Needs Must. A novel

Book I

"SUZANNE." CHAP. PAGE I. Number 12, Sark Place . . . 1 II. Mrs. Taster's Successor ... 10 III. Day Book and Diary .... 18

Book II. Mrs

CLEVERLEY'S CAREER. I. An Evening at Home .... 25 H. The Knowledge of Good and Evil. . 33 III. The Enigmas of Life .... 46 IV. "The Chain that Galls, but Cleaveth not" 56 V. Miss Lowndes 68 VI. " Eace Eacts " 77 VII. A Transaction in Skirts ... 85 VIII. Impasse ...... 95 IX. The Head of the Serpent . . .108 X. A Legal Opinion ..... 116 XL St. Michael's Alley . . . .125 XII. "Very Tired of it all". . . .139 VI CONTENTS. CHAP. page XIII. A Eespite and a Loophole . . • 153 XIV. "Very Chalk" . " . . . .164 XV. The End of the Sermon . . .171 book in. BLIND FAITH. I. Archie 185 II. A False Scent 197 III. A Prohibitive Price . . . .207 TV. " Love goes where He is Sent " . . 222 V. How? When? and Where?. . . 241 VI. "Speshawl" 254 VII. Lady Drysdale's Confession . . . 270 VIII. The Last Word Book I. "SUZANNE." " Le naif produit du monde ou nous sommes." Dumas fils.

Chapter I. Number

12, SARK PLACE. About half way up a narrow street which debouches into the Uxbridge Road somewhere opposite Kensington Gardens, stands a little house that in point of elegance compares rather favourably with its neighbours. The steps are scrupulously clean and white ; the windows are shrouded with dainty India muslin curtains ; during the greater part of the year the little front B garden is one blaze of gay-coloured flowers, and tbe brass door-plate on which the name of " Suzanne " is engraved shines like a burnished mirror. The name on that door-plate is somewhat misleading. It suggests a foreigner and a dressmaker, and the lady who owns it is neither the one or the other. She is Mrs. Stephens, the widow of an officer in the Bombay Cavalry, and although she dabbles in dresses she does not make them.

She is a revendeuse. She buys very first rate finery from ladies' maids "who have the ward robe," and sometimes little else, or from the ladies themselves when they are bard up for ready money; and she sells these gorgeous garments to other ladies, who wish to rival in appearance their wealthier friends, but who have not always the chance. From Madame Suzanne these aspiring dames and damsels may often purchase a twenty guinea costume — just a little tbe worse for wear — for two. And no one is any the wiser. For although Mrs. NUMBER 12, SARK PLACE. 3 Stephens may occasionally divulge to a wavering bidder the name and social status of the original possessor of some smart garment (particularly when she has only bought the aforesaid garment from the maid) she will never for any amount of pressure let out the names of those who buy from her.

Misses Maude, Blanche, and Ethel may go forth into society, gorgeous in second hand finery, to swell the ranks of well dressed women, without the slightest fear of their little secret oozing out through any in discretion on Suzanne's part. She is a great chatterbox, but she is also one of the women who can talk without telling. Where her professional honour is concerned she is as silent as the grave. When Mrs. Stephens first came to reside at 12, Sark Place (I must give her local habitation a name) she afforded much food for gossip of a not very charitable kind. Mrs. Rugg, the pianoforte teacher, who lived at No. 10, felt certain that her new neigh bour was " no better than she should be." Mrs. Islam, the wife of the surgeon wbo resided at 14, was convinced that she recognized in the new comer a member of the Alhambra corps de ballet.

As to the opposite neighbours, who were of a some what humbler class (for the east side of Sark Place is not on a social equality with the west), they were divided between won der, amusement, and admiration. It must be admitted that Mrs. Stephens' appearance accounted for a goodly amount of gossip. To begin with she was in widow's mourning, and if you wear weeds you must expect to be not only stared at, but also talked about. Then she had a very comical expression, and the pink rouge vegetale, with which she overlaid her fat cheeks, seemed to accentuate the mirth ful twinkle in her round, beady, black eyes. " Not at all the sort of eyes that a widow ought to have," Mrs. Islam observed, adding, " in fact I don't believe she ever had a husband." There, however, the surgeon's bride was NUMBER 12, SARK PLACE. wrong.

