Belford's Magazine, Vol. II, No. 3, February 1889

Maud. Why, yes, to be sure, I believe she did.

Newcome (casting the greens into a reckless oblivion). Brown? We have a selection in all the browns that is not to be found elsewhere, I am confident. (Struggles with great pile of browns; grows warm with effort; pauses to mop his brow with handkerchief; finally brings down huge number of browns and lands them on counter). Our – assortment – of – browns – is (heaves a deep sigh), I may say, unequalled.

Ethel. What a sweet shade that is!

Maud. Isn't it?

Ethel. Are these the same price as the others?

[Fingers the browns.

Newcome. Exactly the same, madam; one dollar and fifty cents a yard, reduced from two and a half; all-wool.

Maud. Are you sure they are all-wool? This piece feels rather harsh to me.

Newcome. Every thread, madam; that I will guarantee. We are not allowed to misrepresent anything in this establishment. You can see for yourself.

[Recklessly frays out a few inches of the brown.

Ethel (also fingering goods). Yes, they are all-wool; French, did you say?

Newcome. Every piece imported. We keep no domestic woollen goods whatever. We have no call for anything but the foreign goods.

Maud. How wide did you say?

Newcome. Double width, madam – forty-four inches.

Ethel. Five, seven – let me see, it would take about – how much do you usually sell for a costume?

Newcome (with hilarity, holding up the browns). From eight to ten yards, madam, according to the size of the lady. For your size I should say eight yards was an abundance – a great abundance.

Ethel. She is just about my size, isn't she, Maud?

Maud. Just about. It wouldn't take eight yards, I shouldn't think, of such wide goods made in Empire style.

Ethel. No, I suppose not; but then it's always nice to have a piece left over for new sleeves, you know.

Maud. Yes, that's so.

Newcome. An elegant shade, ladies, becoming to anyone, fair or dark. I am sure any lady must be pleased with a dress off of one of these – serviceable, stylish, the height of fashion.

Ethel. Is brown really so fashionable this season?

Newcome. I am sure we have sold a thousand yards of these browns to ten of any other color.

Maud. Is that so?

Ethel. I do wonder if she really would prefer brown. What do you think, dear?

Maud. Well, it depends somewhat, I think, on how she is going to have it made.

Ethel. True. Well, I think she said in directoire.

Maud. Plain full skirt?

Ethel. Yes, smocked all around – no drapery at all.

Maud. Candidly, love, do you like a skirt without any drapery at all?

Ethel. Well, no, I can't say I do. Do you?

Maud. No. I like a little right in the back, you know – not too much. But I think a little takes off that dreadfully plain look. Don't you?

Ethel. Yes.

Maud. How are y – I mean how is she going to have the waist?

Ethel. I don't know. I heard her say that she was going to have a puff on the sleeve.

Maud. At the elbow?

Ethel. No, at the shoulder.

Maud. And revers, I suppose.

Ethel. Yes, those stylish broad ones.

Maud. Of velvet?

Ethel. Velvet or plush.

Newcome (who has been manfully holding the browns up above his head, permits them to gently descend). We have a full line in plushes and velvets, ladies, to match all these shades.

Maud. How nice!

Ethel. So convenient!

Newcome (mildly). Do you think you'll decide on the brown, madam?

Ethel. Oh, dear! I don't know. It is so hard to shop for some one else!

Maud. It is horrid.

Ethel. I vow every time I do it that it shall be the last. I am always so afraid of getting something that the person won't like.

[Sighs.

Newcome. Any lady must like this brown, madam. Just feel the texture of this piece of goods, and take the trouble to examine the quality. Why, I have never in all my experience sold a piece of goods of such a class at a cent less than two dollars a yard – never.

Maud. It is very fine.

Ethel (vaguely eying the goods behind the counter on the shelves). Is that a piece of claret-colored that I see up there?

Newcome (lays down the browns with a faint sigh of reluctance). Yes, oh, yes.

Ethel. Never mind to get it down.

Newcome. No trouble in the world to show anything; that's what I am here for. (Sighs as he attains the clarets and fetches them to the counter.) Rich shades; ten tints in these also, calculated to suit any taste.

Maud. I always did like claret.

Ethel. Yes, it is so becoming.

Maud. It has such a warm look, too!

