Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. by F. Anstey (read e book .txt) 📕

"UNACCUSTOMED TO DARK-COMPLEXIONED GENTLEMEN."

In Hereford Road I occupy garishly genteel first-floor front and back apartments at rupees fifteen per week and the Lady of the Land has entreated me to kindly excuse the waiting-maid for jumping with diffidence whenever I pop upon her unpremeditatedly on the stairs, being a nervous girl and unaccustomed to dark-complexioned gentlemen—though her own countenance, from superabundance of blacking and smuts, being of a far superior nigritude, it is I myself who should be more justified in jumping.

However, she is already becoming the habituée, and seldom drops the crockery-ware now—except when I simper with too beaming a condescension.

Certain of my readers will perhaps hold up the hands of amazement at my imprudence in disclosing my whereabouts, and other private concerns, in the publicity of a popular periodical—but there is method in such madness; they do not take in Punch at Porticobello House, considering that one penny (or even the moiety of that sum) is more correct value for funny and comical illustrated journalism, while the Allbutt-Innetts, although they see Punch weekly do not peruse the literary contents, especially in the season, when, as Mrs A.-I. frequently remarks, they are in such a constant whirl of social dissipation that they have absolutely no time for serious reading.

At first I was severely mortified that—so far as my acquaintances were concerned—these tittlings and jottings should be thus written with water, but I have since made the discovery that my cloud of disappointment is internally lined with precious silver.

Mr Jabberjee is a little over-ingenious in his excuses.

Since shaking the dust off my feet at Porticobello House, I have not succeeded to pluck the courage for a personal interview with Miss Jessimina, and my correspondence, duly forwarded per Mr Bhoobone Lall Jalpanybhoy, of Highbury, has consisted mainly of abject excuses for non-attendance on plea of over-study for Bar Exam, and total incapacity to journey due to excessive disorderliness in stomach department.

This, unhappily, at length inspired her with the harrowing dread that I was on the point of being launched into the throes of eternity, if not already as dead as Death's door-nail, and so, with feminine want of reflection, she performed a hurried pilgrimage to Highbury.

Now, whether on account of the beetleheadedness of a domestic, or Baboo Jalpanybhoy's incompetency in the art of equivocation, I am not to say—but the sequel of her inquiries was the unshakable conviction that I had not struck root in the habitation from which my letters were ostensibly addressed.

And in a subsequently forwarded letter she did reproach me pathetically with my duplicity, and accused me of being a fickle—by which I was so unspeakably cut up that I abstained from the condescension of a rejoinder.

Next I became the involuntary recipient of another letter in more intemperate style, menacing me that with a hook or a crook, she would dislodge me from the loophole in which I was snugly established, and that several able-bodied boarders were the hue of a full cry in pursuit.

Since Hereford Road is in dangerous proximity to Ladbroke Grove, I was sitting tight in my apartments on receipt of this grave intelligence, with funk in my heart, and the Unknown hovering above me, when my young friend Howard Allbutt-Innett, Esq., arrived with his bicycle, like a god on a machine, and perceiving the viridity of my countenance, inquired sympathetically what was up.

At first, being mindful of the excessive liveliness with which he had bantered my residence in a boarding-house of such mediocre pretensions, I was naturally disinclined to reveal that I was in the plight of troth with the proprietress's daughter; but eventually I overcame my coyness, and uncovered the pretty kettle of fish of my infandum dolorem, and my ardent longing to hit upon some plan to extricate myself from the suffocating coils of such a Laocoon.

"My dear old chap," he said kindly, after I had unfolded the last link of my tale of woe, "I will put you up in a dodge that will perform the trick. Don't see the young woman, or she will get round you with half a jiffy. Write to her that you are not worthy of a rap, and no more a Prince than I am!"

Hearing his last words, I started, and did, like the ghost of Hamlet, Senior, "jump at this dead hour," being convinced that young Howard had found out (perhaps from Hon'ble Cummerbund) that my title was a bogus, and anticipating that, if he divulged the skeleton of my bare cupboard to his highly genteel parents, I should infallibly experience the crushing mortification of a chuck out.

However, I hid the fox that was nibbling my vitals by inquiring, in a rather natural accent, what he meant by such a suggestion.

"Are you such an innocent, simple old Johnny, Prince," he said, with reassuring bonhomie, "as not to catch the idea? Do you not know that European feminines in all ranks of society—alack, even in our own!—are immoderately attracted by anyone possessed of riches and a title—or of either of the two? As an au faït in the female temperament, I shall wager that it is nine out of ten that if you spoof this mercenary young minx into believing that you are merely a native impecunious nonentity, and not to be shot at with powder, she will instantaneously drop pursuing such a hot potato."

To this speech (reported verbatim to best of my ability) I did shake my head sorrowfully, and reply that I greatly feared that Jessimina's devotion to this unlucky self was too severe to be diverted, or even checked, like a cow that is infuriated or non compos mentis, by the mere relinquishment of such tinsel and gewgaw wraps as a title or worldly belongings, having frequently (and that, too, prior to our engagement) protested her preference for very dark-complexioned individuals, and her vehement curiosity to behold India.