LITERATURE.

Globe, Volume II, Issue 156, 3 December 1874, Page 3

LITERATURE.

“DOLLY.” A Stohy of the London “Sans-Souci,” [From Belgravia.] ( Continued. ) “ My Dolly appears with a smile on her face. ” —Charlotte Temple. Seeing me had set her thinking of what she had probably chased from her heart. I know it; for when I looked into my cab after they had left it, I found the floor covered with rosedeaves. She had pulled her bouquet to pieces, and there was a loose pearl among them, like a big tear. She hid her face from me when she got out. I didn’t tell that to the missus—how could I? Nothing would let me rest then, but I must have a look at her; the photographs in the shop didn’t begin to picture her fresh beauty. So I knocked off early one day, and went all alone into the Sans-Souci with a pair o’ glasses I borrered from the lady at the Whip and Snaffle. When the ballet come on, I wasn’t long in picking Dolly out; for she stood out among ’em all, like the moon over the lamps on the bridges, and she danced so light and pretty, with sich a twinkling foot, and sich a smile wavering on her little mouth, and her hair floating about like a pony’s mane ; and her eyes seemed to laugh. Altogether, I didn’t wonder that she should be the most loved and best liked of all the team. If you had only heerd the swells round me admiring of her !

I oughter have been glad she had got on so; hut my heart sunk, and I went away sorry I’d been. And I took my cab on another round from oaf 6 square. Not that it bettered me so doing. No; I had a haccident with my horse, and what with his keep and hire of another, it made a big hole in our savings again. I was down in the mullygrubs, I do assure you, for a month, when an old friend says to me :

‘ Travers, you aren’t a young kid any longer now. Why don’t you go in for something higher than drivin’ out of a night to earn money for another ? I kin put you up to rayther a rich thing in your line. There’s a new party come next door to my gentleman’s, and they are going to sack their coachman because he isn’t patient. Now you’re a family man, Sam, and you don’t kick at trifles. ’

I went. The baron—they called him a furrin baron —wasn’t in; but his lady was willing to see me in the parlour. I never was on sich a carpet before; it was like walking in hay fetlock deep ; and what with the statyers life-size, gold and pictures and looking-glasses, I was regularly done up, and couldn’t see who it was for a bit that was putting questions to me. When I did see the lady, she was in a low chair, laying back easy ; and it was Dolly. I was more shocked than she was. She was hardened now—quick that comes on ’em and there wasn’t a flutter in her voice as she said:

‘ So, Mr Travers, you want to be my coachman, do you ?’ She was taking in her ways and voice. It wasn’t easy for me to answer as I did ; but though the words burnt my lips, I had to say them. ‘ Why,’ says I, not knowing what to call her, ‘as far as that goes, bein’ a poor man under the owner, I’d ought to jump at the offer ; but I’m an old man, Miss Forest, and I never know’d girls who didn’t belong to themselves or a husband to have wheels under ’em long—beggin’ your pardon, my girl—l mean miss, and thank’ee all the same. There’s my missus, and I have friends round Spencer’s Mews, and they might come to know who I was driving for— ’ ‘ You’re a saucy— ’ So she began at me, sitting up ; and I was afeared it would be the book she had in her hand that would fly at my head; but she stopped, champed her lip, and went on agin : ‘ Saucy old— ’ But then she pulled up sharp, and thrust out her chin, with a toss of her hair, just as you may see young horses do when they are teased by the boys at Aldridge’s. And leaving her chair and wheeling round, she bolted out before I well knew she was going. I heerd a bell ring presently and that woke me like, and the door opened. I thought it was her come back.

And do you know what I was going to say ? I was going to ask her to throw up all her fine surroundings and go home with me, and I wished I could offer her the life of a lady and never to soil her hands by work; and then I remembered how we weren’t rich.

And I prayed that the gold and diamonds of the scoundrels would turn to ashes in their hands, and that the good and innocent would be deaf to the voice of the schemer and woman-thief I

Biit it was another than Dolly who came in ; her companion, they call her—that same tall showy girl that had ’ticed Dolly from ns after we had saved her almost on her mother’s grave. A voice seemed to whisper in my ear : ‘ Men are bad enough, but look at yon woman ; she decoyed a younger sister into the den of the devil.’

I saw it all: Dolly would have made a happy man’s wife but for that wretch.

And this was the thing that was going to turn me out of the house —a-pretending not to know me, and imposing on me as a real lady —as if she could ever ape the breed ! There was something in her look which give me a suspicion.

‘ Dolly,’ I says to myself, ‘Dolly knows by my looking out for a sitivation here that I ain’t easy circumstanced; and though I have angered her, she wouldn’t pack me from her door without at least asking where I lived, if she didn’t at once make me the offer of my own lent money back.’ So I says to the stuck-up woman, says I:

‘ Here I stands or here I sits—for I don’t leave this house till I’ve had the offer of the money I lent Miss Forest when she hadn’t a penny but debts in the world ! ’

You never saw a woman jump so with surprise, and turn the color of a biled beet at my cutting in so true.

