At this moment the lady’s “favorite vanity,” in the matter of good works, was The Bunhouse. This really serviceable, though quaint, institution was not, in idea, quite unlike Maitland’s enterprise of the philanthropic public-house, the Hit or Miss. In a slum of Chelsea there might have been observed a modest place of entertainment, in the coffee and bun line, with a highly elaborate Chelsea Bun painted on the sign. This piece of art, which gave its name to the establishment, was the work of one of Mrs. St John Deloraine’s friends, an artist of the highest promise, who fell an early victim to arrangements in haschisch and Irish whiskey. In spite of this ill-omened beginning, The Bunhouse did very useful work. It was a kind of unofficial club and home, not for Friendly Girls, nor the comparatively subdued and domesticated slavery of common life, but for the tameless tribes of young women of the metropolis. Those who disdain service, who turn up expressive features at sewing machines, and who decline to stand perpendicularly for fifteen hours a day in shops—all these young female outlaws, not professionally vicious, found in The Bunhouse a kind of charitable shelter and home.
They were amused, they were looked after, they were encouraged not to stand each other drinks, nor to rival the profanity of their brothers and fathers. “Places” were found for them, in the rare instances when they condescended to “places.” Sometimes they breakfasted at The Bunhouse, sometimes went there to supper. Very often they came in a state of artificial cheerfulness, or ready for battle. Then there would arise such a disturbance as civilization seldom sees. Not otherwise than when boys, having tied two cats by the tails, hang them over the handle of a door—they then spit, and shriek, and swear, fur flies, and the clamor goes up to heaven: so did the street resound when the young patrons of The Bunhouse were in a warlike humor. Then the stern housekeeper would intervene, and check these motions of their minds, haec certamina tanta, turning the more persistent combatants into the street. Next day Mrs. St. John Deloraine would come in her carriage, and try to be very severe, and then would weep a little, and all the girls would shed tears, all would have a good cry together, and finally the Lady Mother (Mrs. St John Deloraine) would take a few of them for a drive in the Park. After that there would be peace for a while, and presently disturbances would come again.
For this establishment it was that Mrs. St. John Deloraine wanted a housekeeper and an assistant. The former housekeeper, as we have been told, had yielded to love, “which subdues the hearts of all female women, even of the prudent,” according to Homer, and was going to share the home and bear the children of a plumber. With her usual invincible innocence, Mrs. St. John Deloraine had chosen to regard the Hon. Thomas Cranley as a kind good Christian in disguise, and to him she appealed in her need of a housekeeper and assistant.
No application could possibly have suited that gentleman better. He could give his own servant an excellent character; and if once she was left to herself, to her passions, and the society of Margaret, that young lady’s earthly existence would shortly cease to embarrass Mr. Cranley. Probably there was not one other man among the motley herds of Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s acquaintance who would have used her unsuspicious kindness as an instrument in a plot of any sort. But Mr. Cranley had (when there was no personal danger to be run) the courage of his character.
“Shall I go and lunch with her?” he asked himself, as he twisted her note, with its characteristic black border and device of brown, and gold. “I haven’t shown anywhere I was likely to meet anyone I knew, not since—since I came back from Monte Carlo.”
Even to himself he did not like to mention that affair of the Cockpit The man in the story who boasted that he had committed every crime in the calendar withdrew his large words when asked “if he had ever cheated at cards.”
“Well,” Mr. Cranley went on, “I don’t know: I dare say it’s safe enough. She does know some of those Cockpit fellows; confound her, she knows all sorts of fellows. But none of them are likely to be up so early in the day—not up to luncheon anyhow. She says”—and he looked again at the note—“that she’ll be alone; but she won’t. Everyone she sees before lunch she asks to luncheon: everyone she meets before dinner she asks to dinner. I wish I had her money: it would be simpler and safer by a very long way than this kind of business. There really seems no end to it when once you begin. However, here goes,” said Mr. Cranley, sitting down to write a letter at the escritoire which had just served him as a bulwark and breastwork. “I’ll write and accept Probably she’ll have no one with her, but some girl from Chipping Carby, or some missionary from the Solomon Islands who never heard of a heathen like me.”
As a consequence of these reflections, Mr. Cranley arrived, when the clock was pointing to half-past one, at Mrs. St. John Deloraine’s house in Cheyne Walk. He had scarcely entered the drawing-room before that lady, in a costume which agreeably became her pleasant English style of beauty, rushed into the room, tumbling over a favorite Dandie Dinmont terrier, and holding out both her hands.
The terrier howled, and Mrs. St. John Deloraine had scarcely grasped the hand which Mr. Cranley extended with enthusiasm, when she knelt on the carpet and was consoling the Dandie.
“Love in which thy hound has part,” quoted Mr. Cranley. And the lady, rising with her face becomingly flushed beneath her fuzzy brown hair, smiled, and did not remark the sneer.