Dinah Fleet

Chapter I

DlCK Rippon lived with his parents in a small Worcestershire town, where his father represented what in America would be called the Grain Interest, meaning that he bought and sold corn at such profit as was obtainable. Owing to the falling prices and the foreign importation, the trade was not quite what it had been, and it was decided that it was quite time Dick went into business and earned his living. Dick had not as yet exhibited any decided aptitude for business ; on the contrary, he had been found reclining on corn-sacks, reading a large, heavy, black, greasy old Shakespeare, in double small print columns, originally the property of Mrs. Rippon's father who had been connected with literature to the extent of keeping a shop where a few books were I B obtainable, in addition to walking-sticks, news papers, and tobacco.

In fact, Dick was not at all what a young man of business ought to be, or what a corn-dealer's son in an obscure provincial town might be expected to be. He loved books, and lived in another and a happier world with them. Who remembers or cares that wheat is a shilling a quarter down when he is reading Ivanhoe ? It happened that a lending library in the town, attached to the Christian Young Men's Institute, contained the Waverley novels — (" Wavverley's novels" the custodian called them) — and when Dick was eight years old, some kindly hazard, some petulant waft of fortune, put " Rob Roy " into his hands, and the delight of those hours will never fade from memory while he lives. He mis-pronounced half the words, misunderstood many of the Scots expressions, omitted most of the love-making, and was a little muddled about the plot, and his joy was beyond description in mere words.

As years went on he read it over and over again, and all the others too, but there was none for which he had such a tender affection, such a feeling as one may have when seeing in later life some old garden where one played as a child, as he had for Frank Osbaldistone, Bailie Nicol Jarvie and Andrew Fairservice. Di Vernon he did not so much care for. She was haughty and sentimental, and her beauty would hardly appeal to a boy of his age. Well, all this was very delightful, of course, but not quite the best preparation for the perfect (or future-perfect) cornfactor. Indeed, he had one day been so led astray as to exclaim before his assembled family, and the "gell" who waited, " Bother corn ! " after his father had talked about that useful cereal without a moment's divergence from the subject, for three-and-twenty minutes.

This naturally caused nearly as much indignation as Mrs. Prig's celebrated denial of the existence of Mrs. Harris. In the end, the following arrangement was come to. Mr. Rippon had a friend, who was secretary to a company, which dealt chiefly in tea and pepper, and carried on its dealings in the City of London. This friend promised to find a place for young Rippon, and one fine day two travellers, one elderly, who had chosen his line of life, his small but sufficing orbit, and gravitated round it for many years, and one 3 B young, barely arrived at years of responsibility, to say nothing of discretion, might have been seen issuing from Paddington Terminus and asking a policeman the nearest way to the City. Having at length arrived at that centre of commerce (greatly to the wonder and bewilder ment of Dick, who had never seen London), they had a satisfactory interview with the tea and pepper man, after which Rippon took his son to hunt for quarters in that abode of decadent grandeur called Bloomsbury, haunted of students, doctors, architects, respectable Semitic burghers, theatrical ladies, and above all by lodgers and boarders.

After a time they found a furnished apartment, consisting of two communicating rooms on the third floor of one of the highest, gauntest houses in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square (which is a mixture of Bloomsbury and Soho, tempered with art), which Mr. Rippon declared to be " the very thing, my boy." My boy, being unac climatized to London, thought that if this depres sing abode, haunted by past gentility and present frowsiness, with a faint " catty " smell lingering about the staircase, was the very thing, it would be interesting to see an interior which might be considered not at all the thing, in some place where shop assistants or other persons with small weekly salaries lived, not to say workmen. And London made him shudder for the first time at its inward and outward ugly possibilities.

