SOME NOTES AT STARMOUTH.
An outcast once more! I exchange the blessing invoked on the perfidious Plapper for curse of equal calibre. On—on—like the Wandering Jew, or the Pilgrim of Love. No rest but the hotel for me! Starmouth landladies beginning to enter into the humour of the thing—they appear now with a broad grin, repeated on faces of accepted lodgers at windows. They evidently do not consider me a sound investment. Meet other homeless ones, searching—we scowl at one another jealously.
Sound Investment.
Evening is getting on—which is more than I am. Sinking into a state of maudlin self-pity. My poor Drama—and all the things I ordered to be sent in to Plapper's! He, or his lodger, will read by my lamp, bathe in my bath, feed on my jam—while I ... but I cannot trust myself to think of it—or Starmouth may lose one of its leading opticians?.... Later—saved! It still seems incredible to me—but I have rooms at last! At Mrs. Surge's—a widow lady, who, as she tells me herself, has not been in a hurry to put up her card, as she likes "to pick her lodgers." And she has picked Me—me, the Blighted, the scorned of Starmouth! No sea-view—but plenty of horsehair. Sunflowers and mignonette in long front garden; bow-window, and regiment of geraniums drawn up in pots on little table. Go back, and recover luggage.
Return to Mrs. Surge's roof, not without nervous apprehensions—she may repent, or I might find the house a smoking ruin. Can't get over an idea that the Fates are pursuing me. However, they seem to be taking a rest just now. I am free at last to study Starmouth. Hitherto I have had eyes for nothing but little cards with "Apartments" on them.
No doubt about Starmouth being full. Streets crowded. Most of the young men promenading in flannels and cricket "blazers," of startling brilliancy. Children, young girls, and stout matrons in striped linen yachting-caps. (When you are elderly, and at all stout, you do not appear to advantage in this form of head-dress.) Chars-à-bancs, flys, tricycles, goat-chaises. Always thought Starmouth was a picturesque fishing-village, with windmills, wooden huts, and drying-nets along beach. It isn't.
Still, of course, the change from all London associations, the absolute quiet must have tendency to refresh the fagged brain. (Always rather a gratifying reflection somehow, to think one has a fagged brain.) I observe they are doing Our Boys at the theatre. At the Aquarium are the Buffon Brothers with their celebrated Acrobatic Ass "from all the London Music-Halls." Switchback Railway, too, on the beach, and automatic machines about every five yards. Plenty of life here.