Mrs. Stephens had had three husbands : " And might have had three more if I chose, but I'm not such a fool," she was wont to observe. But all the same her appearance was not in her favour, and although she had never figured at the Alhambra in any capacity, not even as a spectator, she carried an atmosphere of that scene of revelry about with her wherever she went. It was not until Mrs. Stephens had been residing in Sark Place for some five or six weeks that the door-plate made its appear ance, and then Mrs. Rugg said that " the woman was only a dressmaker after all," and spurred by curiosity she called on her neighbour that very afternoon with the pro fessed intent to ascertain what might be her charges for making a morning dress. She found Madame Suzanne seated in a low rocking-chair, reading " Friendship " by Ouida.

A cup of coffee stood on a small table by her side, and in the saucer were the ashes of a recently finished cigarette. "I called, Madam Susan, to ask what you charge for making a cachemire dress mounted on alpaca ? " " I don't charge anything." " You make dresses for nothing ! " " I don't make them at all." " I beg your pardon, I'm sure, the plate on the door — mis — misled me." " Really." A minute or two later Mrs. Rugg found herself once more in the street, and a prey to the most vivid curiosity. All she had gained by that visit was a glimpse at the interior of her neighbour's drawing room, which she described to her acquaintances as " exquisite, but not at all the thing." " Gay-coloured lamps suspended from the ceiling, my dear Mrs. Islam, and such beautiful rugs on the floor, far handsomer than anything you or I have in our rooms, but that sort of person gets the best of everything, I've heard.

On the wall is a paper that looks like matting, and in the corners are high vases filled with grasses, NUMBER 12, SARK PLACE. 7 and the whole place is crammed with knick knacks. Oh, it doesn't look at all tbe thing." " Not at all, evidently," echoed the guests at Mrs. Islam's Wednesday tea fight. Before long, carriers' vans began to make their appearance constantly at the door of No. 12, and it seemed that the postman rarely passed Mrs. Stephens' house. She had, moreover, a constant succession of callers. Some came in the morning, some in the afternoon, and some at dusk. Some would drive up to the door in a cab laden with parcels, which they would carry into tbe house, emerging from it shortly after wards empty-handed; whilst others who arrived empty-handed would leave tbe door staggering under the weight of a huge bundle.

The day after Sark Place had been worry ing the vexed question of Suzanne's pro fession, position, and moral character for exactly five months, Mrs. Ely, the dentist's widow, who resided at No. 5, made an important discovery. She had that very morning followed two smartly dressed young ladies from the very door of No. 12 to the Notting Hill Gate station, and in the course of the walk she bad overheard one of them say to tbe other : " Well, Dixey, I think we have done a good morning's business with Suzanne to day. That pink is dirt cheap at thirty-five shillings. I only hope Leila won't recognize it at her ball." Whereupon Dixey had made reply : "I shouldn't care one jot whether she did, or whether she didn't. If she doesn't like her poor relatives purchasing her cast off clothes, let her give them new ones.

My dear Tiny, just think how rich she must be when she can afford to discard that pink." Before dusk it was known throughout Sark Place that Madame Suzanne was a buyer and seller of second-band clothes, and great was the satisfaction felt at the discovery. It was a relief to know at last for certain who and what the woman was. NUMBER 12, SARK PLACE. It is not often that in London people take so vivid an interest in the ways and doings of their neighbours. But then it must be admitted that Mrs. " Suzanne " Stephens was a neighbour of no common order.

