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diff --git a/41556-0.txt b/41556-0.txt index 09086dc..a249aa2 100644 --- a/41556-0.txt +++ b/41556-0.txt @@ -1,23 +1,4 @@ -The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with -almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - +*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 41556 *** Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was @@ -8515,366 +8496,4 @@ Gerty and mother think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270} End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556-8.txt or 41556-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - -BY VIOLET HUNT - -AUTHOR OF 'A HARD WOMAN' - -_FOURTH EDITION_ - -LONDON - -CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. - -1904 - - - - -Tempe, a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north, and -Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the -Ægean.--_Lemprière._ - - - - -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -They say that a child's childhood is the happiest time of its life! - -Mine isn't. - -For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is -nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It -is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a -cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too -soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy"--no grown-up person understands -that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. -It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be -despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the -quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest -thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get -that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too -cross to admit that you do! - -I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as -Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead. - -I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying -children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down -everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I -mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in -prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me -insensibly into the habit of composition. George--my father--we always -call him by his Christian name by request--offered to look it over for -me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want -to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up -people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the -worst--I mean the truth--about everybody, including myself. That is what -makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short -commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have -seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be -discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, -however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw -me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a -specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality -and _verve_. I do adore _verve_! - -George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and -vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for -it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two -following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never -knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be -daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the -education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he -has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am -apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a -scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a -long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, -dried-up tone teachers put on,--"Did she see?" And when he asked me, I -didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness. - -I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook -says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook -beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place -somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after -that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil--plain devil when he -is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, -for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she -get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, -but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She -never says a sharp word--can't! George says she is bound to get left, -like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white -like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my -favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without -any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings. - -I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of -us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would -never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been -exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the -tantamount of Mount Täygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly -babies. We aren't allowed to read Lemprière. I do. What brutes those -Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George -says! - -I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that -the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children -"go in and out so," and even Aunt Gerty says that "fancy children never -last," and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count -on keeping up to their own standard. - -I cannot tell you if our looks come from our father, or our mother? -George is small, with a very brown skin. He says he descends "from the -little dark, persistent races" that come down from the mountains and -take the other savages' sheep and cows. He has good eyes. They dance and -flash. His hair is black, brushed back from his forehead like a -Frenchman, and very nice white teeth. He has a mouth like a Jesuit, I -have heard Aunt Gerty say. He never sits very still. He is about -thirty-seven, but he does not like us chattering about his age. - -Mother looks awfully young for hers--thirty-six; and she would look -prettier if she didn't burn her eyes out over the fire making dishes for -George, and prick her fingers darning his socks till he doesn't find out -they are darned, or else he wouldn't wear them again, and spoil her -figure stooping, sewing and ironing. George won't have a sewing machine -in the house. Her head is a very good shape, and she does her hair plain -over the top to show it. George made her. Sometimes when he isn't there, -she does it as she used before she was married, all waved and floating, -more like Aunt Gerty, who is an actress, and dresses her head sunning -over with curls like Maud. George has never caught Mother like that, or -he would be very angry. He considers that she has the bump of -domesticity highly developed (though even when her hair is done plain I -never can see it?), and that is why she enjoys being wife, mother, and -upper housemaid all in one. - -We only keep two out here at Isleworth, though my brother Ben is very -useful as handy boy about the place, blacking our boots and browning -George's, and cleaning the windows and stopping them from rattling at -nights--a thing that George can't stand when he is here. When he isn't -we just let them rave, and it is a perfect concert, for this is a very -old Georgian house. Mother makes everything, sheets, window-curtains, -and our frocks and her own. She makes them all by the same pattern, -quite straight like sacks. George likes to see us dressed simply, and of -course it saves dressmakers' bills, or board of women working in the -house, who simply eat you out of it in no time. We did have one once to -try, and when she wasn't lapping up cocoa to keep the cold out, she was -sucking her thimble to fill up the vacuum. We are dressed strictly -utilitarian, and wear our hair short like Ben, and when it gets long -mother puts a pudding basin on our heads and snips away all that shows. -At last Ariadne cried herself into leave to let hers grow. - -The new cook says that if we weren't dressed so queer, Ariadne and me, -we should make some nice friends, but that is just what George doesn't -want. He likes us to be self-contained, and says that there is no one -about here that he would care to have us associate with. Our doorstep -will never wear down with people coming in, for except Aunt Gerty, and -Mr. Aix, the oldest friend of the family, not a soul ever crosses the -threshold! - -I am forgetting the house-agent's little girl, round the corner into -Corinth Road. She comes here to tea with us sometimes. She is exactly -between Ariadne and me in age, so we share her as a friend equally. We -got to know her through our cat Robert the Devil choosing to go and stay -in Corinth Road once. At the end of a week her people had the bright -thought of looking at the name and address on his collar, and sent him -back by Jessie, who then made friends with us. George said, when he was -told of it, that the Hitchings are so much lower in the social scale -than we are, that it perhaps does not matter our seeing a little of each -other. She is better dressed than us, in spite of her low social scale. -She has got a real osprey in her hat, and a mink stole to wear to -church, that is so long it keeps getting its ends in the mud. She -doesn't like our George, though we like hers. George came out of his -study once and passed through the dining-room, where Jessie was having -tea with us. - -"Isn't he a _cure_?" said she, with her mouth full of his -bread-and-butter. - -We told her that our George was no more of a cure than hers, which shut -her up; and was quite safe, as neither Ariadne nor I know what a "cure" -is. She isn't really a bad sort of girl. We teach her poetry, and -mythology, and she teaches us dancing and religion. She has a governess -all to herself every morning, and goes to church regularly. She once -said that her mamma called us poor, neglected children, and pitied us. -We hit her for her mother, and there was an end of that. We love each -other dearly now, and have promised to be bridesmaids to each other, and -godmothers to each other's children. I am going to have ten. - -Ariadne went to her birthday party at Christmas, and did a very silly -thing, that Mother advised her not to tell George about. Every one at -home agreed that poor Ariadne had been dreadfully rude, but I can't see -it? I adore sincerity. When Mr. Hitchings asked her what she would like -out of the bran-pie when it was opened, same as they asked all the -other children, Ariadne only said quite modestly, "A new papa, please!" - -Their faces frightened her so, that she tried to improve it away, and -explain she meant that she should like an every-day papa, like Mr. -Hitchings, not only a Sunday one, like George. I know of course what she -meant, a papa that one sees only from Saturdays to Mondays, and not -always then, is only half a papa. - -Ariadne's real name is Ariadne Florentina, after one of George's -friends' books. She has nice hair. It is reddish and yet soft, but it -won't curl by itself, which is a great grief and sorrow to her. But at -any rate, her eyelashes are awfully long and dark, and she likes to put -the bed-clothes right over her head and listen to her eyelashes -scrabbling about on the sheet quite loud. She has big eyes like nursery -saucers. The new cook calls them loving eyes. On the whole, Ariadne is -pretty, she would think she was even if she wasn't, so it is a good -thing she is. She considers herself wasted, for she is over eighteen -now, and she has never been to a party or worn a low neck in her life. -We have neither of us ever seen a low neck, but we know what it is from -books, and from them also we learn that eighteen is the age when it -takes less stuff to cover you. The new cook says that all her young -ladies at her last place came out when they were only seventeen. What is -outness? I asked George once, and he said it was a device of the -Philistines. I then told him that the new cook said that Ariadne would -never be married and off his hands unless he gave her her chance like -other young ladies, and he said something about a girl called Beatrice -who was out and married and dead before she was nine. Her surname was -Porter, if I recollect. The new cook said "Hout!" and that Beatrice -Porter was all her eye and just an excuse for selfishness! - -Anyhow it is Ariadne's affair, and she doesn't seem to care much, except -when the new cook fills her head with ideas of revolt. She walks about -the green garden reading novels, and waiting for the Prince, for she has -a nice nature. I myself should just turn down the collar of my dress, -put on a wreath and go out and find a Prince, or know the reason why! - -We keep no gardener, only Ben. Ben is short for Benvenuto Cellini, -another of George's friends. He is thirteen, old enough to go to school, -only George hasn't yet been able to make up his mind where to send him. -It is a good thing Ben has plenty of work to do, for he is very cross, -and talks sometimes of running away to sea, only that he has the North -border to dig, or Cat Corner to clear. - -That is the corner George calls The Pleasaunce--it is we who call it Cat -Corner. Not only dead cats come there, but brickbats and tin kettles -with just one little hole in them, and brown-paper parcels that we open -with a poker. I hope there will be a dead baby in one some day, to -reward us. The trees are so dirty that we don't like to touch them, and -the birds that scurry about in the bushes would be yellow, like -canaries, Sarah says, only for the dirt of London. I hardly believe it, -I should like to catch one and wash it. In the opposite corner George -has built a grotto, and we have to keep it dusted, and he sits there and -writes and smokes. The next garden is the garden of a mad-house. The -doctor keeps a donkey and a pony. Once a table-knife came flying over -the wall to us. George's nerves were so thoroughly upset that he could -not bear anything but Ouida and Miss Braddon read aloud to him all the -rest of the day. Mother happens to like those authors and another -Italian lady's books that we are forbidden to mention in this house. She -never reads George's own works; she says she has promised to be a good -wife to him, but that that wasn't in the bond. She knows them too well, -having heard them all in the rough. Behind the scenes in a novel is as -dull as behind the scenes in a theatre, you never know what the play is -about. Aunt Gerty says that all George's things are rank, and quite -undramatic, and George says he is glad to hear it, for he doesn't like -Aunt Gerty. - -The other persons in the house are George's cats. There are three. The -grey cat, the only one who has kittens, I call Lady Castlewood, out of -_Esmond_ by Thackeray. George sometimes says "that little cat of a Lady -Castlewood"--it occurred to me that "that little Lady Castlewood of a -cat" just suits ours, for she is a jealous beast, a cantankerous beast, -and goes Nap with her claws all over your face in no time! She hates her -children once they are grown up, and is merely on bowing terms with -them, or you might call it licking terms--for she doesn't mind giving -them a wash and a brush-up whenever they come her way. Robert the Devil -was the one that stayed away a week. He is very big and mild; he can lie -down and wrap himself in his fur till he looks all over alike, and you -couldn't find any particular part of him, no more than if he were a kind -of soft hedgehog. George talks to them and tells them things about -himself. - -"I am sure they are welcome to his confidence!" that is what the new -cook said. She likes them better than she likes him. She is quite kind -to cats, though she gives them a hoist with her foot sometimes, when -they get in her way. They are valuable, you see. I wish I was, for then -people care what you eat and give you medecines, which I love. It isn't -often you are disappointed in a new bottle of medecine, except when -there's gentian in it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -You don't get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother -says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who -knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good -servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and -without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, -which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a -servant best through its stomach, and don't give them beer, or -beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I -suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I -know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) -is worth, and I value my right of free entry. - -Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, -and sees germs in everything. It doesn't make her any happier. But as -for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan -for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our -mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the -wrong place, chivied here and there, with no resting-place for the sole -of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she -makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to -see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don't believe any servant was -ever ashamed in her life. 'Tisn't in their natures. They just grin and -bear with it--with the dust, and the scolding too. - -"It's 'er little way," I heard Sarah say once, not a bit unkindly or -disagreeably, though, after Mother had come down on her about something. -But once I caught the very same girl shaking her fist at George's back -and calling him "an old beast!" - -"Sarah," I said, "whom are you addressing?" - -"The doctor's donkey, miss," she said, as quick as lightning, pointing -to it grazing in the doctor's garden next door. People were always -overloading that donkey, and shaking their fists at it. - -I must get to the new cook. The last one gave Mother notice, and I never -could find out why, because she was fond of Mother and could stand the -cats. - -"Oh, I like _you_, ma'am," I heard her say, just as if she disliked some -one else. Mother took no notice, but left the kitchen, and Cook took a -currant off her elbow and pulled down her sleeves, and mumbled to Sarah, -"It isn't right, and I for one ain't going to help countenance it. -A-visiting his family now and then between jobs, just like a burglar--or -some-think worse!" - -What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the scullery window, and -Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of -them both, so that it made a mist and she didn't see me. I knew, though, -she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she "shouldn't -reely," she muttered something more about a "neglected angel!" I did -think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor's donkey as usual, -but then the words didn't fit either of us? I asked her straight if she -did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was -minding his own business and I had better do the same. - -She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for -really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at -the back door, and she kept saying, "A poor girl's only got her -character, mum, and she is bound to think of it--" and Mother said, -"Yes, yes, you did quite right!" and seemed just to want her out of the -house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment -Sarah's back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the -middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into -every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the -towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the -corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its -back like a horse kicking. - -Of course George wasn't allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him -where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester's for the shooting -(George shooting! My eye!--and the keeper's legs!) and said he had -better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to -be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built -my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and -that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and -didn't bother to tuck them in. It isn't necessary to do so when we turn -head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three -times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice -lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson's, Monkey Soap, -and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn't a speck of dirt, or pattern -either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat -one's meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of -one's soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the -joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn't scold -us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them -in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we -black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the -walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that -shows it was shabby and ready for death. - -Mother said afterwards that she couldn't see any improvement anywhere, -but anyhow we enjoyed ourselves and that is everything. We spent money -on it, for we bought _décalcomanie_ pictures, and did bouquets all over -the mantelpieces, but Mother insisted we should peel all these off again -before George came back. He couldn't come back till we got that cook, -for George is most absurdly particular about our servants. Sarah has got -used to him, and there seems to be no idea of her going. She has to -valet him, for he is always beautifully dressed. She has to take the -greatest care of her own appearance, and get her nails manicured and her -hair waved when he is at home. That is about all for her. But the cook -he calls the keeper of his conscience, that is to say, his digestion. -His digestion is as jumpy as he is. Sometimes it wants everything quite -plain, and he will eat nothing but our rice-puddings and cold shapes of -tapioca, etc.; at another time he calls it "apparition," and says the -very name of it makes him shiver. I am used to cold shapes, alas! He -sometimes brings things down from town himself--caviare and "patty de -foy." Children are not supposed to like that sort of thing, but we do, -and George gives them us; he is not mean in trifles. Sometimes it is -pheasants and partridges, that he has shot himself on ducal acres. They -are shot very badly, not tidily, with the shot all in one place as it -ought to be: Mr. Aix explained this to me. They are not to be cooked -till they are ready, and when they are they are a little too ready for -Mother and us, so Papa and Mr. Aix have to eat it all. George belongs to -the sect of the Epicureans; I heard him tell the cook so, also that he -is the reincarnation of a gentleman called Villon. - -For a month Mother "sat in" for cooks, and all sorts of fat and lean -women came and went. Our establishment didn't seem attractive. George -bespoke a fat one, by letter, but Mother inclined to lean. These women -sat on the best chairs and prodded the pattern of the carpets with their -dusty umbrellas, and asked tons of questions,--far more than she asked -them, it seemed to me, and this one that we have at last got was the -coolest of all, but in rather a nice way. She was tall and thin, with a -long nose with a dip in it just before the tip, which was particularly -broad. Ariadne said afterwards that a nose like that seemed to need a -bustle. She said she was a north-country woman, and that is about all -she did tell us about herself, except her name, Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -She sat and asked questions. When she came to the usual "And if you -please, ma'am, how many is there in family?" Mother answered, "Myself -and my son and my two daughters,--and my sister--she is -professional--and is here for long visits--that is all." - -"Then I take it you are a widow, ma'am?" - -Mother, getting very red, explained that George is very little at home, -so that in one way he didn't count, but in another way he did, for he is -very particular and has to be cooked for specially. Being an author, he -has got a very delicate appetite. - -"A proud stomach, I understand ye. Well, I shall hope to give him -satisfaction." She said that as if she would have liked to add, "or I'll -know the reason why." - -She seemed quite to have settled in her own mind that she was going to -take our place. She "blessed Mother's bonny face" before that interview -was over, and passed me over entirely. - -She came in in a week, and the first time she saw George she was "doing -her hall." Ariadne and I were there as George's hansom drove up and he -got out and began a shindy with the cabman. - -"Honeys, this will be your father, I'm thinking!" she said. - -Perhaps she expected us to rush into his arms, but we didn't; we knew -better. We just said "Hallo!" and waited till he was disengaged with the -cabman, who wanted too much, as we are beyond the radius. George didn't -give it to him, but a good talking to instead. The new cook stopped -sweeping--servants always stop their work when there is something going -on that doesn't concern them, and looked quite pleased with George. - -"He can explain himself, and no mistake!" she said to Sarah afterwards, -and she cooked a splendid dinner that night, for, says she to Sarah, -"seemed to her he was the kind of master who'd let a woman know if she -didn't suit him." - -She doesn't "make much account of childer," in fact I think she hates -them, for when Ariadne showed her the young shoots in a pot of snowdrops -she was bringing up, and said, "See, cook, they have had babies in the -night!" Elizabeth, meaning to be civil, said, "Dis_gust_ing things, -miss!" - -Still, she isn't really unkind to children, and admits that they have a -right to exist. She will boil me my glue-pot and make me paste, and lets -Ariadne heat her curling-tongs between the bars of the kitchen fire. She -doesn't "matter" cats, but she gives them their meals regular and -doesn't hold with them loafing in the kitchen, and getting tit-bits -stolen or bestowed. And they know she is just, though not generous, and -never forgets their supper. They were all hid, as it happened, when she -came about the place, but she said she knew she had got into a cat house -as soon as she found herself eating fluff with her tea, and she thinks -she ought to have been told. George laughs at her and calls her "stern -daughter of the north," but he wasn't a bit cross when she told him that -Ben ought to be sent to school. He even agreed, but Ben isn't sent. Ben -is still eating his heart out, and he keeps telling Elizabeth Cawthorne -so. He is much in the kitchen. She is very sensible. She just stuffs a -jam tart into his mouth, and says, "Tak' that atween whiles then, my -bonny bairn, to distract ye." Ben takes it like a lamb, and it does -distract him, or at any rate it distends him; he has got fat since she -came. - -She orders Mother about as if she were a child. Mother _does_ look very -young, as I have said. She ought, and so ought Aunt Gerty, considering -the trouble they both take to keep the cloven hoof of age off their -faces. They go to bed with poultices of oatmeal on them, and Aunt Gerty -once tried the raw-beef plaster. But what she does in the night she -undoes in the day, with the grease paint and sticky messes that are part -of her profession. - -She lives with us except when she is on tour, and is only here when she -is "resting" in the _Era_, and all that time she is dreadfully cross, -because she would rather be doing than resting, for "resting" is only a -polite way of saying no one has wanted to engage her, and that she is -"out of a shop," which all actresses hate. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -I have forced George's hand, so I am told, and neither he nor mother -take any notice of me. - -But Aunt Gerty hugged me all over when she heard what I had done, and -scolded Mother for not being nice to me. - -"I don't see why you need put that poor child in Coventry?" she said. -"You had more need to be grateful to her than not. How much longer was -it going to go on, I want to know? Hiding away his lawful wife like an -old Bluebeard, and me Sister Anne boiling over and wanting to call it -all from the house-tops!" - -"Well, Gerty, you seem to have got it a bit mixed!" said Mother. "But, -talking of Bluebeard, I always envied the first Mrs. B. the lots of -cupboard room she must have had! I wonder if she was a hoarder, like me, -who never have the heart to throw anything away? If I do happen to see -the plans for the new house, I will speak up for lots of cupboards, and -that is all I care about." - -"See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn't it your right? You must -make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your -own comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in -the cold, and 'specially with a husband like you've got!" - -"Bother moving!" said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has -been overdoing it, as she has lately. "It is an odious wrench; just like -having all one's teeth out at once." - -"Hadn't need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and -don't you forget it." - -"The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose." - -"You can get used to something bad, can't you, but that's no reason you -are not to welcome a change? Oh, you'll like the new life that's to be -spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind -of 'behind the scenes' you have been doing for eighteen years. And a -pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new -scenery, new dresses, new backcloth----" - -"You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates -one sometimes, especially now, when----" - -"I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend -on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call -it--it's the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!--into your -fine new house. Pity but _He_ can't get a little whiff of it into his -comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, -perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don't cotton to each other, nor -never shall. He isn't my sort. I like a man that is a man, not a -society baa-lamb! Baa! I've no patience with such----" - -"Sh', Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her -paints in a corner so quietly there!" - -That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the -same. - -"We have never minded the child yet" (which was true), "and I don't see -why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold -her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father -well enough. What you've to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands -white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! -Cream's good, too. You have been George Taylor's upper servant too -long--Gracious, who's that at the front-door?" - -Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all -three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George's, when he is at -home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot -day--a dog-day, only we haven't any dogs, but the kittens were -tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for -coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little -clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of -dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. -But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door -such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never -had I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped -Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw. - -There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was -Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn't. I haven't got to her yet -in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing -at the door holding on to her cap that she'd forgotten to put a pin in. -Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn't like her to leave her caps -off to go to the door, even when George isn't here, out of principle, -and for once it told. - -"For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit -too strong to-day," cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, -and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came -in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the -carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and -a jump. - -"Please m'm!" she cried almost before she got into the room, "there's a -carriage-and-pair just called----" - -"Anything in it?" Mother said. - -"Two ladies, m'm, and here's their cards." - -I took one and Aunt Gerty the other. - -"Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!" Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady -Macbeth saying, "Out, dammed spot!" - -The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, -but it had got under the drawers. - -"I said you wasn't dressed, ma'am," Sarah said, looking at Mother's -apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves. - -"No more I am," said Mother, laughing. "Don't look so disappointed, -Gerty. I couldn't have seen them." - -"But you shouldn't have said your mistress wasn't dressed, Sarah," said -Aunt Gerty. "It isn't done like that in good houses. You should have -said, 'My mistress is gone out in _the_ carriage.'" - -"But that would have been a lie!" argued Sarah, "and I'm sure I don't -want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair." - -"Oh, where have you been before, Sarah," Aunt Gerty sighed, "not to know -that a society lie can't let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too -late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for -aristocratic swells like that, after all." - -"They didn't really want to see me," said Mother. "They only called on -me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of -Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She -is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I -have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your -hair. Off you go!" - -"And get a sunstroke," thought I. "Just because she wants to talk to -Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!" - -So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of not minding me that -they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun. - -Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting -visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies -coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the -bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she -with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was -continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only -had a nice slight figure, like she has. - -"Bead chains and pince-nezs won't do it as you seem to think," Mother -said. "And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!" - -"Happy!" screamed my Aunt Gertrude. "Who talked of being happy? You -don't go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought, -to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your -husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It -would me, that's all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher -than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to -take your call and go on--not before you've had a trip to Paris for your -clothes, though--and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor's -despised wife is. There's an object to live for! That's your ticket, and -you've got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn't he?" - -"Nothing else," said Mother sadly. - -"Nonsense! Weren't you--aren't you as good as he? You are the daughter -of a respectable Irish clergyman. Whose daughter--I mean son--is he? A -French tailor's, I expect. You married him eighteen years ago in Putney -Parish Church by special licence, when he was nothing and nobody cared -whom or what he married. Little flighty, undersized foreign-looking -creature! You have been a good wife to him, borne his children, nursed -him when he was ill, and kept a house going for him to come back to when -he was tired of the others, and if it's been done on the sly, it hasn't -been through any will of yours! And now that the matter has been taken -out of his hands, and a good thing too, and he's obliged to leave off -his dirty little tricks and own you, and send his grand friends to call -on you, and build a nice house to put you in, you want to back out and -hide yourself--lose your chance once for all and for ever! You are -good-looking, your children are sweet--you'll soon catch them all up, -and then you can be as haughty and stuck-up as the rest of them. If it -is _me_ you are thinking of, I shan't trouble you--I have my work and I -mean to stick to it!" - -"I shall never disown you, Gerty." - -"No, I dare say not, but I shan't put myself in the way of a snub. I've -got one thing that's been very useful to me in this life--that's tact. I -shan't make a nasty row or a talk, but you'll not see more of me than -you want to. I'm a lady--I'll never let anybody deny that--but I've -knocked about the world a bit, and it's a rough place, and that soft -dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one's own -battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, -largely. Where you're wearing chiffon, I'll be wearing linen, that's the -diff. Now I'm off--'on' first act and share a dresser with three other -cats, where there isn't room to swing one. Ta-ta! I'm not as vulgar as -you think!" - -She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went -away. Mother asked me why I hadn't been drying my hair in the garden all -this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I -answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found -a cool place and meditated on my sins. - -I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan -never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands -are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself. - -On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this -incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making -devils with George's name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt -it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality. - -There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or -rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my -room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, -or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said -immediately, "Now whatever have you been up to?" I told her that the -word "ever" was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected -to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less -expressive face. - -I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the -age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till -one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of -kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks' legs, and the -cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I -just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next -street but one, standing in front of the "Milliner's Arms," with nobody -in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I -got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly -thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the -very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply -hadn't the heart to miss the chance. - -A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her -dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter's -sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the -public-house floor. Yet I can't say she looked at all tipsy. - -"I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it." She -said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how -I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that for me, by -saying with a little sweet smile, "Well, you pretty child, how do you -like my motor-car?" - -"It is the first time I----" - -"Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?" - -I confessed I should, and she jumped in beside me, saying, "Sit still, -then, child!" and moved the crissy-cross starfish thing in front, and we -were off. - -Mercy, what a rate! Policemen seemed to hold up their hands in amazement -at us, and she looked pleased and flattered. We drove on and on, past -the Hounslow turning, through miles of nursery gardens and then miles of -slums, till at last the houses got smarter and bigger, and I guessed -this was the part of London where George lives, only I did not ask -questions. I hardly ever do. I did see a clock once, and I saw it was -nearly our lunch time. I realized that I had missed rice-pudding for -once, and was glad. She talked all the way along, and I listened. I find -that is what people like, for she kept telling me that I was a nice -child, and that she thought she should run away with me. - -"You _are_ running away with me," I said. - -"And you don't care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall -take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me." - -She amused _me_. She was a darling--so gay, so light, as if she didn't -care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. -If George's high-up friends are like this, I don't wonder he prefers -them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as amusing as anybody,--I am not -going to try to take Mother down--but even she can't pretend she is -happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,--the very dry -kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a -whole glassful between us. - -We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like -my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. -She told me about the houses as we went along. - -"That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives," she said, and -pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny -street. I knew that name--the name of the man George stays and shoots -with--but of course I didn't say anything. Then we passed a funny little -house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a -fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings. - -"You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside," she told me. "A -great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all -the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them -has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all -gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in -the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives -heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, -but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always -do you so well. I declare, if I wasn't going to see him this very -afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have -got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open -eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little -table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should -put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And -remind me to lend you one of his books,--that is, if your mother allows -you to read novels." - -I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us -on them. - -"Oh, does he? How interesting! I love authors! You must introduce him to -me some day. Bring him to one of my literary teas. I always make a point -of raising an author or so for the afternoon. It pleases my crowd so, -far better than music and recitations, and played-out amusements of that -kind; and then one doesn't have to pay them. They are only too glad to -come and get paid in kind looks that cost nothing. The queerer they are, -the more people believe in them. I used to have Socialists, but really -they were _too_ dirty! Some authors now are quite smart, and wear their -hair no longer than Lord Scilly, or so very little longer. Now, there is -Morrell Aix, the man who wrote _The Laundress_. I took him up, but he -had been obliged, he said, to live in the slums for two years to get up -his facts, and you could have grown mustard and cress on the creases of -his collar. And I do think, considering the advertisement he gave them, -the laundresses might have taken more trouble with the poor man's -shirts!" - -I knew Mr. Aix, of course, and I have often seen Mother take the -clothes-brush to him, but I said nothing, for I like to show I can hold -my tongue. Knowledge is power, if it's ever so unimportant. We didn't go -far from the house with walls like stopped teeth, before she pulled up -at another rather smart little door in a street called Curzon. - -"Here we are at my place, and there's Simmy Hermyre on the doorstep -waiting to be asked to lunch." - -It was a nice clean house with green shutters and lovely lace curtains -at the windows, that Ariadne would have been glad of for a dress, all -gathered and tucked and made to fit the sash as if it had been a person. -The young man standing at the front door had a coat with a waist, and a -nice clean face, and a collar that wouldn't let him turn his head -quickly. He helped us out, and she laughed at him as if he was hers. - -"Are you under the impression that I have asked you to lunch? Why, I -don't suppose there is any!" - -Imagine her saying that when she had brought me all the way from -Isleworth to have it! I didn't, of course, say anything, and she made me -go in, and the young man followed us, quite calm, although she had said -there wasn't anything for him to eat. - -"I would introduce you to this person" (I thought it so nice of her not -to stick on the offensive words little or young!) "only it strikes me I -don't know her name." She didn't ask it, but went on, "It's a most -original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in -a year, my dear boy!" - -Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadn't tried, and I do -think you should leave off calling children "it" after the first six -months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didn't think her quite polite, -I told her my name--Tempe Vero-Taylor--in a low voice so that she could -introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same -table. I thought there wouldn't be a children's table, as she didn't -speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have -no conversation. - -Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up -her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didn't -introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didn't suppose I should ever meet -him again, so it didn't matter. - -We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as -much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered -rice-pudding! I wouldn't have believed it, in a house like this. I -refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally -take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldn't taste champagne -when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, -and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often -says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild -beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not meet some this afternoon -at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (that's her name) said -she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldn't very well -say no. - -"You may come too, Simmy," she said to the young man; "it will be -exciting, I can promise you!" - -"Not if I know it," he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, "What is -the lecture about?" - -"The Uses of Fiction." - -"None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an -income." - -"That's a man's view." - -"It is," he said, "a man, and not a monkey's. You don't call your -literary crowd men, do you?" - -I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him -up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on-- - -"You're quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy -your receptions." - -"I don't see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because -you're a fifth cousin. That's the worst of being well connected, so many -people think they have the right to lecture one!" - -"All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were -not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow -you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine -and Ve----" - -Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldn't -come to the lecture he must go, and pushed me out of the room in front -of her and on up-stairs. - -"Good-bye!" she called to him over the bannisters. "Let yourself out, -and don't steal the spoons." - -That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We -went up into her bedroom, and her old nurse--I suppose it was her nurse, -for she wore no cap and bullied her like anything--came forward. - -"Put me into another gown, Miller!" she said, flopping into a chair. -Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, -and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying -me. - -"Don't bother. The child's all right. She's so pretty she can wear -anything." - -I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I -said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went -down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand -in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her -cheek that I hadn't noticed there before. It was real. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -We went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of -coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water -and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person -present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately -began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly -is a member of the committee. - -"Where will you sit, Lady Scilly?" said this person, and she asked a -good many other questions, using Lady Scilly's name very often. - -"I shall sit quite at the back this time," Lady Scilly answered. "Too -many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out!" As she -said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why. - -We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place -had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a -great friend of Lady Scilly's. He spoke to me while she was discussing -some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her. - -"How do you like going about with a fairy?" he asked me. - -"I'm not," I said. "She's a grown-up woman, old enough to know----" - -"Worse!" he interrupted me. "She is what I call a fairy!" - -"What is a fairy?" I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only -trying to make conversation. - -"A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likes--and as other -people sometimes don't like." - -"I see," I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, "just as -grown-up people do." - -"But she isn't pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a -fairy? No, I think not, you don't look as if you _could_ tell a lie." - -"I beg your pardon," I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent -him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we -went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn't like -that, and said "_Jeunesse oblige_," and "_Place aux dames_," and -"_Juniores ad priores_"--every language under the sun, winding up with -that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to -hang back and keep the king waiting. - -"Oh yes, I know that story," I said, just to prevent him going on -bothering. "It's in Ollendorff." - -The lecture-room was quite full, and we--Lady Scilly and I--squeezed -ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were -almost in the dark. - -"Sit tight, child, whatever happens!" she kept saying, and held my hand -as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in -I saw why, for it was George! - -Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, "Don't call out, child!" - -As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the -lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him -before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and -had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old -gentleman had called her a fairy--that meant a tease, and I wasn't going -to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still -as she told me, and George began. - -I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to -remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get -used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite -different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a -little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of -them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing-- - -"_A novel_," said my father, "_is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, -uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, -like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, -and bounded by the four walls of the author's experience. His duty is to -enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement -as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the -reader's own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly -disproportionate, to the whole great arcana_." (I do hope I got this -down right!) "_The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent._" (Once -I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child's play.) "_A -great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama -of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of -the supply._" (Loud applause.) "_The right man, or peradventure, the -right woman_" (he bowed at Lady Scilly), "_knows, or ought to know, so -many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of -that one!