Dale has just been elected for the Fensham Division of Westmoreland, and
he has already begun the line of sturdy young Kynnersleys, of which I
had eumoirous dreams long ago. Quast and the cats have passed into alien
hands. Anastasius Papadopoulos is dead. He died three months ago of
angina pectoris, and Lola was with him at the end. Eleanor Faversham has
married a Colonial bishop. Campion, too, has married--and married the
last woman in the world to whom one would have thought of mating him--a
frivolous butterfly of a creature who drags him to dinner-parties and
Ascot and suppers at the Savoy, and holds Barbara's Building and all
it connotes in vixenish detestation. He roars out the agony of his
philanthropic spirit to Lola and myself, who administer consolation and
the cold mutton that he loves. The story of his marriage is a little
lunatic drama all to itself and I will tell it some day. But now I
can only rough-sketch the facts. He works when he can at the beloved
creation of his life and fortune; but the brain that would be inadequate
to the self-protecting needs of a ferret controls the action of this
masterful enthusiast, and his one awful despair in life is to touch a
heart that might beat in the bosom of a vicious and calculating haddock.
I only mention this to explain how it has come to pass that Lola and I
are now all-powerful in Barbara's Building. It has become the child of
our adoption and we love it with a deep and almost fanatic affection.
Before Lola my influence and personality fade into nothingness. She is
the power, the terror, the adoration of Lambeth. If she chose she
could control the Parliamentary vote of the borough. Her great, direct,
large-hearted personality carries all before it. And with it there is
something of the uncanny. A feat of hers in the early days is by way of
becoming legendary.
A woman, on the books of the Building, was about to bring a hopeless
human fragment into a grey world. Lola went to see what aid the Building
could provide. In front of the door lounged the husband, a hulking
porter in a Bermondsey factory. Glowering at his feet lay a vicious
mongrel dog--bull-terrier, Irish-terrier, mastiff--so did Lola with
her trained eye distinguish the strains. When she asked for his wife in
travail the chivalrous gentleman took his pipe from his mouth, spat, and
after the manner of his kind referred to the disfigurement of her face
in terms impossible to transcribe. She paid no attention.
“I'm coming upstairs to see your wife.”
“If you pass that door, s'welp me Gawd, I'll set the dog on yer.”
She paused. He urged the dog, who bristled and growled and showed his
teeth. Lola picked the animal up, as she would have picked up a sofa
cushion, and threw him across the street. She went to where he had
fallen, ordered him to his feet, and the dog licked her hand. She came
back with a laugh.
“I'll do the same to you if you don't let me in!”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account