On this, their opening march, they rushed into the bazaar with great energy, and though they bore no resemblance to the characters named in the playbill, and though there was among them neither a Godiva, a Hector, a Tom Thumb, or a Japanese, nevertheless, as they were dressed in paint and armour after the manner of the late Mr Richardson's heroes, and as most of the ladies had probably been without previous opportunity of seeing such delights, they had their effect. When they had made their twenty-first procession the thing certainly grew stale, and as they brought with them an infinity of dirt, they were no doubt a nuisance. But no one would have been inclined to judge these amateur actors with harshness who knew how much they themselves were called on to endure, who could appreciate the disgusting misery of a hot summer afternoon spent beneath dust and paint and tin-plate armour, and who would remember that the performers received payment neither in éclat nor in thanks, nor even in the smiles of beauty.
"Can't somebody tell them not to come any more?" said the duchess, almost crying with vexation towards the end of the afternoon.
Then Mr Manfred Smith, who managed everything, went to the rear, and the king and warriors were sent away to get beer or cooling drinks at their respective clubs.
Poor Mr Manfred Smith! He had not been present at the moment in which he was wanted to lead the duchess to her stall, and the duchess never forgave him. Instead of calling him by his name from time to time, and enabling him to shine in public as he deserved to shine,—for he had worked at the bazaar for the last six weeks as no professional man ever worked at his profession,—the duchess always asked for "somebody" when she wanted Mr Smith, and treated him when he came as though he had been a servant hired for the occasion. One very difficult job of work was given to him before the day was done; "I wish you'd go over to those young women," said the duchess, "and say that if they make so much noise, I must go away."
The young women in question were Mrs Chaucer Munro and her bevy, and the commission was one which poor Manfred Smith found it difficult to execute.
"Mrs Munro," said he, "you'll be sorry to hear—that the duchess—has got—a headache, and she thinks we all might be a little quieter."
The shouts of the loud nymphs were by this time high. "Pooh!" said one of them. "Headache indeed!" said another. "Bother her head!" said a third. "If the duchess is ill, perhaps she had better retire," said Mrs Chaucer Munro. Then Mr Manfred Smith walked off sorrowfully towards the door, and seating himself on the stool of the money-taker by the entrance, wiped off the perspiration from his brow. He had already put on his third pair of yellow kid gloves for the occasion, and they were soiled and torn and disreputable; his polished boots were brown with dust; the magenta ribbon round his neck had become a moist rope; his hat had been thrown down and rumpled; a drop of oil had made a spot upon his trousers; his whiskers were draggled and out of order, and his mouth was full of dirt. I doubt if Mr Manfred Smith will ever undertake to manage another bazaar.
The duchess I think was right in her endeavour to mitigate the riot among Mrs Munro's nymphs. Indeed there was rioting among other nymphs than hers, though her noise and their noise was the loudest; and it was difficult to say how there should not be riot, seeing what was to be the recognised manner of transacting business. At first there was something of prettiness in the rioting. The girls, who went about among the crowd, begging men to put their hands into lucky bags, trading in rose-buds, and asking for half-crowns for cigar lighters, were fresh in their muslins, pretty with their braided locks, and perhaps not impudently over-pressing in their solicitations to male strangers. While they were not as yet either aweary or habituated to the necessity of importunity, they remembered their girlhood and their ladyhood, their youth and their modesty, and still carried with them something of the bashfulness of maidenhood; and the young men, the wether lambs, were as yet flush with their half-crowns, and the elder sheep had not quite dispensed the last of their sovereigns or buttoned up their trousers pockets. But as the work went on, and the dust arose, and the prettinesses were destroyed, and money became scarce, and weariness was felt, and the heat showed itself, and the muslins sank into limpness, and the ribbons lost their freshness, and braids of hair grew rough and loose, and sidelocks displaced themselves—as girls became used to soliciting and forgetful of their usual reticences in their anxiety for money, the charm of the thing went, and all was ugliness and rapacity. Young ladies no longer moved about, doing works of charity; but harpies and unclean birds were greedy in quest of their prey.
"Put a letter in my post-office," said one of Mrs Munro's bevy, who officiated in a postal capacity behind a little square hole, to a young man on whom she pounced out and had caught him and brought up, almost with violence.
The young man tendered some scrap of paper and a sixpence.