Chapter II. Mrs

TASKER'S SUCCESSOR. Before proceeding any further with my story I would enumerate the conditions and circumstances that led to Major Stephens' widow becoming a revendeuse (I use tbe French word for brevity). They were these. First, a small income which left no margin either for smart clothes or amuse ment ; secondly, a large capital of energy that had to be invested in work of some kind — pent up it might have proved dangerous; and thirdly, an innate love of finery, that made any work unconnected with gay-coloured silks, satins, and brocades somewhat uncongenial, and consequently unHkely to be in any degree successful. Mrs. Stephens was Anglo-Indian to her finger tips — an Anglo-Indian of a bygone type, of the type that prevailed in the days when intercourse between the two countries was more restricted than at present, and when nobody dreamt of coming home for a few weeks, seeing that it took months to get home.

She had gone out to India as a girl of sixteen to join her father, a general in the Company's service. At eighteen she had married an officer in the Bengal Artillery, who died two years later, leaving his widow to the care of her papa, who was by no means grateful for the honour. His daughter, however, did not trouble him long. On the day she came of age she married for the second time, and before she was thirty she was once more a widow. " But I'm sure to marry again," she told her vexed and indignant parent. " I've got into the knack of it now. And then I've got no incumbrances — and men like that. All the same, I wish my poor little babe had been born ahve." " Well, I hope this time you'll marry someone who can leave you something, and not a penniless idiot," growled the General. " Remember that you have reached years of discretion now — if you're ever going to reach them."

" I shall marry somebody who is smart looking and cheerful," she rephed, calmly. Major Stephens happened to be both. But he was also poor. He had nothing to leave his widow, and at his death, five years later, she returned to England " sick of marrying so often," she declared, and " determined to retire from the service." Her father was dead by this time, but she was not much the richer by his demise. He had never saved. Neither had any of her three husbands. And when affairs were wound up, two hundred a year was all the lively widow had to subsist upon. " And you can't keep a cat upon that," she said, adding, " I shall have to do something." But what ? One scheme after another had suggested itself to her fertile imagina tion, but was rejected as impossible. At length she decided upon taking a little house in Jermyn Street, and letting rooms to single gentlemen.

But that scheme did not answer long. The little house com manded a large rent, and the single gentle men demanded attention of a kind that their landlady was not prepared to bestow. She liked chatting with them on the stair case, but she did not like looking after their personal comfort. "Drat their dirty linen! Why don't they count it out themselves ? " she was wont to exclaim on Monday mornings. Then some of the younger gentlemen ob jected to Mrs. Stephens' appearance, and were afraid she wanted to marry them. They did not admire her lively little ways. They did not believe that she was a lady, and some of them doubted the past exis tence of a Major Stephens. Altogether the apartments - for - single - gentlemen scheme proved a failure, and the little house in Jermyn Street had to be given up, and poor Susie was just beginning to despair of finding remunerative work for her idle hands to do when she happened to meet one day in Oxford Street a young person named Jessie Potter, who had lived for a short time in Calcutta as lady's maid to the wife of a well-known judge, a personal friend of the defunct Stephens.

The lively widow, who had neither a large circle of acquaintances in London nor the means of cultivating her very small one, was delighted to see Jessie again. " How smart you look, Potter ! I daresay you've picked up a husband." "Indeed, I've done nothing half so foolish. L know when I'm well off, Mrs. Stephens. I'm living now with the young Duchess of Doncaster." Mrs. Stephens' interest in a Duchess was something truly sublime. She had never known one personally, she never hoped for such an honour; but she hked talking to somebody who lived with one, and sbe cross-questioned Miss Potter upon the ways and doings of her Grace of Doncaster with an eager interest that made Jessie feel very superior. She had so much valuable know ledge to impart. " We live half the year in Park Lane, and the other half at Breve HalL Of course we have a good deal of visiting in the autumn.

We always go to Scotland for August, and we generally run over to Paris for Easter ; but I call London home." " And tell me about the Duchess's clothes, Jessie. I love to hear about clothes. Where does she buy them ? " " Some in Paris, and some in London, and a good deal from Morgan and Redfern. I have the wardrobe — this was a Morgan costume." " It is smart. But, I say, Jessie, what do you do with all the dresses — those you don't want to wear ? " " Sell them, of course. But I am rather put out just now, for Mrs. Tasker, to whom I have sold them hitherto, has had a para lytic stroke, and she'll never be good for business again, poor dear lady! She was the widow of one of his Grace's old tutors, the Reverend Mr. Tasker, who died leaving her next to nothing. But she did a roaring trade as a wardrobe woman.