She put her hand to her collar, and I heerd the rustling of paper there. Whip me if Dolly hadn’t put money in her hand to return to me, and that woman had ’propriatered it—going to bundle me out

of the house to boot, though I might have been on the downhill to starvation. When I could speak for rage, I thundered out —it was no whisper, you be sure : ‘ Ask your mistress to come here, for leave this house I sha’n’t till I see her ! ’ She didn’t know what to do. And her being a woman I didn’t know what to do. As we were facing one another, Dolly come in, pale as a ghost, with a red spot on her cheeks like a live coal, and her eyes swimming in tears. If she had only fallen into my arms then and there, that I might have taken her home ! She must have been at the door—wanted to see me go, bearing away all her memories of innocent days. She had heard every word, and seeing the bank-note in her companion’s hand, she guessed what was wrong. She wasn’t the size of half that woman, but the big un was afraid of her—for Dolly had a spirit of her own. I pitied her, poor soul! That woman was the only woman that had been beside her for many months—all the other faces that she saw near her were men’s ! ‘ Dolly,’ says I, next to breaking down, ‘ we’ve never wished you ill, and if we had, it couldn’t be worse than it is, with a house of luxury over your head, and that viper as your bosom friend! Don’t you see that she has stopped the money sent by your good heart to me ? ’ The woman flung the bank-note on the black-and-gold table, and the corner uncrumpling, I saw the figure of it—it was for a hundred pound ! Ido assure you, sir, she was repaying me tenfold ! She’d have done no less if she’d been a duke’s heiress, and her money honestly come by, I go bail. ‘My poor girl,’says I, a-swallerin’ of my tears and a-lettin’ the note remain, * get rid of that bad woman before you sleep another night, or you will sleep your last night in some shameful grave, ’ She couldn’t speak through her sobs—for she sobbed, though she held her head up like a soger—but she pointed with her ringed finger to the money. ‘No, my girl,’ says I; ‘me an’ the missus give up that these two year—better she never hears a word of it, and she won’t from me. I never did a day’s work for the gentleman here, and if my hands know it, I never will —and so his money I can’t touch. Goodbye ! Be rid of that thief and decoy—and remember our home is only one step out of this ! ’ And out I rushed —somehow tumbling into the street. I have always tried to fancy that my name was called out after me in Dolly’s voice—but like as not she didn’t. That baron passed away like the rest. I hope that woman went his road with him. Some one grander tried to please Dolly now.

‘ Bless us ! ’ says Mrs Travers, one Sunday morning, over the Lloyd's. ‘ Sam, you remember I told you I’d seen little Dolly Forest’s name in the Sans-Souci playbill ? ’ ‘ You said so.’

‘lt was her, Sam—but look here! ‘Theatre R’yal, Marble Arch. This superb establishment,} entirely renovated and [redecorated, will open on Easter Monday, under the management of Miss De Forest, late of Drury Lane, Her Majesty’s, the Saus-Souci Palace, and the principal theatres. ’ What do you think of that ? ’ I hung my head. Out of the ballet into the manager’s office of a West-end theayter —it was a leap, indeed. There isn’t much of stage-door tattle that we cabbies don’t hear. Next day I had the name of what they call the hidden capitalist of the Marble Arch. Wery proper; he runs his racers as ‘ Mr Jones ; ’ he takes his box at Surrey-side music-halls as ‘Mr Brown ; ’ they call him * Charley Smith ’ at Cremorne ; and why shouldn’t he be *Mr Robinson ’ at the Marble Arch T. R. ? I ’spose I should wear a change of names if I was born with an earl’s privileges, and wore a coronet and not a ‘ solomon. ’

It was a new cab I had, and my old hoss, and my fare to the Marble Arch on the opening night. And there I stayed. 0, such a neat and luscious turn-out at the stage-door ! dark-blue, picked out with cream-white, and a gold hair-line tracing out the pattern—the prettiest brougham 1 ever did see.

Dapper chap the driver—drab coat and cockade to his hat. Footman a werry decent chap, took his pint out of the pewter at the Flybury Tap, like a man, and entered into chat as affable as a hoyster.

Miss De Forest’s own coach that ’ere. All the servants liked her. Now and then she had headaches, and then there was too much ordering about. Afore he had been there a week, Thomas had ten ‘ carpetings but eacli time was§given a sovereign to overlook her ‘ forgetting herself. ’ Flighty, but awfully jolly and winning, that gel. I borrowed the newspaper next morning, jest to see what it said of Dolly ; for Dolly played in both pieces. 0, it did give it her peppery ! She was the first whip in both play and burlesque ; and her not having no eddication to understand what she was saying, and no training to play what ought to have been acted, she failed—no two roads to it, she broke down proper ! Arter the first couple of weeks, and all her friends had been to see her, the public forgot to come ; and if you saw two or three cabs there, where twenty ought to have been, you must have known they was ‘orders ’ that come in them, and no pay. John Thomas had got to like the Fly bury Tap, and he told me that *Mr Robinson ’ soon got tired of that little game, and rows broke out between him and the missis.

When he repeated that Dolly wished herself dead, I didn’t think much of it, for women talk strong without meaning it. But when he repeated that Dolly wished Mr Eobinson dead, I felt rather guilty, and like an accomplice in some ugly job. The theayter struggled on ; country people saw the advertisements and the hoardings, and Dolly’s likeness bigger than life in all the public-house windows ; and they came and kep’ the pot a-bilin’. And the foggy time arrived—ugh ! Last Tuesday I had a busy day of it, rubbing the rust off and taking in money. I went home and felt so jolly that I borrowed a horse and went out again, like a greedy.

I was coming along Oxford street West, empty, at one o’clock, when I see a brougham pull up werry short, and the driver and footman beside him tumble off all in a heap. And one of the winders was bust open, and a man’s head hung out of the opening. To he continued.