Ethel. Now, that – no, this one – no, please, that darker piece – yes. Maud, dear, that made up with plush and garnet buttons and buckles – Oh, did I tell you I saw some such lovely garnet trimmings at Blank's last week, only seventy-five cents a yard, just a perfect match for this. Wouldn't it be too lovely for anything?

Maud. Indeed it would. I am almost tempted myself. Claret is my color, you know.

Newcome. A splendid shade, madam, and only just two dress lengths left.

Ethel. Is this the same goods as the others?

Newcome. The very same; all-wool imported suitings, forty-four inches wide, reduced from two-fifty a yard to only one dollar and a half.

Maud. Wouldn't that be just perfect with that white muff and boa of mine, dearest?

Ethel. Too startling, love. Do you know, I think you made a mistake in getting that white set.

Maud. Why?

Ethel. Too striking.

Maud. Do you think so?

Ethel. Yes. Of course it's lovely for the theatre and opera.

Maud. It's awfully becoming.

Ethel (to Newcome). Now, do you really sell as much claret color as you do green or brown this season?

Newcome. Oh yes, madam; if anything, more. You see claret is one of the standards, becoming alike to young and old. Why, a child might wear this shade. Claret will always hold its own; there is a change in the blues and the greens and the browns, but the claret is always elegant, and very stylish.

Maud. I think so too.

Ethel (meditatively). I do wonder if she would like claret better than brown.

Newcome. I can show you the browns again, ladies.

Ethel. Oh, never mind.

Newcome. No trouble in the world. (Holds up browns and clarets both.) Now you can judge of the two by contrast.

Maud. Both lovely.

Ethel. Which do you like best, love?

Maud. My dear, I don't know.

Newcome. You can't go amiss, madam, with either of those, I am sure. Any lady must like either of them.

Ethel. Oh, dear! I wish people would get well and do their own shopping; it is so trying!

Maud. Horrid!

Newcome. An elegant piece of goods, madam; will wear like iron.

Ethel. What would you do, dear?

Maud. I really don't know what to say. When does she want to wear it?

Ethel. Dinner and theatre.

Maud. By gaslight, then?

Ethel. Yes, of course.

Maud. Does the gaslight change the shade much?

Newcome. Just a trifle, madam; it makes it richer.

Maud. Darker?

Newcome. Just a half a tone.

Ethel. Then that must be considered. Oh, dear!

[Sighs plaintively.

Maud. Why not look at it by gaslight, love?

Ethel. Oh, I hate to give so much trouble!

Newcome. No trouble in the world, madam – a pleasure. I will gladly show you these goods by gaslight, for I am confident you will only admire them the more. Here, boy (calls boy, and hands him a pile of goods), take these to the gaslight-room. This way ladies, please. (They cross the aisle and enter the gaslight-room, preceded by the boy, who sets down the goods and retires.) There! look at that! Isn't that a rich, warm, beautiful color!

[Displays clarets.

Maud. Lovely!

Ethel. Yes, lovely – but (dubiously) I am so afraid she won't like it.

Maud. It is very perplexing.

Ethel. Yes. Oh, how sweet those browns do look in this light! Don't they?

Newcome. Ah, I just brought over the browns, madam, for I thought you might care to see them too.

[Displays browns.

Maud. How they do light up! Don't they?

Newcome. Newest tints, every one of them. Not been in stock over a few weeks, and those browns have sold like wildfire.

Ethel. For my own part I always did like brown.

Maud. Yes, so do I.

Ethel. It's so ladylike.

Maud. Yes, and it's a color that is suitable to almost any occasion.

Ethel. Yes. Now that lightest piece would be just too sweet, wouldn't it, made up with that new Persian trimming?

Maud. Exquisite! Say, do you know I priced some of that trimming the other day.

Ethel. Did you? how much?

Maud. Awfully expensive! Five dollars a yard.

Ethel. How wide?

Maud. Oh, not more than four inches.

Ethel. It wouldn't take much, would it?

Maud. That depends on where you put it.

Ethel. Well, just on the bodice and sleeves and collar.

Maud. About two yards and a half.

Ethel. Fifteen dollars?

Maud. Yes.

Newcome. This brown trimmed in the manner you mention, ladies, would be very elegant.

Maud. Yes, so it would. I wish now that I had looked more particularly at the browns out by the daylight.

