by E. F. Benson
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Title: The Countess of Lowndes Square and Other Stories
Author: E. F. Benson
Release Date: February 16, 2018 [EBook #56579]
Language: English
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THE COUNTESS OF
LOWNDES SQUARE
And Other Stories
BY
E. F. BENSON
Author of “Mike,” etc., etc.
[Illustration: colophon]
CASSELL AND COMPANY, LTD
London, New York, Toronto and Melbourne
PREFACE
I have divided the stories that are here collected under one cover into various classes, so that such readers as want to compare their own experiments, let us say, in blackmailing or spiritualistic séances, with those of other students, may find such tales as deal with their own speciality in crime or superstition grouped together in separate sections of this book. They will thus be spared a skipping hunt through pages in which they feel no personal interest.
In the same way, such readers as are in search merely of the lighter (though not more decorative) aspects of life, will be able to avoid like poison so innocent-looking a title as “The Countess of Lowndes Square,” for assuredly they would not find therein the fashionable descriptions of high life which they might reasonably anticipate, but would merely cast the book from them in disgust, when they discovered that one who had been the wife of an Earl, and ought therefore to have known ever so much better, belonged to the most contemptible of the criminal classes. The table of contents, in like manner, conducts the crank and the cat-lover to the pastures where he is most likely to find a digestible snack.
The short story is not a lyre on which English writers thrum with the firm delicacy of the French, or with the industry of the American author. If the ten best short stories in the world were proclaimed by popular vote, it is probable that they would all be French stories; while if the million worst stories in the world were similarly brought together into one unspeakable library, they would probably all of them—with the exception, of course, of the fourteen that make up this volume—be found to be written in America. There is something in the precision and economy of the French, something in the opulence and amateurishness of the United States that renders the result of such a plebiscite perfectly appropriate, and we should only, when the result of the poll was known, find in it another instance of the invariable occurrence of the expected.
Most of the ensuing tales have appeared before in the pages of Nash’s Weekly, The Windsor Magazine, The Story-Teller, The Century, and The Woman at Home. The rest are now published for the first time.
E. F. Benson.
CONTENTS
BLACKMAILING STORIES
PAGE
1. The Countess of Lowndes Square 3
2. The Blackmailer of Park Lane 25
GENERAL STORIES
1. The Dance on the Beefsteak 69
2. The Oriolists 84
3. In the Dark 110
4. The False Step 126
SPOOK STORIES
1. The Case of Frank Hampden 145
2. Mrs. Andrews’s Control 171
3. The Ape 184
4. “Through” 210
CAT STORIES
1. “Puss-cat” 231
2. There Arose a King 247
CRANK STORIES
1. The Tragedy of Oliver Bowman 267
2. Philip’s Safety Razor 288
BLACKMAILING STORIES
THE COUNTESS OF
LOWNDES SQUARE
And Other Stories
THE COUNTESS OF LOWNDES SQUARE
Cynthia, Countess of Hampshire, was sitting in an extraordinarily elaborate dressing-gown one innocent morning in June, alternately opening letters and eating spoonfuls of sour milk prepared according to the prescription of Professor Metchnikoff. Every day it made her feel younger and stronger and more irresponsible (which is the root of all joy to natures of a serious disposition), and since (when a fortnight before she began this abominable treatment) she felt very young already, she was now almost afraid that she would start again on measles, croup, hoops, whooping-cough, peppermints, and other childish ailments and passions. But since this treatment not only induced youth, but was discouraging to all microbes but its own, she hoped as regards ailments that she would continue to feel younger and younger without suffering the penalties of childhood.
The sour milk was finished long before her letters were all opened, for there was no one in London who had a larger and more festive post than she. Indeed, it was no wonder that everybody of sense (and most people of none) wanted her to eat their dinners and stay in their houses, for her volcanic enjoyment of life made the dullest of social functions a high orgy, and since nothing is nearly so infectious as enjoyment, it followed that she was much in request.
Even in her fiftieth year she retained with her youthful zest for life much of the extreme plainness of her girlhood, but time was gradually lightening the heaviness of feature that had once formed so remarkable an ugliness, and in a few years more, no doubt, she would become as nice looking as everybody else of her age.
Her father, the notorious (probably infamous) Baron Kakao, of mixed and uncertain origin, had at one time compiled by hook or crook (chiefly, it is to be feared, by crook) an immense fortune; but long after that was spent, and debts of an equally substantial nature been substituted for it, he continued to live in London in a blaze of splendour so Oriental, that he was still believed to be possessed of fabulous wealth, and had without the least difficulty married the plain but fascinating Cynthia to an elderly Earl of Hampshire, and had continued to allow her £10,000 a year, which he borrowed at a staggering rate of usury from optimistic Hebrews. They thought that Lord Hampshire would probably see to his father-in-law’s debts; while, rather humorously, Lord Hampshire was post-obiting himself with others who trusted that Baron Kakao would come to the rescue of his son-in-law.
