CONTENTS
THE GREEN HAT
Chapter One: THE GREEN HAT
I
IT has occurred to the writer to call this unimportant history The Green Hat because a green hat was the first thing about her that he saw: as also it was, in a way, the last thing about her that he saw. It was bright green, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect pour le sport.
I saw it for the first time (writes the Author) on the eve of my removal from one residence in London to another; although when I say residence I mean that I was, by the grace of God and at the impulse of my own temerity, removing to somewhat more habitable premises nearby from two rooms and a bathroom above a mean lane in a place called Shepherd’s Market. Not that our lane hadn’t attractions of its own to offer. Our lane was one in which many improbable things were wont to happen, but it somehow seemed inevitable that such things should happen there. But maybe I had better select a few of these things, that you may know the sort of lane ours was. I have seen men arrested there, and I have seen a heavy constable worsted in a fight with a little Jew pickpocket, who was for some time responsible for a rag-shop in our lane. I have seen two butlers fighting in our lane. I have seen a very old nobleman woo a flower-girl in our lane, but whether or not she ever favoured his suit our lane had no means of telling. One night I fell over the body of a woman lying in the blood of a broken head, and in our lane by night policemen solace themselves by smoking cigarettes into the crowns of their helmets, while cats, I must tell you, will never cease to sport together all about it.
But it was by day that our lane attained to any real interest for a student of such things, for then it was sacred to the activities of a hearty-looking man in a brown bowler-hat, who with one hand would write interminably in a small book, while with the other he dealt with passing men in slips of paper known to the law as “betting-slips.” As partner to the hearty-looking man—we are, I venture to say, already embarked on our tale, for these gentlemen will make a faint devil’s chorus for more spacious happenings—was a tall, wizened man who wore a check cap and had hair growing out of his ears. This man would stand at one end of the lane and now and then say, “Oi!” When he had said “Oi!” he would light a cigarette, while the hearty-looking man would run heavily round our end of the lane, for “Oi!” meant that the law was after him. When the law had gone he would come back wiping his mouth, and jokes were exchanged with the butcher and the fishmonger; but when the law really wanted him, say twice a year, a posse of policemen would simultaneously rush both ends of our lane, and the hearty-looking man was mulcted in a fine not exceeding so much and was back again the next morning within a yard of my door. Among his most persistent admirers was a little bent old man with blood-shot eyes and a twitching mouth, who was a window-cleaner without a Union, which meant that he would clean a window for threepence and want no tip. He liked me, and used to give me racing information, but I never won anything.
Now the first thing to do is to clear the ground as quickly as possible for the coming of the green hat, for Mr. H. G. Wells says that there is no money to be made out of any book that cannot bring a woman in within the first few thousand words. But in setting the scene in Shepherd’s Market we have evaded the necessity for any “writing-up” of atmosphere, for that place has an atmosphere quite impossible to convey in a book, unless, of course, you were to take the book to Shepherd’s Market and leave it in our lane for a few days in nice warm weather. Shepherd’s Market is, in fine, a collection of lively odours bounded on the north side by Curzon Street, on the south by Piccadilly, on the west by Hertford Street, and on the east by Half-Moon Street; and rejoices, therefore, in the polite direction of Mayfair, as you will see printed on the notepaper of any of its residents. A flower-shop which was opened in our lane lived for only six months, and that in spite of the gardenia gallantly affected by the old nobleman from Curzon Street every day. I, after having lived there for six years, was (by the grace of God) leaving on the morrow.