She lived in Caroline Street, Eaton Square." Susie's black eyes sparkled with dehght. " Did a roaring trade with the clothes, Jessie ? How lovely ! How did she manage it ? Who bought them from her ? " " Who didn't buy them from her, Mrs. Stephens ? She was known, you see — known in our set — and known to have our things, as well as Lady Spillsbury's, and Mrs. Anton Meyer's, and a heap of other and well-known people's clothes. Why, Miss Lowndes, who is a regular beauty, got no end of things from her, and so did her cousins, the Miss Tyrrells, who live down at Folkestone. Whenever Miss Lowndes doesn't care about a frock she despatches it to Miss Helen Tyrrell. They are just the same figure, and they both wear my lady's things, down to her ball shoes, and gloves, and " " Oh, Jessie, I'll take Mrs. Tasker's place; just you give me her shoes to step into.

Shouldn't I love it, that's all ! " And thus it came to pass that the Major's widow succeeded to the business formerly carried on by the relict of the Reverend Mr. Tasker. Susie Stephens quitted Jermyn Street, and with the aid of Miss Potter, and Mrs. Burberry, Lady Spillsbury's maid, and other important functionaries, she was soon fairly launched in London as a first-class revendeuse. That she should take up her residence in Sark Place had been Jessie's sug gestion. " You must be in a quiet, snug, and yet a perfectly respectable neighbourhood," said the Duchess's maid. " You mustn't be in too fashionable a part, for it soon gets known who and what you are, and if ladies come to you (and they probably will sometimes) they won't care to run across their acquaintances in the street. But at the same time you must not be too far away."

" Fulham ? " suggested the widow. " I know some nice lodgings in the Mabel Grove — only the cabmen will wink wben you tell them to drive there." " Bayswater is more proper," said Jessie. And so Bayswater it was. c

Chapter III. Day Book And Diary

From the very outset of her business career Madame Suzanne, in conformity with the advice of Jessie Potter, kept a day book and a diary. " Mrs. Tasker always did it," said Jessie, who considered that whatever Mrs. Tasker had done Mrs. Stephens should do. The day book contained merely formal entries relative to purchases and sales, but the diary showed many an interesting page, re plete with Suzanne's descriptions of her customers ; to say nothing of her views upon the state of affairs in general. She also kept a list of her regular clients — of those from whom she bought, and those to whom sbe sold ; and then she had a second list of the ladies with whom she dealt personally, and those whose maids alone she interviewed; DAY BOOK AND DIARY. 19 and then there was a third list of what she termed " casuals," people who came once or twice and never returned, who bought goods and carried them away without giving either name or address, a privilege she never accorded to sellers.

" I must know from whom I buv," she used to say. " I don't care one jot to whom I sell, as long as they pay properly ; but I'm not going to be had up for pur chasing stolen goods." Her beady black eyes would sparkle like diamonds when casuals presented them selves, and the pertinent questions she Avould put to such people were apt to prove highly disconcerting. She always asked for references. " Who sent you to me ? " And she was quick at detecting a falsehood, either spoken or im plied. One day, shortly after she had set up in business, she received a visit from rather a tall lady who drove up to the door of No. 12 Sark Place in a very smart hansom, from which she abghted with a bundle in her arms. Two minutes later the lady and the bundle were ushered into Madame Suzanne's presence. " Somebody to see you, ma'am," said Jean, the maid of all-work, who forthwith retired, leaving the stranger to unfold her tale and her parcel.

The tale was a thrice told one, " I have a dress to dispose of, Madame Suzanne, and I heard you would give me a good price. See ! it is very little worn, and black is always serviceable and easy to dispose of. And then the lace is really good of its kind." " Yes, it is fairly good. But if you think it so very good why are you so anxious to get rid of it ?" " Simply because I have taken a dislike to black lately. I shall never buy a black dress again, if I can help it." Mrs. Stephens glanced up to see whether black were after all so very unbecoming to the lady, and then realized for the first time that she could not see her client's face. It was not that her veil was very DAY BOOK AND DIARY. 21 thick, but it was one of those "complexion falls " of sham lace, of a very intricate pattern, that simply blurr and efface the outline of the features.

