin, youngish- old men, who spent their lives criticising the 1 8 MY FLIRTATIONS critics, and whose claim to immortality lay in a memoir of Lamb or Coleridge. Somehow or other, these parties were not hilarious. The elements did not mix, and Mr. Mandell was a somewhat flurried, nervous host. The day that an ambassadress came to tea his distrac- tion was almost painful. Gilbert Mandell was an example of that extremely modern mixture, a man of fashion and a critic ; indeed, his respect for smart women was only equalled by his adoration for the log-rollers of the Saturday Review. I have never made out to this day why he noticed me. Christina says he must have had a depraved taste for school-girls, or else he thought by taking the raw material of a woman, so to speak, he might fashion a companion to his taste. He tried hard to cultivate my mind. He was always writing to me. That was another odd thing about Gilbert Mandell. An ordinary young man looks upon pens and paper with deep-rooted suspicion and distrust. I have had more than one flirtation carried on solely by telegram. But Mr. Mandell was always writing me long epistles, very carefully worded, and in a semi-literary style. THERE IS A LITTLE TOWN IN ITALY WHERE I MUST TAKE YOU ONE DAY, MARGUERITE. MY FLIRTATIONS 21 I remember I was very proud of those letters. They flattered me in a young girl's most vul- nerable point ; they implied that my opinion was worth having. I don't know whether it was that, or his pronounced pessimism, which attracted me most. He was also fond of im- plying as he pointed out, with a white hand, some masterpiece of the Florentine school, or sat murmuring paradoxes over the tea-table that there were places and things which we should see, in the future, together. ' There is a little town in Italy Orvieto,' he said, one afternoon, when Christina and I had been listening to a disquisition on the Renaissance, ' where I must take you one day, Marguerite. You must see the fa$ade of the cathedral. Orvieto is an education in art.' It long remained vague. But one day it was a very wet day, I remember, and we were coming back in a hansom from the National Gallery he alluded in a roundabout sort of way to an organ he was pleased to call his heart. Then it struck me all at once that it was impossible. It was not the Deodoriser that I minded. I think it was the pinkness of his nails and a certain complaisant way which 6 2* 22 MY FLIRTATIONS he had of regarding me which irritated me when it came to a question of a life-long interview. I suppose I must have said ' No,' and possibly with some fervour. Smiling vaguely, he took my hand. He evidently did not believe me. ' I won't hurry you, dear child,' he said, as he left me on my own doorstep. ' You will think it over you will be able to make up your mind by-and-by.' But I never made up my mind that I wanted to marry Mr. Mandell. Not long after he came to say that he was going abroad. At first he wrote pretty often, and, as usual, his letters were semi-literary, though to be sure the ' burning question ' was discussed from various points of view. But, to my relief, the letters got more and more literary as time went on, and finally they stopped altogether. MY FLIRTATIONS 23 CHAPTER II PERHAPS it was by way of contrast to the Superior Person that I appreciated Tony Lam- bert so much for a time. He was the most na'ive individual I have ever known ; indeed, his naivete quite disarmed me. And, in a breezy, boyish way he was diverting. To be sure, he did not expect me to read Schopen- hauer, of whose existence I imagine he was but dimly aware, nor did he ask me to spend afternoons at the National Gallery. Kempton Park and the Gaiety Theatre were more to his taste, and while this sportive affair lasted the house had a rollicking, youthful atmosphere which was the result of something more subtle than Tony's ringing laugh, and Tony's skirmishing fox terriers, who invariably accompanied their master in his many visits. We neither of us took each other seriously, and that added a certain charm to the thing. 24 MY FLIRTATIONS Everybody at home liked Tony, except, I think, Christina, who said she couldn't under- stand his slang, and that he made a draught in the drawing-room, he was so boisterous and restless. The family saw a good deal of him in those days, for he was being painted in parade dress, and he used to stay to lunch so as to be able to pose again in the afternoon. I remember the first time he came in with father, pink with mortification at being seen in his uniform in the daytime out of barracks. Whence comes, I wonder, the love of mufti so deeply implanted in the breast of the British officer ? Tony, fortunately, learnt to forget his early sense of discomfiture, and spent many merry half-hours in our little study when he had done sitting, singing soldiers' songs with a fearful and wonderful accompaniment of his own invention, while the dogs chased each other, barking joyously, over the sofas and chairs. How he used to light up the dim little twilight room with his scarlet bravery and his irrepressible spirits ! Mr. Anthony Lambert was the eldest son of Norfolk People. One day or other he would come into possession of a fine old house, some I REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME HE CAME IN WITH FATHER. MY FLIRTATIONS 27 excellent shooting, and three thousand a year an income by no means large enough to keep up the Towers. Therefore it was an under- stood thing, especially by Lady Marion, his mamma, that Tony, when he married, was to marry money. In the meantime Tony was to be painted, first to adorn the next exhibition at Burlington House, and afterwards the collection of family portraits at the Towers. So that in this way the boy, in spite of Lady Marion's pre- cautions, came directly under the influence of a most undesirable young person, to wit, myself. Tony was a lieutenant in a line regiment, and I fear his high spirits made him have occa- sional differences of opinion with his colonel. In appearance he was distinctly good to look at. He had a clean, pink skin, twinkling blue eyes, and hair so flaxen that it was almost silver. His shoulders were broad and square, he had a delightful laugh, and he was just three-and- twenty. And, without being in the least con- ceited, Tony was thoroughly pleased with him- self, his regiment, and his belongings. He had, in a supreme degree, the magnetism which comes of perfect health, good spirits, and com- plete self-satisfaction. 