THE FUTURIST MISS BROWN.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume I, Issue 55, 11 April 1914, Page 6

THE FUTURIST MISS BROWN.

The sleeping figure of Miss Brown looked strangely .natural in the bizarre surroundings; her green hair flowed over the pillow and made a startling contrast against the black silk sheets. A soft-voiced clock proclaimed the hoiir of one, and on the stroke the bedroom door was opened by a maid with magenta openwork stockings and gilt shoes, a white dress spotted with rough designs of exotic flowers, and beautifully waved black hair in which one solitary red curl shone jauntily. Site parted the curtains and allowed the sunlight to filter in through the rose-coloured windows. One lazily stretched arm, beautifully tattooed, showed that Miss Brown was awake.

The maid then wound up the artificial canary, and proceeded to whistle a naughty little air by Borak consisting of nine discords. The haunting melancholy filled the room for a minute and a half and ceased as abruptly as it had begun. The lazy hand reached its langurous way to Miss Brown's whitened face, and brushed back an idle green curl that had strayed across her eyes.

The room had a pieplant beauty all its own\ It had been designed by a young Frenchwoman of only six, and had all the wonderful quality of unspoilt imagination. The wooden bjptl of bright red lacquer stood on gold feet, the black sheets and pillows were of a dazzling depth against the coverlet of purple crepe. The floor was of white enamel, on which a gilded bearskin and a few savage coloured rugs lay. -The ceiling was burnished gold, and the walls were a dull grey. Now fully awake, Miss Brown pressed the concealed bell, and when the maid returned demanded a dry Martini cocktail and her lunch. This done, she reached out her hand for the "Police Gazette" and eagerly scanned the columns for some thrill with which to stimulate her imagination. Presently her cocktail appeared, followed shortly by a lunch of chillies, a devilled sole, and some, hot caviare; this she picked at while she sipped a glass of champagne. The maid - now set about to smooth the pretty confusion of the last night's disorder; took away the scanty evening dress, the dancing shoes, the big jewelled bag, from which a purple powder-puff had strayed, eloping, as it were, with, the golden lip salve which, lay beside it on the floor.

At a quarter to three Miss Brown became possessed of a feverish energy; she rose, bathed, caused her - purple wig to be placed over her own sweet green hair, only allowing one stray but fascinating curl to escape and toy with her ear. A few dexterous touches and her face was ready. The odd wit of wearing but one eye-

"brow, the other having been shaved off, gave to her face that grotesque air for which she was so justly celebrated. From the disorder of her ebony dressing-table she found the bottle of her own special scent, and liberally sprayed herself. It was a scent many of her boyfriends envied, being a secretifconeoetion of Virginia tobacco and giving out a perfume rather like the pit of a music-hall. "With a dainty fancy she called it Essense de Eevue.

Another conceit of hers was the distorting;.mirror that swung on its slender ivory posts and showed -one a figure as slender as a boy's, no matter Avhat one's figure really was. But in her case there was no need for the deception, for site had the fashionable lack of moulding which gave one just the correct impression of dying from some wasting disease.

Miss Brown was an experienced woman of 18, though she owned to twenty-four, and, but for her hair, might have been taken for any young man about town. The last touches made to her toilette, a purple;patch placed by one eye; the little cigars she affected tucked away in their gold case; the names of three racehorses on a slip of paper —all certs for the day —and ./the telephone number of an airman who was coming to'tea with her at her club' safely seen into her purse. "-.'; . Then, as though the exertion of dressing had fatigued her, she took some absinthe, and at last was guided to her car by the ever-attentive maid.

The liveried man-servant bowed in great deference to her as she sailed through the portals of the Ebon Club, and now all eyes were upon her in admiration. It was a wonderful crowd, the very pick of the middle classes, with here and there a Bohemian earl or a duchess with a vagabond taste. England's brightest boys abounded all crazy for the dance, dressed in elegant fashion and glossy from their well-pomaded heads to the tips of their white-topped dancing boots. Prize dogs of every colour dye could pro'duee lay about on settees or gazed dully out of the pockets of big muffs. Here a jewelled dwarf tortoise ploughed his solitary way among some bread and butter all unnoticed. Gossip, in which daring little swear Avords mingled with new slang, was the order of the day. Young men who had all the grace arid softness of gilded idleness spoke to duchess or chorus girl with equal condescension, smoking as they talked. All were of the same thin, weary figure, all had an air of being very precious, and all, even at that time in the afternoon, had the up-all-night look on their faces.

But now the orchestra, discreetly silent before, broke into the bored air of a tango, and in a moment all was changed. All gaiety was forsworn. The anxious tango expression flew to every face. Boys clasped comparative strangers to their hearts, and with a noble resolve to do or die threaded the slow mathematics of the dance. The sight was so beautiful that

several elderly women dressed to look like girls furtively wiped away a tear, and so spread a little of their eyelash paint, all unconsciously, \uito their chalked cheeks. But no one minded. Here and there in the intervals of the dances the young men might be seen drinking bismuth-and-soda for their nerves, while the women toyed with a whisky-and-soda or fed their dogs with chocolates.

There was a fine lack of rude health or boisterous merriment about the affair, the women looking interestingly ill and the men quite- incapable of any physical feat of endurance, and if now and then some young girl swore, it was daintily done and had no vulgar force or vigour about it. It was obvious that no one was there for enjoyment, but that they were there to be there. Miss Brown was a marked beauty even in that crowd; everything she did had a delicious sense of impropriety about it, yet so veiled that it eluded even her most faithful imitators. Even her ankle watch had the air of ticking improperly, aud the snake that coiled about her neck seemed like an evil spirit. Above all,, she conveyed in a miraculous manner the feeling that" she had never in her life been out in anything so hearty as fresh air.

But at the very height of the afternoon, while, in the slightly broken English she assumed to hide, truth to tell, a suggestion of a vulgar accent, Miss Brown was regaling seven rapt youths with an account of her indigestion after a course of cocktails, an awful thing happened. Into the room a stranger came, brought in by a young member now suddenly aware of his fatal, blunder. It was social death to him, and he knew it too late, and the haunted look on his face was plain to see. The stranger was a woman, big and fine and fair. She was proportioned like a Juno, with clear grey eyes. She was full figured and broad. She was free of paint or powder. She carried no small dog. She came like Nature into the room and smelt of common roses. She spoke. "This," she said, "would amuse my children." Children! With one wild cry of agonised disgust Miss Brown fainted. And men said afterwards in hushed whispers that the stranger's immodesty" had shocked them beyond all words. —Dion Clayton Calthorp, in the "Daily Mail."