Consequently, when he and Cynthia’s disgusting husband expired within a few hours of each other, the widowed and orphaned Countess was left without a penny in the world, and in Rama was there a voice heard, lamentation and great mourning! Father and husband were both sad rogues, and in death, in more than a chronological sense, it is highly probable that they were not divided.
It will therefore be easily imagined that her childhood and marriage had been a sound and liberal education to Lady Hampshire; for they had taught her that the world in general is very easily imposed upon, and that if you are intending to be a villain, the path of villainy is made much smoother to the pilgrim if he smiles. Shakespeare perhaps had given her the germ of that invaluable truth; but, as in countless other instances, her brilliant brain brought to full flower what was only an immature bud of knowledge. In any case, the villain, so she shrewdly reasoned, must keep his frown to himself, and however dreadful the machinations on which he is employed, must cultivate a dewy bonhomie in public, and pretend to be innocently engrossed in the p
leasures and palaces of this delightful world. Lady Hampshire went farther than this (especially since she had taken to sour milk), and actually was engrossed in them for a large majority of the hours of those entrancing summer days. But, like all game fish, she had a close time, which occurred every morning over her post. For to let the reader into her terrible and unsuspected secret, she was an earnest and adroit blackmailer.
It is easy to find excuses (if excuses are needed) to account for her adoption of so vivid and thrilling a life, for indeed it is difficult to see how she could have existed at all without some such source of income as this, and still less could she have kept up her delightful house in Lowndes Square, her cottage in the Cotswolds, her luxurious and rapid motor-car, her box at the opera, her wonderful toilettes at Sandown and Epsom, and Newmarket and Aix and Marienbad.
All these simple pleasures were really a necessity of life to her, while in addition to that she rightly regarded them as an indispensable part of her “makeup” as a blackmailer, a mask behind which she could securely grin. Had she, with her historic name, gone to live in Whitechapel or Bayswater, people would have inevitably concluded that she was hard up, and in the charitable manner characteristic of the world, have wondered how she managed to live at all except by some course of secret and remunerative crime. Whereas the genial and affluent Countess who gave her box at the opera, not to her friend (for she was too clever for that), but to her possible enemies, whenever she did not want it (which was six nights in the week, since she detested music as much as she detested detectives), was a woman who need not laugh at suspicion, simply because there were no suspicions to laugh at. Nobody bothered himself or herself as to how she got her money, just because she always spent it so delightfully. If she had not spent it thus, or if there had been none to spend, there would have been excellent cause for the world to wonder where it came (or did not come) from.
A word is necessary for the sake of those few who may possibly be ignorant of how such things are pleasantly managed, as to her methods when in pursuit of her profession. From an amateur standpoint, and to the world at large, she was, as has been said, Cynthia, Countess of Hampshire; but in her business capacity and to the scarcely less numerous world of her trembling clients she was Agatha Ainslie (Miss). Here she differed from Shakespeare, for she held that there was a great deal in a name, and (apart from the obvious objections to trading as Cynthia Hampshire) there was in the sound of “Agatha Ainslie” much which would inspire a misplaced confidence. Agatha Ainslie, to anyone entering into business relations with her for the first time, would seem to be a not unkindly blackmailer; she might suitably have lived in a cathedral close, with her sister. There was something wistful and pathetic about the title: it was in no way sharkish. She sounded gentle, though her immediate mission might appear diabolical; she was a pleasant dentist who might be supposed to treat you to nasty jabs and vivid extractions for your permanent good.
In Lady Hampshire’s life, passed as it was in country-houses and restaurants and Continental spas, it was no wonder that she found many clients. There was scarcely a scandal in London that did not reach her sympathetic ear before it became public, and there were certainly many scandals that reached that eager orifice which never became public at all. She had a memory which bordered on the Gladstonian for retentiveness, and a terrifying and menacing pen, and a few words dropped secretly into her ear came out of Agatha’s stylograph with blistering effect.
But with the innate kindliness of her nature, she never allowed Agatha to blackmail any who could not afford to pay, and she had several times deferred the exaction of her little fines until it was certain that her client would not be seriously embarrassed and possibly driven to the desperate course of denouncing her. Never had she had reason to blame herself for a suicide, and she had Sir Andrew Clarke’s authority for believing that no one ever died of sleeplessness. She only milked the fat, sleek cows, and twisted the tails of the bulky bulls. Indeed, as she quaintly said to herself, she looked upon the payments they made as a sort of insurance against indiscretions on their part in the future. She protected them against their own lower instincts.
Her arrangements for Agatha were thoughtful in the extreme. Years ago her father had owned a small house in Whitstaple Street, of the kind described in auctioneering circles as “bijou,” which backed on to her own less jewel-sized mansion in Lowndes Square. This house in Whitstaple Street had providentially escaped the notice of his creditors when his affairs—if an entire absence of assets can be considered affairs—were wound up, and in order to give Miss Ainslie a discreet and convenient home, it had only been necessary to cut a door through the back of a big closet in her bedroom in Lowndes Square. The rates and taxes of the bijou were punctually paid by Agatha, who had, of course, a separate banking-account and a curious sloping hand, while a secret and terrible old woman called Magsby, whom Lady Hampshire could ruin on the spot for forging a valueless cheque of her father’s, opened the door to the clients, and made gruesome haddocky meals for herself in the kitchen.