28 jify FLIRTATIONS What an infectious thing is happiness, and what a golden age is three-and-twenty ! With what vigour did Tony play lawn-tennis, how excited he got over races and cricket matches, how hot he became when he danced, what portentous suppers he could eat! . . . The very sound of his voice in the hall a voice with raised inflections, for the ends of Tony's sentences always finished joyously roused one up on the foggiest and dreariest of days. To go for a walk in the park or along Piccadilly with Tony Lambert was a whole education in itself in the ways of young men : his joy was so manifest when a pretty face, a showy figure, or even a well-cut gown ap- peared in sight. He had the omnivorous glance which takes in every detail, and which is the prerogative of men who spend most of their leisure in sport. Seldom will you find a writer, a lawyer, or a scientist with the faculty of observation as highly cultivated as in the most brainless individual used to the rod and the gun. Tony, by-the-bye, was one of the young men with whom I corresponded by electric telegraph. As a matter of fact, I do not MY FLIRTATIONS 29 possess a scrap of his handwriting. Whether he was doubtful of his prowess in grammar and spelling, or whether it was a bit of worldly wisdom beyond his years, will remain for ever a mystery, but Christina got quite tired of those agitated pulls of the bell which announced the telegraph boy, while at this period orange- coloured envelopes were served up to me at every hour of the day. There was nothing he didn't offer us, from invitations to military balls, to bags of American candy. To me especially he offered a great many photographs of himself, in various de- grees of military splendour, which gave my room, for the time being, quite a spirited and martial air. Of course this didn't last long, for my photograph frames and space to put them are limited, whereas my friends are many, and in the course of years one frame contains many 'counterfeit presentments.' Christina says that, if I have a heart, it must be like my photo- graph frames. . . . From what I could gather, Mr. Lambert was never in love with fewer than three ladies at a time. He was like one of the modern monster shopkeepers, a sort of universal 3Q MY FLIRTATIONS admirer of the fairer sex. And yet one never blamed him for it, perhaps because he was so perfectly candid in his enthusiasms. As far as I could make out, the fair with whom I shared his affections at this time were his Major's wife a person with fluffy hair, an exaggerated figure, and a well-worn smile and an individual whose acquaintance, it appeared, he had not yet succeeded in making, but who occupied a dis- tinguished position in the second row of the Gaiety chorus. It was always amusing to get Tony on to the subject of his loves. The ' little friends ' that he ' played with ' seemed to have been of all ages and sizes, and his amorous difficulties appeared to have been numerous. Once already had his family offered a substantial sum to a young lady in the Cam- berwell Road as a substitute for Tony's hand ; but that, as he acknowledged with a pink and rueful countenance, had been in 'his gay and giddy youth.' Having now arrived at the dis- creet age of three-and-twenty, he was resolved to mend his ways. And to begin well, he pro- ceeded, in his airy and irresponsible way, to imagine that he cared about me. FLIRTATIONS 31 I wonder what Lady Marion would have said of the three months that followed ? Tony took his ' long leave' on January ist, and it was at this time, being a good deal in London, that he sat for his portrait. For the next two months Christina and I were never sure when he would not burst into our den with his joyous laugh and a couple of excited dogs wagging delighted tails, with some project of rushing us off somewhere or other in search of amusement. What would Lady Marion have said to all this, I wonder ; and of those many accidental meetings in Bond Street, when we used to drop in at the minor exhibitions, and come out sublimely unconscious of whether we had been looking at Van Beers or Gustave Dore ? Or of the pompous dances in Queen's Gate to which mother allowed me to take the boy, and where he met, I believe for the first time in his life, the youth and loveliness of South Kensington ? Tony had met ' county ' girls and ' garrison ' girls and Gaiety girls, but I don't think he had ever before danced with a London middle-class damsel. Lady Marion, I verily believe, would have preferred the young person in the Camberwell Road. 32 MY FLIRTATIONS But our last dance was not to be in Queen's Gate. The regiment was ordered to the Cur- ragh, and Tony was in despair. Nothing would do but we must come to the regiment's farewell ball at Mulchester, and it was there, in the long, low rooms of the Officers' Mess, against a background of flags and military trophies, that I saw Tony's blonde head for the last time. . . . The pretty scene comes back to me now the glare of scarlet coats among the flesh- tones of the women ; the delicate-tinted tulle dresses against a bank of pink azaleas and palms ; the blue uniforms of the Gunners and the green