Mr. Rippon cross-examined the plausible but grimy landlady, with some severity, and finally agreed to pay a rather exorbitant rent, with "scuttles" estimated at ninepence extra, though he did remark that if there were a hundredweight in each scuttle it would nearly pay its cost at that rate. Then father and son went back to the station, fetched Dick's boxes and trunks, deposited them in Charlotte Street, and went off again in search of that meal for which both of their healthy rural appetites had for some time yearned. They gravitated quite naturally, like a " stream of tendency," towards the Criterion, that being the only place they knew the name of where eatables might be had, and equally naturally they went down into the grill-room of that establish ment, Dick feeling somewhat self-conscious as he and his father tramped the length of the buffet, under the eyes of the young ladies in black with white collars and cuffs, and the customers who sometimes turned round with a lazy casual stare.

Dick felt that his clothes and appearance looked countrified and that his boots made too much noise, and supposed the young ladies and customers would make satirical remarks about him when he was gone. Tbey did not, as a fact, make any kind of remark about him, being far too much occupied with themselves to pay any attention to two persons who looked as if they might be up for a cattle-show. In the grill-room they each had a steak slightly underdone, boiled potatoes, Stilton cheese, and a pint of bitter ale. After this solid and unorna mental repast, they went upstairs into the smoking room, and smoked two dusty-looking " Larry Nargers," on the recommendation of the waiter, who was venerable and haughty, and overawed them. Over these, and some whisky and soda, the father gave the son advice and encourage ment.

" Dick, my boy, you are beginning a new life, you know, as you may say, to-day. I have had the luck to get you a position in the City without very much trouble" — (Mr. Rippon said a position in the City as if Dick had been invited to be an Alderman Past the Chair for Portsoken Ward, or pressed to accept the Freedom in a casket) — "and although the salary is only a small one, still you are beginning your business career in a much more comfortable way than most young men. Why, when I was a boy — well, there ! Never mind. With what I shall allow you, and what you will get from the office, you ought to be able to keep yourself pretty decently. Don't waste time over rubbishing books. There ! I'm not going to preach, or to tell you never to get into debt, to keep clear of women, and not to get drunk, because all young men do all these things whether they've been preached to or not, when the opportunities come.

But don't you get losing your money like a fool ; if you get into debt let me know, and for the rest, always remember, my dear lad, that you are the only son of an honest man in Corn, and are never to do anything you would be ashamed to tell me about. And — that's about all, I believe. God bless you, lad, and now goo'-bye. I must be off to catch the train." And the simple-hearted old corn-dealer grasped his son's hand very hard, paid for the cigars and drinks, and went away. Dick remained thinking for a little while, and then strolled out to look at London town . And that is how Dick Rippon came to be driving a pen along the ledgers of the Nepaul Pepper Company, Limited. After spending six months in a daily course of mounting a stool at 9 a.m., adding up columns of figures and addressing envelopes till mid-day, bolting a hasty and insufficiently nitrogenous lunch at the Aerated Bread Company's shop close at hand, then adding up more figures and address ing more envelopes till 5 p.m., Dick came to the conclusion that business was even more beastly than he had anticipated, and his love for literature grew stronger than ever.

What he wanted was the London of writers and painters, the Bohemia he had read about in Thackeray, the men that had studios in which they smoked pipes and cracked jokes and painted pictures, the men that sat up talking clever talk till three in the morning in some chambers in a gloomy old Inn —in short all that kind of life he had never seen, but had idealized out of books. In London, of course, he was able to obtain books, but not much time to read them in. The result was that he sat up late, and that made his business in the morning more irksome than ever. Ah ! that Sunday morning sleep ! It takes months of regular hours and going to the office at nine to teach the real value of it. Meanwhile, instead of associating with poets and the clever Bohemians he had dreamed about, the only acquaintances apparently accessible to him were the sallow, ill developed, anæmic, top-hatted, young cockney clerks, who smoked bad cigarettes, bought the Sporting Times, frequented the cheap parts of music-halls, and were always missing their trains in the morning and boasting of having " heads."

