The Morals of Marcus Ordeyne. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ on my hat and went to Wellington Road to consult Mrs. McMurray. Heaven be thanked, thought I, for letting me take her little boy the day before yesterday to see the other animals, and thus winning a mother’s heart. She will help me out of my dilemma. Unfortunately she was not alone. Her husband, who is on the staff of a morning newspaper, was breakfasting when I arrived. He is a great ruddy bearded giant with a rumbling thunder of a laugh like the bass notes of an organ. His assertion of the masculine principle in brawn and beard and bass somewhat overpowers a non-muscular, clean-shaven, and tenor person like myself. Mrs. McMurray, on the contrary, is a small, bright bird of a woman.

      I told my amazing story from beginning to end, interrupted by many Hoo-oo-oo-oo’s from McMurray.

      “You may laugh,” said I, “but to have a mythical being out of Olympiodorus quartered on you for life is no jesting matter.”

      “Olymp—?” began McMurray.

      “Yes,” I snapped.

      “Bring her this afternoon, Sir Marcus, when this unsympathetic wretch has gone to his club,” said his wife, “and I’ll take her out shopping.”

      “But, dear lady,” I cried in despair, “she has but one garment—and that a silk dressing-gown of horrible depravity that belonged to a dancer of the second Empire! She is also barefoot.”

      “Then I’ll come round myself and see what can be done.”

      “And by Jove, so will I!” cried McMurray.

      “You’ll do such thing,” said his wife

      “If I gave you a cheque for 100,” said I, “do you think you could get her what she wants, to go on with?”

      “A hundred pounds!” The little lady uttered a delighted gasp and I thought she would have kissed me. McMurray brought his sledgehammer of a hand down on my shoulder.

      “Man!” he roared. “Do you know what you are doing—casting a respectable wife and mother of a family loose among London drapery shops with a hundred pounds in her pocket? Do you think she will henceforward give a thought to her home or husband? Do you want to ruin my domestic peace, drive me to drink, and wreck my household?”

      “If you do that again,” said I, rubbing my shoulder, “I’ll give her two hundred.”

      When I returned Carlotta was sitting, Turkish fashion, on a sofa, smoking a cigarette (to which she had helped herself out of my box) and turning over the pages of a book. This sign of literary taste surprised me. But I soon found it was the second volume of my edition de luxe of Louandre’s Les Arts Somptuaires, to whose place on the shelves sheer feminine instinct must have guided her. I announced Mrs. McMurray’s proposed visit. She jumped to her feet, ravished at the prospect, and sent my beautiful book (it is bound in tree-calf and contains a couple of hundred exquisitely coloured plates) flying onto the floor. I picked it up tenderly, and laid it on my writing-table.

      “Carlotta,” said I, “the first thing you have to learn here is that books in England are more precious than babies in Alexandretta. If you pitch them about in this fashion you will murder them and I shall have you hanged.”

      This checked her sumptuary excitement. It gave her food for reflection, and she stood humbly penitent, while I went further into the subject of clothes.

      “In fact,” I concluded, “you will be dressed like a lady.” She opened the book at a gaudy picture, “France, XVI(ieme) Siecle—Saltimbanque et Bohemmienne,” and pointed to the female mountebank. This young person wore a bright green tunic, bordered with gold and finished off at the elbows and waist with red, over an undergown of flaring pink, the sleeves of which reached her wrist; she was crowned with red and white carnations stuck in ivy.

      “I will get a dress like that,” said Carlotta.

      I wondered how far Mrs. McMurray possessed the colour-sense, and I trembled. I tried to explain gently to Carlotta the undesirability of such a costume for outdoor wear in London; but with tastes there is no disputing, and I saw that she was but half-convinced. She will require training in aesthetics.

      She is very submissive. I said, “Run away now to Antoinette,” and she went with the cheerfulness of a child. I must rig up a sitting-room for her, as I cannot have her in here. Also for the present she must take her meals in her own apartments. I cannot shock the admirable Stenson by sitting down at table with her in that improper peignoir. Besides, as Antoinette informs me, the poor lamb eats meat with her fingers, after the fashion of the East. I know what that is, having once been present at an Egyptian dinner-party in Cairo, and pulled reeking lumps of flesh out of the leg of mutton. Ugh! But as she has probably not sat down to a meal with a man in her life, her banishment from my table will not hurt her feelings. She must, however, be trained in Christian table-manners, as well as in aesthetics; also in a great many other things.

      Mrs. McMurray arrived with a tape-measure, a pencil, and a notebook.

      “First,” she announced, “I will measure her all over. Then I will go out and procure her a set of out-door garments, and tomorrow we will spend the whole livelong day in the shops. Do you mind if I use part of the 100 for the hire of a private brougham?”

      “Have a coach and six, my dear Mrs. McMurray,” I said. “It will doubtless please Carlotta better.”

      I summoned Carlotta and performed the ceremony of introduction. To my surprise she was perfectly at her ease and with the greatest courtesy of manner invited the visitor to accompany her to her own apartments.

      When Mrs. McMurray returned to the drawing-room she wore an expression that can only be described as indescribable.

      “What, my dear Sir Marcus, do you think is to be the ultimate destiny of that young person?”

      “She shall learn type-writing,” said I, suddenly inspired, “and make a fair copy of my Renaissance Morals.”

      “She would make a very fair copy indeed of Renaissance Morals,” returned the lady, dryly.

      “Is she so very dreadful?” I asked in alarm. “The peignoir, I know—”

      “Perhaps that has something to do with it.”

      “Then, for heaven’s sake,” said I, “dress her in drabs and greys and subfusc browns. Cut off her hair and give her a row of buttons down the back.”

      My friend’s eyes sparkled.

      “I am going,” said she, “to have the day of my life tomorrow.”

      Carlotta had already gone to sleep, so Antoinette informed me, when the results of Mrs. McMurray’s shopping came home. I am glad she has early habits. It appears she has spent a happy and fully occupied afternoon over a pile of French illustrated comic papers in the possession of my excellent housekeeper.

      I wonder whether it is quite judicious to make French comic papers her initiation into the ideas of Western civilisation. Into this I must inquire. I must also talk seriously to her with a view to her ultimate destiny. But as my view would be distorted by the red dressing-gown, I shall wait until she is decently clad. I think I shall have to set apart certain hours of the day for instructive conversation with Carlotta. I shall have to develop her mind, of which she distinctly has the rudiments. For the rest of the day she must provide СКАЧАТЬ