of the Rifles striking a sombre note in the gay chord of colour ; the intimate sad- ness of those valse refrains which the band of the regiment played ; and over all that acute atmosphere of mixed pain and pleasure which is associated when one is eighteen with the words ' for the last time.' It was my first soldiers' ball. How well I remember the whole atmosphere of that night : the Colonel, smiling, urbane, and slightly in- different ; the Colonel's wife, a lady with pro- truding teeth and neatly-parted hair, who was said to be wealthy ; the eager young faces of My FLIRTATIONS 2 3 the junior subalterns as they surrounded some showy beauty ; the heavy-jawed Captain to whom I was introduced on my entry, and who deserted me at once for a buxom lady with dubious hair and many diamonds. . . . Oh, those military ladies ! How dashing, how much too dashing, they were ; what drawn-in waists, what liberal smiles, what suspiciously white shoulders ! How pert and off-hand they seemed in public, and how confiding they looked in obscure corners down back passages, where Tony's straw-coloured hair and scarlet coat were to be seen often during that night. Heaven has not been pleased to inflict on me a suspicious disposition, or I fear I should have passed but an indifferently amusing evening. For Mr. Anthony Lambert, with the gay in- souciance of youth, had thoughtlessly invited some half-dozen of his ' loves,' and his Major's wife, it appeared, was inordinately jealous. Some fifteen years ago this lady had been described in a local newspaper as a ' magnificent blonde,' and she had been living up to the epithet ever since. She had all the airs of a beauty, and she seemed to regard Mr. Lambert as her especial property. At ten o'clock I 34 MY FLIRTATIONS heard her reproaching him for only wanting three dances ; at one o'clock she deliberately fetched him out of a balcony where he was saying good-bye to a pretty little girl with red hair. ... I don't wonder that Tony looked harassed ; the smile of his Major's wife was terrifying. Poor boy ! I, at least, had never worried or reproached him, and I think he was proportionately grateful at the last. It was a black night and pouring rain, I remember, when we finally drove away, but I could see that Tony's blue eyes looked unspeakable things as we whispered a final hurried good-bye at the carriage door. One morning, a few months later, we read in the paper that a marriage had been arranged, and would take place immediately, between Mr. Anthony Lambert of the Blankshire Regi- ment, eldest son of Mr. and Lady Marion Lambert of the Towers, Sleepington, Norfolk, and Katherine, eldest daughter of Patrick O'Flaherty, Esq., of Dublin. He had been taken seriously by a garrison beauty a dozen years older than himself. Although they have already three children, I hear that Lady Marion refuses to see her enterprising Irish daughter- MY FLIRTATIONS 35 in-law, and now the regiment is in India. Poor Tony! He was born, it would appear, to be the sport of the less amiable members of our sex. His Major's wife is, of course, with the regiment, and people say that Mrs. Anthony Lambert is primitively jealous. A ridiculous song that he used to strum always occurs to me when I think of him, for the refrain Woman, lovely woman ! epitomises the tragi-comedy of his blameless little life. 3* 3 6 My FLIRTATIONS CHAPTER III IT is with an uneasy conscience that I recall the brief episode of Mr. Hanbury Price. There used to be a derisive ring in Christina's voice when she alluded to Mr. Price as my ' new young man.' She knew well enough that he could not, by the wildest stretch of imagina- tion, be called young. Neither, to be sure, was he in the sere and yellow leaf. No, he was worse than old ; he was middle-aged. Middle- aged in ideas rather than in person, for he affected ajauntiness of attire, which he was able to carry off to a certain extent, being rather big, with a high colour, and having hair still un- touched with grey. He also liked to be thought what in early Victorian novels would have been called ' an agreeable rattle ' ; but then half of Mr. Price's conversation consisted of projects and invitations which somehow never came off. It was wonderful what a reputation for festive MY FLIRTATIONS 37 hospitality Mr. Price had among people who didn't know him well. One of his least agreeable idiosyncrasies was his curious distrust of everybody. He was always in dread of being, as he would have ex- pressed it, ' done.' So suspicious, indeed, was he, that he even suspected himself. His coups on the Stock Exchange, the bouquet he had offered over-night, the very wine he drank, suggested the after-thought that he had made a fool of himself that it was possible he might not yet get the desired return for his money. His small red-lidded eyes, of a watery blue, continually betrayed this recurring idea, while his loosely-hung jaw and mouth gave signs of a loquacious temperament, which his frequent and abrupt laugh did not succeed in making genial. Though he did not mention it in polite society, Mr. H anbury Price hailed from Tulse Hill. In that eminently respectable suburb he had first seen the light, and in the same stucco mansion there still resided his mother and a bevy of plain unmarried sisters, to whom he used to journey down to partake of early dinner on Sundays. ' Never mention Tulse Hill to 38 MY FLIRTATIONS smart people/ he confided to me one day with one of his sudden and unmirthful laughs ; ' if I do, they want to know if it's in Yorkshire.' He was curiously anxious to be voted popu- lar at least among the right sort of people and was fond of alluding, in an airy way, to the parties he had given or intended to give ; but as he had an inherent dislike to laying out half-a- crown on anything which was not strictly neces- sary, Mr. Price must