Indeed, it did not take much roistering to upset their poor little noddles. But it happened at last that Dick's ambition was partly realized, and he was fortunate enough to make the acquaintance of a man who was a gentleman and a literary man, and one possessing, among other accomplishments, a thorough knowledge of that wonderful and mysterious aggregation of human lives and dwell ings of towns and villages, industries, and idle ness, gold and grime, mirth and misery, on which a universe of stars looks down in wonder, called London. John Onslow, as this man was called, could tell you without hesitation what the proper cab-fare was from anywhere to anywhere else, where the cheapest and best food, clothes, lodging and tobacco were obtainable, what a particular quarter, street, or house was notable for, if notable at all, and what once stood where something quite different, or nothing at all, now stands.

Though a comparatively young man, his memory of London seemed to reach back to the sixteenth century. His studies did not, however, exclude or ignore modern things. He knew the latest slang words and phrases special to various kinds of people, and had many acquaintances in nearly all ranks of the community, from the young men who sold papers to the — well, he at any rate had a bowing acquaintance with Royalty. And this Onslow took a fancy to Dick Rippon, whose soul he saw to be wearing itself away in the dim narrow rut of clerkdom and to be made for other, if not better, things than tea and pepper. They made acquaintance accidentally one Sunday afternoon at a demonstration in Hyde Park, at which they happened to be looking on at the same time and place, and one obliged the other with a match, and then a remark or two was passed concerning the demonstration, and each found that the other had the same opinion as himself, viz. that a park kept up at the public expense for the pleasure, health, and recreation of the public, ought not to be made intolerable to decent people on the only day in the week on which it is possible to many of them to enjoy a stroll in it, " merely to gratify the vanity of a number of braying jackasses who overwork the police, trample the grass into mud, drop paper about, pass idiotic resolutions which nobody pays any attention to, and do no sort or kind of good to themselves or anyone else."

So Onslow said, and Dick replied that he thought much the same, on which a youthful bystander, with a large dirty red badge on, said to Dick, — " We don't want none o' yew bloomin' torfs 'ere." " Now listen to me," said Dick, " I work from nine to five with half an hour out for dinner. And then I work all the evening . . " " While our friend with the badge is probably waltzing in High Street, Islington, to Hi-tiddley hi-ti," interposed Onslow. " — and have to dress properly, and get things washed, and for that I get a good deal less than a good many chaps like you can earn in less time. I don't think it's fair to call me a bloomin' tors under those circumstances." The badge-wearer (one of those youths of about nineteen, with very short hair and a large " bowler" hat, who would describe himself on the charge sheet as a " labourer "), instead of making a direct reply to this argumentative appeal, turned to a friend, and said, " 'Ere's a tors wants to Hi tiddley-hi-ti," and then both laughed.

Onslow said, " Now we had better seek fresh woods and pastures new, before there is what the papers call a fracas, which the average' reporter pronounces as if it rhymed to jackass." And so began the friendship of John Onslow and Dick Rippon, and it has lasted now a long time. One winter evening, Onslow took Dick to a dance, a " Cinderella," given by a volunteer regi ment, in which Onslow had one or two friends among the officers. It took place in the drill-hall, a pleasant place, the walls neatly decorated with standing rows of Martinis and bayonets, and a Nordenfelt gun smiling through an evergreen wreath in each corner, " for couples to cannon against," as one of the subalterns, who was witty, remarked. It was the period between Christmas and the New Year, and the room was gaily festooned with holly and evergreens, and red flannel mottoes on a white ground, and the regimental armorial device, while the band, string and brass, worked away on a platform at the other end.

Beyond this end of the room was the canteen, into which thirsty couples roamed between the dances, a canteen which was really three canteens, by etiquette, for there were separate places for officers, non-commissioned officers and men, though on occasions of this festive kind such separation was not always expected to be rigidly observed. That is, the higher condescended to associate with the lower ranks, not vice versa. The ladies were in proportion to the canteens, to use a rather brutal comparison ; that is, there were the officers' ladies, the non-commissioned officers' ladies, and the men's ladies, the latter mighty fine. Onslow introduced Dick Rippon to the subal terns, one of whom, a long-legged, red-haired Irishman (most of the officers seemed for some reason or other to be Irish, and the pleasant mellow tongue resounded in all parts of the room), said, — " Come in the canteen, now, till this dance is over, and by the time you've had your drink I'll be able to introduce you to a lady worth waltzing with, and worth lookin' at, tew."