Newcome. It is easy to look at them again, madam, I am sure. Here, boy, carry these goods back to the counter where you got them. (Boy crosses, laden with goods; Newcome and ladies follow.) That's it. (Boy retires.) Now, madam, just look at that shade by this light. Isn't that perfect?

Ethel. Yes, it's lovely, but —

Maud. Did she say she wished a brown especially, dear?

Ethel. No, she left it to me entirely.

Maud. How trying!

Ethel. Yes. I – I really, you know. I don't dare to take the responsibility; would you?

[Newcome's arms falter slightly in upholding the goods.

Maud. Frankly, my love, I think shopping for anyone else is something dreadful.

Ethel. It is so trying and so embarrassing. I don't dare really to get either (Newcome's arms fall helpless; he sighs) one of them.

Maud. They are lovely, though; aren't they?

Ethel. Yes, if (Newcome revives a little) I thought she would really be satisfied.

[He essays once again to hold up the browns.

Maud. But, dear, they never are.

[His arms again droop.

Ethel. No, never. No matter how much trouble you take, or what pains you are (he sighs feebly) at (he totters), they are so ungrateful.

Maud. Yes, always.

Ethel. Well, I believe we can't venture to decide this morning (he staggers) about the shade. We will very likely return to-morrow.

[He raises a weakly deprecating hand.

Maud (aside, as the two ladies are going). Well, we got off quite nicely.

Ethel. Yes, didn't we! I wouldn't be seen in either of those horrid things; would you?

Maud. No.

[Newcome falls to the earth with a groan of despair; the Chorus rush forward and gently raise him in their arms. As they bear him off, they sing, in a doleful and yet half-malicious fashion:

Chorus.

Poor Newcome!You are not the first man they have ended,And left on the cold ground extended;Or to whom they have sweetly pretended,On whose taste they have weakly depended; —Whom they've left on the cold ground extended,Minus money they never expended,On goods that they never intendedTo buy,Heigh-o, heigh,O – O – !

[They retreat, C., as the ladies exeunt, R., L. Music pianissimo as curtain falls.

Fannie Aymar Mathews.

IRISH NORAH TO ENGLISH JOHN

(Her theory of Home Rule under the Union.)"It manes, and shure and where's the harm?"Said Nora to her spouse;"It manes: if you must mind yer farm,That I shall mind me house."

BELLA'S BUREAU. 4

A STORY IN THREE SCARES

SCARE THE FIRST

I almost flung myself into Dick Vandeleur's arms when he entered my library that evening.

"Can you imagine why I sent for you in such a deuce of a hurry?" I blurted out, embracing him effusively in my pleasure at seeing him.

"Well, I did think there might have been a woman in the case," he drawled, in his deliberate way, stopping to adjust his neck-tie, which had worked its way over his ear during the struggle. "But then, as I happened to have acted as your best man only two months ago, when you married the most charming of women, why, b'Jove, I – "

"Well, it is a woman," I groaned, cutting his speech short.

"The devil!"

"Yes, and the very worst kind, I fancy, if thoroughly aroused."

"But, my deah boy, with such a wife it's – it's – it's – "

"Yes, it's all that and a good deal more," I growled, gloomily. "Don't add to my misery with your ill-timed reproaches. Richard, a back number of my unsavory career has turned up to deprive me of my appetite and blight my being. You remember Bella Bracebridge, of the nimble toes, at whose shrine I worshipped so long and so idiotically? Well, I received a letter from her only yesterday."

"No!" – incredulously.

"Yes."

"What! – little Bella who used to caper around in such airy garments at the Alhambra?"

"The very same. I only wish I could be mistaken," with a despairing groan. "It seems she married money and retired from the stage. By some means she disposed of her husband, and is now a rich and probably good-looking widow. She has purchased an estate within half a mile of here, and is going in heavy for style. She wants to make me the stepping-stone to social success; she sighs for the purple penetralia of the plutocracy. See what a predicament I am in! To introduce her in this house would plant the most unjust suspicions in Ethel's Vassarian mind, while her mother, Mrs. McGoozle, might institute awkward inquiries into the dear, dead past" – with a shiver of anticipation. "Now, my dear Vandeleur, that woman means mischief. She has got about a hundred of my letters breathing the most devoted love: if dear Ethel got a glimpse of a line she would go into hysterics. Bella has hinted, even politely threatened, that unless I show her some attention, which means introducing her to my wife's circle of friends, she will publish those letters to the world or send them to the dramatic papers. Now you must help me out of this scrape."