have undergone untold tortures if, indeed, these festivities ever really came off in his efforts to be classed among the bachelors who entertain. Of course, it was only in time that I became aware of all these amiable little peculiarities, for at first sight Mr. Price gave one the impression of being a good- natured, talkative, and gregarious member of society, with an inclination for giving little dinners and theatre parties. We met him first on a Saturday-to-Monday on the river, at the house of a vulgar little woman whose portrait father was painting. Mrs. Bodley-Gallard was loud in his praises ; she had, it transpired, only known Mr. H anbury Price a fortnight. Our hostess was one of those over-officious people who say things that make MY FLIRTATIONS 39 one's blood run cold. ' Now, my dear Miss Wynman,' she whispered to me on Sunday night after dinner, ' please be nice to the poor young man.' Mrs. Bodley-Gallard belonged to the class of person who calls everybody a 'young man' who still is unmarried, even though he be on the wrong side of fifty. ' I assure you he is devoted quite devoted. Now promise me you'll think about it ! ' A speech which had the effect of making me extremely rude to Mr. Price when he joined me after dinner, and it was only when he had seen us into our cab at Paddington station next morning that I mentioned, after he had made repeated enquiries on the subject, that we were generally at home at five o'clock. He was not long in coming, and when he appeared he was profuse in his invitations. Would we do a theatre ? would we dine with him ? He was thinking of taking a house on the river for August ; he hoped that mother would bring us down to stay with him. The least we could do was to accept his offer for the play. We were to dine some- where first, and the party was arranged for the following Tuesday. But when Tuesday 40 MY FLIRTATIONS arrived, there was a post-card from Mr. Price to say that the proposed festivity was postponed, and, as I afterwards found out, because he had been vainly soliciting free admissions for the Thalia Theatre from a young man whom he knew, who played the footman in the first piece. Then, when the night at last arrived, we found we were to partake of a three-and- sixpenny table d'hote dinner, with a maddening accompaniment of glees ; and this from a man who talked continually of the Amphitryon and the Bachelors' Club. That damped my spirits to begin with. Of course, when one is under twenty, one does not care much for the niceties of cooking and the brand of the champagne ; but it is lowering to one's dignity, in the eyes of one's family, to be asked to dine at table dhdte with travelling Yankees and gaping provincials. But it was nothing to what followed. We were a party of five mother and I, and a couple of men beside our host. When we were at last landed inside the doors of the Thalia, we found that Mr. Hanbury Price had secured seats for his party in the fourth row of the dress circle. The two other men ex- HAVING A PROLONGED ALTERCATION WITH THE ATTENDANT. MY FLIRTATIONS 43 changed amused and surprised glances ; mother and I declared we much preferred the dress circle to a box or stalls ; and Mr. Price, who began to dimly discern that for once his economy was ill-timed, spent half his evening in the lobby, having, as I shrewdly suspect, a prolonged altercation with the attendant on the subject of a charge of sixpence for each programme. It grieves me to think what we must have cost Mr. H anbury Price in hansoms, for our house, as he more than once explained, is in- conveniently situated for omnibuses. Whether he really imagined himself to be in love I have never been able to decide, but he was obviously haunted by dreadful forebodings as to the expense of a young lady with my tastes and proclivities. He used to lecture me about taking care of my gowns, and suggested that I was recklessly extravagant in the matter of feather boas and shoes. . . . One day he tried to persuade me to attend the cookery classes at South Kensington ; and another evening, when he was unusually sentimental, he asked me if I didn't like the neighbour- hood of Netting Hill ? All this contributed to 44 MY FLIRTATIONS Christina's joy, for Mr. Price's struggles between economy and the tender passion were really diverting to behold. I think, perhaps, when I look back at the whole affair dispassionately, that it was the box of chocolates that ended Mr. H anbury Price's dream. One afternoon, when he had been par- ticularly confidential, he asked me, at parting, if I cared for sweets. The next day there arrived from the Civil Service Stores a small cardboard box of second-rate chocolate creams, addressed to me to me, who had had qualms of conscience that he might have telegraphed to Paris for some elaborate offering from the Boulevard des Italiens. Telegraphed, in- deed ! Hanbury Price was not the man to waste his money in telegrams, when a letter, or, better still, a halfpenny postcard, would answer the same purpose. I have quite a col- lection of postcards in his handwriting, for he wrote often on every sort of matter, and he chiefly used the cheapest means of communi- cation. There is the mass of postcards, for instance, which relates to the famous dinner at the Crystal Palace, which finally ended the affair. MY FLIRTATIONS 45 We tried hard to get out of it, Christina and I , but it was of no avail, and in the end we had to go. Mrs. Bodley-Gallard was to be the chaperon, and there were to be one or two other men. I like to go over the events of that day, for they are unique in my history. Five o'clock was the hour of meeting at Victoria Station. It was high midsummer, and bitterly cold and damp. Arrived at the station, we found that Mr. Price had already taken second-class tickets for the whole party, but that he was