The Spike: or, Victoria University College Review, June 1923

Welsh Rarebit

Welsh Rarebit

Last night I had a queer dream. I had just recovered from a minor scalding, brought about by my desire to swallow my coffee before the candle burned out, when a terrific uproar was heard at the front door. In my pyjamas I struggled out of bed and wandered to the door, barefooted, as I could not find my slippers.

"Come on!" shrieked a voice to me as I gained the door-mat, "the coach is simply rotting with indignation and the mice will take the bits between their teeth and bolt if you're not careful!"

I sprang aboard. It is useless to argue with a rabbit when he pulls at his whiskers in that determined way. So I stepped into the hollow pumpkin which he called a coach and the mice, in high Fettle, bounded forward to the slackened rein so suddenly that I sat down.

"Late again!" said the rabbit waving his hand in the air with a circular motion so suddenly that I jumped. But he was only looking at his wristlet watch.

"That," he said nodding his head in sidelong fashion towards a bundle in the corner. "That is Cinderella."

"Oh, indeed," I answered, for I felt it incumbent on me to say something.

The bundle stirred itself and flung a foot forward, proving to be attired in Parisian fashion.

"I'm trying to straighten the seam of my seamless stocking," she said crossly, "and it simply will not go straight."

"That," I said deliberately, "is nonsense."

"Of course it is," replied the rabbit as he bent his bright eyes upon me. "Who ever heard of anything else in a dream?" Whereat he doubled up without warning and, thrusting one foot through the window, commenced to hick the coachman.

"I don't know what's the matter with the mice," he said, resuming his scat. "The cheese must have stopped running."

"The what must have stopped running?" I asked in astonishment.

The rabbit fixed me with a glare.

"The cheese, of course he said, "Don't you know our specially salaried gorgonzola? How else do you think we gel the mice to run' Where have you been living, man?"

"Oh, dear, oh, dear!" wailed Cinderella, who had been gazing al her reflection in a new two shilling piece. "My hair simply will stay up. And I have no hairpins in it. Now can it help, tumbling down now?"

"But why should it tumble down?" I asked her.

"Of course it must" she snapped impatiently. "How do you expect the Prince to love me if it doesn't? It always falls down when he kisses me."

My confusion was lessened by the rabbit, who had climbed out upon the roof of the coach, poking his head in the window upside down.

"Here we are," he announced, and disappeared in a flash. I found myself walking up the stone steps of an unknown house in the most easy and familiar manner in the world.

"Come on," said the rabbit, advancing to meet us. By some miraculous means he had already divested himself of coat and hat and seemed quite at home. "I have the second from now with the Empress Eugenie."

He made one bound over the heads of two footmen and disappeared from sight. I have a confused impression of giving my coat and hat, which I had acquired somewhere, to a man with the cold staring eyes and gaping mouth of a codfish, and followed Cinderella.

"What does he want to wear a watch chain for?" she was saying. "Why he only carries the key of his brother's money-box on the end of it, and he could open that with a screwdriver."

She flitted away with someone oddly like Lord Beaconsfield just as a man who seemed to know me approached. He was languid, dandiacal, and he spoke precisely. His right eye was entrenched behind an eyeglass. We chatted pleasantly, though I haven't the slightest remembrance of what we said. The large room was full of people in fancy dress and with the odd familiarity of dreams I began to recognise them.

"We have this ball every year," my companion remarked. "We give the proceeds to the Home for Destitute Emperors. Several of the poor fellows are in great want just now. There's Romanoff, he can hardly keep a valet, merely because they don't like him with his head off, poor chap. And Louis, he's rather hard pushed; lack of really good linen, don't you know. Caesar Augustus, Vespasian and Domitian, they're unlucky. Stacks of servants, you know, but nothing to wear. We ask them here, but they Won 't come. The poor lads are so sensitive. I told them to wear their jolly old togas, but they say they couldn't dream of coming unless they were in evening dress. Oh, I say, here's Max! What cheer, Max? You fellows know each other?" And he introduced me to Mr. Beerbohm.

Sure enough it was. The incomparable was dressed as the Happy Hypocrite, with a mask of Lord George Hell in one hand and Lord George Heaven in the other. I began to recognise; yet other faces which I knew. Mr. Barrie advanced with mincing tread gowned as Alice-Sit-By-the-Fire. Oscar Wilde appeared in several bead-strings as Salome. A pair of boxing gloves and an allowance of sticking-plaster an Mr. Bernard Shaw represented Cashel Byron's profession. Mr. Masefield, in bonnet and shawl, was the Widow in the Bye Street. Mr. Compton Mackenzie, in spangles, was Carnival. Mr. Hugh Walpole was attired to represent a virulent Duchess. "Ouida" strode into the room with a Union Jack and tricolour over her shoulders. A serious-faced Mr. Galsworthy represented the Eldest Son. Cheeky-faced Mr. Kipling was at tired as Puck. A tall, black figure, I was told, was Mrs. Meynell as the Second Person Singular. Maurice Hewlett was present as the Fool Errant; Mr. Henry James was an Ambassador; Mr. George Moore, in solemn raiment, was Sister Teresa; Sir Conan Doyle appeared as a fairy. Behind these figures I could see others which I knew: Francis Thompson as a bloodhound; (lenience Dane as Shakespeare; Shakespeare as Caesar.

My head began to whirl and I turned to my companion.

"Oh, this is quite a jolly little place," he said to my query. You remember me, of course? I'm Baring; Maurice Baring. But you wanted to know the name of this show. It's the Club of Damned Authors."

* * * * *

Somehow I was quite pleased to awaken in my bed.

C.Q.P.