_" - -Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and -George went on-- - -"_I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways._" (What -works both ways? I must have left something out.) "_A Duchess of my -acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words--as indeed all her words -are pregnant and poignant_" (he bowed to an old corpulent lady in -another part of the room)--"_to me the other day. She said that her -novel of predilection was not a society novel. 'I know it all, don't I, -like the palm of my hand?' she objected. 'I know how to behave in a -drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!' So she complained. The -substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;--what she wants -is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her -drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, -the burglar at his work_----" - -Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he -was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on-- - -"_I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out -of our own lives, and put into somebody else's--to temporarily change -our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going -on below stairs. Bill Sykes and 'Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time -for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant -sprites._" (Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) "_The Highest or the -Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist's counsel of perfection. -There is no second class in the literary railway._ - -"_Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for -instance--only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here -will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my -illustration--if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual -dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting--even Clapham Rise or -Upper Tooting--we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the -better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the -halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of -the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world -that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes -her waking dreams 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' Que voulez vous? She -is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste -thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated -by the novelist's art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum -marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely -Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that -are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the -Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her -chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and -humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their -entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, -like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from -thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang -over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses----_" - -I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady -Scilly pinched me in several places at once. - -"Don't nip me, please," I said. "I think somebody ought to get up and -tell George he's drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will." - -"Bless the child!" she said. "You may answer him when he's done, if you -like, and can. It will be quite amusing." - -I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think -somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother's side. So I waited, -though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George -sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer -Mr. Vero-Taylor's speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that -George and all of them could see me, and I didn't feel a bit shy--no, -for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who -wasn't there to speak up for herself. - -"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said--I noticed that George began like -that--"I don't agree at all with what the gentleman--who is my -father--has been saying about Tooting--Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought -to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly -the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn't do it -unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell -everybody that Mother doesn't read novels about Duchesses or anybody. -She hasn't time, she's much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and -cooking specially for George, and so on. That's all!" - -I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I -hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted -him, perhaps! I don't know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I -didn't feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home. - -He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn't talk, but I -am sure he wasn't cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed -to know I was going to have a bad time. - -I did. Even Mother scolded me. - -Papa didn't come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I -might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me -truthful. Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn't so bad. She read to me about -Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the -other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that -always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn't -mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way-- - - "We left behind the painted buoy - That tosses at the harbour-mouth, - And madly danced our hearts with joy - As fast we fleeted to the South." - -While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and -the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she -could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as -if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had -lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world -will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don't -suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could -alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get the bit -between their teeth----! - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -It is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. -Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and -all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George -Vero-Taylor's little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there -and given him away--such fun, don't you know! It wasn't fun for me, for -I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in -Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn't have mattered -so much if George hadn't been at home a good deal about that time. I -think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, -though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with -his family, though wearing to the servants. - -George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and -thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new -line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into -the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a -volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He -settled to build a house--a house that should express him and shelter -his family as well. Mother didn't want to build. If we _had_ to move, -she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at -Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see -if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a -soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches -spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed -with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with -their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down -to the water's edge. George didn't stop our doing this and taking so -much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But -all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John's -Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, -and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, -made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the -blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the -world that he can do other things than write books. In _Who's Who_, he -doesn't mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of -his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, -Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that's what his friend Mr. -Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very -newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed. - -All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George -talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only -interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main -staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you -see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They -thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once. - -As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his -prices. He expects to get ten pounds per "thou." He told Middleman, his -literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per "thou." -for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for -the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge -establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint -sense of humour, and that's the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says -Middleman can run up an author's sales twenty per cent. in no time, if -he fancies you personally, or thinks there's money in you. - -George's new book is going to be not mediæval this time; people have -imitated him and _The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful_ was -brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. -He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few -English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad -soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and -pay his expenses. - -Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief -in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother's face grew longer -and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped -George to arrange the furniture. - -Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some -interest in her own mansion. - -"I do," Mother said, "but at a distance. I couldn't be of any use -advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. -That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always -about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say -things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as -they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George's own money. He -earned it." - -"Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!" sneered my aunt. - -"I came to him without a penny, and I haven't the right to dictate so -much as the position of a wardrobe." - -"You're the man's lawful wife," said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One -got tired of the expression. - -"Yes, unfortunately," said Mother. "Or I'd have a better chance! But I -am _not_ going to fight over George with that minx!" - -How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never -seen! I once told her she needn't be cross with Lady Scilly, and how -harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of -Papa--snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt; and then she was -cross with _me_, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be -proud. - -Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for -blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we -took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and -George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room -and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, -and all George's furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept -saying-- - -"Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel -Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!" or else--"That -sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and -I"--something or other? - -She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, -and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her -laugh consumedly, so she said. It's extraordinary how he can make people -laugh--people out of his own family! - -She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present -Ariadne at the next Court. It's to please George, if she does remember -to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had -been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George -ought to insist on it, but he always says "Let them rave!" and that -means, Do as you like, but don't bother me. What he won't like will be -forking out forty pounds for Ariadne's dress, and it will end by her -staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising -curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not -condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so -poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she -can get, and make what she can out of George's "mash," when well -disposed. - -About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month's -yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody's yacht that they were -willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included -them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. -She asked George to go with them--"We shan't see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. -the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write -a yachting novel, like William Black's, and put old Pawky in. He is -quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say--dyspeptic -and all that. I can't stand him, but you might bear with him a little in -the interests of Art!" George had no objection to visiting the scene of -his new book at Mr. Pawky's expense, in the company of his own pals, and -accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. -Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of -the voyage? It would be just like them. - -George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He -said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come -home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and -everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, -inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work -abominably, and spoil the whole brewing! - -"Dear," said Mother, "I fear we shall do badly without you--you are a -man, at least--but I'll be good, and spare you cheerfully!" - -So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was -to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go -with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but -there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass -bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself -on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen -and kitchen utensils from "The Magnolias"--one could hardly suppose Lady -Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer -"moved" us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the -things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate--Sarah had gone, and -I never got any better reason than that she "had to"--received them at -Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near -the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to -her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, -wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes -first fell on it. - -We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where -they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had -got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own -house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. -She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door -knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away. - -She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, -"Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn't it! Right -alongside the front-door!" - -I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to -prevent unpleasantness. - -Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged -with marble like a church. "It strikes very cold to the feet!" she said -to Aunt Gerty. "Mine are like so much ice." - -"Oh, come along, and we'll brew you a glass of hot toddy!" Aunt Gerty -said cheerfully. "It's a bit chilly, I think, myself, but 'ansom, like -the big 'all where 'Amlet 'as the players!" - -Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h -or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne -and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study. - -"What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take -off my shoes and stockings to go up them!" - -"So you will, Aunt Gerty," said Ariadne. "It is one of George's rules. -He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them." - -"Took 'em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?" snorted -my aunt. "Well, I don't expect you will find me treading those golden -stairs very often. I ain't one of George's elect." - -"Such wretched things to keep clean," Mother complained. "The servants -are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am -sure one can't blame them, and such good ones as we've got, too, in -these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle -in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to -me?" - -Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way -about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a -servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had -escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and -tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and -put her muff before her face-- - -"Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady's eye coming into a -gentleman's house! Who's that mouldy old statue of?" - -I told her that was Autolycus. - -"Cover yourself, Tollie, I would," Aunt Gerty said, going past him -affectedly. "Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing -splits on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!" - -"I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself," said Mother. -"I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it." - -"And no proper grate, only the bare bricks left showing!" Aunt Gerty -wailed. "How could one get up any proper fireside feeling over a -contraption like that! The Lyceum scenery is nothing to it. It makes me -think of Shakespeare all the time--so _painfully_ meretricious----" - -Lady Castlewood in a basket under Mother's arm, suddenly began to mew -very sadly. Aunt Gerty had put Robert the Devil down on the floor, in -his hamper, and I suppose a draught got to him, for he spat loudly. -Ariadne and I let out the poor things and they bounced straight out on -to the parquet floor, and their feet slid from under them. I never saw -two cats look so silly! - -"Well, if a cat can't keep his feet on those wooden tiles," said Mother, -"I don't suppose I can," and she jumped, just to try, right into the -middle of a little square of blue carpet, which, true enough, slid along -with her. - -"You can give a nice hop here, at any rate," cried Aunt Gerty, catching -her round the waist, and waltzing all over the room, till both their -picture hats fell off, and hung down their backs by the pins. "Ask me -and all the boys, and give a nice sit-down supper, and do us as well as -the old villain will allow you." - -She was quite happy. That is just like an actress! Ariadne and I danced -too, and the cats mewed loudly for strangeness. Cats hate newness of any -kind, and they weren't easy till I got some newspaper, crackled it, and -let them sit on it, and then they were all right. Then Mother and Aunt -Gerty rang the queer-shaped bell, as if it would sting them, and got up -some coals which Mother had had the forethought to order in, and lit a -modest little fire in a great cave with brass images in front of it -under the kind of copper hood. It wouldn't draw at first, being used to -logs, and when it smoked we threw water on it, lest we dirtied the -beautiful silk hangings. At last we fetched Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -"Hout!" she said. "I'd like to see the fire that's going to get the -better of me!" - -She made it burn, sulkily, and Ariadne and I went to a shop we knew of -round the corner, and bought tea and sugar and condensed milk, to make -ourselves tea with the spirit-lamp Aunt Gerty had brought. We had no -butter or bread, only biscuits luckily, so we couldn't stain the Cinque -Cento chairs, whose gold trimmings were simply peeling off them. Sit on -them we dared not, they would have let us down on the floor for a -certainty. Mother and Aunt Gerty had a high old time blaming Lady Scilly -for all her foolish arrangements, and then we all went down to the -so-called kitchen to see how Elizabeth Cawthorne was getting on there. -She was in a rage, but trying to pass it off, like a good soul as she -is. - -"Well, I never! Here's a gold handle to my coal-cellar door! I shall -have to wipe my lily hands before I dare use it. And a fine lady of a -dresser that I shall be shy to set a plain dish on. Beetles here, do you -ask, woman?" (To Kate.) "They'd be ashamed to show their faces in such a -smart place as this, I'm thinking. And what's this couple of drucken -little candlesticks for the kitchen? Our Kate'll soon rive the fond bit -handles from off them, or she's not the girl I take her for!" - -She banged it hard against the dresser as servants do, to make it break, -but it didn't, and she looked disappointed. Mother then suggested she -should unpack a favourite frying-pan she never goes anywhere without, -and sent Kate out for a pound and a half of loin-chops, and cook was to -fry them for our dinners. - -The kitchen fire, after all, was the only one that would burn, so we ate -our chops there, and sat there till bed-time. Ariadne looked like a -picture, sitting at a trestle-table, and a thing like a torch burning at -the back of her head. She was thoroughly disgusted, and got quite cross, -and so did Elizabeth, as the evening went on. She hated trestles, and -flambeaus, and dark Rembrandtish corners, and couldn't lay her hand on -her things nohow, so that when we all went up to bed, Mother said to -her-- - -"Good-night, Elizabeth. You have been a bit upset, haven't you? I wonder -we have managed to get through the day without a row!" - -"So do I, ma'am," said the cook. "Heaps of times I'd have given you -warning for twopence, but you never gave me ought to lay hold on." - -A horrid wind sprang up and moaned us off to sleep. I thought once or -twice of George out on the Mediterranean on a tippity yacht, and didn't -quite want him to get drowned, though he had made us live in such an -uncomfortable house. I had tried to colonize a little, and put up a -photograph of Mother done at Ramsgate in a blue frame, to make me feel -more at home. Ariadne had hung up all her necklaces on a row of nails. -She has forty. There is one made of dried marrowfat peas, that she -nibbles when she is nervous, and another of horse's jesses, or whatever -you call them, sewn on red velvet. We have a bed each, costing -fourteen-and-six. They are apt to shut up with you in them. There is no -carpet in our room, and there are not to be any. We are to be hardy. -Nothing rouses one like a touch of cold floor in the mornings, and cools -one on hot nights better than the same. Our water-jug too is an odd -shape. I tilted all the water out of it on to the floor the first time I -tried to use it. It must be French, it is so small. I shall not wash my -hands very often in the days to come, I fancy. - -Ariadne began to get reconciled to our room when she had made up her -mind it was like the bower of a mediæval chatelaine, or like Princess -Ursula's bedroom in Carpaccio, but I prefer Early Victorian, and cried -myself to sleep. - -Next morning Ben come along; he had stayed all night at the Hitchings', -in Corinth Road. Jessie Hitchings likes Ben best of the family. She may -marry him, when he is grown up, if she likes. He has birth, but no -education, so that will make them even. The only glimmering of hope I -see for Ben is that in this house there seems to be no bedroom for him, -unless it is a room at the top with all the water tanks in it, which -makes me think perhaps George is going to send him to school? For the -present we have arranged him a bed in the butler's pantry. Ben says -perhaps George means him to be butler, as he has laid it down as a rule -that only women servants are to be used in Cinque Cento House. They look -so much nicer than men, George says; he likes a houseful of waving -cap-ribbons. Mother thinks she can work a house best on one servant, and -better still on none. George doesn't mind her having any amount of boys -from the Home near here, but that doesn't suit Mother. She says one boy -isn't much good, that two boys is only one and a half, and that three -boys is no boy at all. I suppose they get playing together? Ariadne and -I would, in their place, I know, and human nature is the same, even in a -Home, though I can't call ours quite that. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -George makes a point of refusing to be interviewed. He hates it, unless -it is for one of the best papers. Then he says that it is a sheer -kindness, and that a successful man has no right to refuse some poor -devil or other the chance of making an honest pound or two. So he -suffers him gladly. He even is good enough to work on the thing a little -in the proof: just to give the poor fellow a lift, and prevent him -making a fool of himself and getting his facts all wrong. In the end -George writes the whole thing entirely from beginning to end, and makes -the man a present of a complete magazine article, and a very fine one -too! - -"I have been generous," he tells us. "I have offered myself up as a -burnt sacrifice. I have given myself all, without reservation. I have -nothing extenuated, everything set down in malice. I have owned to -strange sins that I never committed, to idiosyncrasies that took me all -my time to invent, and all to bump out an article by some one else. I -have been butchered to make a journalistic holiday!" - -This is all very nice and self-sacrificing of George, but this -particular interview read very well when it came out, and made George -seem a very interesting sort of man with some quaint habits, not half so -funny as his real ones, though, and I think the interviewer might just -as well have given those. - -So, when I got a chance of telling the truth, I did, meaning to act for -the best, and give Papa a good show and save him the trouble of telling -it all himself, but nobody gave me credit for my good intentions, and -kind heart. - -In the first place, how dared I put myself forward and offer to see -George's visitors! But the young man asked for me--at least, when he was -told that George was out, he said might he see one of the young ladies? -Of course I don't suppose that would have occurred to him, only I was -leaning over the new aluminium bannisters, and caught his eye. Then an -idea seemed to come into his head. The look of disappointment that had -come over him when he was told that George was out changed to a little -happy perky look, as if he had just thought of something amusing. He -crooked his little finger at me as I slid down the bannister, and said -would I do? and would he come in? Kate is a cheeky girl, but even the -cook admits that Kate is not a patch upon me. Kate evidently didn't -think it quite right, but she slunk away into the back premises, and -left me to deal with the young man. - -He handed me a card. I thought that very polite of him, and "_Mr. -Frederick Cook_," and Representative of _The Bittern_ down in the -corner, explained it all to me. We take in about a hundred rags, and -that's the name of one of them. It's called _The Bittern_ because it -booms people, so George says. - -"I suppose you have come to interview my Father," I said. "I'm sorry, -but he is out. Did you have an appointment?" - -"No, I didn't," said the young man right out. - -I liked his nice bold way of speaking; he was the least shy young man I -ever met. - -"I don't believe in appointments. The subject is conscious, primed, -braced up, ready with a series of cards, so to speak, which he wishes to -force on the patient public--a collection of least characteristic facts -which he would like dragged into prominence. It is as if a man should go -to the dentist with his mind made up as to the number of teeth that he -is to have pulled out, a decision which should always rest with any -dentist who respects himself." - -He went running on like that, not a bit shy, or anything, and amused me -very much. - -"But then the worst of that is, you've got no appointment with George, -and he is not here to have his teeth pulled out." - -I really so far wasn't quite sure if he was an interviewer or a dentist, -but I kept calm. - -"All the better, my dear young lady, that is if you are willing to aid -and abet me a little. Then we shall have a thundering good interview, I -can promise you. You see, in my theory of interviewing, the actual -collaboration of the patient--shall we call him?--is unnecessary. -Indeed, it is more in the nature of an impediment. My method, which of -course I have very few opportunities of practising, is to seek out his -nearest and dearest, those who have the privilege--or annoyance--of -seeing him at all hours, at all seasons, unawares. If a painter, 'tis -the wife of his brush that I would question; if an author, the partner -of his pen--do you take me?" - -Yes, I "took" him, and as George had called me a cockatrice--a very -favourite term of abuse with him--only that morning, and remembering how -she swaggers about being George's Egeria, I said, "You'll have to go to -Lady Scilly for that!" - -"Quite so!" he said very naturally. "Your distinguished parent dedicated -his last book to her, did he not? Did you approve, may I ask?" - -"No," I said. "People should always dedicate all their works to their -wife, whether they love her or not, that's what I think!" - -"Quite so," he said again. "I see we agree famously, and between us we -shall concoct a splendid interview. But now, if you would be so very -good, and happen to have a small portion of leisure at your -disposal----" - -"I'll do what I can for you," I said, delighted at his nice polite way -of putting things. "I'll take you round the house, shall I? Have you a -Kodak with you? Would you like to take a snapshot at George's -typewriter?" - -"Certainly, if she is pretty," said the silly man, and I explained that -Miss Mander was out, and that it was the machine I meant. He said one -machine was very like another, but that if he might see the study, -where so many beautiful thoughts had taken shape? He said it quite -gravely, but I felt he was laughing in his jacket all the time. - -"We'll take it all _seriam_!" I said, not wishing him to have all the -fine words. "And we will begin at the beginning--I mean the atrium." - -He had a little pocket-book in his hand, and he said, as I led the way -through the hall, "You won't mind my writing things down as they occur -to me?" - -"Not at all!" I said. "If you will let me look at what you have written. -I see you have put a lot already." - -He laughed and handed me his book, and I read-- - -"_Through dusky suites, lit by stained glass windows, whose dim -cloistral light, falling on lurid hangings and gorgeous masses of -Titianesque drapery, and antique ebon panelling, irresistibly suggest -the languorous mysteries of a mediæval palace...._ Do you think your -father will like this style?" - -"You have made it rather stuffy--piled it on a good deal, the drapery -and hangings, I mean!" I said. "Now that I know the sort of thing you -write, I shan't want to read any more." - -"I thought you wouldn't," he said, taking it back. "I'll read it to you. -'_Behind this arras might lurk Benvenuto and his dagger----_'" - -"Not Ben's dagger, but Papa's bicycle." - -"We'll leave it there and keep it out of the interview," he said. "It -would spoil the unity of the effect. '_On, on, through softly-carpeted -ante-rooms where the footstep softer falls, than petals of blown roses -on the grass...._'" - -"I hate poetry!" I said. "And we mayn't walk on that part of the carpet -for fear of blurring the Magellanic clouds in the pattern. Do you know -anything about Magellanic clouds in carpets?" - -"No, I confess I have never trod them before," he said, becoming all at -once respectful to me. I expect he lives in a garret, and has no carpet -at all, and I thought I would be good to him, and help him to bump out -his article, and not cram him, but tell him where things really came -from. So I drew his attention particularly to the aluminium eagle, and -the pinchbeck serpent George picked up in Wardour Street. I left out -George's famous yarn about the sack of our ancestral Palace in Turin in -the fifteenth century, when the Veros were finally disseminated or -dissipated, whichever it is. I don't believe it myself, but George -always accounts for his swarthy complexion by his Italian grandmother. -Aunt Gerty says it is all his grandmother, or in other words, all liver! - -We went down-stairs into the study, which is the largest room in the -house. - -"Your father has realized the wish of the Psalmist," said _The Bittern_ -man. "_Set my feet in a large room!_" - -"He likes to have room to spread himself," I said, "and to swing -cats--books in, I mean." - -"So your father uses missiles in the fury of composition?" - -"Sometimes; but oftenest he swears, and that saves the books. He mostly -swears. Look here!" - -I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander's handwriting, and on -it was written, "Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. -Vero-Taylor during the last hour." - -_The Bittern_ man looked at them, and, "By Jove! these are corkers!" he -said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There -was Drayton, the ironmonger's bill lying about too, and I saw him raise -his eyebrows at the last item, "_To one chased brass handle for -coal-cellar door_." - -"That's what I call being thorough!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I'm -thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!" - -He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see -the pen George uses. "Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?" he asked. - -"Mercy, no!" I screamed out. "He would have an indigestion! This is his -pen--at least, it is this week's pen. George is wasteful of pens; he -eats one a week." - -"Very interesting!" said he. "Most authors have a fetish, but I never -heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat -paragraph. Come on!" - -You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I -showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey -carpet spread on it, instead of a white one--that was how they had it -in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable -Mediæval was, and if it wasn't for the honour and glory of it, how much -we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors -reflect--there's not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne -can see herself in when she's dressing to go out to a party--or chairs -that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are -forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death! - -"Very hard lines!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I confess that this point of -view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my -article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its -votaries----" - -"Yes," I said. "Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne's -photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! 'To think -that any wife of his--' 'Cæsar's wife must be above suspicion!' And as -for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue -plush." - -"Capital!" said _The Bittern_ man. "All good grist for the interview! -And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard -so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?" - -"Except that we are not allowed to go up them--Ariadne and me--without -taking our boots off first, for fear of scratching the polish. We have -to strip our feet in the housemaid's pantry, and carry them up in our -hands. That's rather a bore, you will admit!" - -"And your father? Does he bow to his own decrees?" - -"Oh, no!" I said. "Papa is the exception that proves the rule." - -"Capital!" again remarked _The Bittern_ man. "I am getting to know all -about the great Mr. Vero-Taylor in the fierce light that beats upon the -domestic hearth! But, by the way," he said, with a little crooked look -at me, "it is usual--shall I say something about Mrs. Vero-Taylor? -People generally like an allusion--just a hint of feminine presence--say -the mistress of the house flitting about, tending her ferns, or what -not?" - -"You must put her in the kitchen, then," I said, "tending her servants. -Would you like to see her?" - -"I should not like to disturb her," he said politely. "Will you describe -her for me?" - -"Oh, mother's nice and thin--a good figure--I should hate to have one of -those feather-beddy mothers, don't you know? But I don't really think -you need describe her. I don't think she cares about being in the -interview, thank you, but you may say that my sister Ariadne is -ravishingly beautiful, if you like?" - -"And what about you, Miss----?" he asked, looking at me. - -"Tempe Vero-Taylor," I said. "But whatever you do, don't put me in! -George would have a fit! He won't much like your mentioning Ariadne, -but I don't see why she shouldn't have a show, if I can give her one." - -"Very well," he said. "Your ladyship shall be obeyed. Now I really think -I have got enough, unless----" I saw his eyes straying up-stairs. - -"There's nothing much to see up those stairs, except George's bedroom, -and I daren't take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like -the rest of the house, but very, _very_ comfortable." - -"Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn't -trouble to black more than his face and arms," said _The Bittern_ man. -"And _your_ rooms?" - -"Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we -have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediæval castle -would have. Now that's all, and----" - -The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought -it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. -George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This -reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. -_The Bittern_ man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked -me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how -he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had -told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on -that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, -and would gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the -circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at -least have a _succès de scandale_, at least I think that is what he -said, for I don't understand French very well. While he was making all -those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little -grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, -and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn't. George opened the -door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw _The -Bittern_ man and came forward, and _The Bittern_ man came forward too, -with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the -Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little. - -"I came from _The Bittern_," he said, and George nodded, to show he knew -what for. "To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview----" - -"I am sorry I happened to be out!" began George, and then I knew, by the -sound of his voice, that _The Bittern_ was a _good_ paper. "But if it is -not too late, I shall be happy----" - -"No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir," the interviewer -said, waving his hand a little. "I came, and I go not empty away, but -with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my -pocket. You left an admirable _locum tenens_ in the person of your -daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of -the necessity of troubling _you_. You will doubtless be relieved also. I -shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!" - -And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened -the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George -said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, -and _The Bittern_ man never sent a proof after all, so when the article -came out--"_Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe -Vero-Taylor_,"--I got some more. That is the first and last time I was -ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I -see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. -Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve -his ambition like that. George didn't punish him, of course, he is a -power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -I wonder if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering -and interfering in their affairs? I don't mind our having a -house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please -Lady Scilly. - -"A party! A party!" she said to George, clasping her hands in her silly -way. "My party on the table!" like the woman in the play of _Ibsen_. -"Ask all the dear, amusing literary people that I adore. And I'll bring -a large contingent of smart people, if I may, to meet them. Please, -_please_!" - -I don't know what a contingent is, but I fancy it's something -disagreeable. Lady Scilly is George's friend, not Mother's. She has only -called on Mother once, and that was in the old house, and then Mother -was not receiving as they call it, so she has never even seen the -mistress of the house where she is going to give the party. Christina -Mander, George's secretary, says that is quite the new way of doing -things, and she has been about a great deal, and ought to know. - -Miss Mander is a lady. She is very thin, one of those lath-and-plaster -women, you know, that seem to live to support a small waist that is -their greatest beauty, but when we first knew her, she was plump and -jolly-looking. We practically got her for George. Years ago, when we -were quite little and had had measles, we were sent down to a sort of -boarding-house at Ramsgate to an old lady, an ex-dresser in some theatre -Aunt Gerty knew, and who could neither see to mend or to keep us in -order, though she got thirty shillings a week for doing it. They never -got us up till nine; I suppose the slavey thought sufficient for the day -was the evil thereof, and tried to make the evil's day as short as -possible. One morning when it was quite nine, and the sun was shining -in, Ariadne and I were feeling frightfully bored, so we got up in our -night-gowns, moved a wardrobe, and found a door behind it into another -house. It was quite a smart house, with soft plush carpets and -nicely-varnished yellow doors. We went all over it. Only the cat was -awake, licking herself in the window-seat. The bedroom doors were all -shut except one, and we went in and found a nice girl in bed with her -gold hair all spread over the pillow. She didn't seem shocked at us, but -laughed, and when we had explained, she wished us to get into the bed -beside her. It had sheets trimmed with lace, and her initials, C. M., on -the pillow. We did this every morning till we went away. She kept us up, -afterwards sending us Christmas cards and so on, and when George -advertised for a secretary to help him to sub-edit _Wild Oats_, she -answered it, among the thousand others, and we remembered her name and -made George engage her. - -She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D'Auban's -dancing academy, and to Klondike--where all her hair got cut off, so -that she hasn't enough to spread over the pillow now--and behind the -scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper -once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new -arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed -for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her -mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when -George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, -tortoise-shell _pince-nez_ and all, but she took to Mother at first -sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this "new move of dear -Christina's." - -She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had -developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on -saying the name of George's new magazine, as if it shocked her very -much. - -"_Wild Oats!_ Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them -somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You'll look -after her, won't you? Is there any danger"--she looked towards the -study-door"--of her falling in love with her employer?" She laughed -carelessly. - -"Not the slightest!" said Mother, laughing too. "She will have her eyes -opened, that's all, to the seamy side of artistic life." - -"My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. -After all, it's only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they -must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But -we don't need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!" - -"I quite agree with you," said Mother. "Only if one happens to be the -scullery-maid----" - -Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I -was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual. - -"And," said Mrs. Mander, "she buys everything that comes out, especially -badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and -look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she -came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his -magazine--_Wild Oats_. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it -sounds so _very_ advanced!" - -"Oh, very," said Aunt Gerty. "But it won't live!" - -"You don't say so?" Mrs. Mander put up her _pince-nez_ and looked at -Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn't like. - -"None of my brother-in-law's things do!" Aunt Gerty went on calmly. "He -is a prize wrecker--of women and magazines!" - -Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the -conversation. - -"Oh, he's a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is," went on Aunt Gerty. -"But I don't think he'll convert Miss Mander to his views." - -"I hope not," said Mrs. Mander, "for I notice that if you make a law -unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! -At least as far as women are concerned." - -"People will always let you go your own way," said Mother; "but the -point is, will they come with you--join with you in a pleasant walk?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Mander, "my daughter is the most headstrong of young -women. I can't control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed -her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor." - -"I gathered as much," said Mother, not offended a bit. "But I will look -after her well!" She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make -her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week. - -Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecænas! Ben says she a minx. Ben -hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a -cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but -then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother -won't go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that -George doesn't try to persuade her much. You see, he isn't used to -having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all -those years! - -George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina -is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should -he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide it under -a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she -says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She -says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the -hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old -house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; -anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, -for his Sundays were only for a select few--very selected. He only gave -tea and bread-and-butter--very little butter--and no table-cloth--plain -living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he -pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to -the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, -and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own -house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him -to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his -solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a -Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of -the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But -that would not do for George, for he isn't at all hermit-like, and he -can make epigrams! They say that is his _forte_. I hate them myself, I -think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people's feelings -so that they can't complain, but then, of course, the family gets them -in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home. - -George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He -said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out -of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he -would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging -from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, -and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and -peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat -on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the -smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other's -faces! That didn't suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much -as she could. - -Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still -Mediæval, at six o'clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, -because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it -can't go all round. That's the reason we have finger-bowls now, and -little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to -eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can -see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own -trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that -loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen -Mother's face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said -she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers' -and the butchers' shops back a century? - -The first course, George explained, was quite easy--it was little bits -of toast with honey and hypocras. - -"Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?" Mother said, -meaning to be funny. "There's a very civil young man there might help -me?" - -"Next course, smoked eels," went on George. "Any soup you like, only it -must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have -venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, -oranges, capers in vinegar----" - -"It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and -ever, that's one good thing!" Mother said, "for nobody will care to try -that _menu_ twice!" - -"It would look well in the papers, though," George said. "What do you -say to barbecued pig?" - -But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and -Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not -obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at -twelve o'clock, and all the guests to unmask then. - -The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but -at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had -designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing -red splotch in one corner, which signified George's passionate Italian -nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with -Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to -open everything! - -"My Goodness!" she said. - -"Isn't it right?" I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at -it I was no wiser, for I couldn't see what was wrong. There it was, -written out very nicely, "_Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the -twenty-first_," and the address in the corner, and all those rules about -the dominos, and that was all. - -"Oh, dear darling Christina," I begged, deadly curious, "do tell me what -is wrong with that? I cannot guess." - -"It's just as well, perhaps," she said. "Preserve your sublime -ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can." - -And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that -being loyal to her employer. - -I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one -better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was -_Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home_! I think that was absurd, for -though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn't quite live -here yet! and Mother does, and what's more, Mother never goes out at all -except to take a servant's character, or scold the butcher, or something -of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from -him, and looked at it, and I'll swear I saw her smile before she tore it -up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn't tell me what was wrong -with the first card. - -We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole -morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, -though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I -don't believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now -and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted -asked--six, no less, if you please--and she's only been out six months! -And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a -card trick! But he didn't take any notice, and kept walking up and down -the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody -wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; -there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have -than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of -course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more -of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there -had been about it. I kept saying, "Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You -give me all the plain people to do." - -Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all -away after fifty had been written. - -Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to -do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he -was going to announce it in the pages of _The Bittern_, and that all his -friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how -should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that -depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know -that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that -you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and -find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real -friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the -acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and -lemonade. There should be a password, _Hot with_, and _cold without_, -and they roared when I told them this, but I didn't see why. Then the -party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where -they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn't call -themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn't be able to -come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems -to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They -have to be paid for coming, surely, and I'd rather see them than any of -the others. "If they don't come the party will be spoilt for me," I said -to Christina. - -"It will be all right," she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of -course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like. - -Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that -brother of Cæsar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of -Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny -thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, -while I look like a big boy. My legs are very long. George has a monk's -costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of -looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very -nice. - -I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it -somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that -anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, -bell-like--I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but -he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others. - -The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs -of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved -away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently -lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in -moderation; it was rather fun--I felt as if I were planting bulbs. -George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be -put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to -put it on the fire. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -About nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o'clock the house was -overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger's -costume he had borrowed, with George's consent, and I do believe he -enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was -to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the -evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, -for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. -I'm sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people -didn't come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were -detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at -their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a -detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with -a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of -course, but the devil needs no domino. And _I_ knew all the time that it -was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for _The -Bittern_, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, -and I had no butter to my bread for a week because of him. How I was -supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I -can't see, only _The Bittern_ man knew well enough, I expect! Never, -_never_ again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer! - -There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them -discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get -jammed in behind, "powerless to move," as they say in the novels, even -if I had wanted to. People _are_ careless. I heard heaps of -conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, -without stopping to think whether or no I wasn't one of the family. I -suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn't -matter what they said, and it needn't count afterwards. - -The man I listened to was _The Bittern_ man, dressed as the devil. The -woman's domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any -colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. _The -Bittern_ man seemed to know her. - -"I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in -London?" - -The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask. - -"Not quite, but very nearly," she said. "I am a gas. Give me a name!" - -"I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?" - -"Is it a noxious gas?" she said, "for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I -only speak of things as I find them, and one must send up bright copy, -or one wouldn't be taken on. I tell the truth----" - -"Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!" said he. "The devil -and _The Bittern_ are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that -makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than -one. Now tell me, can't we exchange celebrities? I'll give you my names, -and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?" - -"All the world--and somebody else's wife!" she said quickly, and the -devil rubbed his hands. "But that is the rub--we can't know who they all -are till twelve o'clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will -decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest -mended." - -"Then we shall have to invent them!" he said. "The very form of -invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me -which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here." - -"Naturally! Wasn't it she who discovered George Vero-Taylor and made him -the fashion, you know?" - -"Do you suppose he was particularly obliged to her for digging his -family out as well?" - -"You naughty man! But it was a most extraordinary thing, wasn't it? -Delightful, and not too scandalous to use. For the man is really quite -harmless, only a frantic _poseur_ and----" - -"Ah, yes, and posed in London Society for ten years as an unmarried man! -Suppose some nice girl had gone and fallen in love with him?" - -"Ah, but he was careful, as careful as a good _parti_ has to be in the -London season. He lent them his books, and guanoed their minds -thoroughly, but he always sheered off when they showed signs of taking -him seriously." - -"Chose married women to flirt with, for preference? What does the wife -say?" - -"The wife? So there is a wife! But no one has ever seen her. Perpetual -hay-fever, or something of the sort." - -"That is what Vero-Taylor gives out." - -"Oh, I don't really think there is anything in--with Lady Scilly, I -mean. He is too selfish--they are both too selfish. Those sort of women -are like the Leaning Tower, they lean but never fall. It is an alliance -of interest, so to speak. He introduces the literary element into her -parties, and writes her novel for her, and in return she flatters him -and takes his daughter out. Poor girl, she would be quite pretty, if she -were properly dressed, but the mediæval superstition, you know--she has -to dress like a Monna Somebody or other, so as to advertise his books. I -believe she did refuse to have her hair shaved off her forehead _à la -Rimini_, but she mostly has to comply----" - -"Well, I never heard of a man using his daughter as a sandwich-man -before. Which is she?" - -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen pointed out Ariadne, whose bath-towel was -tumbling all over her eyes. - -"She looks half-starved!" said _The Bittern_ man. - -"My dear man," said Sulphuretta Hydrogen, "don't you know that they -have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told -that they have a kind of buttery-hatch--a cold pie always cut in the -cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so -disposed." - -"Well, they are free, at any rate--free from the trammels of custom----" - -"Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!" - -I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told -about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the -buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman -that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said-- - -"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a -position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she -chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she -eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn't far behind-hand, -though he is yellow!" - -And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! -But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball? - -I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to -make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there's a will -there's a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to -like it. Though I don't believe young men marry the girls who make eyes -at them best, and as Ariadne's one object is to marry and get out of -this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong -way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was. - -"I am sure I don't know," she said crossly. - -"I'll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is," I said. "She is in the -party--in the room!" - -"Well, I can't help that!" said Ariadne, tossing her head. "Mother ought -to look after her better." - -I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in -her own house, and even her own daughter didn't seem to care whether she -was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady -Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn't, for I -thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino--I seemed to -remember having helped to hem it. They needn't say that eyes can't look -bright in a mask, for this woman's did. She went up to George, and she -didn't speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of -French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat. - -"_Eh, bien, beau masque!_" was what she said. "I know you, but you do -not know me!" - -"I know you by your eyes," he said. "Eyes like the sea----" - -Now, Lady Scilly's eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them -that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that -George was talking without thinking. - -"Eyes without their context mean nothing!" she said, and then I knew the -woman was Christina, for that was the very thing she had once said to -Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice. - -"Come!" she said to George. "Speak to me, say anything to me that the -hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!" - -"Madame!" said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but -after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had -no idea that Christina could have done it so well! - -"Come," she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown -impatient. "Come, a madrigal--a _ballade_, in any kind of china!" - -I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn't Lady -Scilly. She couldn't have managed that about ballads and lyrics. - -He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little--just a -little. - -"No, no, I dare not!" she cried out. "There is a hobgoblin called Ben in -the room--a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why -on earth don't you send that boy to school?" - -I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, -and he took the first chance of leaving the mask's side. There wasn't a -buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so -hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn't -say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying -themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only -time people are really gay, I observe, is at a funeral, or at _Every -man_, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn't be jolly. - -I was thinking sadly about my dear Mother, and wondering where she was, -when I ran against a Frenchman, a real Frenchman, and he asked me where -was the mistress of the house, and that showed me that other people -thought about her too; I didn't answer for a moment, and he went on in a -kind of dreamy voice-- - -"I was brought here to see an English interior----" - -"Well," I said. "It's inside four walls, isn't it?" - -"_Mon Dieu, mademoiselle_," said he, "I had made to myself another idea -of _le home Anglais_--the fireside--the _maîtresse de la maison_ with -her keys depending from her girdle--the children--the sacred children, -standing round her--_bébé_ crowing----" - -"There isn't any baby!" I said, "and a good thing too! But this is a -party, don't you see, and we are all playing the fool, and we shall be -sensible to-morrow, and if you will excuse me, I am one of the sacred -children, and I am just looking for my mother's knee to go and stand -against." - -He made way for me with a "_Permettez, mademoiselle!_" and I went, -thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. -Ben didn't know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the -door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling -people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in -the street, with a man, who was George. There are tall bushes near our -door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door -gardens. Ben didn't know till I told him; he is the stupid child that -doesn't know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She -had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There's -a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn't, being a -poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it -couldn't be seen under her mask, and whined, - -"Oh, I'm so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!" - -"For beautiful women--I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes -of dialogue," George said; "there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck -your red pleasure from the teeth of pain." ... - -"Yes, I am very wicked," she said. "My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do -you know, I am almost afraid of myself." - -"As I am--as we all are," said George. - -"Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are -you so guarded, so unenterprising?" - -She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that -Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn't, so she couldn't think -why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was -bi-chaperoned--if that is the way to put it--for there was me too. Ben -and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don't think George did, because he could -not quite make a fool of himself before Ben. Besides, it was draughty -out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to -come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn't. She said she had -never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and -she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some -rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity -again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and -there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, -since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it. - -George looked at his watch, and said, "In ten minutes they will give the -signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better----?" - -"I shall leave the party," she said. "I shall walk straight home! It -will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet -again in the glare of----" - -"The lights are shaded," George put in. - -"I alluded to the glare of publicity!" she said. "I shall ask this -commissionaire," she said, "to call my carriage----" - -"Better not," said George hastily, "for you would have to give him your -name,--your name which I know. For my sake--won't you slip back into the -ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like -the rest? Believe me it is best." - -"It is my host commands, is it not?" she said slyly, to show him that -she had known it was he all the time, and ran past him, in a skittish -way. As if he hadn't known all the time that she knew that he knew that -she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in -pretending. - -Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up -a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which -seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted -so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the -devil was going with her. He was _The Bittern_ man, of course, only I -didn't know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly. - -"You know the way?" she was asking him. - -"I know the house, like the inside of a glove," he said, and indeed he -did, for hadn't I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me -instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, -rather like Puck was, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, so I thought I would -stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off -her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved -so badly in both. _The Bittern_ man offered to show her the way to -George's sanctum. - -"You see, you can go where you like in a show-house--or ought to be able -to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate." - -"The press is too much with us, soon and late," said she, laughing. - -"Ah, but confess, my lady, you can't do without us!" said this awful -young man--though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose -in everywhere in the interest of his paper. "You suffer us gladly." - -"I don't suffer at all--I shouldn't allow you to make me suffer," said -she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out -of the Bible. - -I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn't steal -the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs. - -"I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe," said -_The Bittern_ man. - -"Haven't you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less -eccentric as one goes up," said Lady Scilly. - -"Art is only skin-deep," said _The Bittern_ man. "Just look at that bed, -which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive -or artistic than Staple's.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and -let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear -our host give the word for unmasking." - -So they marched out of George's bedroom, for that was where they had got -to--and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and -modern--and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. -Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I -wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her -work, for though the supper was all sent in from a shop, there would be -sure to be something for her to do. - -These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in -a blaze of light and an empty kitchen--for the moment only, for one -heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, -and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady -Scilly and _The Bittern_ man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a -checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and -looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen -fire, which had caught her face on one side. - -Lady Scilly and _The Bittern_ man took no notice of her, but walked -about looking at things. - -"And so this is the Poet's kitchen!" Lady Scilly said, rather -scornfully. "How his pots shine!" - -"Very comfortable indeed!" said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise -George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask--"It's no end of a -privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet's use. -This is his soup-ladle, and----" - -Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook's sentence for -him. - -"And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat--and -I'm his wife!" - -Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of -polite. He isn't a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and -he began to come here. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -Smart women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in -the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn't got either of her own, so she is -always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom -asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age--too near. -That's what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene -about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the -thing, I don't care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly's motor is -always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We -run into something live--or else the kerb--most times we are out, and -it's extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though -once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get -into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is -just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. -I read an interview with her in _The Bittern_ the other day (she had to -start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it -said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was -the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how -could she be? There isn't room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, -unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely. - -Lord Scilly is very well born too, he's the eldest son of the Earl of -Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with -expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes -he would, but Lord Scilly doesn't, because he's not quite a beast. He is -very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding -her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have -heard that he doesn't think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering -herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn't understand -why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write -novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. -George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every -morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn't mind in the least her -collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; -but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to -collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different. - -I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who -tells me everything, doesn't think so much collaborating is quite what -is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, "blessed if she'd -let herself be put upon by a countess." - -Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy--that's what her name means, -Paquerette. That's what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a -grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it -makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. -Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she -is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all -times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won't. If she -gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may -say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and -listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am -always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish. - -The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve--Lady Scilly had -sent a messenger for me--she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue -tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was -writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a -few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly -all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers -with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and _La Femme -Polype_ was the name of one, and _Madame Belle-et-m'aime_ another. Lady -Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French -if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also -on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that -made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and -the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors -hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush -things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw -so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with "To darling, -from Kitty London," and as many more with "Best love, yours cordially, -Gladys Margate," and I have given up trying to count the ones of -actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy -forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote _The Sorrows of the Amethyst_, -and one of the K.C. who wrote _Duchesses in the Divorce Court_--the -Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play -called _The Up-and-Down Girl_, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces -once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his -volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I -think he's put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, -which isn't often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. -There's a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes--I don't -suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so -big it would burst the post-bag--and there are two sorts of racks on it, -one to hold her bills that she hasn't paid, and that's got printed on it -in gold "_Oh Horrors!_" and another with those she has paid with "_Thank -Heaven!_" on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays -bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends -something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however -broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker -would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances -are you'll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, -being dead, you can't be expected to pay! - -I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and -also, if they are writing, I can't help seeing what it is, and then if -it is "_Dearests_" and "_Darlings_" I do feel awkward. But to-day when -she had said "How do you do?" she handed me the writing-board. - -"Write for me, dear," she said, "to the most odious woman in London. And -the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she -dared to play Lady Ildegonde in _The Devey Devastator_ at a _matinée_ at -Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses--stood by the -management of course--and nails like a coal-heaver's. Now don't you -think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round -my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene -Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not -forgive her. Now you write. '_Dear thing!_' Don't be surprised, I can't -afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! '_You were wonderful -yesterday! I know what's what, and believe me that's it!_' I mean the -dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call -diplomacy. Don't say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will -see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything -for me, and _The Bittern_ will do anything for her. We will go and see -her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, -dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!" - -She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it -didn't matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and -then she seemed to feel better. - -"I wish I could do without Miller!" she said. "Old Miller hates me, and -I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good 'perks' for that. -She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her -one day. So they will! I can't afford to quarrel with a woman who can do -my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear -to-day, Miller?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Miller (she's Scotch, and she is rather stingy of -"ladyships"), "there's your blue that come home last week. It seems a -pity to leave it aside just yet." - -"You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can't -put that on, it's too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it." - -"Then there is the grey _panne_." - -"Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own -maid. No offence to you, Miller." - -"I don't intend to take any, my lady," said Miller, pursing up her -lips. "What about your black with sequins?" - -"Yes, let's have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child's hair. -You see, I dress to you, my dear." - -But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just -as she chooses her horses to be a pair. - -Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only -thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her -nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once -had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I -shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it--the -best paints--and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year. - -Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in -Paris--rather purplish--it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is -just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and -looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked -away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, -and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if -her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little -tendrils of hair down on her forehead. - -"Child, child," she said to me. "Do you know what makes me sigh?" - -"Indigestion?" I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn't, -that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so -diabolically, so preternaturally ugly. - -"Oh no, you look sweet!" I said. I really thought so, but Miller -grinned. - -"You are delightful!" Lady Scilly said. "And you can have that boa you -are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me -meretricious; and, child, when your times comes, don't ever--ever--have -anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can't leave it off, -and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to -subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the -time. Oh, _la, la_!" - -I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we -read of in a book. I've seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her -black and blue, and she kept saying, "Go on! Harder! Harder!" but as it -didn't seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn't do it again. But I -took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself. - -When Lady Scilly was ready she said--"We won't lunch in, we will go to -Prince's and have a _filet_. Scilly's in a bad temper because of bills. -Well, bills must come,--and I may go, I suppose. There's no reason one -shouldn't keep out of their way." - -She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she -told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us -at three o'clock. - -The butler said, "Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party -of ten!" all in the same voice. - -"So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!" and she flopped into a hall -seat. - -"Yes, my lady," Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door -again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude. - -So we took off our hats, at least I did--she wears a hat every time she -can, except in bed--and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and -her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I -know. - -Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, "You have got too much -on!" - -She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so -as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office -laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like -blackberries on every bush--one of the penalties of greatness. - -"I've never really seen your face, Paquerette," he said, "and I do -believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are -right not to make it too cheap. Who's coming? Smart people, or one of -your Bohemian crowds?" - -"You'll see," she said. "Mrs. Ptomaine, for one." - -"Dear Tommy!" said he. "I love her.... Desist, O wasp!" he said to one -that had come in by the window and was bothering him. "This is a -precursor of Tommy." - -"Tommy's all right, so long as she hasn't got her knife into you. She -favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see -that she doesn't make eyes at my tame millionaire." - -"Oh, Mr. Pawky!" said Simon. "Is he coming? You should put me opposite, -so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn't Tommy have a bit -of him? She's terribly thin!" - -"Because he isn't a very big millionaire--only half a one--and there's -only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may -flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else -is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and -mortally afraid of Lauderdale--and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I -nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should -like to have seen all your faces!" - -Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the -millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and -indigestible, and as if millionairing didn't agree with him. He could -only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little -"How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear" conversation with me, but he attended most -to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss -Lauderdale, and _Lady Ildegonde_ and the dresses, and discussing -Society, as it is now. - -"Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No, -the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can't -forgive is for people to bore us!" - -I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can't culture, -while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn't waste -her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society -takes count of that she didn't mention? - -"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to -Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale -now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour -into my life!" - -"Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly. - -"That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty -London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can -play billiards on his own back!" - -"Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant, -but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his -hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and -stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They -say he runs it? - -He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. -Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to -have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to -distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and -flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared -her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much -tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats -were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across -the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly -never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her -other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice -painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for -him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash -the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting -Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I -wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did -women, but I was born too late for that. - -When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a -leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but -waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at -it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the -flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, -and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the -drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent -somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes. - -At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady -Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs. -Ptomaine. - -"I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had -several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put -a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked -to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!" - -"What does she do?" I asked. - -"Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers. -Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to -make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free. -I don't care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if -their names are given, and then they don't worry so with their bills. -And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a -lesson--things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite -say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one's quarrels through -the press, isn't it? Here we are at Tommy's flat! Up at the very, very -top! The vulture in its eyrie--is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I -know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift! -One oughtn't to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!" - -I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door. - -"So soon, darling! Delightful!" she said. She didn't look very pleased -to see us, I thought, but she was "in to tea," I could see, for there -were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with -egg-powder. - -"I wanted to prime you about your critique of _Lady Ildegonde_, you -know. Now, Tommy, it is understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and -punished for her impertinence in daring to act _me_, in Camille's -dresses." - -"Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you -don't trust your Tommy." - -"Not so much darling dear, now, if you don't mind," said Lady Scilly. -"We are alone, and this child doesn't need impressing. It fidgets me." - -"All right, sweetheart--I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite -obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state. -"Is it too early for tea?" - -"Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a -headache?" - -"Three distinct headaches," said poor Tommy. "Did three first nights -last night, and got a separate headache for each." - -"How interesting!" said Lady Scilly. "I mean I am very sorry. Is there -nothing I can do?" - -"No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest -will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think -of nothing for an hour." - -Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were -just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire! - -Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very -pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her -in an undertone, "No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea. -_Must_ you go?" - -Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as -my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine," -in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more -"dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?" -and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have -serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink -toast-and-water in her house any more. - -"There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it," -she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after -another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon -motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?' -But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking -the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll -get him to give her a new carpet!" - -I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it -was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and -then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having -nothing marketable about her, not even a title. - -If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so -obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they -seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. -Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted -with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of -Frederick Cook, perhaps? - -She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write -Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. -Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the -night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office -and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. -Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to -take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to -change it for another and a nicer. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -It is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten -thousand copies of a book, you can't get any sort of useful advice on -the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner -consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice -from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can't in fairness -advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that -Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl, -she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a -room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to -ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too -shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see -if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl -like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious. -She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly's aunt, the Countess of -Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she -holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a -feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs -them to invent a fate for her. - -"Haven't I got a future like other people?" she whines, and then the -poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in -her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to -have three husbands, although she is already seventy. - -Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at -least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see -people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they -would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to -bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in -shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking -silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been -having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very -serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, -though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne -what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only -two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right -sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as -Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. -Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite -sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry, -and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece -of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as -she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in -the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than -usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very -smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the -Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never! - -Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed -Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a -nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least -that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we -were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to -help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything -countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all -that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds -unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to -go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can -ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good -wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that -George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It -is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and -so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of -one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never -going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. -I don't know how much that is. She will never tell. - -Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn't got. It is odd, how -taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, -dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And -fashion after all is only a matter of "bulge." You bulge in a different -place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave -off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you -may consider you are a well-dressed woman! - -Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence -a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every -week, from _The Bittern_, and for _Wild Oats_. George is "Pease Blossom" -on _The Bittern_. We don't need to subscribe to a library, we live in a -book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers' Row -afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the -smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready -George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in -together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of -_Darnel_, and people thought him clever but malicious. - -Papa doesn't know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the -novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has -no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time -for--it depends on how many Ariadne gives me--and then when she is doing -her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper -ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so -it's all right. - -Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn't invent, but -found ready made. "Up to the level of this author's reputation" is one; -"marks a distinct advance," "breezy," "strong, or convincing," and the -opposites, "unconvincing," "weak," "morbid," "effete," are useful ones. -She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions "a fine -sense of atmosphere" if she honestly can. - -She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She -flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their -books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and -what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not -one of the whole d--d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, -especially The _Bittern_, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that -ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and -gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote -her own words to her! - -Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the -reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of -course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a -pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as -to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he -allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, -there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but -one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She -was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for -heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up -her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error -and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel -action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society! - -It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, -because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have -the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother -listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner -to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up -and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about. - -"D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of -mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!" - -It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George, -you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a -regular corker of a review. - -"I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal -ineptitude of this author's_----'" - -I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though -I never saw it in print. - -Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all, -which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes -oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The -Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole -year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went -to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote -about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself -wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but -the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to -frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, -and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, -and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the -cookery-book. - -That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, -who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all -about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and -Countesses are interested in mediæval knights and maidens, cooks--nor -yet laundresses--aren't. - -"The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!" he says -sometimes. "If I was proper, they wouldn't even look at me!" - -"Ay! the suburbs?" George says dreamily; "the kind, the mild, the -tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught -Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in Pall Mall and -Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy----" - -"You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!" says Mr. Aix. - -"I have shocked them--they love being shocked! I have startled -them--that does them good. I have puzzled them--not altogether -unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with -Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a -common, romantic denominator----" - -"You are like those useful earthworms of _le père_ Darwin, bringing up -soil and interweaving strata," said Mr. Aix wearily. - -George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. "Yes, I dominate the -lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at -the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you -ever envisage Peckham?" - -"I lived there and sold matches once," said she, "and, moreover, I've -kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs." - -"Is there anything you haven't done?" said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a -woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living -among his raw material. When he was writing _The Serio-Comic_, in order -to get the serious atmosphere--which I should have thought gin would -have done for well enough--he went every night of his life to some music -hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their -frocks at the back for them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out -just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn't preach -for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn't have told him -anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend -that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina -calls this novel "The Sweetmeat in the Gutter," and loves it, though -George says it is as broad as it's long, and that ladies shouldn't read -it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it -doesn't matter. _I_ have read _The Serio-Comic_, and I can't see -anything wrong. There's more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie -Dulcimer's real name is Frances Raggles, and she's the mother of five in -the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there's a -brandy-and-soda in every chapter. - -Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like -Lady Scilly's pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears -spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says "Quite so," as -if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. -He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like. -Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would -knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks -anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an -exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a -telegram--so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different -ways, and Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for -the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both -at the same time. - -He is about the only person who doesn't think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne -naturally dislikes him. She can't help it. If we didn't let her think -she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that -sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won't consider himself snubbed. -It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him. -Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him -if it is to be called _The Dustman_ or _The General_, and what the -_locale_ is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside -London? - -I have an idea that it will be called _The Seamstress_, for he has -lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where -we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to -sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle -into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour. - -Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep -her eyes open, as she always is after a dance. - -"I have often wondered," he began, "what must be the sensations of a -young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled, -is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her -senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous beat of the time, -relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying -frivolity? Is she----?" - -He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted-- - -"I can tell you. She's thinking all the time, 'Is there a hair-pin -sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in -front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. ---- it -depends which Mister is there that evening--think of it all?" - -"Don't, Tempe!" said Ariadne. - -"No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell -me some more things about women." - -"Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a -hansom?" - -"No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?" - -"Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like," I said. "It is only because -there happens to be a looking-glass there." - -George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary -agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in -Surrey and tempted them--to sell him the rights of every novel they did -for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their -heads and said, "You must go to Middleman!" Then he took them to a -London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads -and sent him to Middleman, who makes all their bargains for them, but -he can't control all the reviews. - -One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in -his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go. -George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an -effort to be a hero to one's typewriter, or one's daughter. - -"I am in a rage!" Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he -looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. "Just let me get hold of -this fellow they have got on _The Bittern_, and see if I don't wring his -neck for him!" - -George didn't say anything, and so I asked--somebody had to--"What has -_The Bittern_ man done, please?" - -"Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that's all! I'd have the -fellow know that I'm read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England! -Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!" - -George read it--at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn't seem to want -to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying-- - -"Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth--one can -always learn something from criticism, or so I find!" - -"What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent -paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding, -that's what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it -him!" - -"Well, it wasn't me wrote it, Mr. Aix," I said, "nor Ariadne!" He isn't -supposed to know that George farms out his reviews. - -Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it -had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in -for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn't he trouble -to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were -growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have -said to _The Bittern_ editor, "Avaunt! Don't tempt an author to review -his friend's book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many -reasons!" That is my idea of literary morality. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -George came back from his yachting tour with the Scillys very brown and -cheerful, having collected enough sunshine for a new book, and Christina -is typing it at his dictation. - -George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in -touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can't -for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that -she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs -to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of -her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the -end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, -as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes -among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, -he says, and she doesn't mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows -he is being managed, which shows that he doesn't really think he is. I -asked her once why she didn't marry, but she said the profession of -typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off -your high stool if you wanted. - -Christina always says rude things about epigrams and marriage. She is -not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of -course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and -ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes -ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, -and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china -memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks -on Marriage. - -1. Man cannot live by epigram alone. - -2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at -a _bal masqué_ at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards. - -3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in -the shape of conversation that grows near it. - -4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude. - -5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all -wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it. - -George's new novel is to be called _The Senior Epigrammatist_, and the -scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands. - -"Our well-known blend," said Mr. Aix, "of opaline sea and crystal -epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this -sunlight soap won't wash clothes. It isn't for home consumption. It -gladdens publishers' offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The -fires of passion----" - -"Don't talk to me of passion," said Christina. "I just detest the word. -Passion is piggish! It's a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, -and I wouldn't be seen dead with a temperament, in these days." - -She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She -typed something like this-- - -Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (----) C. Ball B B---- - -"Who is Ball?" said Mr. Aix anxiously. - -Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off. - -"A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in -his shoes." - -"The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!" - -I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She -hasn't said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him. - -It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen's Gate, that -she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, -that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever -you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, -though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, -I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she -would not marry, and that was a beard. - -He wished out loud that he hadn't got let in for the sitting-down seats, -so that he could not make a clean bolt of it when he had had enough of -Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so -though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us -quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that "she knew a bank!" -as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. -After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced -him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and -gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of -him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round -indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through -the programme though people shoo'd him, and then he stopped for a little -and apologized, and went on again. - -"I don't often turn up at this sort of function, do you?" he asked -Christina. - -"No, I do not," she replied, "I have too much to do as a general thing." - -"And stay at home and do it," said he; "you're wise." - -"I have to!" said Christina. "Oh," she sighed, "I am so dreadfully hot." - -It was June. - -"Why do you wear that bag?" he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which -was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every -one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a -different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like -every one else. - -"Get out of it, can't you, and let me take care of it for you, and that -boa thing you have got round your neck." - -She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him. - -"I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the -seat," she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. -So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers -with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking -at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn't -seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn't -seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he -would make George straighten his back! - -"I say," he said presently, "do you like gramophones?" - -"I love them," said Christina, and I knew it was a lie. - -"My people have a perfectly splendid one!" said he, and his whole face -lighted up. "I wish you could hear it." - -Christina wished she could, and he said-- - -"Oh, then, we will manage it somehow." - -When the concert was over he didn't bolt as he had said he wanted to, -but gave us ices, Christina one, me two, and then Christina put the bag -on again. - -"If you were in my motor in that thing in a shower you'd get drowned," -said he. "Why, it would _hold_ the water. I should like to drive you in -my motor all the same. I say, can't I call on you?" - -Christina told him very nicely that she was private secretary to the -author, Mr. George Vero-Taylor, and hadn't much time for herself. She -seemed to say that this made a call impossible. - -"Ah, I see! Live in, do you? Well, I'll call there, drop my pasteboard, -all straight and formal, you know, and then there can be no objection to -my giving you a spin in the motor. Right you are! Sinky Cento House. -What a rum name! Suggests drains! Never mind, I'll be there, and then -when I've made the acquaintance of your chaperon, she'll allow you to -come to tea with my mater, and make the acquaintance of the gramophone. -My mater's too old to go out. It's a ripper, the gramophone, I mean, -like some other people I am thinking of!" - -"What a breezy man!" said Christina, on the way home. "He reminds me of -The Northman I used to draw at South Kensington. I broke him, and had to -pay seven-and-six for him." Then she began to think--I believe it was -about Peter Ball. He _was_ handsome, for he had blue eyes and a little -short, straight nose like the Sovereigns in Madame Tussaud's. - -"Isn't he exactly like Harold of England?" I said to Christina. "I hope -George won't snub him when he comes to see you?" - -"He won't come," said she; "but if he did he wouldn't know he was being -snubbed." - -"No, he would say to George, 'Keep your snubs for a man of your own -size.' But, Christina dear, I always _thought_ you hated both marriage -and gramophones." - -"I am not so sure about gramophones," said she. "Perhaps a very big -one----?" - -"A six-footer, like Mr. Peter Ball, eh?" - -She was quite moody and absent in the 'bus going home, and wouldn't go -on top to please me. Then I accidentally stuck my umbrella in over the -top of her shoe as I walked beside her, and then she was too cross to -speak at all. I respected her mood. That is why I am beloved in the home -circle. But I have my own ideas, and they keep me amused. - -I was unfortunately out of the way when Mr. Peter Ball did call, three -days later. Mother and Christina were in, and Ariadne, who gave me a -true account of it all. She says the first thing he said to Christina -was, "I hope you don't think I have been too precipitate?" I suppose he -meant in calling? He stared about him a good deal at first, and she -thought that George's queer furniture made him feel shy, and that he -thought the ivory figure of Buddha quite indecent. She was sure he -didn't admire her (Ariadne), but only Christina, because Christina is a -"tailor-made" girl, that men like. Mother made the tea very strong that -afternoon, so as to make him feel at home, and then after all he didn't -touch tea. She kindly offered him a brandy-and-soda and he declined -that, but I expect it was only because it would have seemed -disrespectful to Christina. All men are alike, and prone to a b. and s. -if they can get it without disgrace. Mother was sure that he had fallen -head-over-ears in love with Christina, and she with him at the very -first sight. She told me so, and said she meant to help it on. - -"It is because Christina is so used to seeing George every day," said I. -"Peter Ball is very different, isn't he?" - -Mother said that there was no accounting for tastes, and that for her -part she considered George's type was the nicest. But whatever we did, -she said, we were not to chaff Christina about it, and put her off a -very good match. A girl of Christina's sort never took kindly to chaff, -and though she should be sorry to lose Christina as a secretary to -George, it being impossible to tell what sort of minx he might engage in -her place, she for one wouldn't like any personal consideration whatever -to interfere with Christina's establishment in life. Peter Ball is a -landed gentry. He is M.F.H. in the county of Northumberland to the -Rattenraw Hunt, and a capital shot and first-rate angler. When his old -mother dies he will be richer, but he is a good son, and often stays -with her in Leinster Gardens where he has asked me and Christina to go -to tea next week. - -I promised not to chaff, but if she had only known, it would have taken -a steam-crane to put Christina off that particular thing. She talked -lots about Peter. He was the "finest specimen of humanity she had ever -come across!" "Such a contrast to the little anæmic, effete, -ambisextrous (I hope I have got it right?) creatures that haunt Cinque -Cento House, who are all trying to get more out of their heads than is -in them!" "Greek in his simplicity, a sort of mixture of John Bull and -Antinöus!" I say, just wait till you see his mother; nice men's mothers -are sometimes sad eye-openers, and Peter Ball is always talking about -his. Also it is quite on the cards that she may not like Christina, and -then I am sure he will never propose to her. He is an admirable son. I -believe he keeps a gramophone just to attract the girls he admires into -his mother's cave, and give her the opportunity of looking over them, -and making up her mind if they are fit to be her Peter's wife or no. - -When the eventful day came, Christina was on thorns. She didn't know how -to dress. She finally left off the chiffon bag and wore a fringe-net, -and her best-cut "tailor-made," and took out her ear-rings lest they -should damn her in his mother's eyes. Then at exactly five minutes to -four we rang the bell in 1000 Leinster Square. - -A proud butler opened the door. George will only let us have maids, -although he could afford ten butlers. - -The house was beautiful, and not a bit like ours. "Early Victorian," -Christina whispered me. She was dreadfully nervous, and made me too. I -dropped my umbrella in the rack with such a clatter that she blushed and -scolded me. Then a palm-leaf tickled my head as I went by, and I begged -its pardon, thinking some one behind was trying to attract my -attention. We were taken into a big room with pedestal things in gold -and stucco set down at intervals, and a clock with a bare pendulum which -looks simply undressed to me, and a bronze Father Time with his sickle -lying lazily across the top. On another clock there was a gilt man in a -gilt cart whipping up two gilt horses. The carpet had large bouquets of -roses on it, and I thought what a good game it would be to pretend they -were islands and hop across from one to the other. I began, but she -stopped me. In a corner was the gramophone, like a great brass ear put -out to hear what you were saying. It was playing when we went in, like -an old man with a wheeze, and in came Peter Ball looking as if he had -just got out of a bath, and said, "How-do-you-do! it is playing -'Coppelia.'" Then it played "Valse Bleue" and "Casey at the Wake," and -"Casey as Doctor," and "When other Lips," and then Peter Ball said his -mother was ready. - -Into another room we went, full of Berlin wool-work chairs, and screens -of Potiphar and his wife, and the curtains were of green rep with ropes -of silk to tie them back and gilt festoons to hide their beginnings, and -an old old lady in a big arm-chair and a lace cap with nodding bugles -was in a corner, just like another and older bit of furniture. - -We were introduced; she was very deaf and very blind, and I am not sure -she didn't think I was the girl Peter wanted to marry. However that -might be, she seemed pleased with us, and we talked of her son and the -house. Christina, who used to say she preferred a Chéret poster to a -Titian, and plain deal to mahogany, admired everything freely. The -rosewood wheelbarrow with silver fittings given to Peter Ball's father -when he laid a first stone somewhere, she said was superb and so -graceful; the picture of old Mrs. Ball by Ingres in a poke bonnet and -short waist she said was far superior to anything by Burne Jones. - -"Who is Burne Jones?" said the old lady, and Christina denied Burne -Jones cheerfully. I thought of my favourite piece of poetry-- - - "See, ye Ladies that are coy, - What the mighty Love can do!" - -Then we had tea (the cake in a silver basket on a fringed mat, if you -please!), and after we had talked a little more, we said good-bye, and -Peter took us out. He had rushed out of the room just five minutes -before, when the first symptoms of leave-taking manifested themselves, -and we saw why, when we passed out through the first room where the -gramophone was. It played us out with "The Wedding March," surely a -graceful thought of Peter Ball's! - -"He's very nice, but what a pity he hasn't got taste!" I said as we came -away. You see, I am used to Cinque Cento House, and I have always been -told that there is only one taste, and that ours is it. - -"Taste!" Christina mooned, as we got into a 'bus. "There's so much of it -about, isn't there? On my word, it will soon be quite _chic_ to be -vulgar." - -It was not difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing after that. -It was about this time that Mr. Aix found Christina typing her own name -and Peter's on a sheet of III Imperial. He hadn't even set eyes on Peter -Ball then, but he did a few days later, when Peter Ball came to tea, -holding his grey kid gloves in his hand. George, luckily, was out again, -really out, not pretending to be in his study, and Mr. Aix it was who -opened the front-door for Peter when he went away at seven. - -"A man!" he said, when he came back to us all in the winter garden, and -Christina was just going out--escaping to her own room to think over -Peter Ball, I dare say--and she said as she passed him-- - -"I could hug you for saying that, Mr. Aix." - -"No, you couldn't," said he. "I am popularly supposed to be repellent. A -lady said I was like a white stick of celery grown in a dark cellar. -Another, of music-hall celebrity, compared me to a blasted pipe-stem. I -do not look for success with your sex. It was kind of you to think of -it, though." - -Peter Ball meant business, or else we could not have all spoken of it so -openly. George was awfully cross at the idea of having to find a new -secretary. Lady Scilly said she thought he could do better than -Christina, who was too forward (and too pretty). She tried very hard to -flirt with Peter herself, but perhaps Peter thought _he_ could do -better, and wouldn't. She looked into his face and said, "You great big -beauty!" She told him "high" stories, as Christina and I call them, and -he wouldn't laugh. She asked him right out why he wouldn't, and he -answered equally right out, "Because I disapprove of all jesting with -regard to the relations of the sexes!" - -Lady Scilly looked disgusted, and left him severely alone, as he meant -her to. - -For weeks after this he was like a full pail of water one is afraid to -carry without spilling. At last he slopped over, and asked Christina to -be his wife. I wasn't in the room, of course, but Christina was nice and -told us afterwards. He went on his knees, she says, and I believe her, -because I found a cushion on the floor immediately after, before the -housemaid had tidied the room, and I think he had managed to put it -under his knees without her seeing. Our floor is bony. - -"The very moment," she said, "he had got me to say yes, he jumped up and -rushed out without his hat, to send a telegram to his mother with the -good news!" - -She thought this so nice of him and so flattering, as showing that he -hadn't made quite sure of her. For though we all knew she meant to take -him, he was not supposed to be aware of it. Considering that Christina -is grown up, she ought to be able to make a man think exactly what she -wishes him to think about her. Such power comes, or should come, with -advancing years, and is one of its compensations. Ariadne, of course, -isn't old enough to have left off being quite transparent, and regrets -it deeply in some of her poetry. - -Christina was married to Peter Ball almost directly, and Ariadne and I -were her bridesmaids. Mrs. Mander gave us our dresses and hats. They -were quite fashionable; she would have no nonsense or necklaces. Ariadne -looked smart and like other people, for once. She didn't look so pretty, -but it is a mistake to want to go about the streets looking like a -picture. Prettiness isn't everything, and the really smartest people -would disdain to look simply ready for an artist to paint them. - -Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly's best friend, was Peter Ball's best man. He -had met Ariadne at the Scillys', but at Christina's wedding he said that -he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. -She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never -did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and -George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own -asking. - -That can't be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the -iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did _rather_ like her, but he wasn't -quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that -means--and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry -about it, as of course she would be. At all events he didn't come--his -chief kept him in till six o'clock every day, or some excuse of that -sort. As if a man couldn't always manage a call if he wanted to, even if -he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars! - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -We never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton -or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of -course St. John's Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole -month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in -Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty--something about a company -that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn't care where -we went, as he isn't to be with us. He just forks out the money as -Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do -things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all -we _are_ his family, and everybody knows that now. - -I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn't so -much about. - -Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven't got an ounce of country fibre in them. -They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase -them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the -quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is -sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there's a wasp inside -it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They -haven't country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down -grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, -and offend everybody all round. - -So they weren't particularly happy in the first rooms we took, at a farm -just out of Whitby. There was one stuffy little best parlour, sealed up -like a bottle of medecine, and one mouldy geranium looking as if it -couldn't help it on the window-sill, and the "Seven Deadly Sins" in -chromo on the walls, and Rebecca at a well of Berlin wools over the -mantelpiece. They covered the family Bible with an antimacassar, and -Aunt Gerty's theatrical photos without which she never travels, and -suppressed the frosty ornament in a glass case of one of Mrs. Wilson's -wedding-cakes. Mrs. Wilson married early, she says, and I say she -married often, for there are three of them! It _was_ uncomfortable. -Mother didn't complain, Aunt Gerty did. She had nowhere to hang up her -dresses; they were all getting spoilt; she couldn't see to do her hair -in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass, and the room was so small -that she twice set fire to her bed-curtains, curling her hair, which she -did twenty times a day, for there was always wind or rain or something. -The walls were so thin that she could hear every word Mr. and Mrs. -Wilson said to each other in the next room, quarrelling and arranging -the bill and so on. She couldn't sleep with the window shut, and all -sorts of horrid buggy things came in if you left it open. It was so -dreadfully lonely here, and she had never "seen so much land" in her -life. - -Aunt Gerty has been on tour often enough to get used to uncomfortable -lodgings, lodgings not chosen by herself, very likely, and her luggage -all fetched away the day before she leaves by the baggage man! But it is -in a town, and that makes all the difference. Give her a strip of mirror -in the door of her wardrobe, and a gas-jet ready to set fire to her -window-curtains, and a row of shops outside to cheer her up, and she -won't think of grumbling. - -The landlady didn't consider us a particularly good "let." I used to -hear her in bed in the mornings explaining to Mr. Wilson, who is a -railway porter, how glad she would be to be "shot" of us if it wasn't -for the money. "Ay, lass!" he would answer, and then I used to hear him -turning over in bed and going to sleep again. - -"They're better to keep a week than a fortnight!" she used to say. "What -with their late dinners and breakfasts in bed, and their black coffee, -and all sitting down for an hour o' mornings polishing up them ondacent -brown boots--they darsen't trust the help, no, not since she went and -rubbed them with lard--poor girl, she meant well,--and she fit to rive -her legs off answering the parlour bell every minute! Well, the sooner I -see their backs, the better pleased I shall be!" - -We took the hint and gave up the rooms, and got some nicer ones in town -on the quay. Aunt Gerty left off bothering Mother to have late dinner -and strong coffee, and we lived on herrings and cream cheeses, the -cheapest things in Whitby. I mean the herrings. When they have a good -catch, they sell them at a halfpenny each on the quay-side, or slap -their children with them, or shy them at strangers. Anything to keep the -market up! - -Mrs. Bennison, our new landlady, isn't a Whitby woman, but her husband -is, and owns a boat, and takes Ben out sailing, and tries to make a man -of him. We hardly ever see him, so we know he is happy. Mother and Aunt -Gerty sit one on each side of the bow window the greater part of the -day, and make blouses, and read at the same time. George would throw -their books into the harbour if he caught them in their hands; they are -the sort he disapproves of. I won't say who the authors of these are, as -being a literary man's daughter it might give offence, but they are by -women mostly. George vetoes women's books too, for they are generally -bad, and if they are good, they have no business to be. - -Just now, George isn't here to object, he is at Homburg, doing a cure. -He always gets brain fag towards the end of the season like his other -friends. It seems to me the smartest illness to have, except -appendicitis. The moment Goodwood is over, they all troop off to Germany -or Switzerland and pay pounds to some doctor who only makes them leave -off eating and drinking too much, and go to bed a little before -daylight. It is kill and then cure with the smart set, every year. -George does what is right and usual--bathes in champagne at Wiesbaden, -and drinks the water rotten eggs have been boiled in at Homburg. He does -it in good company, to take the taste away. Mr. Aix drew us a picture of -George and a Duchess walking up and down a parade, with a glass tube -connected with a tumbler, in their mouths, talking about emulating "The -Life of the Busy Bee" as they went along. - -About the middle of August we heard he had come back to England and was -paying his usual round of visits to Barefront, and Baddeley and -Fylingdales Tower. Nearly all these places have real battlements and -ghosts. Fylingdales Tower is near here. Mother and I and Aunt Gerty -joined a cheap trip to it, the other day, and were taken all over the -house for a shilling. I don't even believe The Family was away, but -stowed away _pro tem._ and staring at us through some chink and loathing -us. I did manage to persuade Aunt Gerty not to throw away her sandwich -paper in the grate of the fire-place of the room where Edward the Third -had slept on his way to Alnwick, but kindly keep it till we were got -into the Park. But she was very irreverent all the same, and insisted on -setting her hat straight in the glass of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, and -that was the only picture she looked at at all. I don't care for -pictures much. I like the house, which is old and grey and bleached, as -if it never got a good night's sleep. Too many spirits to break its -rest. I don't believe in ghosts really, but I often wonder what are the -white things one sees? I don't see so many as I did when I was quite a -child. Aunt Gerty shivered and went Brr! She hated it all, she is so -very modern. She admitted that she only went with us because she had -hoped George might be actually staying there, and would see his own -sister-in-law among the trippers and get a nasty jar. Mother is a lady, -and knew quite well that he wasn't there, or else she would not have let -Aunt Gerty go, or gone herself, even _incog._ George _had_ been there -recently, though, for the black-satin housekeeper said so, and that she -read his books herself when she had time, or a headache. "He's quite a -pet of her ladyship's," she told Aunt Gerty, who had spotted one of -George's books on a table and asked questions. She was dying to tell the -old thing that we were relations of the great Mr. Vero-Taylor, but -dursn't, for Mother's eye was on her. Mother looked as pleased as Punch -though, and gazed at the chairs (behind plush railings) that her husband -had sat on, and at the portrait in Greek dress, by Sir Alma Tadema, of -the lady who "made a pet of him." - -George had written from Homburg once or twice to me, and I used to read -his letters out to Mother, who naturally wanted to hear his news. She -was a little annoyed because he didn't mention if he was wearing the -thicker vests as the weather was getting chilly, and begged me to ask -him to be explicit in my next, but I did not, because it might have -shamed him in the eyes of his countesses if he left the letter about, as -of course he would. George respects the sanctity of private -communication so much, that he never tore up a letter in his life; the -housemaid collects them when she is doing his room, and brings them to -Mother, who hasn't time to read them, any more than the housemaid has. - -The third week in August George wrote to me, and told me to engage him -rooms in Fylingdales Crescent on the East Cliff. You might have knocked -me down with a feather! - -Mother was hurt at George's having written to me, not her, on such a -pure matter of business, until I explained that he merely did it to -please the child! One doesn't mind making oneself out a baby to avoid -hurting a mother's feelings. I don't know if Mother quite accepted this -explanation, but she said no more about it, and told Mr. Aix the good -news. He is in lodgings here, to be near us--Aunt Gerty thinks it is to -be near her, and he lets her think anything she likes. He looks forward -to George's coming with great interest, and says he will look like some -rare exotic on the beach, such as a humming-bird or a gazelle. Aunt -Gerty at once got hold of the visitors' list. - -"Let's see which of his little lot is coming to Whitby?" she said, and -hunted carefully through three columns till she found that Adelaide -Countess of Fylingdales, Mr. Sidney Robinson, nurse baby and suite, were -at the Fylingdales Hotel, on the East Cliff. Lord Fylingdales, her -eldest son, is the widower of a Gaiety girl who actually died after she -had been a Countess a year, poor dear! Aunt Gerty knew her. He is Lord -of the Manor here, and his portrait is all over the place. - -"Old Adelaide's a shocking frump, Lucy; you needn't distress yourself -about her!" said Aunt Gerty consolingly to Mother. - -"I am not distressing myself about her, Gertrude," replied my Mother, -and she didn't look at all distressed in her neat short blue serge -seaside dress, and shady hat. She looked ten. - -"I know her son," Aunt Gerty went on. "A fish without a backbone. I very -nearly had the privilege of leading him astray myself. It is Irene -Lauderdale now, I hear." - -"I wish you'd stow your theatrical recollections, Gerty," said Mother. -"Come, Tempe, get your things on, we will go and take rooms for your -father and my husband." - -"Brava!" said Mr. Aix. "Capital accent there." - -"Oh, you go along!" said Mother, and we went off at once and engaged -George's rooms. We got very nice large ones, with dark green outside -shutters to the windows, and took a great deal of trouble to explain -George's little ways to them, for their sake as well as his. Ben will -valet him. Mother told the people that he is bringing his man, who will, -however, sleep out. George never gets up till twelve, French fashion. - -Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn't -ornamental just now. He can't speak, he can only croak, and though he -isn't very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing inside himself -and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly -man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his -face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them -and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he -doesn't care at all what he does, he doesn't even mind playing servant -for a bit, if George would like it. Mother tells him he is a good boy -and the comfort of her life, and that if she can manage it, she will get -him sent to college after this, only he had better please the mammon of -unrighteousness all he can. So he means to be a good valet to the -Mammon. - -The Fylingdales Hotel is in the best part of the town, on the East -Cliff, and they dine late there every evening, and don't pull the blinds -down, and the townspeople walk backwards and forwards, and watch the -people dining at seven-thirty, dressed in their nudity. I think evening -dress looks quite wrong at the seaside. Aunt Gerty and Mother put on a -different blouse every evening, and look nice and cosy and comfortable, -though George does say sarcastic things about the tyranny of the blouse, -and the way Aunt Gerty will call it Blowse. I wash my face, that is all -the dressing _I_ do. Ben puts on an old smoker of George's, and flattens -out his hair to support the character of being the only gentleman of the -party, unless Mr. Aix is there to supper, and the less said about Mr. -Aix's clothes the better. - -Ben makes boats all day, when he isn't in one, and Ariadne makes poetry. -Her one idea, having come to the sea for her health, is to avoid it, -and seek the rather scrubby sort of woods which is all you can expect at -the seaside. So every afternoon nearly we take a donkey to Ruswarp or to -Cock Mill, and "ride and tie." We used to pick out a very smart donkey, -but a very naughty one. He was called Bishop Beck, perhaps for that -reason, and he went slow,--that was to be expected, but when he stopped -quite still and wouldn't move for an hour or more in the middle of Cock -Mill Wood, long, long after one had stopped beating him (for he looked -at us and made us feel ridiculous), Ariadne said she would rather do -without adventitious aid of this kind, for it interfered with her -afflatus. - -She walks up and down in the wood paths, finding rhymes, which seems the -hardest part of poetry. - -"Dreams--streams--gleams--" she goes on. - -"Breams?" I suggest. - -"Not a poetical image!" - -"It isn't an image, it is a fish." - -"It won't do. Am I writing this poem or are you?" - -I don't argue. It doesn't really matter much how Ariadne's poems turn -out. Being Papa's daughter she is sure to find a hearty reception for -her initial volume of verse. - -We used to stay out till what Ariadne called Dryad time. She thought she -saw white figures hiding behind the trees in the dusk. Little pellets -made of nuts and acorns and dead leaves, and so on, used to fall on us -out of the thickets, and Ariadne said it was the Dryads pelting us. She -thinks trees are alive, and that one of the reasons you hear ghosts in -all old houses, is the wood creaking because in the night it remembers -it was once a tree. I prefer to believe in ordinary solid ghosts instead -of rational explanations like that. But still Ariadne's funny ideas make -a walk quite interesting. Of course we never talk of such things at -home, among materialists and realists like Aunt Gerty and Mother and -George. George makes plenty of use of birds in his books, but he once -came home from a visit to St. John's College at Cambridge, and told us -that he had been kept awake all night by a beastly nightingale under his -window. Now I have never heard this much-vaunted bird, but I am sure, -from Matthew Arnold's poem where he calls it Eugenia, it must be a -heavenly sound, quite worth while being kept awake by. - -Ariadne and I stay out very late till it is getting dark, hoping to hear -it, in Cock Mill Wood, and then we go home and race through supper, and -then go out again, on the quays and piers this time. We don't know or -care what George and his friends are doing, up above us, in the smart -hotel on the cliff. What I should just love would be for some of them -and George to come down for a walk in the dark and perhaps meet us, and -for George to say, "Who are those little wandering vagabonds flitting -about like bats? Why doesn't their father or mother keep them at home in -the evenings?" It would be so nice, and Arabian Nightish! - -At very high tides, we stay out very late, and take a shawl, and sit on -a capstan and tuck it round us, and listen for a certain noise we love. -It is when the water gets into a little corner in the heap of stones by -the Scotch Head, and gets sucked in among them somehow, and then we hear -a sort of sob that is better than any ghost. Ariadne and I put our heads -under the shawl when we hear it, but not quite, so as to prevent us -hearing properly. - -The harbour smells at low water, and the town children yell and scream, -and it isn't poetical then. So Ariadne and I like to go away on the -Scaur and put our fingers in anemones' mouths, and pop seaweed purses, -and pretend we are lovers cut off by the tide, as they are in novels. In -the afternoons when the harbour is full we sit on the mound above the -Khyber Pass, and watch the water filling up the hole between the -opposite cliff and the cliff ladder. It is all quite quiet then. We -don't hear any town cries, for the children that make the noise are -turned out of their playground, and their mothers out of their good -drying-ground, and the boats begin to go out of the harbour in a long, -soft, slow procession-- - - _And the stately ships go on_ - _To their haven under the hill._ - -I am sure Tennyson meant Whitby when he wrote that. - -One night we could not sleep because the woman next door had had her -"man" drowned, and cried and moaned for hours. He was a fisherman, and -we had seen his boat go out third in the row the day before. He is -supposed to have fallen overboard in the night? Next day, Mother went in -and gave her five shillings and she stopped crying. - -Mr. Aix had a try to paint the view in front of our windows. At least he -said there was no such thing in nature as a "view," and left out the -Church and the Abbey, because they "conventionalized" things so. He -belongs, he said, to the Impressionist School, if any. He got quite -excited about his drawing, and at last went and borrowed a station truck -to sit on; it raised him a little. One day a chance lady sat down on one -of the handles, and over he went. It served him right for leaving out -the two best things in Whitby. - -When George came, Ariadne and I used to take turns to go and lunch with -him at his breakfast, where we had French cookery. There were leathery -omelets that bounced up like the stick in the boys' game when you -touched the end of them with a spoon, and fillets that you wouldn't have -condescended to have for a pillow, but still, it was French. - -We were dressed nicely and took our clean gloves in our hands, and -George wasn't ashamed of us, and introduced us to his friends. Lady -Fylingdales' Mr. Sidney Robinson said I was like George--that I had his -nose. I went to bed that night with a clothes-peg out of the yard on it, -to improve its shape. But the old lady was half blind, and all made of -manner. I also saw the Lord Aunt Gerty might have led astray, and he -hadn't a manner of any sort, and his nose wanted to run away with his -chin. - -George had no fault whatever to find with the arrangements Mother had -made for his comfort, and he told her so, the first time he saw her, in -Baxter Gate, coming out of the Post Office. The first place George flies -to in a town is the Post Office, to send telegrams. He corresponds -entirely by telegram with some people; he says it is paying five-pence -more for the privilege of saying less. We had been shopping. George -spotted us, and Mother thought he had rather not be recognized, but he -was good that day and he actually left Mr. Sidney Robinson--a commoner, -married to a countess, and that exactly describes him, Aunt Gerty -says--to say a word to his own wife. It was market day, and we had -bought several things in the Hall across the water. A pound of -blackberries and a cream cheese, and a chicken and a cabbage, each from -a different old woman with a covered basket. Mother had a net and I a -basket to put them in. I was glad that George did not offer to "relieve" -us of them, like the young men Aunt Gerty picks up here; but he stopped -and talked to us quite nicely for a long time. He and Mother seemed to -have a great deal to say to each other, and the basket-handle began to -cut my arm in half. Also it was a very hot day. George had on a white -linen suit, and a straw hat from Panama. He looked quite cool, and like -Lohengrin or the Baker's man. Mother didn't. She looked hot. I touched -her elbow, not so much because of my arm that ached, but because she -looked like that, nor did I think it looks well to stand talking in the -street to gentlemen, even if it is your own husband. - -"Well, George," she said, taking my hint at once, "we must be going on. -The butter is melting and the chicken grilling and the cabbage wilting -while I stand here talking to you." - -"Charming!" said George, but he wasn't thinking of us, but of Mr. -Robinson, who was champing a few yards away. We said "Good-bye" without -shaking hands. George, I think, might have lifted his hat. I have read -of fine gentlemen who lifted their hat to an apple-woman, let alone -their wife and child. - -George and his friend walked off together. I suppose the Robinson man -was too well-bred to ask George who his lady-friend was, as any of Aunt -Gerty's men would do, but he certainly stared a good deal. Of course he -knows who we are, everybody in Whitby does, I should think, and they -most likely conclude that it is less unkindness than the eccentricity of -genius. If you haven't got that blasted thing called genius, I suppose -you can bear to live in the same house with your wife! - -We walked slowly home with our purchases. Mother had a headache all -dinner, and lay down in the afternoon. - -"I met your father, Ben," she said at supper. "His boots want a little -attention." - -"I don't believe," said Ben crossly, "that any one ever had a more -tiresome man to valet. He will wear his clothes all wrong, and then is -always ragging and jawing at a fellow because they don't look nice." - -"Hush, Ben, he is your father." - -"Hah, I was forgetting!" said Ben, and gave one of his great laughs, as -if you were breaking up coal, or something. Ben is now so changeable and -nervous that you never know where to have him. He is growing up all -wrong, but what can you expect of a boy brought up by women? He never -sees a boy of his own position, though I know that in London he has some -low companions he daren't bring to the house. The Hitchings are his only -respectable friends, but they live such a long way off now. Jessie -Hitchings is devoted to Ben, but she is only a girl like Ariadne and me. -Mr. Hitchings told mother, years ago, that the boy was being ruined, and -Mother cried and said she knew it, but could do nothing, for his father -was by way of educating him at home till something could be settled. -Snaps of Latin, and snacks of Greek, that is all George gives the poor -boy when he has a moment, and that is never. - -This is the only grievance Mother has, although Aunt Gerty is always -trying to persuade her she has several, and putting her back up. Mother -ends by getting cross with her. - -"For goodness' sake, you Job's comforter, you, leave off your eternal -girding at George. Can't you see, that as long as a man has his career -to establish--his way to make----" - -"His blessed thoroughfare is made long ago, or ought to be. That is what -I can't get over----" - -"You aren't asked to get over it. It is not your funeral, it is mine, so -shut up. A man like George, who is dependant on the public favour, needs -to be most absurdly particular, and careful what he does lest he injure -his prestige. Look at yourself! You know very well in your own -profession how very damaging it is for an actor to be married; that if -an actress marries her manager, he has to pay dear for it in the -receipts. She had better not figure as his wife in the bills, if she -wants him to get on. You can't eat your cake--I mean your title--and -have it. No, it's bound to be Miss Gertrude Jennynge on the bills, even -if it is Mrs. What-do-you-call-it in the lodgings, with a ring on her -finger, and every right to call herself a married woman. The public -don't care for spliced idols. An artist has to stand clear, and preserve -his individuality, such as it is!" - -"And run straight all the time. I'll give George credit for that. But -there, whatever's the good of it to you? A man can make a woman pretty -fairly miserable, even if he is stone-faithful to her. It's then it -seems all wrong somehow, and doesn't give her a chance of paying him in -his own coin!" - -I think Aunt Gerty is the reason why George fights so shy of his family. -He hates her style, and yet he can hardly forbid Mother seeing as much -as she likes of her own sister. The trail of the stage is over us all. -Not that I see anything a bit wicked about the stage myself! I have -never noticed anything at all wrong, and actors and actresses are the -kindest people in the world! But there is a queer, worn, threadbare, -rough, second-rate feeling about them. Off the stage--and I have never -seen them on--they are tired and slouchy and easy-going. Aunt Gerty is -most good-tempered and will do anything to help a pal, and takes things -as they come; those are her good points. But she talks such a lot about -herself, and never opens a book that isn't a novel, and wears cheap -muslins and beaded slippers in the street, and lots of chains that seem -to be always getting caught on men's buttons. She calls men "fellows." -She is always going to play Juliet at one of the London houses. Meantime -she puts up with provincial companies. She makes the best of it, and she -tells us she is going to play Nerissa in the Bacon Company, as if she -had got engaged for a parlourmaid in a good house, and discusses Ariel -as if Ariel were a tweeny or up-and-down girl between the sky and the -earth, and Puck a smart clever Buttons. She speaks of her nice legs as a -workman might of his bag of tools. She can sing and dance, when she -isn't asked to act. She has cut all her hair short to make it easier for -wigs. Her great extravagance is in wigs. She calls them "sliding roofs" -for convenience in talking about them in trains and omnibuses. When she -did wear her own hair she dyed it, so I like the wigs better, as there's -no deception. - -If Mother was ever an actress, which I don't somehow believe, though -Jessie Hitchings said once that she had heard people say so, it has all -been knocked out of her. She dresses very well, always in simpler things -than Aunt Gerty. She left off her waist years ago, to please George, and -now that it is the fashion not to have one, she is in the right box--I -mean stays. Her hair is brown, and she mayn't frizzle it, so it is soft -and pretty like a baby's. She generally wears black, over lovely white -frilled petticoats that she gets up herself to keep the bills down. She -has such little hands that she can pick her gloves out of the -five-and-a-half boxes at sales, which are always much reduced. So few -people have small hands. She may not wear high heels, and that is a -grief to her, as she isn't very tall, but hers are very pretty feet, and -she can dance. - -George doesn't know that she can dance. I do. Once Mr. Aix asked her to -dance for him when I was in the room. Aunt Gerty played on the -tin-kettle piano. Mother danced a cake-walk, which I thought very ugly, -and then a queer step that a friend had taught her when she was a child. -In one part of it she was dancing on her hands and her feet at the same -time. It was the queerest thing, and she left her dress down for that -and it lay in swirls about the carpet. Mr. Aix said it was the dance -that Salome must have danced before Herod, and he quite understood John -the Baptist, and where did she get it? But Mother wouldn't tell him. -She said it was a memory of her stormy youth in the East End. - -Mr. Aix said that she could make her fortune doing it as a turn at a -Society music hall, as it would be something quite new and decadent. -That is just what Society wants--the slight, morbid flavour! Then Mother -put on her short skirt and did the ordinary vulgar kind of dance they -teach now, and I liked it best. She was everywhere at once, smart and -spreading out in all directions, like spun glass on a Christmas card. -Her eyes danced too. Ben said he couldn't have believed she was his -mother! - -Then Aunt Gerty performed, and she is professional. But it was not the -same thing. Aunt Gerty's legs are thick, and compared with Mother's like -forced asparagus to the little pretty, thin, field-grown kind. Mother's -dancing was emphatically dramatic, Mr. Aix said. - -I asked him if Mother could act, and he answered, "My dear child, your -mother can do anything she has a mind to." - -"Then why doesn't she have a mind?" I at once said, forgetting how it -would upset our household and George if she were to go on the stage. -Mother naturally remembers this, and stays domestic out of virtue. - -"I wish you would write a play for me, Mr. Aix," said Aunt Gerty, "and I -would get a millionaire to run it. I wonder, now, what one could do with -Mr. Bowser?" - -She went off in a brown study, and Mr. Aix said rudely, "I will write a -play for Lucy sooner," looking at Mother, who was sitting fanning -herself with her pocket-handkerchief. "She has got the stuff in her, I -do believe. Gad! What a chance! What a lever! What a facer--!" - -And he dropped off into a brown study too! Mother went and mended Ben's -blazer. - -Mr. Aix isn't staying with us, we have no room in our house; he has a -room over the coast-guard's wife, but he comes in to us for his meals. I -don't believe George realizes this, or he would tell him he is throwing -himself away, and losing a good chance of advertising his books. Mr. -Aix's books seem to go without advertising, more than George's do--I -suppose it is because they are so improper. - -At any rate, he prefers to throw in his lot with us. One day we were all -having a picnic-tea at Cock Mill. The party consisted of Mother, me and -Ariadne, Aunt Gerty and Mr. Aix, and an actor friend of hers and his -wife, who was acting for a week at the Saloon Theatre. Mr. Bowser, whom -Aunt Gerty wants either to marry or get a theatre out of, was with us -too. They call him the King of Whitby, because he owns so many plots in -it, and is going to stand for it in the brewing interest next election. -We had secured the nicest table, the one nearest the stream, and had -just tucked our legs neatly under it, when a carriage drove up. Aunt -Gerty and the King of Whitby were at that moment in the old woman's -cottage who gives us the hot water, toasting tea-cakes. - -The Fylingdales' party got out of that carriage, and George got slowly -down off the box. They trooped into the enclosure, and Mr. Sidney -Robinson, trying to be funny, asked the old woman if she could see her -way to giving them some tea. - -"Here o' puppose, Sir!" said she, as of course she is. She pointed out -the table that was left and that led them past us. - -If Aunt Gerty had been there with Mr. Bowser she would certainly have -claimed George as a relation and said something awkward, but she was -luckily toasting tea-cakes, and had perhaps not even seen them. I saw -George just look at Mother, and I saw her smile a very little, and make -him a sign that he was to go right past us, and not speak or seem to -know us before. Of course Mr. Aix never spoils any one's game, not even -George's. So he went on talking hard to the actor's wife, though I saw -his lip curl. I, of course, never need be given a cue twice, so I kicked -Mother hard under the table for sympathy, but preserved a calm superior. - -Aunt Gerty and Mr. Bowser came out with plates full of tea-cakes they -had cooked, and I didn't know if it was the fire or Mr. Bowser had made -Aunt Gerty's cheeks so red--I hoped the latter for her sake. They had no -idea of what had happened while they had been toasting and flirting, it -appeared from their manners, which were bad. Aunt Gerty always puts an -extra polish on hers when George is present, and even Mr. Bowser would -have added a frill or so to suit the aristocracy. - -Our party was very gay. Actors all can make you laugh if they can do -nothing else, and our shrieks of laughter must have made the other party -quite envious, for they were as quiet as a mouse and as dull as the -stream all overshadowed with nut-bushes and alders that grew over it -just there. - -Suddenly George got up, and left them, and came over to us, and Aunt -Gerty swallowed her tea the wrong way round, and had to have her -shoulder thumped. - -George took no notice of her, but put his hand on Mr. Aix's shoulder and -said something to him in a low voice. - -"Not if I know it!" Mr. Aix answered, quite violently, adding, "Many -thanks, old fellow, I am happier where I am." - -George looked awfully put out. Of course I knew what he wanted. Those -smart people up at the other table had expressed a wish to see Mr. Aix. -He is a successful though painfully realistic novelist, and George had -told them he was actually sitting at the next table, and had promised to -bring him over to them to be introduced. In his disappointment, he -glared at us all, especially the actor, who didn't care a brass farthing -for George's displeasure, and went on eating tea-cake _ad nauseam_. - -"Oh, all right!" said George, to cover his vexation, "if you prefer to -bury yourself in a----" - -"Easy all!" Mr. Aix said. "Leave everybody to enjoy themselves in their -own way. And we are depriving your delightful friends of----" - -George had turned and gone back to his delightful friends long before -Mr. Aix had finished his sentence, and Aunt Gerty patted the poor man on -the back till he wriggled. - -"Loyal fellow!" she said several times. She had got well on to it now, -and she started a fit of giggles that lasted all the rest of the time we -were there. It didn't matter much, for we were all quite drunk on weak -tea and laughter. - -But we turned as silent as mice as the Fylingdales' party, having had -enough of their dull tea, streamed past us, and got into their carriage, -and rolled away. George was not with them. I dare say he had got over -the hedge and gone round to meet the break by the road, not wanting to -walk past our party again, and to avoid unpleasantness. I supposed he -had paid for the tea; but no, this grand party forgot to do that, so -that in the end Mr. Aix paid for their refreshment for the old woman's -sake that she should not suffer. - -When they had gone, we felt relieved; but it sobered us somehow. Aunt -Gerty and the gentlemen smoked quietly, and we were so still that we -could hear the little beck bubbling over the loose stones beside us. -Then Aunt Gerty was persuaded to recite something, and she did "Loraine, -Loraine, Loree!" in a shy, modest voice. You see these were all her real -bosses, and she valued their approval, and the actor's wife is -considered very stiff in the profession. She herself sang "The banks of -Allan Water" very sadly and solidly, and Aunt Gerty cried. To cheer us -all up again the actor--rather a famous one, Mr. D--L----, did one of -his humorous recitations out of his London repertory for us, so that we -nearly died with laughing, and Aunt Gerty dried her tears, and whispered -to me that trying to laugh like a lady was so painful that she longed to -take a short cut out of her stays. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -Lady Scilly came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda's Terrace. - -"They can't be parted long, poor things!" Aunt Gerty said, and Mother -hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her, -for a good blow, before she went to America. - -Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in "smalls" as Dick -Turpin, and Irene as "The Pumpeydore," and Irene as Greek Slave, and -Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the -principal stationers' windows. I should have thought she would have been -ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row -of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid--what Aunt -Gerty calls "la-di-dah" sort of people--can stand anything, so long as -it's public. - -When she wasn't dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just -a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out -a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two -gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with -her, and its lead kept getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and -round my father's legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He -wouldn't have stood that from any one but a popular favourite. - -I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt -Gerty. They stopped at Truelove's and looked at the picture-postcards. -She became very serious all at once. - -"I must go in and procure Myself!" she said to George, sniggling. In -they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove's -shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as -good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained -from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to -ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for -one never knows how a daughter's presence may interfere with a father's -plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don't want to injure his sales! - -Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not -approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her -face altogether. - -"The blighted idiot!" she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, "has -completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly -meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!" - -She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket, -and she sang out loud, while Aunt Gerty's open mouth betrayed her shock -at her audacity-- - - "Oh, I'm Contrition Eliza, - And she's Salvation Jane. - We once were wrong, we now are right, - We'll never go wrong again." - -"I can't quite promise that, alas! My friends won't let me. I will send -Salvation Jane to Lord R----y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen -dozen, please; isn't that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you -pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?" - -"Good business!" said my Aunt. "Let me see? How much has she rooked -him?" - -"Please don't ask me to do sums," said I. "Besides, George has a perfect -right to do as he pleases with his own money!" - -George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them. - -"Whatever do you want them for?" asked Irene. (He never lets me say -whatever.) - -"To send to my children." - -"Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked. - -"In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in -the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, -however. - -"And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great -book." - -"There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and -made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove -sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would -bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. -George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), -and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The -Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero -really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked -blank. - -"I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----" - -George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_, -that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or -_The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of -them." - -Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary! -Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty -soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of -sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, -dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of -imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with -light----" - -It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty -didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand -suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water. - -"Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept -saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who -had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own -stupidity in upsetting the water. - -"Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew -well enough. - -"Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say -what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even -then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago. -She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the -sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind." - -"Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing. - -"Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be -electrified!" - -But Mother wasn't a bit electrified. - -"All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who -chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my -wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead -in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so -civil to her." - -"Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?" snorted Aunt -Gerty. - -"Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly's best friend." - -"Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural -friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always in -each other's pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there -she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I -don't believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may -well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take -it all out of one poor woman's life!" - -"I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure." - -"You sham it." - -"That is the next best thing to being it." - -"A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and -have got a husband that doesn't come within a hundred miles of -appreciating you." - -"Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do; -I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted -on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of -them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn't -condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!" -said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so -mild. - -I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty -thought so too, for she screamed out, "Bravo, Luce!" Mother burst into -tears. I don't think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother's tears, -so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at -something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever to go into -the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that -was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the -head, not hard--Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the -shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away. - -A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see -George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these -Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of -George, don't understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn't -like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is -death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for -half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches -cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing -with him--George _believes_ himself into his colds. He says that the -sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic -temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn't that, what he has is -the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this -may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and -that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to -talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother -came to him. - -"My dear boy, no!" Mother said, and George groaned as he always does -when she calls him boy, but invalids can't be choosers of phrases. "You -aren't going to die just yet." She went on, kindly banging his pillows -about--"I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to -look after you. I shouldn't wonder if they didn't make objections in the -house. There will be a bit of a fuss." - -"Who will make a fuss, Mother?" I asked, "and why should they?" - -"Don't ask questions about what you don't understand," Mother said -sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? "Run home -and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or -two, and that she is to send my things, just what I'll want for a couple -of nights." - -"Night-gown and toothbrush," said I. As I left George put out his hand -to Mother and said quite nicely-- - -"You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the -sick man's pillow?" - -Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his -cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She -kept saying, "I _know_ they'll think I am not respectable." - -The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left -them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty -chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said-- - -"This will clear up George's ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly -illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely, -don't he? Is its blessed poet's nose a good deal swollen?" - -I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture of the Pope and -Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things. -George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over -his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too -active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he -begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat -Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George's chest to soothe him. -It did, and he played with my hair. - -"I am an angel when I am ill," he said; "don't you find me so? Strong -natures like mine----" - -Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,--seaside roses always -look coarse, I think--and a lot of cards. - -"Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and -Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has -left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it, -for I don't mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room, -exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them, -though I don't suppose you can smell anything just now." - -She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene's card was on the top. It -had a monogram in one corner--a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard -of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one -lives and learns. - -"I don't, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman," -George said. "But what, as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as -an actress?" - -"I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half -her chances," Mother said eagerly. - -"No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances! -Irene has a genius for advertisement." - -"Look after the 'ads,'" said my Mother, "and the acts will take care of -themselves." - -"Good!" said George, "I should like to have said that myself." - -"I dare say you will, George," said Mother quite nicely, "when once I -get you well again." - -I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less -than a week, but she didn't let him out once during that time, and had -him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering -about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the -house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they -were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who -we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them. -I was too proud, but Ariadne's decision was complicated by a hopeless -attachment she had started. "Love is enough!" she used to say, "and I -_must_ go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!" - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly, -and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first -time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came -here, though they had both taken part in Christina's wedding. He had -just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength -of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn't; he would call now -if she asked him, but we don't want him coming to the house on the quay, -for we couldn't insulate Aunt Gerty. - -He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda's -Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never -to be in her company more than he can help! That's one to us. - -His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there -once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little -recitation on what he observed in his friend's house. Whatever isn't -ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the -house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and -squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler, -excessively _collet monté_, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the -family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices _décolleté à -outrance_. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of -Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn't. Prayers, bed -at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don't think -George will ever be asked again, but I don't wonder Lady Scilly was able -to get hold of Simon. _She_ doesn't frown over her _décolleté_ bodices, -and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those -young fox-hound puppies "at walk" that one sees in the villages, and -Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. -I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that -Lady Scilly doesn't, or else she would not let him out so freely. She -would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil's finishing his -term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to -preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from -Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don't -make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don't -count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used -for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they -have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and -Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes -meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and -Ariadne won't let him carry them for her, she doesn't like him to know -that she is reading all about Love. - -Simon doesn't really want to find out. He never wants very much -anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and -hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always -scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the -country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I -wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell -me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if -he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to -hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon's eyes were bigger, he -really would be very handsome. Ariadne's, however, are big enough for -two. - -This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it -hurts--women. It doesn't hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up -his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want -when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only -sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who -is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most -marriages are made--hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true -benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the -bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In -refusing, you must remember to hope after you have said that it can -never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to -accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your -burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you -come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing -neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves. - -Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to -resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an -affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a -man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A -harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew--from novels--that -that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must -unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to -sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and -went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the -back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the -crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was -her consolation. - -Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards--she met him turning out of the -reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt -Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it -was Mr. Bowser. - -Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all -with any man--and she does get on with Simon, that is certain--is to -collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities -of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine -instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched -feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the -idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it, -and manage it himself, and then--squash it! - -Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn't in it with -them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite -casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves, -though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they -can get it into their heads that they won't be conspicuous by their -absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When -one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit -stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at -those doors in despair you would find it no go! - -So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don't see it. I sit -tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned. -And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to -is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not -talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes -comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn't -said a word more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her. - -"Excelsior!" I said. "I do really believe he is thinking of it." - -Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars -in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that -goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you -come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare? -He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on -hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn't ride -as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow. -He would see better to ride if he wasn't short-sighted, anyway. I don't -believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge's Tour and Mr. Jorrocks' -something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a -little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn't be -surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of -his, and that Cædmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales' -estate. - -I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately, -and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but -because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he -never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne -is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if -it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her. I am -not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do -that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love -latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne. - -She hates herrings now, and doesn't care for cream. She lives -principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go -about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and -cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and -shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade -through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and -the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a -pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the -world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long. -She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won't go -to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to -the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never -moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn't show in her face that -she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short -fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds -altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for -her. She doesn't let Simon know that she publishes, for it would -discredit her in his eyes. He says there's no harm in girls scribbling -if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn't. - -Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a "splendid girl." -She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland, -and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected. -Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless -barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don't mean we actually -want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where -one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put -the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once -kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always -betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are. - -The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the -poor boats can't always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier -when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene -Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It -can't blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with -Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt -Gerty refused to do. - -I don't know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters -chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends -with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord -Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady -Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and -she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form, not because she -is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton -abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre -as "one of us." The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his -cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears -plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has -the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw--a _front candide_ with a -vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like -that. - -Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some -one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are -generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near -relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these -questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he -takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the -pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says "what is the -good of being a gentleman if you can't wear a shabby coat?" and does -wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don't show it. -They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of -housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a -break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met -Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry -he has there, I believe. - -"Did you wish to see me?" he asked the front tourist politely. - -"Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?" said the tourist. It was of course -all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard -that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of -beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. -Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see -the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he -stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though -he isn't exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear -what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in -disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, -and when he didn't understand her, he just shook his head and grinned -and turned away. - -Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully -afraid of his father, who isn't proud of him, but of Almeria, who he -says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the -boy. - -Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne's fringe proved -an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria's naked forehead made -her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as -that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make -friends with Simon's sister, for he had obviously a great respect for -the girl's opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald -forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at -each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a -mutual bond between them. - -"My sister writes a little," he said. - -"Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine," said Almeria, witheringly. - ---"And goes about," he went on, "with a hammer collecting----" - -"Bedlamites and Amorites," said I, to make them laugh. - -They didn't laugh, and Simon continued-- - -"And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins." - -Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the -conversation. - -"And isn't it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their -mouth--well, they are all mouth, aren't they?" - -"And stomach!" said Almeria, turning away politely. - -Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But -any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as -she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose, -just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as -fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that -Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly -civil--but civility is the greatest preserver of distances there is if -people only knew. - -Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne, -but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so -compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn't any, but she is -gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow -masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for -her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not -because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn't conceited enough -to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for -her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty -all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic, -unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that -go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let -the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She -has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow -here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair. -"Always at work!" he says suddenly, and Ariadne's guilty hands go down -like clockwork. It isn't rude, the way he says it. He looks at her -kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like, -and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne. - -She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to -detest. Sometimes he looks quite glum when she is ordering him about, -but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves -as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don't want to? -And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants -to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month's wages to be allowed -to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going -down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are -strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady -Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon's cooling off, and just now -prefers to give him his orders from a distance. - -She calls Lord Scilly "Silly-Billy," and "my harmless, necessary -husband." He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she -really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one -made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord -Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, -and yet I don't think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life -that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and -Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks -his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should -much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader -than George's, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn't married -to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the -junket--it turns it! - -He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn't at all -anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her--even to me. That -is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these -smart people don't realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had -one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn't choose -to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won't go out with him, -though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as -it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we -are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don't, or he -would soon chuck us. - -Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties -they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I -think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and -attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don't believe -much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of -view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either -side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it -seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said-- - -"I back the little 'un!" - -He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and -it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a -notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she -alluded to Ariadne's frock as worn by "a very young girl." Lord Scilly -thinks a girl ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing -her. - -Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day -fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood's Bay. Simon sent her a present by the -first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to -London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented--I suppose -he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without -some excuse like that?--and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave -her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she -expected, and not even that. - -However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her -that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only -teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood's -Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment. - -The moment he got to Robin Hood's Bay, he was off by himself, and away -quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he -gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was -looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with -"A Present for a Good Girl" on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, -only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they -will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating. - -I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if -she would stay a lady in her great disappointment? She did. She thanked -him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw -her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so -was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As -for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence -of Ariadne's discretion. - -It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and -talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and -beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they -did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was -looking, and the women used _papier poudrée_ slyly in their -handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer -force of will. I was all right, being only a child. - -Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem -to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got-- - - "The patient world about their feet - Lay still, and weltered in the heat." - -"What else could it do but lie still?" I said, and suddenly just then -Simon got up-- - -"I say! I'm going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, -Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn't fall -and break her nose on the cliff steps." - -After the mug incident I don't see how anybody could have objected, or -tried to prevent Ariadne from taking the advantages of being treated as -a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got -up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known -fact that Lady Scilly can't stand the sea in small quantities like what -you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None -of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take -any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as -she passed him. - -We had a lovely sail of a whole hour's duration. We had an old boatman -wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a -smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged -couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on -to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to -borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon's and tie a knot in it at all -four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she -had on a crown, not a hat. - -When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, "Oh, my -poor Ariadne!" and helped her to hide herself more or less in the -waggonette going home. I didn't know before how becoming the cap was! - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -When George came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls -at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty -may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing -as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother's -guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at -George's bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement -in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up -with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne's umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came -off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the -cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much -mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of -lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre's people won't have -anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon -and Bowser had previously married Ariadne's legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty -does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in -cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser -would be the ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says -sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty -trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and -very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to -make her anxious to please _him_. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the -Bowser business, on condition she doesn't try to squeeze herself into -the Saloon dancing set where George's friends go. - -The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for -going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch -it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of -water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to -tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. -The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long -evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the -great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in -the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung -over the sea. - -There is a nice boy I like--he is twelve, quite young, and doesn't need -conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people -meeting me and saying, the way they do, "What, child, all _alo-one_ by -yourself?" which is so irritating. - -He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir -Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat -horses and drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to -like him, so he brought me a list of his father's yearlings, with their -names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his -own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must -have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran -away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing? - - Witch, ch. f. (II.B.), 2 yrs., Mr. Brooks, 21 guins. - Milkmaid (h.h.), 3 yrs., " Wingate, 30 guins. - Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.), Foal, 6 yrs., Lord Manham, 35 guins. - -And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but -I saw he meant it, and didn't tease him. - -Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not -etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is -why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don't dance. I don't -care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I -suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs -and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me. - -Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it -is _de rigueur_. And when they are not dancing they are talking of -money. I have heard them. I don't mind listening, for, of course, money -isn't private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight -nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas, which -puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals -or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is -at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about -stocks to please her. - -Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does -not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying -themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly? - -One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but -before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, -Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn't been -raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own -forehead. - -"Phew! I'm hot," he said. "It's a weary old world! Hope I die soon!" - -Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon's -partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy--that's what the -grown-up women always call their special men!