not above recouping himself from our purses for this outlay. ' Just as jolly second-class,' declared our host, ' if you're a party, don't you know ; ' though he laughed awkwardly when he found that a couple of damp, plush-clad babies, with their respective mammas, were also to journey down with us to Sydenham. Of course we arrived too early, and wandered about on the interminable and dubious boards of the Palace among pieces of greasy paper the remnants of recent feasts until seven o'clock. But dinner came at last with a lengthy harangue as to which table Mr. Price had selected, an interview with the manager, and 46 MY FLIRTATIONS some sour Sauterne-cup. Only one young man had turned up (the other two had pro- bably dined with Mr. Price before), and he chaffed our host into ordering a beverage more suitable to the damp night ; but even that failed to revive the flagging spirits of the party. Mournful pauses fell, and H anbury Price's eye travelled anxiously after the cham- pagne bottle as it went its way round the table. Even Mrs. Bodley-Gallard could not pretend that she was enjoying herself. And then, with the phenomenally hard peaches and dried figs, came the final blow. There were to be fireworks, but our host had evidently no in- tention of offering us covered seats from which to view them. ' One of you young ladies will come with me in the grounds,' urged the ever- economical Hanbury, casting a sentimental and meaning glance in my direction. ' I'm afraid I've caught cold already,' I said with decision. And then Christina, with true nobility, came to my rescue, in answer to my appealing nudge : ' I will, if you like,' she said, quickly ; ' Peggy can't wander about in the dark and the cold to- night. She's nearly got bronchitis as it is ; the child must stay indoors.' MY FLIRTATIONS 47 The only young man at once secured seats for the chaperon and myself, and Mr. H anbury Price spent what he may have intended to be the eventful night of his life wandering about the grounds, under a dripping umbrella, with my sister. Christina's account of the evening is extremely diverting. I shall always be grateful to her for that night. Whatever dif- ferences may arise between us in after years, I shall never forget from what an awkward inter- view Christina saved me. And he, for his part, had a chastened air in the railway-carriage coming home. We left town very soon after, and when I meet Mr. H anbury Price on rare occasions in the Park, or at some crowded party, I get ready my sweetest and most deceitful smile. But Mr. H anbury Price invariably looks the other way. 48 MY FLIRTATIONS CHAPTER IV THE gleam of velvety grass through a grey cloister, a bare oaken staircase, leading to a low room lined with books ; a cushioned window seat, a summer night, and the distant sound of someone playing the violin : hese are the things that come back to me whenever anyone pronounces the name of Frank Harding. It was at Oxford, at Commemoration, that I saw him first. He was lying on his back on the grass in one of those small, meagre gardens in the Parks which make the joy of Oxford dons and their wives, and their troops of babies. As a matter of fact, he was being photo- graphed we were all being photographed as is the pleasing custom during Commemoration week. We had gone to pay a call on the Talford Browns Talford Brown is the most eminent authority on the Phoenician language in Oxford and we had been at once taken MY FLOTATIONS 49 into the garden, where tea and the photo- grapher's camera awaited us. There we found the usual Oxford group : the lady with smooth hair and clinging gown, one or two vague, bearded Fellows or tutors, the girl in a pince- nez and badly-made boots, a couple of small boys, two babies, three dogs, and Frank. Flat on his back, as I said before ; his six foot one of length arrayed in virgin flannels and a Trinity College blazer. Frank Harding was one of those excep- tional beings, an undergraduate on easy nay, even familiar terms with dons. The wives of these gentlemen were very tolerant of Frank indeed, if it were given to a don's wife to be capable of a flirtation, I am pretty sure they would have flirted with him. As it was, he strolled in and out of those villas in Norham Gardens very much as he liked, played with the babies, teased the dogs, and helped the ladies of the house in their perennial little difficulties with the Greek syntax. In spite of his eccentricities and those daring caricatures of the dons of his which regularly appeared in Shrimpton's window, the authorities all liked Frank, and everybody was ready to bet if 4* 5 MY FLIRTATIONS one can picture such a transaction taking place in a college common-room that Frank would take a First. We stayed to dinner at the Talford Browns, and we were much struck with the somewhat affected simplicity of the Oxford interior. There was a long table, sparsely decorated with attenuated glass flower-holders, in each of which were placed three Iceland poppies. Mrs. Talford Brown, who had the reputation of being a wit, and was understood to say scathing things about the undergraduates, herself carved the cold mutton which formed the principal dish at dinner. Professor Talford Brown drank toast-and-water. We had a salad, with a trifle too much vinegar, and we talked a good deal of the higher educa- tion of women, and of the recent finals for honours which had just come off. Christina sat next to the Professor, and I could see that our host and hostess were as much taken with her as it is possible for Oxford people to be with a mere Londoner ; and this was an inexpressible relief to me, for every minute I felt that I was falling lower in their regard. An irresistible impulse seized me to say MY FLIRTATIONS 51 frivolous things, to giggle in an imbecile manner, and to ask Mrs. Talford Brown if she