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Read Ebook: Punch or the London Charivari Vol. 105 October 14th 1893 by Various Burnand F C Francis Cowley Editor
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Ebook has 84 lines and 13495 words, and 2 pages
BOBO began her bloater.
"Why the beast has a hard roe!" she cried. "COKALEEK, you shall have the roe;" and she dropped it into his tea before he could object. "You're not eating any breakfast. Put the mustard-spoon in his mouth, BILL, if he insists upon keeping it wide open while he stares at me. Ain't I fascinating this morning? Why the devil don't you notice the new feather in my hat? I always wear feathers when I'm going out clubbing, because I plume myself upon being smart. Here, somebody see if my spur's screwed on all right."
"I wish your head was screwed on half as well," said BILL, as BOBO planted her handsome Pinet boot, No. 31z, on the breakfast-table.
COKALEEK looked on and smiled, with his mouth still open. It was all he had to do in life. He had married her because she was BOBO; and the more she out-Bobo'd BOBO, the better she pleased him. He was a marquis, and a millionaire, but he had only one drawing-room at his country-seat; and the smoking-room was upstairs--obviously because there was no room for it on the ground-floor. And there was only one piano in the house, at which BOBO'S gifted young friend, SALLIE RENGAW, was engaged in the early morning, picking out an original funeral march with one finger, and throwing breakfast-eggs about in the fury of inspiration.
"You should always give SALLIE poached eggs," he remonstrated, holding his nose; "they make a worse mess when she pitches them about, but they only hurt the furniture."
"Does she always chuck eggs?" asked COKALEEK, mildly.
It was BOBO'S first autumn at Cokaleek House, and the Marquis wasn't used to the ways of her gifted friends. She had another friend, besides the musical lady, a Miss MIRANDA SKEGGS, whose conversation was like a bad dream; and these two, with BILL SPLINTER, were the house-party. COKALEEK, waking suddenly from an after-dinner nap, used to think he was in Hanwell.
"She chucks anything," answered BOBO; "kidneys, chops, devilled bones. How can she help it? That's the divine afflatus."
"Back? Why he's never been here in my time," faltered COKALEEK. "I don't know any feller called SEBASTIAN."
"Rippin'!" cried BOBO; "and now we'll have the funeral. Get all the cloaks and umbrellas off the stand, MIRANDA. BILL, bring me the coal-scuttle--that's for the coffin, doncherknow. COKALEEK, you and BILL are to be a pair of black horses; and me and MIRANDA 'll be the mourners. Play away, SALLIE, with all your might. We're doing the funeral."
Out flew BOBO into the garden, driving BILL and COKALEEK before her, scattering coals all over the gravel walk, and slashing at the two men with her pocket-handkerchief. She rushed all round the house, past the windows of the back parlour, kitchen, and scullery; and then she suddenly remembered the cub-hunting, and tore off to the stables, tally-ho-ing to COKALEEK and BILL to follow her. The next thing they all saw was a shower of baking-pears tumbling off the garden-wall, as BOBO took it on her favourite hunter. She had been essentially BOBO all that morning.
"BILL," said BOBO, one winter twilight, by the smoking-room fire, after her fourteenth cigarette, "I want you to run away with me."
"Rot," answered BILL.
"Yes, I do. I've ordered the carriage for half-past ten this evening. We shall catch the mail to Euston."
"You won't catch this male," said BILL. "No, BOBO, you're very good fun--in your own house, but I don't want you in mine. You are distinctly BOBO, but that's all. It isn't enough to live upon. It won't pay rent and taxes."
"You're a cur."
"No, I'm trying to be a gentleman. Besides, what's the matter with COKALEEK? Hasn't he millions, and a charming house in the heart of the collieries?"
"He's all that's delightful, only I happen to hate him. Directly I leave off chaffing him I begin to think of arsenic, and, brilliant as I am, I can't coruscate all day. It's very mean of you not to want to elope."
"I daresay; but I'm the only rational being in the book, and I want to sustain my character."
BOBO stayed, and BILL went in the carriage that had been ordered for the elopement; and then there happened an incident so rare in the realms of fiction that it has stamped my novel at once and for ever as the work of an original mind.
COKALEEK, the noble, unappreciated husband, got himself killed in the hunting-field. He went out with BOBO one morning, and she came home, a little earlier than usual, without him, and smoked cigarettes by the fire, while he stayed out in the dusk and just meekly rolled over a hedge, with his horse uppermost. He wasn't like GUY LIVINGSTONE; he wasn't a bit like dozens of heroes of French novels, who have died the same kind of death. He was just as absolutely COKALEEK as his wife was BOBO.
And did BILL marry BOBO, or BOBO BILL?
Not she! Another woman might have done it--but not BOBO. She knew too well what the intelligent reader expected of her; so she jilted BILL, in a thoroughly cold-blooded and BOBO-ish manner, and got herself married to an Austrian Prince at half-an-hour's notice, by special licence from the A. of C.
BY OUR OWN PHILOSOPHER.--Woe to him of whom all men speak well! And woe to that seaside or inland country place for which no one has anything but praise. It soon becomes the fashion; its natural beauties vanish; the artificial comes in. Nature abhors a vacuum; so does the builder. Yet Nature creates vacuums and refills them; so does the builder. Nature is all things to all men; but the builder has his price. Man, being a landed proprietor and a sportsman, preserves; but he also destroys, and the more he preserves so much the more does he destroy. Nature gives birth and destroys. Self-preservation is Nature's first law, and game preservation is the sporting landlord's first law.
A VERY BAD "SCUTTLE POLICY."--The Coal Strike.
A DALY DREAM.
"For be it understood It would have lived much longer if it could,"
and so banishes his own outlaws from the elegant and commodious theatre in Leicester Square.
Transcriber Notes:
Small caps were replaced with ALL CAPS.
Throughout the document, the oe ligature was replaced with "oe".
Throughout the dialogues, there were words used to mimic accents of the speakers. Those words were retained as-is.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not corrected unless otherwise noted.
On page 178, "cubbing" was replaced with "clubbing".
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