Dick accompanied the Celto-Scandinavian gentle man in the smart mess-uniform, who produced champagne, and talked to him over it, sitting on a wooden table, and talked to the sergeant-major (also Erse,) and the sergeant-instructor (whose name was Sullivan), who happened to come in for refreshment too, and to have a quiet little conversation about the Rijment and the 'Tack-formation, as a relief to the monotony of mere social commonplace which they had to talk to their guests. Then the officer, whose name was Tully, said, " Ah, now, I'm sorry. Mrs. Knight's got a partner. I'll get you another — look at her, that's Mrs. Knight. Billy Knight is one of our captains, but this is the first we've ever heard or seen of Mrs. Knight, but she's a thunderin' beauty, anyway." " I should be a trifle afraid of her, I think," said Dick, looking at the lady, an admirably preserved and really charming woman of about thirty-five, with an extremely dissatisfied expression.

She was tall, statuesque, with large, deep-set, calm grey eyes, dark-brown curly hair, a body in excellent proportion, inclining to the robust, and well-shaped head, hands and feet. She was dressed remark ably well in black, and was looking rather sulky, but that was only because her partner had been a fool, and had stamped on her toes occasionally. Dick had said he would be afraid of her, in a semi-jocular way. " Oh, get away out of that ! " said Lieutenant Tully, grasping Dick firmly by the elbow, as if he were a policeman running him in. " Come on now. Mrs. Knight, this is Mr. (What's your name ?) Mr. Rippon, a great friend of my own, and dances like a prince of the blod." Mrs. Knight bowed with graceful majesty, and, relaxing her gloomy expression, said, " I only saw a prince of the blood dance once, and it suggested to me a mustang bucking.

I am very sorry, Mr. Rippon, but my programme is quite full, and as it is, we shall have to go before I have carried out all my contracts." " Couldn't you manage to work a little overtime on an occasion like this, Mrs. Knight?" asked Onslow, with a sweet smile, as he joined the group, " because my dance is very low down, I know?" " Yes, you are very low down," replied the beauty calmly, but with a light in the grey eyes. " I'm afraid you'll get left. Come and give me a glass of wine, now, instead." When she was alone with Onslow, she said, " How did you know ? " " I saw you one morning in Brook Street enter ing your most imposing premises. Being struck by your appearance, for which you will not blame me, I asked the nearest shopman who you were, and he told me you were Madame Jeanne. Better than the old business at Oxford, isn't it ?

" " Have you got your knife into me about any thing, Jack?" . " Not a bit." " Have you been, or are you going to give me away to any of these people ? " " Nothing further from me. I only made that jocular allusion to your profession for your own understanding. They would not know." c DINAH FLEET " Have you said anything about me to Billy ? " " Not a word. He thinks he introduced us as total strangers. I behaved all right, didn't I?" " Oh, yes ! I only wanted to know what you are up to. I didn't think you a likely person to do an unkind thing, Jack, but you have to keep your eyes about you in this world." " Especially when they are eyes like yours. You go on and prosper, Augusta. By the way, what have you been playing at for the last several years, since you left off tending the paternal licensed victualling establishment ?

Where did you buy that American accent, which becomes you extremely ? " " In the best place to get it. I haven't time to tell now. Come and see me some day, and I'll tell you." " Meaning you want a little time to invent in ? " " Now that's unkind," she replied, looking at the little bubbles going up in her glass and bursting as they reached the surface. Here Tully joined them with a lady and Dick. " What are you thinkin' of now ? " said the jovial subaltern to Mrs. Knight. "You're lookin pensuv." To this, Mrs. Knight replied, — " I was only thinking these little globes of gas going up in procession were like the generations of men hunting ideals. They realize at the top, every time." "You don't idealize much, yourself?" said Onslow. " Well, no, I'm pretty real. I must go and look for my partner."