had ever been to the Empire ? Do what I may in the after years, I know that I shall ever be regarded with contempt in those Oxford circles in which ' plain living and high thinking' obtain. But Frank Harding, who sat next to me, by no means shared this opinion. To begin with, we recollected that we were, so to speak, old friends. We re- membered that it had taken two nurses and a governess to make peace between us some fifteen years ago, when we had met at a children's party and found no favour in each other's eyes. The Hardings, indeed, were connections of my mother's, so that we had seen Frank now and then up to the trying age of eight ; but after that they had gone to live in the country, and we had lost sight of them for years. But on the strength of my having pulled his hair some dozen years ago, Frank, in his unconventional and airy way, insisted on calling us ' Christina ' and ' Peggy.' After dinner, Mrs. Talford Brown went up to put the twins to bed nothing was ever allowed to interfere with this domestic rite 52 MY FLIRTATIONS and then we all sat in the ugly little square garden, and watched a great yellow moon travel slowly up the sky. And Frank Hard- ing talked. He was as far removed from the ordinary football-playing young man as it is possible to be. To begin with, his father was a poet one of our finest latter-day lyrists and it was from him that he inherited all his sympathy, his feminine intuitions, and his charmingly impracticable theories. At present, of course, he was only a clever, somewhat lanky boy ; but his beautiful grey eyes made him almost handsome, and his perfectly easy manners were curiously attractive. He had the wildest ideas, and was the sort of man who might found a new religion, commit a murder, devote a lifetime to the East End, or take away his neighbour's wife and write a book to prove that his action was justified. Some years have passed since then, but I shall never be as- tonished to hear anything of Frank Harding, except that he had gone into the City and was paying. taxes in Bayswater. We saw a great deal of Frank in the days that followed. To enjoy Commemoration, one must be twenty and never have stayed in MY FLIRTATIONS 53 Oxford before. It was astonishing how much we managed to get into that week, and how much of Frank's society we had. . . . There were lazy mornings, punting on the Cherwell, and picnics to Godstow and Sanford Lasher, the ball at Christ Church, and the garden- parties in the colleges, for which we put on our best frocks, and stared at the celebrities, and then hurried home to a cosy tea in our rooms, where a dozen undergraduates fought deco- rously for the honour of handing the tea-cups. And then the endless strawberries, the valses that were quarrelled for, the unstinted devotion of the boys. . . . I am old-fashioned enough to like a young man to be in love. Even if his passion burns for someone else, one likes to see it, and it is still more interesting when the young man ex- pends his ardour on oneself. So Frank fell in love with me, and I liked it. ... I remember it all as if it were yesterday. There is the sad-coloured June day a harmony in soft greys and greens when we went to pick fritillaries in Mesopotamia. It was the day after Commemoration was over, and the narrow, willow-fringed river was de- 54 MY FLIRTATIONS serted. Afar off we could see the grey spires and towers of the University against the wide, white sky, while across the fat, buttercup-gilded meadows came the mellow, distant sound of Oxford bells. As Frank pushed the punt lazily up stream, we seemed wrapped in a mysterious green silence. We left the punt where the old chain ferry crosses the Cherwell, and plunged into the long new grass. I car- ried a basket for the fritillaries, and Frank had brought an empty soda-water bottle ; a proceed- ing which puzzled me immensely, until I found that all among the abundant grass studded with June flowers there leapt and danced hundreds of tiny, nimble, gay-hearted frogs, only lately emerged from the juvenile or tadpole state. ' They are so like undergraduates ! ' I cried, kneeling in the long grass and stretching depredatory fingers here and there, while Frank pretended to be offended, and declared I shouldn't put any of my frogs into his soda- water bottle. . . . But in the end we compro- mised, and Frank was set to gather the queer, spotted, purplish-brown fritillaries, whilst I crammed the leaping little reptiles into our bottle. . . . And so the June afternoon slipped Mv FLIRTATIONS 55 by, until the clang of evening bells warned us it was time to turn homewards. . . . The next morning, when the train which conveyed us back to town steamed out of the station, the two things I carried away with me as a remembrance of my first Commemoration were a lapful of La France roses and the sight of a pair of wistful grey eyes. Frank had got permission to stay in Oxford during a part of the vacation and work, but his work took a form which would scarcely have met with the entire approval of his tutor, seeing that he was reading for a First in classics. One night, a few days after, as Christina and I were dressing for an evening party, I was handed a letter in a strange handwriting. It contained a poem, and the poem was about myself! After Tony's telegrams and H anbury Price's post-cards it seemed idyllic to have a charming, clever young man writing poems about me ! I waved the missive triumphantly under Christina's nose, and made myself, as she remarked, odious for the rest of the evening. ' He says I am like the morning star shining above the mists of a murky city, and that the 56 MY FLIRTATIONS birds sing sweeter at my foot-fall, and skim like Hope across life's ' ' Life's fiddlestick ! ' said Christina. ' Pass those hot tongs. How you can encourage boys to write you such rubbish I