--just as Simon had taken -out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that -I envy him so. - -"Blow these wretched figures! They won't come!" I heard him say. - -"On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions," Lady -Scilly had answered pettishly; "what I complain of is that they won't -go! See if you can't pull me through, dear boy." - -I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on -a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can -see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of -dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into -it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey's iron -building. - -And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said -nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing -to say, and as he evidently didn't want her to say it, it didn't matter. -She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white -in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine's, so she is repaid -for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked -at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall -when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple -or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn't, -but sighed instead and said-- - -"I wish I had a mother!" That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I -nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say. - -"Do you?" she said. "I have." - -Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed -to like it, for the next thing he said was-- - -"Why don't I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like -you." - -I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, -not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very -moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They -came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put -her hand on Simon's shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on -Ariadne's. - -Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. -Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as -if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was "giving this -woman away" quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows -it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly. - -Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. "I love this thing, you know," she said -to George. Then, going a little way back--"Just look at them! Isn't it -idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of -over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to -listen to. And I--poor I--am Romeo's deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline -take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?" - -She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way -and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all -this if she hadn't felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn't been -silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne. - -"I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the -piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare--I mean flirt well!" - -They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth. - -"I consider all that in _beastly_ taste!" he said, whacking the rail -with Ariadne's fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a -baby when you have smashed its favourite toy. - -Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. -Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such -is man--and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne. - -"I'll give you a new one. I'll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in -and dance--dance like the devil!" - -Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. -He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the -Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present -moment she hasn't got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and -betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow -money off George--just once--for that would choke him off her soonest of -anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother? - -Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, -eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the -time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She was vexed -because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being -jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when -he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary -considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And -Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular -walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it. - -Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied -he would be. Then an untoward event happened. - -There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror -came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying -one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but -there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. -The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other -side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir -Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in -attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had -to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It -couldn't have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and -joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would -have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, -with his little _retroussé_ nose next to his father's beak, and -Almeria's large knuckle-duster of a proboscis framing them. I don't -suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way -behind, and he doesn't love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. -Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty's mash, as she calls him. I believe -she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at -being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate -party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white -muslin she had made herself--window-curtain stuff from Equality's sale. -It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the -seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made -her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. -I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we -were in. - -I wasn't attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. -Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a -sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into -the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would -tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the -platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the -gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a -victim--and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne! - -He didn't ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this -liberty, but just seized Ariadne by her thin muslin shoulder, and -pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had -time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was -acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt -Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came -plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely -excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear. - -He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and -shook her, saying, "This is the victim!" - -It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she -might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own -class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the -rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the -stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course -turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and -Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,--just once--and I saw his -scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him -look like that before. It was awful! - -The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been -thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, "I can't stand any more of this. -I believe I shall faint!" - -That wasn't true, I knew, she can't faint if she tries, but still any -one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable. - -I said to my aunt, "We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if -you like." - -And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic--that was the -worst of it--faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and -scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a -victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then -she burst out crying. - -"He will never speak to me again. I know he won't. He is very proud, and -I have disgraced him--disgraced him before his order!" - -"You can't disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and -now you never will be." - -"No," Ariadne said, meekly, "I am unworthy of him." - -"You are very weak!" said I, "but on the whole I consider it was Aunt -Gerty's fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!" - -Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I -tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call -next day to show that _noblesse oblige_, and that he didn't think -anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn't suppose -he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser -and then by Dapping, again. - -All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the -eye of Whitby. It rained luckily. Next day she still wouldn't, and as -it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was -going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her. - -"No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else," I said; -"and they can't see that your shoulder is black and blue under your -gown." - -"I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin -too," she moaned, though I don't know what she meant, that it had made a -more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what. - -"I know one thing," she gulped. "Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall -cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him--cut him dead." - -"Why not? He murdered you." - -I think this was Ariadne's first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She -would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother -encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she -said several times, "Never again!" which is the most awful thing to say -to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn't to be trusted with girls, -and especially George's girls. Mother gave it her well. - -"You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! -I shall never hear the end of it from George." - -"George indeed! Why wasn't George looking after his own precious kids -then? I don't think he's got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be -having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much -surprised!" - -"You hold your wicked, lying tongue!" was all Mother said to her. -Mother, somehow, hasn't the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty. - -I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He -can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. "Paquerette -knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is -a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a -bit! She and I understand each other!" - -He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly -doesn't agree with him, or says she doesn't. "Scilly and I," she once -said to Ariadne, "are an astigmatic couple." She meant, she explained, -that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the -long-sighted eye. - -Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were -concerned. George's scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and -she couldn't possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne -could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn't stir out of -the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. -Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing -them into each other's arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If -Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon's being near her made her look -quite old and anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored. - -One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the -quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it's fashionable, and if -you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen -by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats -were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed -sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on -the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure -and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as -they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and -took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much -that he didn't ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of -Simon Hermyre's is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses -to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be -rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no -criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still -think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy. - -"Do let me have the pleasure," he kept saying, and "Do let me!" and -goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I -suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be -trying to do what they want in spite of themselves. - -"Then that is settled, thank the Lord!" I heard him say at last. (My -sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and -rather drowned their conversation.) "Just look at that sheet of silver -on the floor of the boat--all one night's haul! Suppose it was shillings -and half-crowns?" - -"Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as -you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is -very like a full court-train, isn't it, the one you are going to have -the privilege of paying for?" - -Simon said yes it was, but he didn't seem to like her quite so much as -he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have -grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched -look come over his face. - -Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come -there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my -sailor and came round behind her and said, "How do you do?" - -Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to -speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their -bathe. - -"How is your sister?" Simon asked me. - -"Very well, thank you--at least I mean not very well----" - -"I don't wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night." - -"Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did." - -"Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute -Bowser some injury I'll---- And the people she was with----? I beg your -pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both--wasn't it her -business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor's good-nature being imposed upon?" - -He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was -best to do for the best of all. - -"Oh, _that_ person," said I. "She wasn't anything to do with us. Miss -Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?" - -"I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like -that alone." - -"Why, I was with her!" - -"What earthly good are you, you small elf?" asked Simon seriously and -kindly, smiling down at me. "I wish to goodness _my_ sister----" - -I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take -to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn't say it. He is so prim and -reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, -and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called -Henderland in Northumberland. - -"Henderland," said I, "that's near where Christina lives." - -"Who is Christina?" - -"Why, George's old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best -man." - -"Peter Ball's! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. _'Have you forgotten, -love, so soon--That_ church _in June?'_ Yes, of course I used to call -her the Woman who Would--marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over -there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation." - -He wouldn't say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little -way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now -Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina -for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this -talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down -to a time, but I was wiser. I said "Good-bye" quite shortly, as if I -wasn't at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little -ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her -before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty -Aunt Gertys can't hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin -her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did -it at lunch. - -"Please, Aunt Gerty," I said, "if you meet me on the quays or anywhere -when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be -familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I -gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were." - -"Oh, did he ask?" said Aunt Gerty, jumping about. "He must have seen me -somewhere. In _Trixy's Trust_ perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, -you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course." - -"All right," said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now -don't you call that eating your cake and having it! - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -We all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough -to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly -that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the -air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it -more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she -completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which -she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the -brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very -patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was -feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented -it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken -heart. - -George left for Scotland. He _says_ he is going to shoot with the -Scillys. I don't know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben -Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn't matter. It was settled -that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland. - -Ariadne didn't like going straight on from Whitby, because she would -have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the -difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious -things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we -should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a -penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The -all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three -hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written -up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few -months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George's black velvet -fencing costume and his neat legs. - -George has _so_ much taste. He simply lives at Christie's. He cannot -help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says -they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them. - -The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina's. -I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after -a proper _bonâ fide_ shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George -gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and -another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing -mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the -out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She -has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All -types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a -_Miriam's Home Journal_, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the -Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye -Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a -heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling -about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn't scold them -lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and -the little tailor kept saying, "A pleat here would be beneficial to it, -Madam," or to his assistant, "Remove that fulness there!" till there -wasn't a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge. - -Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came -home. "Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne," I said to her, -imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him -and made him take ten shillings off the bill. - -I couldn't help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, -when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the -privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with "real cow" -as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her -shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, -that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and -considered herself little better than a murderer! - -Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and -told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his -opinion. So long as he didn't tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not -matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody -mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in -connection with Ariadne's new dress. I was sure we should see him -somewhere in Northumberland. It isn't as big as America, and where there -is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of -him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock's -wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for -I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given -her a moorcock's feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of -fools to shoot them. - -I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, -and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How -it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love -for a long while to come. I don't care if it never comes my way at all. -But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for -it yet, anyway. I don't believe that Love is a woman's whole existence -any more than it is a man's. We are like ships, made in water-tight -compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the -whole concern isn't done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole -compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others -wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out -yet watching it through the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices -now and then. - -I don't study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento -House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady -Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise -for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for -himself. - -Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt -Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off -could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving -by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for -Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far -off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them -_Funny Bits_ and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children -often profit by their elders' foolish fancies. - -Mother wouldn't even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear -the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on -suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular -affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it -called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where -the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as -the Scotch Express rattled by. - -To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about -something, and kept sticking her hip out in an engaging way she has, -and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her -an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not -quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, -if they only could all get the man they want _at the time_ they want -him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All -grown-up people's tempers come because they can't get what they want. -And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn't got what she wanted, for a -whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. -She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream -and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my -Aunt Gerty's, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy -it. - -Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly -started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put -on--Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as -other women do--and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, -and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched -her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor -had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she -said-- - -"No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!" - -A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I -wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was -anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at -Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I -think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn't know she was -pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to -keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon's set, -they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she -has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so -as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids. - -"It doesn't matter how you look," I said, "there is nobody but porters -to see you, and you don't want to mash them and distract them from their -work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you -preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George's -dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look -as repulsive as we can." - -George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to -do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a -prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be -by ourselves all the way. - -Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and -brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked -in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from -scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and -looked ugly for two. I was interested in the country. It is quite -hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an -industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and -keeping warm (coal) didn't mean so many people having to live black, and -whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don't think I approve of -civilization, if this is what it comes out of? - -When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to -Ariadne, "I told you so!" for there was Christina Ball in a muslin -dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was -sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn't be hers; -we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild -to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one -of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And -besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and -so she did). - -We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony -and couldn't get down--and it was arranged that our luggage was to come -on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart -new dog-cart. - -Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like -the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and -countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and -said to Christina, "Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the -pond!" - -The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said -nothing, but looked it. - -"Oh, the duck-weed!" said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be -amused by anything she says. "Miss Emerson Tree here--allow me to -introduce Peter's American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree--calls it the -'stagnance.'" - -The ugly child still didn't say anything, though "stagnance" was just as -absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite -afraid of one who, though so young, didn't seem to want to fly out. She -turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of -Ariadne's shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina -went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of -things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do -believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before -Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves. - -It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly -child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant -upon the last syllable of the word _despise_ was the nastiest thing I -ever heard. - -"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been -looking at it all the way we've come." - -Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its -socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary -child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying -a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. -Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the -country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first. - -"But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good -thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I -have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance." - -"Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I. - -"I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the -offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was -saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post -haste, to hatch some chickens----" - -"I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne. - -"Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to -kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of -the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every -hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----" - -"You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly. - -"Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants -shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five -more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then -some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an -electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a -blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood." - -"How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused. - -I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been -used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to -the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery -and unfamiliar death. - -"Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne, -and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an -unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated -at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am -fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them -to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so -why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat -back, take the reins a minute!" - -Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody -always sees at once that I am the practical one. - -When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on. - -"Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the -school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven't had tea with myself -for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don't know! Peter says I -lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the -Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron's, your -father's, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so -shocked when I recommended him _The Road to Rome_! It's a book of -travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he -told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder -whether you'll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are -possible." - -"I am not a flirt--now," said Ariadne. - -She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at -least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. "My God, pony!" she -said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose. - -"And there's Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more -than ten miles off." - -Ariadne at once sat tight--too tight. It was almost painful, and showed -in her face too. - -Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree -spoke again, and actually about Ariadne's body. - -"Any way, it's on all crooked," she said, as if she was continuing the -previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. -They couldn't, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the -coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her -hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were having tea. She -had hers "laced"--I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and -thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She -certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her -mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, -people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I -would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person's things to her -face as I would of--kissing Emerson Tree's very ugly mug, though I -wouldn't tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. -Peter calls her "the little witch." - -"The little witch," he says, "was being neglected, or thought she was, -at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, 'I -say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!' You -should have seen the old boy's face!" - -I did see the old boy's face. He was waiting at tea. - -Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly -as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, "Dash it -all! why it's bald!" How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her -with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the -pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to -catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd -things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat--as if a cat -ever stayed to be aspinalled!--and gunpowder into ovens, and frogs into -boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the -clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once -when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked -before her, she had given away the furniture. - -"She went solemnly down the village," said Christina, "making presents -of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn't want and I -did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray -door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it -came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I -had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day." - -We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I -disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a -child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, -after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because -we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off -discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to -have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used -to put us head first down rabbit-holes. - -"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man. - -"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital -shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!" - -"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party -point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always -seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I -am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make -my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane -brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for -idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in -with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of -straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'" - -"I don't like that phrase, Christina!" - -"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!" - -Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not -bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little -consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for -the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil -to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather, -but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Ariadne got fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl -in her position. I can't say that she kept that up at all well, beyond -looking sad, sometimes when she wasn't thinking, or at meals. She has to -pretend to be _distraite_, for really she is very all there, and likes -her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up -in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won't answer his -question whether she wants some more?--"Thinking of the old 'un, what?" -He doesn't know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows -nothing of Ariadne's affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word -for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex. - -Jane Emerson Tree doesn't take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; -she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is -a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather -patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has -lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the -billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn't a hat, it is a tile, and so -can't either become or unbecome. - -Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham's, or at -Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes' place; neither places are more than ten miles -or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina -wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only -other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the -Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, -and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is -what becomes of all our old families. He isn't old, but very wrinkled. -That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy -velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as -Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, -here, till Christina's "shoots" come off, and Ariadne egged him on--the -amount of egging on a shy man takes!--to ask her, and then accepted to -go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in -a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew -the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked -her if she felt chilly ("Chilly!" she thought) about sixteen times, and -said By Gosh when he didn't catch anything, which was frequent, and -"What in thunder's got 'em?" alluding to the trout, when at last in -despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to -the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without -being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squires ought to be -like Mr. Heathcliff in _Wuthering Heights_ and hide a burning lava of -passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester -is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up -in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a -real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank -bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding -disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not -catching fish! - -He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages "for the -ladies" at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all -Christina's rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as -much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says -Ariadne must take care and not to be like "Miss Baxter (whoever she was) -who refused a gent before he asked her." - -Christina thinks he _is_ a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing -for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and -that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be -able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin -than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and -get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by -way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him -sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes the side -of the woman--_esprit de corpse_, I think they call it. I myself think -there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great -mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love -with Simon. I even threatened her with this _exposé_, and she turned -round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she _wasn't_ in love with -Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half -of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first -go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because -she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for -one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual -pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she -cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could -get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very -afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that! - -Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. -We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the -places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening -up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise -done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we -called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons. - -At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and -Ariadne answered demurely that it was getting a nice pea-green, or a -good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that -they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse -than ever. - -Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of -them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we -had to make a rule that we wouldn't allow gentlemen in the church during -decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers -instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men's button-holes -instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss -Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really -keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn't care for so -many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady -work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she -_reely_ could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from -him! We were only decorating for three days. - -During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on -very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in -the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had -taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we -did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day's -ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double -dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church just -as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their -own, in either case. - -Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no -wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not -look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she -had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then. - -At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the -village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a -want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is -all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to -make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne's untidiness is -trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as -book-markers, and butter--well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! -Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the -door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne's cakes, when made, will -form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of -breaking the nastiest fall. - -Christina's cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave -her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the -Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get -fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing -good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for -giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status -was preserved. - -On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter -Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of -the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside -while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them -to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of -them said, "Ay, Sir, but aren't we men the buttresses a-leaning up -against it and propping it up like?" Peter was only shocked. - -We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more -than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our -eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our -flowers wouldn't topple suddenly because we hadn't tied them securely -enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, -standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and -a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he -said, "Why, that wor t' Kern babby!" I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who -dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a -pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll -on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his -answer; he was pleased. - - "MY DEAR MISS VERO-TAYLOR, - - "Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in - one so young. The little mannikin--or rather womankin--is, as you - aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the - very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the - custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to - dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the - streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, - and the people dance round it singing: - - 'Blest be the day that Christ was born! - We've getten Mell of _Ball's_ corn! - It's well bun' and better shorn! - Hip! Hip! Hurray!' - - "This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly - scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the - Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps - during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this - grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the - goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called - Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, passim--" - -"Oh yes, pass him, pass him!" said Peter impatiently, who won't however -let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for -saying, - -"Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn't it?" - -"Well," she remarked to Ariadne later on, "you had better be getting up -your mythology" (meaning the Bible, only Peter didn't twig anything so -wrapped up as this), "because you will be sure to be subpoena'd to -take a class in the Sunday school after you have fished for it. _Nemo -Dodd impune lacessit!_" - -"Can't Dodd lace his boots with impunity?" I asked Peter. I knew it -wasn't that, any more than _Res angusta domi_ means "Please to keep -Augusta at home," and some others like that I have made. - -Sure enough, Mr. Dodd made Ariadne take a class in his Sunday school, -and Christina chuckled. It is the price of Mr. Dodd's admiration, and he -admired Ariadne very much. She is not really any happier for it, rather -bored by it in fact. She spent three whole days getting up Sacred -History for fear the school children, who have of course been properly -brought up and grounded, should floor her, a poor feckless literary -man's daughter. Peter Ball gave her a little arithmetic. She got as far -as Proportion with him. There was one sum about how many men it would -take to build a wall of so many feet in so many hours. If it was Inverse -Proportion, which it might be, and then again it mightn't, you put the -men under the wall and divide by the hours; as many of them as are left -after such treatment is the answer. It came, stupidly enough, -two-and-a-half, so I suggested to Ariadne, as I was helping her, to put -_Two men and a boy_. Peter said she didn't repay teaching, and saw -nothing to laugh at, though his wife seemed to. - -Then Ariadne started an essay club with prizes. The Squire bought those -for her in Morpeth when he went in to sell pelts and hides. Fancy -touching his hand after that! They were bits of his poor beasts that he -had killed! Billy Scott's short essay on the elephant, "_an animal with -a leg at each corner and a tail at both ends,_" was funny; and Sally -Moscrop's description of "_any animal she liked to choose._" She -invented "_The Proc,_" a beast with four legs, "_two of whom are bigger -and longer than the others, for the Proc lives all around a hill._" -Grace Paterson's essay was quite long. "_The Pin is an exceedingly -useful article. It has saved the lives of many men, many women and many -children by not swallering of them._" - -Grace is fourteen and the beauty of the village. She has begun a tale in -ten chapters. She has to write it up in the apple-tree, for fear her -father should "warm" her. - -She and Ariadne were the two belles of the Ball in the Parish Room on -Monday evening. They both danced with the Squire, who said he was in -luck to get two literary ladies to dance with him on the same night. But -Ariadne walked home with him, and I went with Christina. Mr. Rochester -had one of his own roses Ariadne had given him back, in his button-hole. -She is so unhappy about Simon that she doesn't care who proposes to her. -That is the way girls take it--a very selfish way, but they are selfish -all through when they are in love. Ariadne actually thinks the Squire -thinks he proposed to her going home that night. I don't. It was pitch -dark as we went home, the village is not lighted, and it is a very -wicked village. She says, long arms like tentacles came groping out from -the wall in the dark, and the Squire dragged her past them. As the -village young men couldn't see, they thought her one of their own -sweethearts, for by then the party had broken up and was all over the -place. The chucker-out had been very much occupied and had found the -brook near the school-house door very handy. - -But I don't myself think the Squire did propose. He offered to take care -of her, past the tentacles, but not for life. I think if a girl is -always dreading proposals and thinking of how men will feel it when -refused, proposals never come to them. That is what Christina said, and -that Peter Ball took her entirely by surprise, when he asked her. I knew -better, for I had chaperoned that affair. She says Peter wears very -well, and that there's some gilt left on the gingerbread still. The -gramophone is still in all its glory, and when she was ill up-stairs, -when Jim was born, Peter used to send up a message by the nurse for her -to leave the door of her room open for half-an-hour before dinner, and -then she would hear it. The nurse always forbade it, but Christina -always insisted on it, to please Peter, and lay with her ears stopped up -with sheet till the half hour was over. It is a new gramophone, not the -one he had in Leinster Gardens. That shouted itself out, I suppose? -Christina found an entry in his old pocket-book-- - -_"July 19--a memorable year in my life. I bought a new gramophone and I -got married. I won't say anything about my wife here, but the gramophone -was a beauty when she was new----"_ - -Ariadne was disgusted. She doesn't believe Simon would say such a coarse -thing. Well, I wish she had some experience on the subject, what Simon -would say, that's all! - -When Simon did come over to shoot, Ariadne hardly spoke to him during -the three days he was here. No one did, much. He is so fearfully -eligible that all the nice girls feel they must snub him, and he hardly -gets a cup of tea. If Christina hadn't known nice girls only, Ariadne -would have had a better chance. What is the good of being a nice modest -girl among other nice modest girls? And though Ariadne would not believe -it, she did badly without her foil Lady Scilly, who showed up her -niceness and made Simon draw comparisons. Then there was another adverse -circumstance. The Squire came and followed Ariadne about with his eyes, -till it really wasn't safe to sit in a line with them both. That put -Simon off. He is too nice to prefer a girl because another man is making -himself unhappy about her. - -Indeed Simon looked most uncomfortably serious and even sad. He has got -his first wrinkle fixed between his eyebrows. He looks at Ariadne often, -but in a puzzled sort of way, and takes himself up with a jerk, shaking -his head, that the curls are cut off from too short to waggle. - -"He cares for me--yes, he cares desperately," said Ariadne one night, -just as she was arranging her watch and her handkerchief on the chair -beside our bed, and his photograph under her pillow. I have to take that -away every morning lest the housemaid should see it and make fun of her. -Ariadne forgets. We also arrange the strap of our box down the middle of -the bed so that neither of us should encroach in the other's part, and -all these arrangements take time. Ariadne, though she is so gentle and -so in love, always looks sharply to her rights, and more than her -rights, and I generally find myself lying on the very rim of the bed. -She is the eldest, unfortunately, and once she took the strap out of the -bed to me when I objected. - -"He loves me--oh, he does!" she moaned, "only he is not free." - -"He is in the power of a wicked witch, like the one who enchanted -Jorinde and Joringel in Grimm!" I said, and tried to go to sleep and -thought a little. Lady Scilly isn't old, like the German witch, but I -remember what the Ollendorff man said to me about her being a "fairy," -and I know there is some connection between them. Fairies are those who -would do harm if they had the power; witches have the power, but only -because they are old and don't care for the things they cared for when -they were young. Ariadne will never be a fairy when she grows up, she -will always be too silly, and get put upon in society, though in private -life she is quite up to her rights, and talks as loud as any one and -doesn't trouble to be die-away. Men never see that side of girls, -mercifully they are able to keep it out of sight till they are at least -married, and on the pig's back, as Peter says. It is the unromantic -things they are ashamed of. Ariadne wouldn't mind Simon knowing she had -appendicitis, but not for worlds that she had a corn on her foot and had -to have it cut, or a chilblain, and it burst. - -Presently she woke up and said, "Will any one tell me why a woman like -that should be allowed to ruin his young life?" - -"All young men have nine lives like a cat, there will be eight left for -you to ruin, when you get him--but you never will." I always add this -not to raise false hopes. "And, goodness me, you can't expect to get a -young man all to yourself, as fresh and shining as a new pin!" - -"Yes, I do!" said Ariadne crossly. "I want a safety-pin even. I am a new -pin myself--I have never loved anybody but Simon, now have I?" - -I didn't answer that, but said I did wish we might turn over and go to -sleep, when Christina rapped on the wall with a hairbrush and begged us -to be quiet. - -"Yes. All right! We will!" I yelled, and I certainly wouldn't have said -another word, but Ariadne began again, five minutes later. - -"Tempe, why do these wretched married women--I'd be ashamed to be -one--always want everybody at once? She has got Mr. Pawky, and----" - -"Mr. Pawky is only for money," I said. I was not going to tell her -about her dear Simon paying Lady Scilly's bills as well as poor Pawky. - -"And Simon's for love, then--oh dear! And George for literature. I am -prettier than her, Tempe? Say I am--oh say I am, I want to hear you say -it." - -"I won't say it. You are far too conceited already." - -"That is the same as saying it," answered Ariadne, and got calmer. "And -at all events I am real, and that's more than she can say. I don't have -to peel off my charms and put them away in a drawer like she has to." -(Ariadne is able to put her poems quite in grammar, but I suppose she -thinks it unnecessary to be always at a stretch.) - -"I don't believe realness counts at all with young men," I said. "I -believe they really and truly enjoy kissing paint, and groping about the -floor for pin curls when they've done, and powder on their shoulders -when they go out into the street from calling." - -"Goodness!" cried Ariadne, almost shrieking, "you don't suppose Simon -ever went as far as kissing her? If I thought that, I'd----" - -"What?" - -"Never let him kiss me again. He hasn't of course, yet! Oh, Tempe, I -wish he had!" - -"There you go!" I cried out, sick of her changeableness. "First you want -him not to, then you wish he had. And the poor thing must kiss -somebody--he's got no mother, and kissing Almeria would be like kissing -a cactus or cuddling a porcupine. Do please keep to your own part of the -bed, you don't respect the strap a bit! I shall be on the floor in a -minute. I'm lying right in the hem of the sheet now." - -Ariadne kindly made a little more room for me as I was patiently -listening to her, and went on. - -"Tempe, I have learned in three short seasons some of the bitter truths -of so-called society----" - -Just then, as any one could have foretold from the noise we were making, -Christina walked right into the room. - -"Will you two children be quiet! Why are you crying, Ariadne?" - -Ariadne said she wasn't crying, and at the same time asked Christina to -be good enough, as she was up, to get her a clean pocket-handkerchief -out of the drawer, one of those tied up with blue ribbon, not pink, for -they are larger and plainer. Christina got it and then came and sat on -my foot, which she could scarcely help doing, as I was only just but -tumbling out of the bed altogether. She was exceedingly nice and -sympathetic and agreed that Lady Scilly ought to put Simon back, for he -was too little a fish for her to hook, being only twenty-four and she -thirty-eight. She assured Ariadne, much as Mother used to assure me, -that there were no ghosts--then if there aren't, what are the white -things one sees hanging about the doors of rooms?