"Delighted to be of any service, I'm sure," tapping his boots impatiently with a jaunty little cane. "But, really, you know, I don't see – "

"Why, it's easy enough. Don't you remember we were once the pride of the school because we robbed watermelon patches so skilfully? What a narrow shave that was in the apple orchard the night before commencement, when you – "

"Yes, yes, I remember, deah boy; but what have those childish pranks got to do with the present case? We don't want to rob an apple orchard" – by way of mild protest.

"It is another kind of fruit that we are after – the fruit of youthful follies. Here," opening a cupboard and throwing out two pairs of overalls somewhat the worse for paint, two jumpers ditto, and several muddy overshoes, "Vandeleur, if you love me put these things on."

I fancy I can see him now adjust his glass and survey me with bulging eyes. I certainly did have nerve to ask that famous clubman, so irreproachable in his dress, to assume such inartistic and plebeian garments.

It took a great deal of palavering before I could persuade him that I was lost unless he consented. How he grunted as he reluctantly laid aside his silk-lined white kersey coat and evening dress, and tried to put on the overalls with one hand while he held his aristocratic aquiline nose with the other.

"Really, I hope I shan't be found dead in these togs," he remarked ruefully, as he surveyed himself in the glass. "What would Flossy say? and how the chaps at the Argentine would wonder what I'd been up to!"

I cut short his speculations by thrusting a soft slouched hat on his head and dragging it down over his eyes.

"There now!" I said, standing off and contemplating him critically and admiringly; "you have no idea, my boy, how becoming this costume is. One might imagine you had been born a stevedore."

He looked rather sour at this doubtful compliment, and hitching up his baggy trousers, asked, "Well, what is the next misery?"

"It is twelve o'clock," I said, referring to my watch. "My wife has gone to bed. Like Claude Duval, we will take to the road."

After a stiff libation of brandy and soda we stole softly downstairs and found ourselves in front of the house. Only one light glimmered in the black pile, where Ethel was going to bed.

"Where away?" asked Vandeleur, as I turned the path.

"To storm Bella's bureau," I cried, leading the way through the dark.

SCARE THE SECOND

With much difficulty we found ourselves at last in the spacious grounds of Bella's estate. I had laid my plans carefully the day before, and there seemed no possibility that they would miscarry. By liberal fees I had learned from her butler that she was to spend that night in New York with a friend, and for a further consideration he offered to leave one of the drawing-room windows open so that we should have a clear field.

Everything seemed to be working beautifully, and I already felt the coveted letters in my grasp. We found the French window ajar, and with tremulous hearts stepped over the sill and into the room. After several collisions with the furniture, of which there seemed to be what we thought an unnecessary amount, we finally scraped our way into the hall.

Here was a quandary. We were in a hall, but what hall? Whether the stairs led in the right direction there was no one present to consult. We walked or rather crawled up them, nevertheless. I tried the first door on the landing, and was rewarded with "Is that you?" by a female voice that sent us scuttling along the passage in undignified haste.

Well, at last, after many narrow escapes from breaking our necks, we reached Bella's room. I knew it the moment I saw the closet full of shoes. Bella was always proud of her feet, and had, I believe, a pair of boots for every hour of the day.

To make things even more sure that I had arrived at the chaste temple of my former flame, there was the famous bureau of ebony inlaid with ivory – that bureau which contained enough of my inflammatory letters to reduce it to cinders.

"Can you regard that bureau with equanimity?" I exclaimed, unconsciously assuming a dramatic attitude. "Does it not recall your vanished youth – the red horizon of your adolescence? Ah," I cried, overcome by the sight of that familiar bit of furniture, "how often have I slid a piece of jewelry into that top drawer as a surprise for Bella! Her delighted shriek which followed the discovery rings in my ears even now. Oh, halcyon days of happy holiday, mine no more, can a lifetime with a funded houri wholly fill your place?"

"That's all very well," cried Vandeleur, who can assume a disgustingly practical tone when he wants to. "While you are rhapsodizing here over your poetical past, some stalwart menial may arrive with a blunderbuss, and fill our several and symmetrical persons with No. 2 buckshot. Perhaps Bella may have missed her train or her friend. She might return here at any moment and surprise us" – looking around him uneasily.

"Anybody would think that you had never been in a boudoir at this time of night," I retort savagely.