can't conceive. And we're an hour late as it is. Get on your cloak, Peggy, and for Heaven's sake throw that drivel into the fire.' But I naturally did nothing of the kind, and when Frank appeared at our house a week later, somewhat sad of mien and looking rather thin, I did my best to cheer him up, though we neither of us said a word about the poem. He stayed until it was time to catch the last train to Oxford, and after that he was always ap- pearing at unexpected moments. He used to write me odd little abrupt notes, asking if I cared to see him ? What could I say ? It is awkward to tell people that you don't wish to see them. Besides besides, I did want to. ... It was only when it came to the stern realities of life that I took Christina's point of view, and saw what an impossible thing it was. ... I remember so well the day it was finally decided a cold, drizzling November afternoon. He had rushed up from the MY FLIRTATIONS 57 country, where he was living now that he had left Oxford, and had been shown into the long amber-and-white drawing-room, where they had forgotten to light a fire, so that the cold winter twilight wrapped us round as we sat. Frank had taken a First, and there was some idea of his getting a Fellowship. But he did not wish to stop in Oxford, or, indeed, in Eng- land. The imperial destinies of the English race was one of his hobbies, and he asked me to give up London and go to North- Western Canada, where he wanted to start a new com- munity. Visions of Margaret Fuller and the ' Blithedale Romance,' of Laurence Oliphant and his self-sacrificing bride, were evoked to tempt me. But I knew I still had sense enough to know that it was not for me. . . . The dreary November day had closed in before Frank rose to go. And long after he had gone I sat on in the cold dark room. One by one the lamps twinkled out all up the street, and a dreary piano-organ came and played some threadbare airs from a comic opera. . . . Christina was very nice to me when she found me sitting alone in the cold and the dark, for I think she knew I had been crying. . . . $8 MY FLIRTATIONS Frank Harding has always refused to see me since that day. He writes sometimes ; the last time I heard from him he was in South Africa, and I gathered from his letter that he considered the amalgamation, by marriage, of the Boer race the duty of all English settlers in the Transvaal. . . . There are times times when I am a little tired of the egotism and puerile frivolity of London young men, tired of their little quar- rels and their little admirations for fashionable divinities when I would give worlds to see Frank stretched in my deck-chair, his grey eyes gazing into futurity, and propounding even the most amazing of his curious social schemes. And he does he ever think of those old Oxford days, days full of cool green sha- dows and quick with emotion, over yonder in his home under a torrid sky ? Probably not probably not. ' There are no fields of amaranth on this side of the grave ' some poet has wisely written ; ' There is no name, with whatever emphasis of passionate love repeated, of which the echo is not faint at last.' MY FLIRTATIONS 59 CHAPTER V VAL REDMOND. HE was curiously pretty, incredibly ma- licious, and indisput- ably 'smart,' with a nice house in Sloane Street, where he en- tertained a great deal, and a little following of young gentlemen who copied his neck- ties and buttonholes, and whom one some- times saw giggling together in corners, and calling each other by pet names. When one of them wanted to give Val Redmond a birthday present in that set the young 60 MY FLIRTATIONS men constantly make each other little presents he chose a silver vinaigrette, which Val took out with him to dinner all that season. And yet the boy was very far from being a fool. If he had lived in less degenerate days, and had been obliged to work for his living, he might have made a name for himself. But as it was, he only gave amusing parties ; while one was haunted by misgivings if one had to leave his drawing-room early with one's reputation behind. When he gave dinners and Sunday lunches at his house in Sloane Street, his aunt, Lady Marchmont, presided. To have had only men's parties would not have suited Val. He liked the society of women, and particularly of old women ; but then his elderly female friends were invariably clever, and some had had, in addition, an almost historical past. ' Dear Julia Calverly,' he would say of the Dowager Countess he had the most astounding way of talking of his elderly dames ' I love that woman. It is as good as reading a scandalous " Memoire pour servir " to talk to her.' ' Julia is veryyfo de sieclel admitted a pasty- looking youth of nineteen. MY FLIRTATIONS 61 'Oh, my dear! . . . End of the last cen- tury, you mean,' smirked Val. One of the most amusing things about Mr. Valentine Redmond was his imperturbable coolness. Though hardly two-and- twenty, he had none of the tremors, the diffidences of youth. I have seen him talk to an archbishop or a foreign potentate with the same ease with which he would tackle an undergraduate or take a young lady down to supper. Not that you would ever have caught Val Redmond wast- ing his acidulous sweetness on a young girl. Women under thirty seldom went to his house. One of his least pleasing characteristics was a tendency to flout and pout. He was con- stantly having little quarrels with his intimate friends. His intimate friendships lasted, on an average, exactly six weeks. In other houses where they talk scandal it is usually about acquaintances, but in Val's drawing-room you generally heard his bosom friends deprived of their reputations. This is a trait which makes society feel uneasy, and to it one may perhaps attribute the brief duration of Val's friendships. Ours, for instance, though it was never per- fervid, lasted but a brief two months. 