The Green Hat

I

It has occurred to the writer to call this unimportant history The Green Hat because a green hat was the first thing about her that he saw: as also it was, in a way, the last thing about her that he saw. It was bright green, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect pour le sport.

I saw it for the first time (writes the Author) on the eve of my removal from one residence in London to another; although when I say residence I mean that I was, by the grace of God and at the impulse of my own temerity, removing to somewhat more habitable premises nearby from two rooms and a bathroom above a mean lane in a place called Shepherd’s Market. Not that our lane hadn’t attractions of its own to offer. Our lane was one in which many improbable things were wont to happen, but it somehow seemed inevitable that such things should happen there. But maybe I had better select a few of these things, that you may know the sort of lane ours was. I have seen men arrested there, and I have seen a heavy constable worsted in a fight with a little Jew pickpocket, who was for some time responsible for a rag-shop in our lane. I have seen two butlers fighting in our lane. I have seen a very old nobleman woo a flower-girl in our lane, but whether or not she ever favoured his suit our lane had no means of telling. One night I fell over the body of a woman lying in the blood of a broken head, and in our lane by night policemen solace themselves by smoking cigarettes into the crowns of their helmets, while cats, I must tell you, will never cease to sport together all about it.

But it was by day that our lane attained to any real interest for a student of such things, for then it was sacred to the activities of a hearty-looking man in a brown bowler-hat, who with one hand would write interminably in a small book, while with the other he dealt with passing men in slips of paper known to the law as “betting-slips.” As partner to the hearty-looking man—we are, I venture to say, already embarked on our tale, for these gentlemen will make a faint devil’s chorus for more spacious happenings—was a tall, wizened man who wore a check cap and had hair growing out of his ears. This man would stand at one end of the lane and now and then say, “Oi!” When he had said “Oi!” he would light a cigarette, while the hearty-looking man would run heavily round our end of the lane, for “Oi!” meant that the law was after him. When the law had gone he would come back wiping his mouth, and jokes were exchanged with the butcher and the fishmonger; but when the law really wanted him, say twice a year, a posse of policemen would simultaneously rush both ends of our lane, and the hearty-looking man was mulcted in a fine not exceeding so much and was back again the next morning within a yard of my door. Among his most persistent admirers was a little bent old man with bloodshot eyes and a twitching mouth, who was a window-cleaner without a Union, which meant that he would clean a window for threepence and want no tip. He liked me, and used to give me racing information, but I never won anything.

Now the first thing to do is to clear the ground as quickly as possible for the coming of the green hat, for Mr. H. G. Wells says that there is no money to be made out of any book that cannot bring a woman in within the first few thousand words. But in setting the scene in Shepherd’s Market we have evaded the necessity for any “writing-up” of atmosphere, for that place has an atmosphere quite impossible to convey in a book, unless, of course, you were to take the book to Shepherd’s Market and leave it in our lane for a few days in nice warm weather. Shepherd’s Market is, in fine, a collection of lively odours bounded on the north side by Curzon Street, on the south by Piccadilly, on the west by Hertford Street, and on the east by Half-Moon Street; and rejoices, therefore, in the polite direction of Mayfair, as you will see printed on the notepaper of any of its residents. A flower-shop which was opened in our lane lived for only six months, and that in spite of the gardenia gallantly affected by the old nobleman from Curzon Street every day. I, after having lived there for six years, was (by the grace of God) leaving on the morrow.

It is late, after midnight, when the tale begins.

I had been that evening to a party; for that is now the name that folks give to a dance—I am not sure why. In America, I believe, one doesn’t even give a party, one just throws a party, but as to this party I am telling of, it had, with that infallible sense of direction peculiar to parties, whether given or thrown, taken a man by the nerves at the back of his head and had hurled him into a deep pit. And it was as one encompassed by that pit, deep as the playground of the seven devils, dark as the very dungeons of gaiety, that I found myself back in my flat above the mean lane. It would be the last night I would ever spend in that flat, and I was so glad. The bookshelves had already been taken away, and books littered the floor, books and pictures and what-nots crowded the gate-leg table, while the ottoman with its soiled Chinese yellow cover was a shambles of whatever you will find in a bachelor’s flat if you begin to clean out the drawers. The bedroom, however, was still ordered for human habitation.

Now I had no sooner cast my hat on the bed than the bell rang. It was one of those infernal things you pull at, so that they may go on clanging forever, and as it clanged I wondered, I am afraid ungraciously, who it could be. Could it, I wondered, be anyone for Gerald March, who lived in the flat above mine? But no one, I told myself, has called on Gerald March within the memory of man, for that man discourages callers, that man knows how to discourage callers.

I had no hope in pretending not to be at home, for my lights were plain to see from our lane. And in my mind’s eye I saw the hearty face of the acquaintance at the door, and with my mind’s ear I heard the hearty greeting that dropped from his parasitical and thirsty lips. He had seen my light, that man, as he went his way home from some party even more pestilential than the one which had sent me home stricken; and he would fain drink a glass with me, after the fashion of pests of the night, that are hearty with the weary and thirsty with the unwary.

I could, however, always order my privacy without seeming too unfriendly by looking down from my bedroom window, for whereas the windows of my sitting-room faced the public-bar of The Leather Butler and an angle of the offices of the Duke of Marlborough’s fine house, from my bedroom window I had a clear prospect of our lane. Of pests, however, there was neither sight nor sign; nor of cats, nor of men, nor of any low and usual thing; only, under the lamp at the Sheep Street end of our lane, a long, low, yellow car which shone like a battle-chariot. It was empty.

Now I am of those who are affected by motorcars: their lines thrill me, the harmony of their colour touches me, a gallant device wins my earnest admiration so that, walking along Piccadilly, I will distress my mind by being a partisan of this one, a despiser of that one. Nor am I to be won by any cheap thing, no matter how brave-seeming it may be to the eye, how admirable in endurance; but I am to be won only by the simple lines, the severe and menacing aspect, of the aces among motorcars; for economy hath charms, but not to the eye. This car charmed the eye. Like a huge yellow insect that had dropped to earth from a butterfly civilisation, this car, gallant and suave, rested in the lowly silence of the Shepherd’s Market night. Open as a yacht, it wore a great shining bonnet, and flying over the crest of this great bonnet, as though in proud flight over the heads of scores of phantom horses, was that silver stork by which the gentle may be pleased to know that they have just escaped death beneath the wheels of a Hispano-Suiza car, as supplied to His Most Catholic Majesty.

Downwards to my door I looked, and there was a green hat before my door. The light from the one lamp in Sheep Street fell about it, and that was how I saw that it was a green hat, of a sort of felt, and bravely worn: being, no doubt, one of those that women who have many hats affect pour le sport.