--that Simon didn't -really care for an old thing like that, and that if he did, her -attraction must naturally wear out in the course of ages, and that -Simon wouldn't be so very old by the time that happened, and would know -a nice girl when he saw one, with his unjaundiced eyes. - -She also thought Ariadne should not put upon me so, and should give me a -bigger piece of bed. - -I was thinking all the time she was talking of George, and how Mother -too as well as Ariadne was unhappy because of this evil fairy. I wished -the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, -and that Simon mightn't be in it when that happened. - -When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made -Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever -married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let -all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems -unattached, you may be pretty sure there's a girl worrying about him -somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! That's my motto, and -indeed a woman now-a-days is lucky if she gets a whole man to herself as -Christina has Peter, and well she knows when she is well off, and only -laughs when her Peter says, as he did at breakfast, when she offered him -Quaker Oats, "Woman, haven't you learnt that my constitution clashes -with cereals?" - -Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his -friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went -out into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched -it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we -could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne's best silk ties, -and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don't know if it did Lady Scilly -any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the -columns of the _Morning Post_ every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, -or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to -Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of -best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, -and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of -her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, _i. e._ Lady -Scilly's having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks -that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same -room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular -dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when -it comes to preserving Peter. - -The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the -seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One -can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson. - -She is a substantial farmer's daughter, in spite of her thinking she can -write. But she can wring a fowl's neck, and make butter, two things that -Ariadne never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other -from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire's -position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a -gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor -spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on -beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the -figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had -consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. -I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! -Devil! Devil!" repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that -was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the -best. - -Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if -possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a -novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandière. I suppose it is -Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores -Ouida, and Doré is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's -wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it -looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully -afraid of beetles! - -Christina came on to us for a few days after staying with her -mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and -taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears -so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was -learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was -an advent. - -Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with -holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her -undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, -do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not -young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above -all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in -our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George's -request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does -not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, -Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about -making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death -about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I -used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up -in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which -Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would -disapprove of it. - -Ariadne managed to "sneak" a waist, and George never noticed. That is -the odd part of it; we all think that that inch more or less makes such -a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, -and to the outward eye look as thick as ever! - -Ariadne's figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find -out one's best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of -friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but -doesn't want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn't come out in -self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut -fibre, _I_ think, but Papa's friends admire it, and she gets the -reputation of being a beauty on it in our set. - -But in Lady Scilly's set, that is Simon's set more or less, they think -her a pretty girl, badly turned out! - -"Ah, you are your father's daughter, I see!" Christina said at once to -her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, -because she couldn't find a white one. I did not mention that I myself -had begun to sew one of Ariadne's iron pills on to my shoe, and only -stopped because it didn't seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we -have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes -down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes -out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing -and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor -points out to her that she hasn't got on any waistband, and another in -the hall sticks a pin in somewhere, that shines in the sun, when she -gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and -looks at it fixedly. - -"_Dégagée_, as usual!" he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was -two years at a crammer's to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in -Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something -better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least -shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon -says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one -be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not -Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can't stand chaff as a general thing. -Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her. - -Simon has curly hair--not at all neat--which he can neither help nor -disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict's so as -to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and -Ariadne's estimation. "Can't help it. Couldn't bear to look like one of -those chaps." - -He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here -sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his -visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic -now. She can't bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, -and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who -come to describe it and photograph it for the Art papers, and wonders -if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different -from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he -seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at -all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won't -let Highsam be done for _Rural Life_, or lend Mary Queen of Scots' -cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria's -portrait in _The Bittern_ with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria -wrote him such a letter, _almost_ rude, giving him her mind about -interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon -has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I -grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know -of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy -the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the "festive gee" now, he -says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and -frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam -Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they -aren't the same as Ariadne's. - -"Great Scott!" he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one -afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that -George had specially designed for her. "If Almeria saw you in that -frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won't -wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg's on the -twenty-fourth! If you do, I swear I won't dance with you in it!" - -Of course he didn't mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in -her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it -seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to -please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington's dance had been sent -out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time -to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a -ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her -marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in -a county family, not a Bohemian one. - -Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost -ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting -either of us. Christina said _Quem Deus vult_--and that though you might -look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look -smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne's body was all over the place, -with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn't. When it was -basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were -working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are -three Empire mirrors in that room, you can't see yourself in any one of -them, so we had to tell her it didn't do, and never would do. - -"Take the beastly thing off then!" said Ariadne, almost crying, and -pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia's head. -(Amelia is the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) "I won't -wear anything at all!" - -"And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!" I said to tease -and console her, but she wouldn't be, and she left the body clinging to -Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good -thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in. - -"Dear me!" Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of -lying in bed late. "You look like Burne-Jones' _Laus Veneris_--'all the -maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.' I persuaded your father to bring me -up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make -all your own dresses." - -So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses -grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers' bills. - -"The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her," said -George. - -"Ninepence-halfpenny isn't going to express me!" Ariadne said, under her -breath. "It covers me, and that's all!" - -"I always think," George maundered, "that the symbolic note struck in -the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, -of the prevailing wind of a woman's mood. Her moods should be variable. -She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, -some mad scarlet incoherent thing another----" - -"I don't see how you are going to do all that on ninepence-halfpenny," -Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to -listen to her impertinence. "Why you can't even get the colour!" - -"It is every woman's duty to set an example of beautiful dressing -without extravagance!" and he looked at Lady Scilly's pretty pink -fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go. - -"Oh, this," she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it -was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. "This! This cost nothing at all! -I have a clever maid, you know?" - -"If all the women had clever maids that say they have," Christina -whispered to me. "What would become of Camille, I wonder?" - -George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, "You must never quit -an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable." - -"My dresses quit me," said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so -that the hole in it didn't show. "I'm jealous of the sofa! It's better -covered than me." - -I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she -is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear "this -creation." - -"At Lady Islington's," Ariadne answered rather sulkily. - -"Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, -my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to -dance in--it is too _débutantish_ for me, and I do wish some one would -wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will -do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?" - -"The day after to-morrow!" I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with -gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly's little dresses were like. -Camille's "little" would beat Ariadne's biggest. - -"Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall -be so much obliged." - -Ariadne said "thank you," a little ashamed to think that Simon was -coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to -dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, -and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady -Scilly's little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when -she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick -and no mistake, and I really thought so. - -But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress -into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress -didn't come. "Put not thy trust in smart women!" she said, and as it -happened, she was right, for the dress never did! - -At five o'clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn't a sign of it, -and Ariadne hadn't let herself worry over it, by my and Christina's -advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to -carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn't -worry, but she was very angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes -so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would -be all right. The dress wasn't so very bad either; we had given up all -attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell -that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. -Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her "girl" when she was dressed, she -nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet. - -"That'll get him, that'll get him, Miss Ariadne, you'll see!" she kept -saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love -that she couldn't help liking it. She had taken particular care of her -hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten -curlers in to make sure of it's looking nice. And it did, like Moses in -the burning bush. - -At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, -and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o'clock. I was just jumping in -(I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting -stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. -Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. -And she is learning to drop her h's in the south. - -"'Ere!" she said. "'Ere!" and shoved a great card-board box under my -nose. "_With Lady Scilly's love and compliments._" - -I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the -string, and there was a ball-dress--_the_ ball-dress! - -I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne--so near -and yet so far--dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre's -affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked -home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless -on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I -indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. -It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe -it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed -to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. -It said-- - - "DEAR CHILD, - - "My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must - be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and - I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with - my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste. - - "Ever yours, - - "PAQUERETTE SCILLY." - -"That's all she cares about--that George should think her generous! But -if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed -to get it here in time. I don't care for misplaced generosity." - -"Suppose, Miss," said Elizabeth, "that you was to take a cab and go to -where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I -say." - -"My sister isn't a music-hall artist," I regret to say was what I -answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn't -altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get -Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the -dress out on Ariadne's bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with -my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed. - -I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it -was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was -Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her -off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would -tease her a little first. - -"Well, did you have a good time?" I asked her. - -"Fairly," answered Ariadne. - -"Did you have any offers--in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure -you would." - -"I believe I am all torn to bits?" said Ariadne, walking round and round -her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take -any notice of my question. - -"Now don't expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!" - -Ariadne said, "I shall not touch it. I don't mean to wear it again, but -hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful -dress!" - -"Don't drivel!" I said, "unless there is really something particular -about the dress that I don't know." - -She didn't even rise to that, so I said, "I wonder you don't light up, -and have a good look at it." - -"There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?" Ariadne said, -sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn't mean to go -to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly's dress on her bed, and -was keeping calm just to tease me. - -"Did any one see you home?" I asked. - -"Yes, some one did," she answered, still in a sort of dream. - -"Did he kiss you in the cab?" I at last asked her, thinking that if -anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could -tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she -wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was -riled to extinction. - -"Oh, for Goodness' sake, get to bed!" I cried. "And if you are going to -undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get -into your bed very _very_ carefully!" - -That did it. - -"You naughty girl," she said quite quickly. "Have you been putting Lady -Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It's too bad of you!" - -She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She -saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it. - -"So you have come?" she said, talking to it as if it were a person. "You -are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you." - -"Well," said I, "you _are_ condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one -might ask?" - -"Mr. Hermyre." - -"Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! -I believe she's shy? How often did you dance with _Mister_ Hermyre?" - -"Oh, don't tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid." - -"Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, -there!" - -"He is going to," said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn't -know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night! - -I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it. - -"Did you--did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, -as we have always agreed you would?" - -"I may have--I don't know--I hope not!" - -"You hope you didn't, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not -run into him, or put his eye out or something?" - -"Beast, what do you mean?" - -"Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, -and I presume it has been there all the evening!" - -Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and -told me all about it quite nicely. - -As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight -difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a -Count--fancy, at Lady Islington's?--and he had been rude to Ariadne -about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn't so -near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other -man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite -him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new "mash" he was. I -believe he's the German chauffeur I saw in her car. - -But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought -it on--that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he -had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of -course never mentioned it to Simon. - -Lady Islington is Simon's Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. -After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange -and frightened--he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they -are riled--and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery -sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she -could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. -She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold -hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her -spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn't say anything, he -seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or -other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything -else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would -get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby--that he would take -hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, -imagining his taking hold of it, "willing" him to do it. She wanted him -to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; -but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own -free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not -begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow -that he was thinking of this too, or something like it--something to do -with her, at any rate. - -She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always -solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer -took place. - -Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of -them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon -take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, "Have you got a -fan?" - -Ariadne didn't know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all -part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite -truly-- - -"I haven't got one. You broke it." - -"And didn't I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! -Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn't see me?" - -And he kissed her. - -This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, -quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he -then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly -all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter -that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, -except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And -of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine. - -Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be -married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, -subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was -able to assure Simon that George won't, he doesn't care about keeping -Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre's _fiancée_ -she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course -Simon won't let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And -she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all -engaged girls. She bores me. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -Dear Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne -in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane -Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am -told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her -bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood -next her, couldn't prevent it, for she hadn't a single pin on her she -could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that -stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her -what she thought of Ariadne's "waist" this time, and didn't she wish she -could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found -time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne's dress was -made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, -the coal-agent's daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. -Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who -adores her, and doesn't see that she is a bit common. Men in love never -do. Still, she is our only childhood's friend, so Simon and even Almeria -didn't make the least objection to have her included in the procession. -They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to -afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out -wonderfully, and I really don't mind her at all. As the bridesmaids' hat -wouldn't set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it -to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and -stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much -softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at -Highsam later on and learn to ride. - -George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so--a set of his own -works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always -had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave -her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter -Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her -his mother's best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or -beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had -practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon -said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she -meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a -joke, and that _Punch_ wouldn't put in; but Ariadne never noticed and -was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, -I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the -Latin word _Donec_ engraved on it. I did not know what that meant, and -Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog's collar -afterwards. - -Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took -note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so -shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn't care for her -own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in -Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to -make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, -_after_ marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair. - -They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father's six places. He has -given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and -is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas. - -George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all -to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a -plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and -plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all -the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right -time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any -ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she -can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over -the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and gets -us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one -dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all -of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don't know if George -would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd -circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody's -fault but the plumber's, who came to put them right last time and -carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule -has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don't burst at all. - -When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, -and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect -Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were -undoing a few, and damned "this whirling season of string and brown -paper!" - -"I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post -early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all -mention of the egregious subject!" - -And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our -bedrooms in future. - -The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn't mind obeying him, we were -so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed -having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took -to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and -poor Ben's chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite -desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother to make some arrangement by -which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside -for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he -might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn't get much better -there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, -she couldn't save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any -rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She -would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some -books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly -to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, -since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can't do without him, -and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George -swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching -trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he -doesn't get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the -money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him -that she meant to pay the cost of Ben's education, for it is money, she -is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind -which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a -necessary evil for the sons of men. - -I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with--"he is the -devil for country houses!" Mr. Aix says, "he has got them in the -blood,"--I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to -breakfast--he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at -home--they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and -three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful -guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses -where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, -and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at -the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him -madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer. - -George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. -His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a -sad deer's. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to -wearing stays. I don't believe this. I am the only one in the house who -sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on -hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of -him, so I don't know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is -always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written -about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a -"singularly colourless personage," whom Mother likes very much. She -isn't half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more -suitable. - -After Christmas was over, George left us and went to "The Hutch," Lady -Scilly's place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says -she has piped all hands on deck--I mean all the people who are helping -her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor -among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will -drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I -am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be -fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It's such a good -old title. - -I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never -stayed so long at "The Hutch" before. He has his own suite there, and -all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or -characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment? - -Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there--Never no more!--but she has a lady -friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get -"restive." - -Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; -she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky -episode. - -"And I didn't make much of him, after all!" she told Mother and Aunt -Gerty. "Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn't trust women -any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty -purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy -any one--even a millionaire's--confidence in human nature. She borrows -of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it's quite -awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your -sweet innocent daughter rescued him from the wiles of Scilly, and -perhaps Charybdis--who knows? He looked weak!" - -"And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his -hands!" said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn't "quite -eighteen carat," Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a -woman's own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and -journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to -get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its -inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press -in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. -Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty -of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house -except the study. Mother won't let them go in there at all while George -is away. I hear them talking between the puffs-- - -"You can engage to work so and so, eh?" or "Have you got thingumbob?" - -Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes -them, and gets Mother to speak the woman's part for him, so that he sees -how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her -continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on -him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to -understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he -takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix -always speaks the brutal truth--he can't wrap anything up--he is as -"crude as the day," so George often says--I don't see Mother's -cleverness. - -They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. "Mustn't christen it before -it is brought into the world," and "One thing you can confidently -predict about it, it can't be born prematurely!" and so on. They use the -study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George's swivel-chair, and -Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman's part out -aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often -calls out, "Oh, you darling!" when she has said a particular piece. -"What a divine accent you give it!" "That will knock them!" "Wicked to -hide such a talent!" and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to -read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises -Mother all the time. - -"Pooh, pooh!" says Mr. Aix, "leave her to her intuitions! You battered -professionals don't know the value of a new note." - -So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George -married her. And a good thing too! - -Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be -finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his -study of course, but we hadn't the remotest idea of his arriving when he -did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time. - -We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah -blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was -in George's swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George -was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a -slap. - -"Our child comes on bravely!" he was just saying to Mother, as George -appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth. - -Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, "I'll bet you Lord Scilly has had him -kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!" and bolted into the hall, -forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk. - -"Welcome back, old fellow!" said Mr. Aix, turning round in the -swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty's blouseries. -They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George -turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught -it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a -great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as -servants always do when it is a question of not paying one's just debts. - -She began "If you please, sir, the cabman----" but her voice was quite -drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and -George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time. - -"Won't you pay your cab, George?" said Mother gently, "and then you can -abuse me at your leisure!" - -Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the -room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother -like a little school-girl before him. I don't know what they said to -each other, but George wouldn't come out to dinner, but had a plate sent -in. - -Mother didn't alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix. - -George's plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own -father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been -kicked out of "The Hutch" as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady -Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel -she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion. - -He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was -on his hands among Aunt Gerty's blouse trimmings. - -"Shall I take these away?" I asked. "Don't they make you angry?" - -"I haven't noticed." - -I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty's horrid pink shape all -over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn't even -scold me. - -"Where is Lucy--my wife?" he asked me presently. - -"My Mother?" said I. "She's gone to the theatre." - -"Is that usual?" - -"Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty -has gone with them." - -"Chaperons them, eh?" - -I didn't like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix _them_ in that -insulting bracketting way, so I said-- - -"Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change." - -"Aix?" said he, "for a change! God!" - -"She's collaborating with Mr. Aix." - -"Damn him and his play too." - -"Oh, not his play, George. Mother would be _so_ grieved." - -Then George suddenly pulled a paper out of his pocket and said, "Read -that aloud, child." - -"Is it a bit of your new novel?" - -"Yes, it is a bit of my new novel. Read." - -I did. - -"_We talk and talk, and never act. Oh, this curse of civilization! You -make excuses for S----, for your bitter enemy. Magnanimous, but effete! -He is behaving well, but so unpicturesquely. He offers a woman no excuse -for staying with him. Oh, Italy! Italy! You, magician, have made me long -for the life of Italy, the silver incandescent sands, the passionate -brown of the olives--but why should I try to outdo you in your own -imitable manner?_" - -"_In_imitable, you mean, don't you, child? But no, we will not trust -this white devil of Italy. Go and fetch me a plateful of cold meat. And -here are the keys; go down to the cellar and get a bottle of Burgundy. -Corton eighty-eight. You'll see the label. We will carouse." - -I was delighted. George and I finished the bottle between us, and he -ate a good supper, and said no more of Mr. Aix, or Mother either. - -I almost liked George just then. I saw why Lady Scilly liked him. He is -funny and gentle. I asked him to choose a school for Ben, and he said he -would think about it. It is the oddest feeling to suddenly become "pals" -with one's own father. I had never known it before. There is some good -in George, and his eyes are very bright. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -My mother is changed--not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly -every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than -ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that -simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George -and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more -than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has -taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her -because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to -speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she -gads about so much, she doesn't neglect her household duties. She sees -after George's comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the -house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He -shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for -him--it took her two hours--and then he said half-laughing, "A bad sign, -Tempe! Read your Balzac." - -I don't read Balzac, and I don't know what George means. I don't try, -and I find that is the best sort of sympathy one can give. At any rate, -he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to -type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under -his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not -so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at. - -We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was -married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come -to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She -simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch, -had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see -George, and she could have seen him more easily at "The Hutch" or her -town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel, -but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down -her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few -women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you -soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written -copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the -literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to -their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and -written her a polite letter about it, though that won't prevent him -slating it in _The Bittern_ if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says. - -I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to -hit George back with when he came and found us doing dressmaking in his -sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his -house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more -use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and -perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on -George's side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never -approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto. - -Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn't "look -that pleased to see her," as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards. -Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on -with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at -the Islingtons', at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a -Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly's chauffeur. He was waiting -outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took -him to her aunt's ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to -pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished. - -Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, "A female to see -you, sir." - -"Paquerette!" said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and -when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on -one knee and looked up into George's face, saying, as I have heard the -French do to their professors of painting or music,--"_Cher maître!_" - -George had taught her to do this in the days when he was really her -professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the -Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I -could tell that she had no further use for him. - -I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I -were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they -didn't think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at -first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the _entente -cordiale_ we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like -doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want -myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw -me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet -we had not quarrelled. George put on his "pretty woman" manner, and -raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited -her. - -"How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell -you, she is leaving me." - -I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn't -come to see Mother, and hadn't thought of asking whether she was out or -not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity-- - -"You put it crudely." - -"I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall -not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know -the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow -that I am--_coeur de célibat_, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John's -Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens----" - -"No woman's such a fool as to leave a place like this----" - -"What does Shelley say? _Love first leaves the well-built nest----_" - -"You certainly are a most extraordinary man!" she mumbled. George -puzzled her by changing about so. - -"Yes," he answered her, smiling. "Come, take off your furs and make -yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the -rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am -weak, I shall not." - -"Are you quite sure you won't be stronger by the end of this interview?" - -"Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the -steed after the horse--I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge -success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of _The Bittern_ writes -me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to -beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive -woman. What more do you want?" - -"D. the novel! I want _you!_" she said, stamping her foot. - -"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed -forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a -chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the -heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's -holiday." - -"You _are_ unkind." - -"Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new -novel you propose we should work out together." - -"I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----" - -"Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking -it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never -do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours. -It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of -popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about -it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, -and you know how much that is!" - -"Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she -said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----" - -"It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of -Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best -as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast -is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open -the windows. When the novel is done----" - -"I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face. - -"Women hate realism." - -"Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay -our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it -will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The -Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb -down----" - -George shook his head. - -"No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure -if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go -now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for." - -"Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously -irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and -timely assistance, your----" - -"Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was -kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was -going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who -kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy -foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix -would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has -helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so -much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, -and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty -to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the -public-house that first day. - -"Good-bye--then--George!" she said, with something between a sneer and a -sob. "We meet again--in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross." - -What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George -bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in -the car as large as life--and as a German. Though indeed he is very -good-looking. - -"I can see that he is cross in every line of his back," Lady Scilly -whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them, -and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and -it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant. - -George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing, -and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded. - -"She will probably bolt with him before the year is out," he said, as we -went back to the study shivering. He played cat's-cradle with me till -dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game -appeared to amuse him, I didn't mind making a fool of myself for once. - -About Mother's going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it -really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don't see -who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is -George's greatest friend, as well as Mother's, and people don't run away -with perfect strangers, as a rule. - -Mother was certainly up to something, for her eyes were as bright as -glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say -while these were going on, slapping Mother's palms and vinaigretting -her--"It is natural, you know--the excitement." The excitement of -running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and -"nurse her energy," for she "would want it all!" Mother was by far the -most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of -George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was -always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her -life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the -Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a -club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog. - -George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he -knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements -questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and -grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced -a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his -foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack, -who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he -seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively -stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and -translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father -Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very -good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine -Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so -hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. -People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her -family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty -shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. -It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being -praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the -shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the -poor woman meant well. - -Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to -be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. -She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, -as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I -believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice -man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his -influence. - -One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant -or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. -George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things -Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest -before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for -the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would -not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find -out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine -eternity; one has nothing to go on. - -We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I -felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great -difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I -slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had -trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into -her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out -of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare -arms. - -"Oh, my pretty little Mother," I said. "I do love you." - -"You are just like every one else," she answered me pettishly. - -"I'm not," I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does -love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown. - -"Did George ever see you like this?" I asked. - -"Often. Is he gone to bed?" - -"Yes, with a headache." - -She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking -off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a -noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other -was still by the side of his bed. - -"Hold the candle, Tempe!" Mother said quickly. It was that she might go -down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt -and cried. - -"Oh, George, I am doing it for the best--I am, I am! For my poor -neglected boy--my poor Ben." - -She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation -with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on -the sheet near George's arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, -that I at once shut the stable-door--I mean blew out the candle and made -a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I -was--Father Mack hasn't cured George quite of swearing!