5* 62 MY FLIRTATIONS The Duchess of Birmingham brought him to our house. She was going to have her portrait painted, and Val was brought along to help to decide on her costume. He knew a great deal about clothes ; his taste was charming, his house as pretty as a house need be. Her Grace was a stout little person from Philadel- phia, who was at vast pains to acquire an English manner. Her chief desire, as far as I could make out, was to be painted in a coronet. But Mr. Redmond, with his head on one side and his eyes half shut, tabooed the idea of a diadem. He was rather in favour of sables, of dark velvets, of heavy brocades. Father, I remember, was furious when he had gone. ' Does the young puppy think he knows more about it than I do ? Confound his impudence why, I have been painting portraits for twenty years.' And yet, after all, it was Valentine's cos- tume which was chosen, and the Duchess brought him again more than once to see the picture as it progressed. Father always liked to have me in the studio when he was painting, so that every time he appeared we made a little more of each other's acquaintance. I think I MY FLIRTATIONS 63 was rather rude to him than otherwise, but he was the sort of person who disliked gush in women. Gushing was too much the prerogative of his ' boys,' who usually, by-the-bye, were heard addressing each other as * my dear.' Sitting on the oaken staircase of the studio, talking to Val while the Duchess's portrait went on below, I learnt a number of surprising things about London society. He told me of all the houses where a young man might permit him- self to be seen, where it would be to his ad- vantage to do so, and where it would be fatal, absolutely fatal, for him to appear. ' I had the imprudence to lunch with the Patterson-Tay- leurs, those new people in Prince's Gate ; and though, of course, a lunch doesn't count the same as a dinner, I assure you it was weeks before I heard the last of it. A young man can't be too careful where he goes,' Val confided to me one day with a rueful air. He had found me filling the bowls and vases with roses, and had insisted on being allowed to help. It was one of his talents, that of arranging flowers. He was sitting on the hall table, swinging his feet, and holding his head on one side as he twitched an amethyst-coloured orchid in front of the 64 MY FLIRTATIONS light. 'JThere is the question of dancing, too. Ah, not that? screamed Mr. Redmond in his rather shrill voice, as he plucked a huge poppy out of my hand ; ' you can't possibly put that in blue and white ; Nankin is only for roses ! What was I saying? Oh yes, about balls. Isn't it absurd of people to expect one to dance everywhere ? . . . Some of us were at Mrs. Vandeleur's ball the other night you know the woman I mean, with a quantity of drab daughters ? and she actually had the effrontery to seize me by the elbow and ask me why I wasn't dancing the polka ? As if anyone ever did anything but sup at the Vandeleurs ! and as if she didn't know perfectly well that one only dances at the houses where one dines! I resisted for a long time, and then she had the shocking taste to remind me that she had seen me leading the cotillon at the Duchess's with Lady Susan, when she knows that Lady Susan is one of the most amusing persons in London. She is \\\e fin-de-siecle old maid.'; I shall never forget our first dinner at his house in Sloane Street. It was the oddest party. There was something strange and unusual not only about the guests, but the very Mv FLIRTATIONS 65 dishes and the flowers. The dining-room, painted and decorated like that of a Roman villa, contained nothing but the table and one or two giant palms in pots of old faience. The tablecloth was nearly covered with a mass of pink rose-leaves, with here and there a spray of roses thrown carelessly on to this pink carpet. A huge lamp of Oriental workman- ship, hung by gold chains, lighted up the mass of rose colour, and there were none of the usual fripperies of a lady's table. But perhaps what struck one most on glancing round the room was the fact that all the men were boys, though they appeared prematurely old, and that all the ladies were elderly, though they, to be sure, looked unnaturally young. ' The glories of the past,' simpered the pale, clean-shaven youth who had taken me in, sur- veying the ladies with unabashed effrontery. ' It reminds one of the ruins of the Acropolis, don't you know.' My neighbour got very confidential as the dinner progressed. He gazed at me critically with tired eyes, under lids which drooped a little at the corners. ' Do you know our host well ? No ? A 66 MY FLIRTATIONS pity he's so shockingly malicious. Gives charming dinners as far as the people go but I don't think much of his cook, do you ? Oh no, I've only known him a fortnight ; he in- sisted on being introduced to me at the Vande- leurs' ball, and I thought, as he is a great friend of one of my dearest friends Tommy Single- ton, you know that he would be sure to be nice. . . . And I really do think he's charming. He would take no denial ; I've dined here already three times. . . . We go everywhere together. Do you see that weird old person opposite ? She says such quite too deliciously amusing things ; she is a great friend of the Prince of Wales' s. Tommy Singleton seems in great form to-night. He is so very charming ! I must introduce you to him, though I'm afraid, my dear Miss Wynman, that you won't get on very well. Tommy is so dreadfully frightened of debutantes. Don't you think dear Lady Rougemont's new toiipe'e is quite delicious ? I do. But then I adore the meretricious and the artificial. That is Miss Van Hoyt, the Ameri- can heiress; she always wears that miniature of an old gentleman with a hook nose and powdered hair. ,