Ainslee's Magazine, February 1913 — page 152: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

142 a party, do you see? I wish I could re- member it; one of your American stories—deuced clever. Poor Mawlyn’s been laid up ever since, scarcely been out of his room, I believe. He’s got sciatica. Do you understand? Devilish annoying, sciatica. I’ve had it, and that beast of a woman is too much occupied with her own bally love affair to half attend to him. “T’veheard he’s almost constantly in a most wretched state of pain. It seems the housemaid on their floor told the housemaid on my floor—I say, old chap, what if we went down to have a look at the tennis? Oh! I beg your pardon! confounded awkward of me; this little pipe has a most awkward habit of spill- ing its fire. I do hope I didn’t burn you. Have you heard that Captain Maidstone’s daughters won the mixed doubles yesterday? Wasn’t it clever of them! Gad! This morning’s quite too lovely.” He ceased speaking, and we edged our way out among the groups of [ng- lish chatting with staid reserve in the cool of the veranda. Past the jolly, white-haired old admiral, his wife and daughters. Past laughing groups of tall, rosy, big-boned young English girls, keen as their brothers over sports. Past squat, fixed groups of spinsters, and dowdy old dowagers in lavender and black morning caps, in wicker arm- chairs, who made tea in their rooms, gathered their store of sugar from the breakfast table, and invited all their friends from the neighboring pensions upon Saturday afternoons, when tea was free downstairs. Afternoons when they invariably criticized the tea as “vile.” Gossip never needed a more fertile field for clicking tongues over the tea- cups to flay Mrs. Mawlyn alive in, than this big, luxurious’ hotel, so popular with the English, who, when they dis- cover anything excellent in France at a minimum price, settle on it like flies and stick to it with true British tenacity. ° It was, moreover, somewhat like be- ing elected tu a country club to secure rooms; even nodding acquaintances congratulated you on entering, when AINSLEE’S you could prove that your trunks were upstairs, and the key to your room in your pocket. “I’m so glad the Crichton-Pooles are in at last!” you overheard in passing. “Fancy, after waiting three weeks at that stuffy old Hotel Angleterre!’ Or, “My dear, have you heard that the Countess of Baylesford told Lady Ches- whit-Dun yesterday that she would not give up her rooms on the fifteenth even if she had to sleep in a bathroom—all the bathrooms are occupied, I’m told— rather annoying, my dear, in the morn- ing, I should say, getting up and out for the others’ baths. Have you heard that Lord Rick’s eldest son wired for a suite and bath, and only got the bath? Delicious!” Thus, you see, once in, no one dared leave. It was too difficult to return, and in no other hostelry within a day’s jour- ney, ‘mind you,” was there such a jolly lot of the right sort, as the colonel de- clared and added: “One meets so many rotters.”’ “Jolly!” I winced. Yes, Mrs. Maw- lyn was jolly—jolly enough, but she didn’t seem to please. The rest, for the most part, that the colonel alluded to, possessed that conservative and re- served jolliness which the British em- pire has for generations taken first prize in distributing along the Riviera in those exclusive private hotels where they exhibit in a.glass case the wash set once used overnight by royalty, next to the hymnals, the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the Rollo books. Such places as these when it rains are morgues, The colonel and I were soon on our way along the shady hill path, that short cut down to the tennis courts, and I may say that, of all the little hill paths that wound and zigzagged over the grounds, this little path we were on was the most popular. The woods through which it crept were dense. There were short turns, bringing up abruptly back of moss-covered bowlders, and _ stray, leafy nooks, long before the tennis courts were reached, capable of hiding from the inquisitive gaze of the indis- COWMUC DNOOLK (C@