" I think I am too dark for black," she added nervously. " Then you must be awfully made up to day," thought Suzanne, "for your skin looks quite fair." It ended by the owner of the black frock disposing of her sable garment for thirty shillings — about a tithe of its value, and hurrying away after giving for her name and address : " Mrs. Smythe, Grosvenor Hotel." " We are only passing through town now," she said, as she left the room; "but on our return in the season I shall have more things for you." Suzanne bowed politely, and it was not until her visitor had closed the front door behind her that the wardrobe lady suddenly remembered that she had never asked Mrs. Smythe for a reference. It was the first time she bad ever been guilty of such an oversight, and she resolved that it should be the last.

Indeed for the moment she had serious thoughts of hurrying out into the street after the stranger, but she had neither bonnet nor cloak at hand, and it was a bitterly cold afternoon. Moreover, she was in thin shoes— red ones em broidered with gold — and the pavement was half an inch thick in mud. " Let her go," muttered Suzanne crossly. " It serves me right for being such a care less fool. However, the dress is a real good one, and I've got it for a mere song. Fancy coming all the way from Victoria Station to Bayswater in a hansom to sell a fifteen guinea dress (I'm sure this didn't cost a farthing less) for thirty shilhngs ! Let us see who made the frock." But that Madame Suzanne was destined never to know. The Petersham belt had been cut out of the bodice, and on the band ofthe skirt there was neither name nor sign ; but in the skirt itself, amongst the folds of the lace, was an awkward tear (in the silk lining) which had evidently been hastily DAY BOOK AND DIARY. 23 repaired by fingers unskilled in the art of fine needlework.

" Humph, Mrs. Smythe ! I beheve you stole this dress. If you'd had an ounce of honesty in your whole com position you'd have pointed out this ugly tear, and if I'd had a grain of sharpness I'd have found it out for myself. I don't beheve you are Mrs. Smythe. Well, it doesn't signify to me who you are or what you are, but if you send me any more old clothes I shall ask for references." But Mrs. Smythe neither sent nor came again to Sark Place, and, contrary to Suzanne's expectations, the dress remained for many a long day on her hands, or rather half of it did. The bodice was sold within a month to a customer whom Suzanne could not afford to disoblige, and who did not want the whole dress. But the skirt remained hung up in the big wardrobe in Sark Place month after month and year after year for nearly six years.

Once Mrs. Stephens did take it out and look it over with a view to making it up for herself. But the cut of skirts had changed that season, and Suzanne, who loved to be in the vanguard of fashion, tossed the black faille aside in scorn. Moreover, like Mrs. Smythe, she hated herself in black. " I shall get rid of you some day," she said, as she once more consigned the offending garment to the depths of the old wardrobe. " And any way I've got my money back again over tbe bodice. Mrs. Grant Tyrrell gave me a pound for that, and now I have no doubt she has sewn one of Emily Viney's bands into it. What frauds women are ! You're a rum lot — as the devil said to the ten commandments." Book II. MRS. CLEVERLEY'S CAREER. " But somewhere, unless love forget his old way, There shall be something better yet — aye, some day."

Chapter I. An Evening At Home

Mrs. Cleverley was thoroughly irritated and overstrung by the events of the day, and 9 p.m. found her whole being touching the culminating point of its human vitality. She had certainly had a good deal to try her, and " the spring of the year " as her maid termed it, was not wholly responsible for her condition. Looking back upon the hours that had just passed she found but little cause for satisfaction. She had lost that afternoon at " Poker " twenty pounds — and she had been playing with borrowed money half the time! " One more item in the insoluble debt," she exclaimed wearily, as she took from her writing table drawer a bundle of bills, and began looking through them for about the sixth time during the last half hour. " Joyce, butcher, forty-three pounds. He must be paid, and soon too, for he is beginning to be very disagreeable.

