The Rejuvenation of Miss Semaphore

The gong at 37, Beaconsfield Gardens, South Kensington, thundered under the vigorous strokes of the bow-legged German waiter. By one, by two, by three, the boarders trooped down to dinner, the more sensitive to noise stopping their ears as they descended.

The very deafest could not ignore that gong. Müller always attacked it suddenly, as if running amuck or possessed by a demon. It reverberated far and near, and echoed faintly to Gloucester Road Station. Boarders, arriving late, were seen to run when their ears caught the familiar sound.

At the head of the central table in the fine dining-room, its three windows looking on the Gardens, sat the proprietress, Mrs. Wilcox. She was a bright-eyed, stout, florid woman of forty-five, dressed in black silk and a lace fichu secured by a cameo brooch. As she waited for her guests, she meditatively sharpened a carving knife.

By the sideboard stood her husband, Captain Wilcox, slender, dried-up, younger than his wife, and dominated by her. Where they met, and why they married, was a never-failing source of speculation in the house. It was asserted that Miss Tompkins took him in payment of a debt. Be that as it might, the mild, subdued little Captain was evidently a gentleman. He had been in a Lancer regiment, got into difficulties, and now at eight-and-thirty was a person of much less importance in his wife’s boarding-house than her imposing cook.

Though never supposed to act as master, the name and authority of Captain Wilcox were frequently evoked by Mrs. Wilcox when any unpleasant duty had to be done. He it was, for instance, who sternly insisted that no credit should be given. He stood out for the weekly settlement of accounts. He was responsible for certain persons receiving notice to quit. He made the unpopular rule that the drawing-room lights should be extinguished precisely at eleven. In a word, he was the Jorkins of the firm. For the rest, he held some small post in the City secured for him by his wife’s brother, helped daily with the carving, and paid for his own keep.

Besides the central table, there were round the room several smaller ones, accommodating from four to eight persons. To one of these, some men and women concerned in our story were making their way. First came Miss Augusta Semaphore, a tall, thin, and rather acid-looking woman of fifty-three. Close behind followed her sister, Miss Prudence, who was ten years younger, and accustomed to be treated as a baby. Prudence wore a fringe that hung over her eyes in separate snaky curls, and in damp weather degenerated into wisps; she was plump and fair, had a somewhat foolish smile, and, as befitted her part of giddy, little thing, any number of coquettish airs and graces.

Their neighbours were, a stately couple named Mr. and Mrs. Dumaresq, Mr. Lorimer, a clownish youth, of good family and aggressive patriotism, Major Jones, Mrs. Whitley, a small, mincing lady of recent and painful refinement, and finally a large and commanding woman with a terrible eye, who was vaguely believed to have taken out a medical degree.

“For what we are about to receive,” said Mrs. Wilcox, “the Lord make us truly thankful.”

With a creak and a rustle, some five-and-thirty boarders drew in their chairs. The covers were removed, and a ripple of prosy talk began.

As usual, it started with polite enquiries as to each other’s health. In boarding-houses it generally does. No one cares a button for you or your ailments, but they ask after them all the same with exasperating regularity and take no interest in the answer.

“How is your cold, Major Jones?”

“Better, thank you, Mrs. Dumaresq—and your neuralgia?”

“Much worse; I never closed my eyes last night.”

“But you are taking something for it?”—and so on, and so on, and so on.