Punch: Punch (70.1876)

206

PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI.

[May 20, 1876.

"FAIR PLAY."

Young Mistress. "It's your 'Sunday Out' next Week, Jane ; isn't it?
Jane. "Lor', Mum! Why you've forgotten ! It's tours'!"

frozen, Gunter-iced woman, and feeling her own face burning hot-
lier than a furnace. " Give it me ! "

" I could give it you with pleasure," returned Virginia, with a
curve of her suave lips, expressing the intense bitterness of a bland,
unforgetting, unforgiving nature; '' but I prefer simply handing
you the telegram, which, as you may see, I have already opened
and read."

"And it says ? " the poor young girl asks nervously.

"It says," answers Lady Virginia, glancing at Percy, with a
cold, impassive smile—" ' From the Rev. Thomas Hassock to Miss
Bella St. John Villars. Come. I am very ill. All U. P.
There is money in it.' "

"And who is Thomas Hassock ? " asked Percy, his face distorted
with passion, as he pulls at, and bites, his long whiskers.

Lady Virginia unbuttons her great eyes, and hooks her nose
with even more frigid, aristocratical haughtiness than usual, as she
replies, "Thomas Hassock is the lover of Miss Bella St. John
Villars."

Percy Shortwynd jumps up three times in a bitter, surging
wrath that for a few moments quite carries him away. But as they
waited there for him, expecting him back every moment, he returned
at last, and speaks with a quickening, deepening emotion in every
word. |

" You have deceived me!" he says, turning a blank back upon her
sternly.

Lady Virginia stands hard by—hard as the iron nails in the
planks of the floor,—fanning herself blandly, with the zebra expres-
sion so strong on her face now, that even the upturned, speaking eye
of the passionately admiring Octopus, as he gloats on her marble,
Clyte-like charms, from a recess of his deep, cold tank, is for a
moment dimned, and silenced, by a great, overpowering awe.

" I have deceived you," she answers, with whitened lips, whence
proceeds a grievous, touching sound,—a something resembling the
recently cut grass in summer, inasmuch as it is a fresh moan : "good
bye! "

"Good bye!" he answers, shortly,—very shortly even for him,

who is scarcely five feet six in the longest day. "I shall never see
you again nor speak another word to you." *

She flings herself upon his breast, her arms cling around his
thick, brown throat, and her wealth of hair falls all over his broad,
strong back and shoulders, as he pants and gasps in her embrace,
heaving his short, heavy, columnar legs up in the air one after the
other, in vain attempts to free himself from this fair, full, soft,
tepid, light-headed, heavy-bodied, caressing burden. She clings
frantically, with ivy-growth tenacity, around his broad, open throat.

Virginia, classic though she be, must be colder than iced marble
if she can stand by and witness this calmly. Reddening for once in
her life, and with some show of resentful animation, she stoops
majestically, and, with her white, long, harsh, handsome hands,
seizes Percy firmly and determinedly by the ankles. He is between
the two. Bella has him by the head-locks, Virginia by the fet-
locks. The latter will not release him, holding him as by a strong
chain that cannot be broken.

To and fro they swing him, these two glorious, brave, loving
women—with the violent flooding of a long pent-up passion. Their
hearts and pulses begin to beat madly, frantically fast, as though
rivers of flame instead of blood were coursing through their veins.
Their heads swim round the Aquarium, and, such is the boiling,
burning heat, that, were the Thames there, it would be set on fire ;
but, being as it is, 'only the fish are fried to cinders in their trans-
parent, cool tanks, now turned into very hot-houses, rather for
orchids, than octopuses.

A man is not easily pulled into little bits, but at one or other
woman's feet he must fall, scarred by the fierce, unequal contest.
The paroxysm is short. One big, sharp, short snap, and Percy,

* What the Editor says.—"As after this follow five pages of dialogue
between Percy and Bella, we have thought it more consistent to omit
them, and make Percy stick to his original text."—Ed.

What the Authoress says {to the Editor).—" You think you know human
nature! Tour Aunt, who is the only one on the Editing Committee whose
opinion is worth anything, writes privately to say that she thinks you've
omitted the most natural and most characteristic portion of the novel. So do
I. I shall consult my Solicitor, and your Aunt will be a witness."—Ed.