I begin to pull out the drawers of the bureau, breaking locks in the most reckless way, and tossing the contents of these dainty receptacles about in the most utter confusion. Vandeleur, with his eyeglass adjusted, is poking into everything in the closet as if he were looking for a mouse, only pausing now and then to glare around with an apprehensive shiver.

"Dear me," I soliloquize, while the contents of those bureau drawers are tossed here and there in the fever of my search. "How everything here reminds me of the past! She has even preserved the menu card of that memorable dinner at Torloni's; and here – here is a lock of brown hair tied with a pink ribbon! I really believe it must be mine!"

"My deah boy," howls Vandeleur, shaking me by the arm vigorously, "will you cut short your soliloquy? Is this a time for poetry, when we might get ten years if we were found burglarizing this house?"

I pay no attention.

"And here is the steel buckle from her shoe that fell off the night we danced together at the French ball. Poor dear Bella! that was not the only dance we led where folly played the fiddle!" – with a thrill of reminiscence.

"If you don't find those letters in just two minutes," interrupts the dreadful Vandeleur, "I shall post for home."

"In one second, my boy – one second."

Now I examine the bureau carefully for a concealed drawer. I seem to have ransacked every corner of that precious article in vain. Visions of Bella's vengeance flash before my eyes. I can see the demoniac smile on her face as she gloats over my downfall. The white wraith conjured up by the thought of those fateful letters fills me with a mad fury, and I long to dash that hateful bureau into a thousand pieces and flee the house.

But the demolition could not be executed noiselessly, and the situation is perilous enough already for a man of my delicately organized constitution, with a heart that runs down with a rumble like a Waterbury movement; so I think I won't break the bureau.

I renew my mad search for the missing drawer, that seems to be of a most retiring disposition, as drawers go. I bethink me of stories of missing treasure: how the hero counted off twenty paces across the floor, and then dropped his dagger so that its blade would be imbedded in the wood, and then dug through several tons of masonry, until he found a casket, sometimes of steel, sometimes of iron, and sometimes of both.

And then he did a lot more mathematical calculating, and pressed a knob, and there you are! Ah! a thought – I had forgotten to apply myself to the moulding of the bureau, as a hero of the middle ages would have done under the circumstances.

I begin from side to side, up, down, and around. Ha! ha! at last! A little drawer shoots out almost in my face, startling me like a jack-in-the-box.

A faint perfume of crushed violets salutes my nostrils. The letters – they are there in the bottom of the drawer! I know them too well by the shape of the square large envelopes. They cost me many a dollar to send through the stage-door by the gouty Cerberus at the gate when Bella trod the boards.

I reach out my hand to seize them, when an awful scream causes me to stagger back in dismay.

Bella Bracebridge, in a jaunty travelling dress, stands in the doorway in the attitude of a tragic queen – her eyes flashing, her bosom heaving, just as she looked the day she asked for a raise in salary and didn't get it.

She steps towards me: I retreat, transfixed by her defiant attitude. She fear a common burglar? Never!

I know she intends to seize me and scream for help, and I am afraid, too, that she may recognize my face. So I step back – back, edging towards the window.

She reaches out her hand to seize me, then totters and falls in a dead faint.

I look around for Vandeleur. He has lost all presence of mind; is staring at the figure on the floor, with wild, dilated eyes, and an expression of hopeless idiocy on his face. I can hear people moving below stairs. Her scream must have aroused the house. "Vandeleur," shaking him by the arm, "we must run for it. Do you understand? Ten years! Hard labor!" – the last words hissed excitedly in his ear.

"What? where? who?" he mumbles, with a face as expressive as that of codfish.

I rush to the balcony to see if we can make the jump below. It is dark, but the leap must be made. Better a broken leg than a ball and chain on a healthy limb for years and years.

I drag Vandeleur in a helpless condition out on the balcony, boost him up on the railing, and push him off. Then I leap after him.

Fortunate fate! We fall into a clump of blackberry bushes, and not a moment too soon. Lights flash out from above. I hear the hum of excited voices, Bella's calm and distinct above the rest, as she gives the ominous order, "Let those bloodhounds loose!"

Ugh! We scramble out of the bushes in the most undignified haste, leaving most of our outward resemblance to human beings on the thorny twigs. Then helter-skelter over the fields and hedges, stumbling, staggering, and traversing what I suppose to be miles of country.