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CHAPTER II. A BOARDING-HOUSE EVENING, AND AN IMPORTANT LETTER.

A BOARDING-HOUSE EVENING, AND AN IMPORTANT LETTER.

Boarding-houses all the world over have certain features in common. These are the result of haphazard association between people without common interests.

No. 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South Kensington, was no exception to the rule. Its inmates were chiefly women, the widows and daughters of professional men. A few childless married couples lived there, and a sprinkling of unmarried men who were either old or extremely young. Some of the people were well-connected, others well-off, all were dull, a few pious. Several secretly considered themselves superior to the others. They focussed the attributes of the British Philistine, and were an object-lesson as to the low intellectual level of average respectable humanity.

21Lacking occupation and mutual outside interests, the boarders were led to discuss each other freely. The men mostly herded together in the smoking-room. The ladies gathered in the drawing-room. A sort of armed neutrality was maintained between the sexes. He or she who ventured to invade the headquarters of the other was looked on as daring or brazen as the case might be. At meals alone did some thirty-five people assemble. Even then, they were not expected to change their place at table, so had to trust to chance for agreeable neighbours.

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The few girls who lived in the house had not a gay time. Poor things! They had no lovers, no interests, no society, no prospects, and incomes that required management. Once they ceased to be new arrivals, the men, all of whom were ineligible, took no notice of them. They were treated with a nonchalance more galling than unkindness, and were subtly given to understand that they could not expect the same consideration as young women outside who lived in their own homes and had parents who entertained. The elderly people, and especially Miss Semaphore, looked rigidly after the proprieties.

22Occasionally a dashing widow or an attractive and forward damsel temporarily upset the dulness. Dances were organised, round games started, heads turned. These brilliant meteors never lingered long on the horizon. Their stay usually terminated in some episode that led to a notice to quit. The succeeding flatness was the more marked.

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