Leonide, Costumiere d la cour de Mexique. Well, how Leonide has the cheek to dun me I cannot think. I have simply made Leonide. But for me she would now be in Hindon Street, Pimlico, where I first discovered ber. It was I who induced Carrie Doncaster to order a drawing-room dress from Leonide. It was I who implored Mabel Anderson to give Leonide the order for Stella's trousseau. And Carrie and Stella have recommended the wretch right and left — the wretch who now duns me, actually duns me, for a paltry two - hundred and seventy -four pounds. And here is Aglae ( Aglde, indeed!) Mrs. Dick Munro, who but for my friendly AN EVENING AT HOME. offices would now be daily governessing at two guineas a week, and her early dinner found her. That was the magnificent re muneration that Miss Janet Foster was receiving from Lady Drysdale when I managed to persuade Dick that he was in duty bound to marry the girl.

He had made her fond of him, and he liked her, and she suited him; and I doubt if he could have done much better socially, for the " gentleman bookey " is not everyone's money. And then after a specially lucky season Dick grants his wife her heart's desire, and sets her up in a millinery busi ness within a stone's throw of Bond Street, and I bring ber all ber smartest customers ; and now she has the impertinence to inform me that she 'shall feel obliged by my settling without further delay (twice under fined), the enclosed account for £43 16s. 6d.' Is it possible that I, who have only one head, can have worn £43 16s. &d. worth of hats, bonnets, falls, and artificial flowers during the last year? It is monstrous — im possible. — What is it, Phelps? " "A note, ma'am." " Oh, please don't draw down the blind, Phelps, this stifling evening.

What can you be thinking of ? " " They can see in over the way, ma'am," replied Phelps, the aggrieved monotone clearly audible in her high-pitched voice. " What does that signify? They have seen — let them see," said Mrs. Cleverley, opening her note. " Dear Vine," (it ran), " Will you take me to the Lintopps' to-night? Say Yes, and I'll call at eleven in the least offensive looking growler Roza can find. Aunt has a face-ache — as usual when I require her services. " Your's most " Ad. L " Bearer waits." To which dear Vine made reply : " Dear A. " Sorry I can't. Have nothing to wear. This is not a figure of speech, but a AN EVENING AT HOME. sad matter of fact. Tynemouth put his clumsy hoof on my black last night, and literally tore the skirt to ribbons. My pink is dead, and my cream is filthy.

Go early to tbe Lintopps' and wait in the cloak room for Lady 0. I know she is going. " Your's " V. c. Then Mrs. Cleverly put her note into an envelope which she addressed to Miss Adelaide Lowndes, No. — Eccleston Street, and gave it to Phelps to hand to the bearer, who waited. This done, she walked up to the open window and looked out. There were lights in the opposite house — in the front bedroom and the dining room; but the drawing-room lay in dark ness. " Mrs. Schneider is going out," murmured Vine ; " to Lady Tyne's, I daresay. She has a small and early to-night. Well ! " The world goes up and the world goes down, And sunshine follows the rain," but some people go up higher than others, and some go down lower. This day twelve months Miss Lily Greene little dreamt when sbe was vegetating in lodgings in Sandgate Road, Folkestone, that she would be dressing to-night for a party at one of the smartest houses in London.

I do believe the world hinges on luck, whatever the causationists may say. It was sheer luck old Joe Schneider meeting that girl, taking a notion to her, and marrying her off-hand, literally to escape from Lady Drysdale's toils. He did it for nothing else, I'm certain. And he ought to have been ashamed of himself for doing it at all, when his poor old wife hadn't been dead two months. What a world it is ! " Mrs. Cleverley's world did not deserve praise at Mrs. Cleverley's hands, for in many respects it had treated her badly. It had certainly often treated her very un fairly, and injustice in the long run in variably produces independence, and some times independence of the worst kind. But on the other hand Mrs. Cleverley bad treated the world unwisely. She had AN EVENING AT HOME. laughed in its face, and turned its verdicts to scorn.