And she walked gracefully away — " Incedit regina" observed Onslow, to Dick, who said, " Ask another." Onslow went on, " I like her accent. It's not the regular Saratoga squawk, but the talk of an Englishwoman who has been in America ; and she has caught the American taste and perfection in dressing." "What do you know about dress ? " asked Miss Tully, with whom Dick had just been dancing, a tall, slender girl, with big blue eyes, plenty of fair hair, a rather long, good-looking face, a kind heart, a not very wise head, a ready laugh, and a bit of a temper, in short what may be called a "jolly" girl, who said, " Sure I will ! " when Dick asked her to give him a dance. And he danced with Miss Tully, who laughed and chattered and enjoyed her dancing as she enjoyed all other pleasant things, including the supper which shortly followed, at which her long-legged brother, a lady with whom he had been dancing, Captain and Mrs. Knight, and Jack Onslow were present, in the smaller and cosier officers' room, where, at Tully's instigation, the corporal in charge brought cold pie and salad and the everlasting champagne, and they had a merry banquet, Tully and his sister doing most of the talking and making the room aromatic with brogue.

Captain Knight was a rather tall, dark man, not exactly handsome, but with a good-humoured sagacious face, an expression like a dog you could trust, and a slightly cockney accent. He was supposed to be very rich, and interested in horses and prize fighters and theatrical matters, and he was cer tainly a good, kind fellow, and generally liked, and that is nearly all there is to say about him, but enough. Here we may give heed for a moment to a thing that Dick Rippon did, and its consequences. Having had, under pressure from the hospitable Tully, a fair amount of champagne, and having by ig C nature a good proportion of that vanity that doth hedge a young literary man of poetic aspirations, he assumed courage to say to Onslow, — " I say, look at this thing. The person who is called the Guv'nor or Boss by my fellow workers copped it, and returned it to me without a word.

He had a most stricken expression." And he handed Onslow a piece of paper. It had an invoice heading printed at the top, but the MS. portion was as follows : — A SONG OF SCENTS i. How many summers' roses are now rotten Since I knew you, White Rose ? Until to-day I thought I had forgotten, And you have, I suppose ? I think you told me, once or twice, You love me, didn't you ? A story may be very nice Although it isn't true. ii. One fragrant hour, Wood Violet, We watched the evening star. I wonder if you quite forget, I wonder where you are ? It was a golden sea we sailed in, In which we lost the way, Yet longer love we somehow failed in I think, what do you say ? " Oh, how scandalous ! " said Onslow. " Now, if this had been Stanzas to a Ceylon Blend, or the Pepper-castor of Nepaul, an Oriental Legendary Epic, it would have been excusable.

But this sort of thing — well, it contains that mixture of melancholy and cynicism which seems indispensable to the young poet. Never mind, old chappie when you are older it will get into your prose too. Don't you think your employer would have been even more disgusted, and the literary world pro portionately better pleased, if you had made your second stanza like this, — I sang of you. Wood Violet, Unto the evening star. It twinkled to my triolet, It danced to my guitar. Tinkle, tinkle, my guitar, Snap a string and there you are ! There, you shall have the rest at a more con venient season. It's delightfully unbusinesslike. Relieves the Tea-dium I suppose ? " Miss Tully seized it, and said, " Potry ? Give it here ! " And she read it aloud con expressione and con brogua. Dick blushed, but was pleased, and the lady who had been Mr. Tully's partner, a Miss Fleet, said, " I think it's very good."

Dick looked at her, having hardly noticed her hitherto, and he saw the light in her eyes like the distant sparkle in a dark night, and his soul surrendered. His soul was quite right, it may be said. And then the string of his tongue was loosened, and he talked, and talked well, as one used to talk long ago when the years were young and hope was new, and there was beauty and interest in life, and love was better than wine, and the flaming sword had never driven one out of Fool's Paradise.

