The Blower of Bubbles. Beverley Baxter
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Beverley Baxter
The Blower of Bubbles
Published by Good Press, 2019
EAN 4064066236168
Table of Contents
MR. CRAIGHOUSE OF NEW YORK, SATIRIST
I
Snow was falling in Sloane Square, quarreling with rain as it fell. Lamps were gleaming sulkily in Sloane Square, as though they resented being made to work on such a night, and had more than a notion to down tools and go out of business altogether. Motor-cars were passing through Sloane Square, with glaring lights, sliding and skidding like inebriated dragons; and the clattering hoofs of horses drawing vagabond cabs sounded annoyingly loud in the damp-charged air of Sloane Square.
It was Christmas Eve in Sloane Square, and the match-woman, the vender of newspapers, and the impossible road-sweeper were all exacting the largesse of passers-by, who felt that the six-penny generosity of a single night atoned for a year's indifference to their lot. People were wishing each other a merry Christmas in Sloane Square, as they struggled along under ungainly parcels. The muffin-man was doing an enormous trade.
And I looked from my window and prayed for Aladdin's Lamp or the Magic Carpet, that I might place a thousand miles between myself and Sloane Square.
There was a knock at the door.
"Enter the Slave of the Lamp," said I, and the door opened to admit—my landlady, Mrs. Mulvaney.
"Will you be dining in?" she said. Her Irish accent hardly helped the illusion of the all-potent slave.
"And why not?" I asked.
"Ach, nothing, sor. I only thought——"
"An unwomanly thing to do, Mrs. Mulvaney."
"You're afther being a strange one, dining alone on Christmas Eve."
"Then join me, Mrs. Mulvaney."
I swear she blushed, and I felt more than a little envious of the nature which could convert such a vinegary attempt at condescension into a gallantry.
"F'what would I be doing, taking dinner wid a child like you?"
I was twenty-five, but Mrs. Mulvaney looked on all men as equally immature.
"And have you not got no friends?" she went on, but I stopped her with a gesture.
"Thank Heaven—no!" I said. "I am one of intellectuality's hermits. An educated man in London is like the bell-cow of the herd—a thing apart."
"You're a great fool, I'm afther thinking."
"The foolish always damn the wise," I answered, with an attempt at epigrammatic misquotation.
Mrs. Mulvaney heaved a sigh. Its very forcefulness recalled the nautical meaning of the verb.
"You'd be a sight happier outside," she said. "Holy Mary knows I wouldn't be driving you into the streets, but I'm worried you'd get cross wid yourself at home."
To get rid of her, I put on my coat and went out. Perhaps she was right; things would have been intolerable at home. Home! Such a travesty of the word! The sickly lamplight of Sloane Square was preferable.
"Merry Christmas, guv'nor!" said the road-sweeper.
"Merry fiddlesticks!" I growled, and gave him sixpence. I tried to avoid the vender of newspapers, but he spotted my fur collar with the instinct of a mendicant, handing me a paper and his blessing.
"'Appy Christmas, milord!" said he.
I paid him a shilling for his diplomacy.
Thinking to escape the match-woman, I altered my course, but with the intuition of her sex she contrived to put herself directly in my path.
"It's a cauld nicht," she moaned in a rickety, quavering Scottish voice—"a cauld, wintry nicht. Ye'll be haein' a wee box o' matches, aw'm thinkin'!"
I gave her twopence for them, and she shivered with cold as her skinny fingers clutched the coins. I can think of no excuse for my parsimony except the fact that I didn't need the wretched box—matches were not yet a luxury of the very exclusive.
Yes—in all Sloane Square, on that damp and foggy Christmas Eve in the year 1913, I doubt if a more morose, self-satisfied, cynical human being plunged into the mists than I. I was unhappy, and reveled in my very unhappiness. If it had been in my power, I would have sent a cloud of gloom into every home and over every hearth in London. There was something splendid, something classical, in my melancholy; it was like Hamlet's, but greater than Hamlet's, for he knew the reason of his mood, while mine was born of an intangible superiority to my day!
It is not easy, even now, to write of those days. The figure that crosses the screen of memory reminds me of Chevy Slyme—a debt-paying, respectable Chevy Slyme, forsooth!—but just as sulkily swaggering, just as superior, and not quite so human; for Chevy, at least, inspired the friendship of Mr. Tigg.
II
Unconsciously following the bus route, I emerged eventually on Piccadilly, and was jostled and ogled and blessed and cursed with the greatest heartiness. Somewhere near Bond Street I collided heavily with a young man who was trying to negotiate the crowd and at the same time lose nothing of the shop windows' display.
"A thousand devils!" I muttered, recoiling from the impact.
"A thousand pardons!" he said, raising his hat. The graceful lilt of his voice was peculiarly reminiscent; his smooth brow and silky fair hair were both familiar and elusive.
"One moment——" He gazed into my face with a searching look, keeping his hat poised in the air as if the better to concentrate his thoughts. "Not the Pest?" he said.
I nodded, and, if the truth be told, felt not a little pleased at the sound of the old nom d'école earned when I was at Westminster.
"And how," I said, "is the Blower of Bubbles?"
For answer he replaced his hat at a rakish angle and shook my hand with both his for what seemed a full minute, the crowd parting good-naturedly like a wave encircling a rock.
"My dear old Pest," he said, "we shall dine together."
"I'm sorry, but——"
"There is a perfectly vile restaurant half-a-mile from here, that has the best violinist and the worst cook in London."
"My dear chap——"
"Of all the luck! Think of my running into you on Christmas Eve!"
And just then I noticed that we were no longer standing still, but proceeding up a side street, arm-in-arm, while his disengaged hand indicated the passing scene as if it were the most gorgeous bazaar of the Orient. He spoke with extraordinary rapidity, except in uttering certain words, when he would make a slurring pause, as a singer will let a note melt into a pianissimo, then race on again with renewed vigor. It was a fascinating trick of speech, and, added to the subtle inflections of his voice, never failed to startle one into the closest attention.
I turned to him once with some remark on my lips, and