Upstairs Lady Hampshire kept her Agatha-clothes, in which she looked like some unnatural cross between a hospital nurse and the sort of person who gets more stared at than talked to, and when she had found a home for the guileless young carpenter who fashioned her means of communication between Lowndes Square and Whitstaple Street in a remote though salubrious district of Western Australia, it really seemed as if she might laugh at the idea of detectives. She had but to lock herself into her bedroom, and in five minutes Agatha, with her spectacles and rouge and terrible wig, would be firmly conversing with clients in Whitstaple Street. Then, when a pleasant conclusion had been come to, five minutes more would be sufficient, and Lady Hampshire would emerge from her bedroom refreshed by her rest, and ready to immerse herself in a perfect spate of fashionable diversions.
Such to Lady Hampshire’s effusive and optimistic mind was her career as it should have been. But occasionally the hard sordid facts of existence “put spokes” in the wheel that should have whirled so merrily. And as she sat this morning in her elaborate dressing-gown, she found a spoke of the most obstructive kind.
Agatha’s letters had, as usual, been placed outside the door of communication by the terrible Magsby, and Lady Hampshire, on the principle of business first, pleasure afterwards, had answered all the letters sent to herself which dealt with the social pleasures of town before she opened the far more exciting packet of Agatha’s correspondence. The very first of them made her feel as if she had several lowering diseases in the pit of the stomach. It ran thus:
“To Miss Agatha Ainslie.
“Dear Madam,—I have learned your terrible secret, and know the means whereby you acquire your great and ill-gotten wealth. Believe me, my heart bleeds for you that in your position you should ever have had to descend to the crime of blackmailing, which, you are well aware, is regarded in a very serious and perhaps even brutal light by the otherwise humane code of English law.
“Now I make no threats; I studiously avoid them. But if you can help a deserving and struggling individual already past the prime of life, I assure you, on my sacred word of honour, that you will not sleep the less soundly for it. A pittance of £1,000 a year paid quarterly, and in advance, would be considered perfectly satisfactory. My messenger shall call on you this afternoon at a quarter-past three, and I earnestly suggest that the first payment should then and there be given him.—Faithfully yours,
“M. S.”
“P.S.—Motives of delicacy prevent my mentioning my name. A cheque therefore would be less welcome than bank-notes or gold.”
Cynthia Hampshire shuddered as she read. Often and often she had wondered with kindly amazement at the hare-like timidity of her clients, who so willingly paid their little mites to the upkeep of her establishment, when a moment’s courage would have taken them hot-foot to the smiling and hospitable portals of Scotland Yard. But as she perused this perfectly sickening communication, she found herself, in the true sense of
the word, sympathizing with them—that is to say, suffering with them. It really was most uncomfortable being blackmailed for something of an illegal nature which you actually had done, and she no longer wondered at the lamb-like acquiescence with which her clients fell in with the not unreasonable terms that she offered them.
The thought of calling at Scotland Yard with this outrageous letter occurred to her, but at the idea of appealing for protection her soul cried out like a child in the dark, and her courage oozed from her like drippings from a squeezed sponge. Furthermore, so spirited a proceeding was rendered even less feasible by the fact that it was not Lady Hampshire who was being blackmailed, but her Agatha. She doubted very much if she would be allowed by the odious meticulosity of English law to prosecute on behalf of poor Miss Ainslie, who must suddenly have gone abroad, while the idea of going to the house of vengeance in the disguise and habiliments of that injured spinster was outside the limits of her sober imagination. And who could M. S. be, with his veiled threats and nauseating denial of them? She ran rapidly through the list of her clients, but found none whom she could reasonably suspect of so treacherous a feat.
Very reluctantly she was forced to the conclusion that she would have to pay the first quarter anyhow of this cruel levy. Luckily Agatha had been doing very well lately, for London had been amusing itself with no end of questionable antics, and there was a prospect of a good season to come. But £250 per quarter would assuredly take a considerable portion of gilt off poor Miss Ainslie’s gingerbread, and it was at once clear to Lady Hampshire that she must raise Agatha’s rates.
She was lunching that day with Colonel Ascot, an old and valued friend. Though still only a year or two past fifty, he had made three large fortunes, of which he had lost two. But the third, which he had rapidly scooped out of the rubber boom, had sent him bounding upwards again, and she had more than once wondered if she could get him on to Agatha’s list. More than once also, in answer to his repeated proposals, she had thought of marrying him, but she did not think it right to accept his devotion without telling him about Agatha, and it seemed scarcely likely that he would wish his wife to have such an alter ego. For as Agatha she led such a thrilling and tremendous existence that it would be a great wrench to annihilate that exciting spinster in the noose of matrimony. On the other hand, if Agatha’s business was to be threatened by these bolts from the blue, in the shape of demands from M. S., the pain of parting with her would be appreciably less severe. The matter required fresh and careful consideration.