Chapter II

No one unfamiliar with London can quite picture the different rank, age, dignity, complexion, as it were, or bouquet, of houses by merely hearing the name of their street or square mentioned. It is a kind of mental response to stimulus which requires long habit and a special co-ordination to be arrived readily at. In the same way only a sailor can apparently smell his way in a fog or snow-storm, and tell you (as a Norwegian pilot once told me) that the sea in certain parts of an intricate channel makes noises different from those which it makes in other parts. Therefore, although to the Londoner the mere mention of Fitzroy Square at once suggests a definite class of people, period of architecture, degree of spacious gloom and moderate gentility, to other ears it probably only brings back reminis cences of Thackeray, wherefore a few words of description for the benefit of those who do not know may be excused, and if necessary skipped by those who do.

It is in some respects conveniently situated. For instance, if it is convenient to you to be in a fairly cheap neighbourhood, and yet to have " Something Square " as your address, to be in easy reach of the City, of the stations in Euston Road, and of that great and commercial artery called Tottenham Court Road, as well as Regent Street, Fitzroy Square is your place. Its immediate surroundings are far from lordly, and indeed verge on the squalid, but the Square itself is stately and stony, and has grass and trees in it, and the inevitable locked gate of which the residents have a right to the key. There is nothing obtrusively immoral about Fitzroy Square — except perhaps a lingering flavour of Art, now fleeting westward and north westward, which has not yet quite deserted the neighbourhood, but it is quite a respectable art.

Fallen grandeur can fall very low sometimes, as certain parts of Soho can testify, but Fitzroy Square has retained its dignity. The grandeur has fallen with its face to the foe, and wrapped its toga round it like the dying Cæsar. It is inhabited by families who occupy all the house, and do not take lodgers. Lodgers can find accommodation in the different streets leading immediately into the Square, and within sight of its trees, but not actually within it, as a rule. And there is nothing commercial about the Square, none of those collections of nasty zinc and brass plates with " Somebody and Co." on them, with wholesale goods packed and stacked visibly inside what ought to be the dining-room window, which occur in some squares which might be mentioned. Oh no, the dining-room windows admit light (in modest quantities) into real dining-rooms, and are fenced from intrusive curiosity by plaited cane screens, or stained glass, or peradventure little glass greenhouses like portable aquaria, but never of course brown wire blinds with gilt lettering on them.

And the houses have retained (naturally) their liberal dimensions, wide stone staircases, carved white marble mantelpieces, and big rooms, which sometimes have to be divided into two by modern occupants. The Square children — there are lots of them — are allowed to play in the Square, and there are several nice churches not far off, which shows that though no longer opul ent, or exactly aristocratic, the Square is highly respectable. To have a large number of children is in itself a strong proof of respectability, provided of course they are legally come by. It shows up in strong relief the element of domesticity, that bulwark of English virtue, the Home, for not owning which, and its inevitable children, we pity the French so much and so often. The only time when the Square is the least disreputable is Sunday, and that is because the authorities fail to clean it on that morning, apparently because cleansing is wanted more then than on any other morning.

The inhabitants of the neighbouring streets, who have not such a high standard of respectability as those of the Square, apparently select Saturday night to dis tribute such hats, boots, vegetables, eggshells, dead dogs and cats as they have no further use for, to say nothing of the less popular portions of rabbits, about the surface of the Square, presumably out of malice aforethought, while contingents of dismal demonstrators with dirty flags assemble there about lunch-time (which is dinner-time on Sunday) previous to straggling to the Park to pass resolu tions put simultaneously by sound of bugle from waggons. Well, in this excellent Fitzroy Square of ours, there was a boarding-house. I said there were no lodgers. There were not. This was accommoda tion in a private family, access to which was only obtainable by those who satisfied the family as to their fitness to become inmates of Henrietta House, as it was called.