--and we made a -clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began -to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a -honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to -catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her. - -"Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to -run away." - -"Run away! Who says I am going to run away?" - -"George." - -"He told you?" - -"He told Lady Scilly." - -"Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true." She laughed, a -laugh I did not like at all. It wasn't her laugh, but I have said she -was quite changed. - -"Oh, Mother, don't laugh like that!" - -"You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a -wicked mother's heart! Well, my dear, I'll promise you one thing. I will -never run away without you. Will that be all right?" - -"That will be all right," I answered, much relieved. For although I am -so much more "pally" with George and sorry for him, I don't want to be -left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the -_Marguerite_ from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and -mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing -for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather -tell me all in her own time. - -I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is -social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away -is chiefly the want of society. - -That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried -away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won't affect -her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a -mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have -suited Simon's stiff relations. It might have prevented him from -proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited. - -One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I -hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when -you only throw two or three things into a bag? A couple of bottles of -eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in _To Leeward?_ I, at -any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without -it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient. -Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets -so dreadfully condemned in novels. - -George's new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is -not so _farouche_ as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George -keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn't go to see -Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was "off" dear Father Mack, and -he says last time he went to see him it was the Father's supper-time, -and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting -his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish -off a plateful of bullock's eyes. Just like George to be put off his -salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if -Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner -like George. - -Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix's play. -George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain -old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can't act, -as "lead." - -"Who's your Parthenia?" he asked him. - -Mr. Aix answered, "Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the -suburban drama--the usual way." - -"Any good?" asked George casually. - -"I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me -as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one," said Mr. Aix, glancing -across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed. - -"I will take Tempe to your first night," said George suddenly. - -"A play of Jim Aix's for the child's first play!" cried Mother in a -fright. "I shouldn't think of it." - -"Children never see impropriety, or ought not to," George said. "But if -you don't wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead. -It will do the play good." - -"It's a fond delusion," said Aix, "that the aristocracy can even damn a -play." - -Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be -free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night, -after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o'clock mail that we -should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered -why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after -all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the -curtain if called, and that wouldn't possibly be till about ten o'clock, -too late for the train? - -Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love -that. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -"Shall I type your Good-bye to George?" I asked Mother. She said, "What -do you mean?" I said, "The one you will leave pinned to your pincushion -in the usual place?" - -She laughed, and I again thought her most fearfully casual. There was no -packing done, although one would have thought she would have liked her -clothes nice and fresh and lots of them, so that she shouldn't feel -shabby at Boulogne, and let Mr. Aix and herself down. As for my -clothes--I really only had one--one dress I mean--and it was hanging -loose where it shouldn't, and with a large ink-spot in front nobody had -troubled to take out with salts of lemon or anything. - -But I began to think some things had been sent on beforehand, as advance -luggage or so forth, for Mr. Aix came in one evening, and when Aunt -Gerty raised her eyebrows at him, he said "A 1!" That I fancied was the -ticket number for the luggage, so I felt more at ease. - -One eventful evening, after Mother had been lying down all day, I was -told to put on my sun-ray pleated, and to mend it if it wanted it. I did -mend it and I put a toothbrush in the pocket of it, and I kissed all -the cats until they hated me. Cats don't like kissing, but then I didn't -know when I should see them again? I supposed some time, for running -away never is a permanent thing. People always come back and take up -housekeeping again, in the long run. - -The funny thing was, they had chosen the day of Mr. Aix's first night to -run away on. I suppose it was in case he was boo-ed. Then the manager -could come on and say, "The author is not in the house, having gone to -Boulogne with a lady and little girl, by the nine o'clock mail!" That, -of course, was the train we were to catch. I looked it out, I am good at -trains. - -George took Lady Scilly to dine at the Paxton that night, and on to the -theatre where some others were to meet them. I have never been to a -theatre myself, only music halls. At six o'clock George went off, all -grin and gardenia. The grin was as forced as the gardenia. I observed -that. - -Aunt Gerty badly wanted to go with Mr. Aix and hold his hand, as he was -as nervous as a cat. But he wouldn't have her with him, and I don't -wonder. It would have been impossible to shake her off by nine o'clock, -and he would have missed the boat-train, and Mother and me. - -After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and -told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn't intrude on her -privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye to her old home, as I -was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes' list of -horses--for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only -love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of -her room smiling, and her pockets didn't stick out a bit. She is calm in -the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a -fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight -from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started -unconsciously. - -"Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!" - -I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I -held on to the toothbrush. - -"Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!" Mother said, as -we got into a hansom. - -"I won't; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?" - -"Mr. Aix? I am sure I don't know. He will be about, I suppose, unless -they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don't talk." - -She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to -keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn't help -thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what -Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne -tried seven cures, and none of them saved her. - -It was ridiculously early, only seven o'clock. As we drove on and on I -began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it -was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn't the door of a -station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his -hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, -up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be -building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and -that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on -wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a -landscape of an orchard on it. - -"What is it?" I asked one of the people standing about--a man in a white -jacket. - -"That, Missie--that's the back cloth to the first scene," and then he -mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to -show I didn't understand. - -"Oh, yes, quite so," I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once -been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening -dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort -of inappropriate man. - -"Where's my mother?" - -"Oh, your mother! Yes, she's gone to her room. I'll take you to her." - -"But are you going to make us live _here?_" I asked; but bless the man! -he was too nervous to take any more notice of me and my remarks. We -muddled along; I tumbled over a lump in the middle of the floor with -grass sown on it, and caught my foot in a carpet, made of the same. Mr. -Aix quite forgot me and I lost him. - -"Mind! Mind!" everybody kept saying, and shouldering past me with bits -of the very walls in their arms. They left the brick perfectly bare, as -bare as our old coal-cellar at Isleworth. (The one in Cinque Cento House -is panelled.) I saw an ordinary tree, as I thought, but I was quite -upset to find it was flat, like a free-hand drawing. My eyes were -dazzled with electric lights, mounted on strings, like a necklace, only -stiff, that they pushed about everywhere they liked. There were things -like our nursery fire-guard all round the gas, that was there as well as -electric. I noticed a girl go and look through a hole in a bit of canvas -or tapestry that took up all one side of the wall, and went near her. - -"Pretty fair house!" she said. She was a funny-looking little thing, -with hardly enough on, and what there was was dirty, or dyed a dirty -colour. In fact no two persons there were dressed alike; it was like a -fancy-dress party, such as the Hitchings have at their Christmas-tree. -The noise was deafening, they were shoving heavy weights about here and -there, without knowing particularly or caring where they were going. My -new friend had an American accent, and was as gentle as a cat. She went -a little way back from the curtain with me and stood by a man she seemed -rather to like, though he didn't seem to like her. He was very tall and -big, and when she had been talking to him a little while, she said -suddenly-- - -"Excuse me! I must not let myself get stiff!" and took hold of a great -leather belt he wore, and propped herself up by it and began to dip up -and down, opening her knees wide. The man didn't seem to like it much, -but he was kind and chaffed her, till I got tired of her see-sawing up -and down, and talking of her Greekness, and asked one or the other of -them to be kind enough to take me to my mother. - -"Certainly, little 'un," said the man; "kindly point the young lady out -to me. There's so many in the Greek chorus!" - -"It is Miss Lucy Jennings' daughter," said somebody near. - -"I'll take you to her after my dance," said the girl. "Wait. Watch me! I -go on!" - -It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering -about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not -more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and -watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no -stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work -boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no -wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an -ordinary game of blindman's-buff, and said to me, "Now, pussy, I will -escort you to your mommer." - -She took me to the edge of the wall where a little stairs came down, -and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other -green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his -cheeks and a baby's rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were -streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, -natural mother. - -But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and -answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in -front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and -she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a -waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow! - -That finished me, and I screamed, "Oh, Mother, where have you put your -black hair?" - -Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to -shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said-- - -"It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will -kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!" - -So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, -nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the -effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid. - -The others didn't think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, "Really, Lucy, I -wouldn't have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor -women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the cheek, Kate. The -lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know." - -So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit -of an animal's foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, -she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said -something at the door--"Garden scene on!" and went away. The nurse -called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down -the stairs. - -Then for the first time I twigged what it was--a _Theatre!_ The people -were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but -what I didn't know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard -Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, -and terribly disillusioned as well. - -The play was all the running away there was to be! Mother was going to -be no more to Mr. Aix than taking a leading part in his play amounted -to. My toothbrush literally burned in my pocket. I had been made a fool -of. - -But when I came to think it over quietly, I did not know but what I was -not rather glad. It would have been a horrid upset, this running-away -idea, and I believe George secretly felt it very much, though he did -swagger so and pretend he didn't care. The only thing was, perhaps he -would mind Mother going on the stage even worse than running away? I -longed to see him and hear what he had to say about it. - -Mr. Aix was standing quite near us, between a flat green tree and the -wall of a temple. He looked almost handsome; I suppose it was the aroma -of success, for certainly this _was_ a success. The audience seemed -delighted with Mr. Bell, a great fat actor in boots, with frilled tops -like an ancient Roman, who stood in the very middle of the stage raging -away at Mother about something or other she had done. - -"Bell's in capital form to-night," said Mr. Aix, quite loud. "I'm -pleased with him." - -"I hope I shall content you too," said Mother, who was shivering all -over, and I don't wonder, for the draughts in this place were terrific. -Kate handed her a bottle of smelling-salts. - -"Better by far have a B. and S.," said Mr. Aix. - -"No Dutch courage for me, thank you!" said Mother. "Tell me at once, is -George and the cat in the box?" - -"They are, and Mr. Sidney Robinson and the Countess of Fylingdales. You -must buck up, little woman, and show them what you can do!" - -"And what you can do!" she answered politely. "I shan't forget you have -entrusted me with your play." - -"And, by Jove! you'll bring it out as no other woman could. You can----" - -"I'm on!" said Mother, suddenly, and shunted the shawl, and pushed -forward and began to act. - -They clapped her at first and nearly drowned her voice, but she went -right on and abused Mr. Bell in blank verse. I was glad Mr. Aix hadn't -made her a laundress or a serio, but something nice and Greek and -respectable. - -I stood there with Kate and Mother's shawl and Aunt Gerty, and never -knew what it was to be so excited before! The Greek girl came up to me -and said-- - -"Say, your mommer'll knock them!" - -Then they seemed to come to a sort of proper place to stop, and the -curtain began to rattle down, and Mother and Mr. Bell were holding each -other tight, like lovers, only I heard her say in a whisper, "Mind my -hair!" - -They stayed there a long time looking stupid, even while the curtain was -down and people were clapping all round. Then I saw why they did it, for -it went up again, and again, and then they parted and took hands the -last time, and looked straight in front of them and panted, while people -shouted their names. Then the curtain came down again and Mr. Bell -limped off, for, as he said, politely, Mother had been standing all the -while on his best corn. She was so sorry, and he said it didn't matter, -and he hoped he hadn't disarranged her hair. - -Oddly enough the clapping began again. Aunt Gerty jogged Mother, who -stood near me looking quite giddy, and said "Take your call, silly!" - -Mr. Bell took her by the hand and made her walk along in front of the -curtain that a man held back for her by main force, and then we heard -the people roaring again, till it seemed more as if they thirsted for -their blood than wanted to praise them. This happened twice. When they -didn't seem inclined to clap any more she went off to her room with -Kate, while Mr. Aix thanked her for making his play. - -"Come and look at them!" said Aunt Gerty to me, and we went and looked -through the rent in the curtain, for that was the hole in the wall the -girl looked through. There was George and Lady Scilly talking away as if -Mother and her triumph hadn't existed. I think George was cross, but I -really couldn't tell. - -Mother wouldn't have me in her room at all this time, and I lounged -about with Aunt Gerty till it all began again. Mother didn't do this -next act so well, at least Aunt Gerty said not, and scolded her. - -"I can't help it, Gertrude," Mother said. "I thought George would -have----" - -"Never fear! He'll hold out till the end of the play. Then he'll be -round here bothering as sure as my name is Gertrude Jenynge!" - -And her name is Gertrude Jennings, which is pretty near, and in the -third piece of acting, when Mother was not on much, I heard George's -voice asking to be taken to her. - -"Miss Jennings left word she was not to be disturbed this wait." - -"I'm her husband." - -"Very likely, sir!" The man sneered. - -He didn't get in, and he stood there neglected by the staircase till the -beginning of the next and last act, as they said it was. I dared not go -and speak to him, for he looked so cross, and I was also afraid he -would carry me away to the box with Lady Scilly, so I just slipped -behind a bit of scenery and observed. - -Presently Mother came softly out of her room and passed George leaning -on the rail of the staircase leading to her dressing-room. - -She nodded and laughed. - -"Wait for me, George, please. Kate, take this gentleman to my room----" - -And she went gaily on to the stage. - -I followed George and Kate to Mother's room, and discovered myself to -him. He made no fuss, simply looked right through me, and began walking -up and down while Kate sewed a button on to something. - -We heard the clapping from the front quite distinctly. George ground his -teeth. Then Kate slipped out and Mother came in alone, panting, and took -hold of the dressing-table as if she was drowning. - -"I've saved the piece!" said she almost to herself, and then to George, -"I'm an artist. Oh, George, why weren't you in front to see me in the -best moment of my life?" - -"When I married you, Lucy----" George stuttered. - -"Yes, but that wasn't nearly such an occasion! Oh, George, forgive me, -and don't spoil all my pleasure." - -"Pleasure!" said George, as if he was disgusted. - -"Here comes Jim Aix to congratulate me. Poor Aix, he is so pleased...." - -She burst into tears as Mr. Aix came in. He took absolutely no notice of -George, but just caught hold of Mother's hands and said several times -over-- - -"Thank you! Thank you! Bless you! Bless you! Good God! You are -crying----" - -"It is my husband there, who grudges me my success! He does, he does! -Oh, George, for shame! I did it for Ben--for our son--to be able to send -him to college. I have made a hit--quite by accident--and you grudge it -me!" - -"He doesn't, he doesn't grudge you your artistic expansion!" said Mr. -Aix, and went to George and put his hand on his shoulder. "Old George is -the best sort in the world at the bottom. Pull yourself together, dear -old man, and be thankful you have a clever wife, as well as a good one. -She's a genius--she's better, she's a brick. I can tell you she's a -heaven-born actress, and you know what sort of a wife she has been to -you. Speak to her, man, don't let her cry her heart out now, in the hour -of her triumph. What's a triumph? At the best but short-lived! Don't -grudge it her! Congratulate her----" - -George came out of his corner and took Mother's hand and kissed it -nicely, as I have seen him kiss Lady Scilly's hand, but Mother's never. - -"One can only beg your pardon, Lucy, for this, and everything else. Can -you forgive me?" - -I re-open my MS. to add a few facts of interest. - -1. Ariadne got a baby in June; his name is Almeric Peter Frederick. - -2. Aunt Gerty got her brewer, and Mrs. Bowser has left the stage. - -3. Ben was sent to school, and they say he is clever, though I never -could see it. - -4. Lady Scilly has run away with the chauffeur and, so far, hasn't come -back. - -5. I am going to stay with Ernie Fynes' mother, Lady Fynes, at Barsom. -Ernie will be away at Eton, but he loves me. - -THE END - -_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ - - -THE BEST BOOKS - -TO ASK FOR - -AT ALL LIBRARIES - -AND - -BOOKSELLERS - - -NEW NOVELS BY POPULAR WRITERS - -Price 6/-each - -VIOLET HUNT -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME -By VIOLET HUNT, Author of "The Maiden's Progress," -"A Hard Woman," etc. (Fourth Edition.) - -MARY STUART BOYD -THE MAN IN THE WOOD -By MARY STUART BOYD, Author of "Our Stolen -Summer," "With Clipped Wings," etc. - -ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW -THE SHULAMITE -By ALICE and CLAUDE ASKEW - -KEBLE HOWARD -THE GOD IN THE GARDEN -By KEBLE HOWARD, Author of "Love and a Cottage." -With Illustrations by FRANK REYNOLDS. - -H. C. BAILEY -RIMINGTONS -By H. C. 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Mother said. {pg 26} - -look of dsappointment=> look of disappointment {pg 62} - -one of the man who did=> one of the men who did {pg 101} - -when your times comes=> when your times comes {pg 105} - -The fortune-seller doesn't=> The fortune-teller doesn't {pg 115} - -though the first room=> through the first room {pg 137} - -I dare said he had got=> I dare say he had got {pg 165} - -it is the only times in his life=> it is the only time in his life {pg -199} - -"The Survival of the fittest"=> "The Survival of the Fittest" {pg 284} - -Gerty and mother think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556-8.txt or 41556-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - -BY VIOLET HUNT - -AUTHOR OF 'A HARD WOMAN' - -_FOURTH EDITION_ - -LONDON - -CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. - -1904 - - - - -Tempe, a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north, and -Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the -AEgean.--_Lempriere._ - - - - -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -They say that a child's childhood is the happiest time of its life! - -Mine isn't. - -For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is -nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It -is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a -cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too -soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy"--no grown-up person understands -that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. -It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be -despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the -quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest -thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get -that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too -cross to admit that you do! - -I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as -Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead. - -I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying -children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down -everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I -mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in -prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me -insensibly into the habit of composition. George--my father--we always -call him by his Christian name by request--offered to look it over for -me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want -to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up -people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the -worst--I mean the truth--about everybody, including myself. That is what -makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short -commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have -seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be -discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, -however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw -me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a -specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality -and _verve_. I do adore _verve_! - -George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and -vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for -it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two -following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never -knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be -daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the -education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he -has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am -apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a -scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a -long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, -dried-up tone teachers put on,--"Did she see?" And when he asked me, I -didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness. - -I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook -says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook -beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place -somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after -that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil--plain devil when he -is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, -for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she -get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, -but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She -never says a sharp word--can't! George says she is bound to get left, -like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white -like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my -favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without -any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings. - -I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of -us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would -never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been -exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the -tantamount of Mount Taeygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly -babies. We aren't allowed to read Lempriere. I do. What brutes those -Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George -says! - -I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that -the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children -"go in and out so," and even Aunt Gerty says that "fancy children never -last," and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count -on keeping up to their own standard. - -I cannot tell you if our looks come from our father, or our mother? -George is small, with a very brown skin. He says he descends "from the -little dark, persistent races" that come down from the mountains and -take the other savages' sheep and cows. He has good eyes. They dance and -flash. His hair is black, brushed back from his forehead like a -Frenchman, and very nice white teeth. He has a mouth like a Jesuit, I -have heard Aunt Gerty say. He never sits very still. He is about -thirty-seven, but he does not like us chattering about his age. - -Mother looks awfully young for hers--thirty-six; and she would look -prettier if she didn't burn her eyes out over the fire making dishes for -George, and prick her fingers darning his socks till he doesn't find out -they are darned, or else he wouldn't wear them again, and spoil her -figure stooping, sewing and ironing. George won't have a sewing machine -in the house. Her head is a very good shape, and she does her hair plain -over the top to show it. George made her. Sometimes when he isn't there, -she does it as she used before she was married, all waved and floating, -more like Aunt Gerty, who is an actress, and dresses her head sunning -over with curls like Maud. George has never caught Mother like that, or -he would be very angry. He considers that she has the bump of -domesticity highly developed (though even when her hair is done plain I -never can see it?), and that is why she enjoys being wife, mother, and -upper housemaid all in one. - -We only keep two out here at Isleworth, though my brother Ben is very -useful as handy boy about the place, blacking our boots and browning -George's, and cleaning the windows and stopping them from rattling at -nights--a thing that George can't stand when he is here. When he isn't -we just let them rave, and it is a perfect concert, for this is a very -old Georgian house. Mother makes everything, sheets, window-curtains, -and our frocks and her own. She makes them all by the same pattern, -quite straight like sacks. George likes to see us dressed simply, and of -course it saves dressmakers' bills, or board of women working in the -house, who simply eat you out of it in no time. We did have one once to -try, and when she wasn't lapping up cocoa to keep the cold out, she was -sucking her thimble to fill up the vacuum. We are dressed strictly -utilitarian, and wear our hair short like Ben, and when it gets long -mother puts a pudding basin on our heads and snips away all that shows. -At last Ariadne cried herself into leave to let hers grow. - -The new cook says that if we weren't dressed so queer, Ariadne and me, -we should make some nice friends, but that is just what George doesn't -want. He likes us to be self-contained, and says that there is no one -about here that he would care to have us associate with. Our doorstep -will never wear down with people coming in, for except Aunt Gerty, and -Mr. Aix, the oldest friend of the family, not a soul ever crosses the -threshold! - -I am forgetting the house-agent's little girl, round the corner into -Corinth Road. She comes here to tea with us sometimes. She is exactly -between Ariadne and me in age, so we share her as a friend equally. We -got to know her through our cat Robert the Devil choosing to go and stay -in Corinth Road once. At the end of a week her people had the bright -thought of looking at the name and address on his collar, and sent him -back by Jessie, who then made friends with us. George said, when he was -told of it, that the Hitchings are so much lower in the social scale -than we are, that it perhaps does not matter our seeing a little of each -other. She is better dressed than us, in spite of her low social scale. -She has got a real osprey in her hat, and a mink stole to wear to -church, that is so long it keeps getting its ends in the mud. She -doesn't like our George, though we like hers. George came out of his -study once and passed through the dining-room, where Jessie was having -tea with us. - -"Isn't he a _cure_?" said she, with her mouth full of his -bread-and-butter. - -We told her that our George was no more of a cure than hers, which shut -her up; and was quite safe, as neither Ariadne nor I know what a "cure" -is. She isn't really a bad sort of girl. We teach her poetry, and -mythology, and she teaches us dancing and religion. She has a governess -all to herself every morning, and goes to church regularly. She once -said that her mamma called us poor, neglected children, and pitied us. -We hit her for her mother, and there was an end of that. We love each -other dearly now, and have promised to be bridesmaids to each other, and -godmothers to each other's children. I am going to have ten. - -Ariadne went to her birthday party at Christmas, and did a very silly -thing, that Mother advised her not to tell George about. Every one at -home agreed that poor Ariadne had been dreadfully rude, but I can't see -it? I adore sincerity. When Mr. Hitchings asked her what she would like -out of the bran-pie when it was opened, same as they asked all the -other children, Ariadne only said quite modestly, "A new papa, please!" - -Their faces frightened her so, that she tried to improve it away, and -explain she meant that she should like an every-day papa, like Mr. -Hitchings, not only a Sunday one, like George. I know of course what she -meant, a papa that one sees only from Saturdays to Mondays, and not -always then, is only half a papa. - -Ariadne's real name is Ariadne Florentina, after one of George's -friends' books. She has nice hair. It is reddish and yet soft, but it -won't curl by itself, which is a great grief and sorrow to her. But at -any rate, her eyelashes are awfully long and dark, and she likes to put -the bed-clothes right over her head and listen to her eyelashes -scrabbling about on the sheet quite loud. She has big eyes like nursery -saucers. The new cook calls them loving eyes. On the whole, Ariadne is -pretty, she would think she was even if she wasn't, so it is a good -thing she is. She considers herself wasted, for she is over eighteen -now, and she has never been to a party or worn a low neck in her life. -We have neither of us ever seen a low neck, but we know what it is from -books, and from them also we learn that eighteen is the age when it -takes less stuff to cover you. The new cook says that all her young -ladies at her last place came out when they were only seventeen. What is -outness? I asked George once, and he said it was a device of the -Philistines. I then told him that the new cook said that Ariadne would -never be married and off his hands unless he gave her her chance like -other young ladies, and he said something about a girl called Beatrice -who was out and married and dead before she was nine. Her surname was -Porter, if I recollect. The new cook said "Hout!" and that Beatrice -Porter was all her eye and just an excuse for selfishness! - -Anyhow it is Ariadne's affair, and she doesn't seem to care much, except -when the new cook fills her head with ideas of revolt. She walks about -the green garden reading novels, and waiting for the Prince, for she has -a nice nature. I myself should just turn down the collar of my dress, -put on a wreath and go out and find a Prince, or know the reason why! - -We keep no gardener, only Ben. Ben is short for Benvenuto Cellini, -another of George's friends. He is thirteen, old enough to go to school, -only George hasn't yet been able to make up his mind where to send him. -It is a good thing Ben has plenty of work to do, for he is very cross, -and talks sometimes of running away to sea, only that he has the North -border to dig, or Cat Corner to clear. - -That is the corner George calls The Pleasaunce--it is we who call it Cat -Corner. Not only dead cats come there, but brickbats and tin kettles -with just one little hole in them, and brown-paper parcels that we open -with a poker. I hope there will be a dead baby in one some day, to -reward us. The trees are so dirty that we don't like to touch them, and -the birds that scurry about in the bushes would be yellow, like -canaries, Sarah says, only for the dirt of London. I hardly believe it, -I should like to catch one and wash it. In the opposite corner George -has built a grotto, and we have to keep it dusted, and he sits there and -writes and smokes. The next garden is the garden of a mad-house. The -doctor keeps a donkey and a pony. Once a table-knife came flying over -the wall to us. George's nerves were so thoroughly upset that he could -not bear anything but Ouida and Miss Braddon read aloud to him all the -rest of the day. Mother happens to like those authors and another -Italian lady's books that we are forbidden to mention in this house. She -never reads George's own works; she says she has promised to be a good -wife to him, but that that wasn't in the bond. She knows them too well, -having heard them all in the rough. Behind the scenes in a novel is as -dull as behind the scenes in a theatre, you never know what the play is -about. Aunt Gerty says that all George's things are rank, and quite -undramatic, and George says he is glad to hear it, for he doesn't like -Aunt Gerty. - -The other persons in the house are George's cats. There are three. The -grey cat, the only one who has kittens, I call Lady Castlewood, out of -_Esmond_ by Thackeray. George sometimes says "that little cat of a Lady -Castlewood"--it occurred to me that "that little Lady Castlewood of a -cat" just suits ours, for she is a jealous beast, a cantankerous beast, -and goes Nap with her claws all over your face in no time! She hates her -children once they are grown up, and is merely on bowing terms with -them, or you might call it licking terms--for she doesn't mind giving -them a wash and a brush-up whenever they come her way. Robert the Devil -was the one that stayed away a week. He is very big and mild; he can lie -down and wrap himself in his fur till he looks all over alike, and you -couldn't find any particular part of him, no more than if he were a kind -of soft hedgehog. George talks to them and tells them things about -himself. - -"I am sure they are welcome to his confidence!" that is what the new -cook said. She likes them better than she likes him. She is quite kind -to cats, though she gives them a hoist with her foot sometimes, when -they get in her way. They are valuable, you see. I wish I was, for then -people care what you eat and give you medecines, which I love. It isn't -often you are disappointed in a new bottle of medecine, except when -there's gentian in it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -You don't get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother -says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who -knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good -servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and -without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, -which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a -servant best through its stomach, and don't give them beer, or -beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I -suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I -know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) -is worth, and I value my right of free entry. - -Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, -and sees germs in everything. It doesn't make her any happier. But as -for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan -for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our -mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the -wrong place, chivied here and there, with no resting-place for the sole -of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she -makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to -see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don't believe any servant was -ever ashamed in her life. 'Tisn't in their natures. They just grin and -bear with it--with the dust, and the scolding too. - -"It's 'er little way," I heard Sarah say once, not a bit unkindly or -disagreeably, though, after Mother had come down on her about something. -But once I caught the very same girl shaking her fist at George's back -and calling him "an old beast!" - -"Sarah," I said, "whom are you addressing?" - -"The doctor's donkey, miss," she said, as quick as lightning, pointing -to it grazing in the doctor's garden next door. People were always -overloading that donkey, and shaking their fists at it. - -I must get to the new cook. The last one gave Mother notice, and I never -could find out why, because she was fond of Mother and could stand the -cats. - -"Oh, I like _you_, ma'am," I heard her say, just as if she disliked some -one else. Mother took no notice, but left the kitchen, and Cook took a -currant off her elbow and pulled down her sleeves, and mumbled to Sarah, -"It isn't right, and I for one ain't going to help countenance it. -A-visiting his family now and then between jobs, just like a burglar--or -some-think worse!" - -What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the scullery window, and -Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of -them both, so that it made a mist and she didn't see me. I knew, though, -she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she "shouldn't -reely," she muttered something more about a "neglected angel!" I did -think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor's donkey as usual, -but then the words didn't fit either of us? I asked her straight if she -did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was -minding his own business and I had better do the same. - -She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for -really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at -the back door, and she kept saying, "A poor girl's only got her -character, mum, and she is bound to think of it--" and Mother said, -"Yes, yes, you did quite right!" and seemed just to want her out of the -house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment -Sarah's back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the -middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into -every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the -towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the -corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its -back like a horse kicking. - -Of course George wasn't allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him -where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester's for the shooting -(George shooting! My eye!--and the keeper's legs!) and said he had -better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to -be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built -my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and -that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and -didn't bother to tuck them in. It isn't necessary to do so when we turn -head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three -times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice -lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson's, Monkey Soap, -and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn't a speck of dirt, or pattern -either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat -one's meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of -one's soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the -joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn't scold -us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them -in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we -black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the -walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that -shows it was shabby and ready for death. - -Mother said afterwards that she couldn't see any improvement anywhere, -but anyhow we enjoyed ourselves and that is everything. We spent money -on it, for we bought _decalcomanie_ pictures, and did bouquets all over -the mantelpieces, but Mother insisted we should peel all these off again -before George came back. He couldn't come back till we got that cook, -for George is most absurdly particular about our servants. Sarah has got -used to him, and there seems to be no idea of her going. She has to -valet him, for he is always beautifully dressed. She has to take the -greatest care of her own appearance, and get her nails manicured and her -hair waved when he is at home. That is about all for her. But the cook -he calls the keeper of his conscience, that is to say, his digestion. -His digestion is as jumpy as he is. Sometimes it wants everything quite -plain, and he will eat nothing but our rice-puddings and cold shapes of -tapioca, etc.; at another time he calls it "apparition," and says the -very name of it makes him shiver. I am used to cold shapes, alas! He -sometimes brings things down from town himself--caviare and "patty de -foy." Children are not supposed to like that sort of thing, but we do, -and George gives them us; he is not mean in trifles. Sometimes it is -pheasants and partridges, that he has shot himself on ducal acres. They -are shot very badly, not tidily, with the shot all in one place as it -ought to be: Mr. Aix explained this to me. They are not to be cooked -till they are ready, and when they are they are a little too ready for -Mother and us, so Papa and Mr. Aix have to eat it all. George belongs to -the sect of the Epicureans; I heard him tell the cook so, also that he -is the reincarnation of a gentleman called Villon. - -For a month Mother "sat in" for cooks, and all sorts of fat and lean -women came and went. Our establishment didn't seem attractive. George -bespoke a fat one, by letter, but Mother inclined to lean. These women -sat on the best chairs and prodded the pattern of the carpets with their -dusty umbrellas, and asked tons of questions,--far more than she asked -them, it seemed to me, and this one that we have at last got was the -coolest of all, but in rather a nice way. She was tall and thin, with a -long nose with a dip in it just before the tip, which was particularly -broad. Ariadne said afterwards that a nose like that seemed to need a -bustle. She said she was a north-country woman, and that is about all -she did tell us about herself, except her name, Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -She sat and asked questions. When she came to the usual "And if you -please, ma'am, how many is there in family?" Mother answered, "Myself -and my son and my two daughters,--and my sister--she is -professional--and is here for long visits--that is all." - -"Then I take it you are a widow, ma'am?" - -Mother, getting very red, explained that George is very little at home, -so that in one way he didn't count, but in another way he did, for he is -very particular and has to be cooked for specially. Being an author, he -has got a very delicate appetite. - -"A proud stomach, I understand ye. Well, I shall hope to give him -satisfaction." She said that as if she would have liked to add, "or I'll -know the reason why." - -She seemed quite to have settled in her own mind that she was going to -take our place. She "blessed Mother's bonny face" before that interview -was over, and passed me over entirely. - -She came in in a week, and the first time she saw George she was "doing -her hall." Ariadne and I were there as George's hansom drove up and he -got out and began a shindy with the cabman. - -"Honeys, this will be your father, I'm thinking!" she said. - -Perhaps she expected us to rush into his arms, but we didn't; we knew -better. We just said "Hallo!" and waited till he was disengaged with the -cabman, who wanted too much, as we are beyond the radius. George didn't -give it to him, but a good talking to instead. The new cook stopped -sweeping--servants always stop their work when there is something going -on that doesn't concern them, and looked quite pleased with George. - -"He can explain himself, and no mistake!" she said to Sarah afterwards, -and she cooked a splendid dinner that night, for, says she to Sarah, -"seemed to her he was the kind of master who'd let a woman know if she -didn't suit him." - -She doesn't "make much account of childer," in fact I think she hates -them, for when Ariadne showed her the young shoots in a pot of snowdrops -she was bringing up, and said, "See, cook, they have had babies in the -night!" Elizabeth, meaning to be civil, said, "Dis_gust_ing things, -miss!" - -Still, she isn't really unkind to children, and admits that they have a -right to exist. She will boil me my glue-pot and make me paste, and lets -Ariadne heat her curling-tongs between the bars of the kitchen fire. She -doesn't "matter" cats, but she gives them their meals regular and -doesn't hold with them loafing in the kitchen, and getting tit-bits -stolen or bestowed. And they know she is just, though not generous, and -never forgets their supper. They were all hid, as it happened, when she -came about the place, but she said she knew she had got into a cat house -as soon as she found herself eating fluff with her tea, and she thinks -she ought to have been told. George laughs at her and calls her "stern -daughter of the north," but he wasn't a bit cross when she told him that -Ben ought to be sent to school. He even agreed, but Ben isn't sent. Ben -is still eating his heart out, and he keeps telling Elizabeth Cawthorne -so. He is much in the kitchen. She is very sensible. She just stuffs a -jam tart into his mouth, and says, "Tak' that atween whiles then, my -bonny bairn, to distract ye." Ben takes it like a lamb, and it does -distract him, or at any rate it distends him; he has got fat since she -came. - -She orders Mother about as if she were a child. Mother _does_ look very -young, as I have said. She ought, and so ought Aunt Gerty, considering -the trouble they both take to keep the cloven hoof of age off their -faces. They go to bed with poultices of oatmeal on them, and Aunt Gerty -once tried the raw-beef plaster. But what she does in the night she -undoes in the day, with the grease paint and sticky messes that are part -of her profession. - -She lives with us except when she is on tour, and is only here when she -is "resting" in the _Era_, and all that time she is dreadfully cross, -because she would rather be doing than resting, for "resting" is only a -polite way of saying no one has wanted to engage her, and that she is -"out of a shop," which all actresses hate. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -I have forced George's hand, so I am told, and neither he nor mother -take any notice of me. - -But Aunt Gerty hugged me all over when she heard what I had done, and -scolded Mother for not being nice to me. - -"I don't see why you need put that poor child in Coventry?" she said. -"You had more need to be grateful to her than not. How much longer was -it going to go on, I want to know? Hiding away his lawful wife like an -old Bluebeard, and me Sister Anne boiling over and wanting to call it -all from the house-tops!" - -"Well, Gerty, you seem to have got it a bit mixed!" said Mother. "But, -talking of Bluebeard, I always envied the first Mrs. B. the lots of -cupboard room she must have had! I wonder if she was a hoarder, like me, -who never have the heart to throw anything away? If I do happen to see -the plans for the new house, I will speak up for lots of cupboards, and -that is all I care about." - -"See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn't it your right? You must -make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your -own comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in -the cold, and 'specially with a husband like you've got!" - -"Bother moving!" said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has -been overdoing it, as she has lately. "It is an odious wrench; just like -having all one's teeth out at once." - -"Hadn't need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and -don't you forget it." - -"The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose." - -"You can get used to something bad, can't you, but that's no reason you -are not to welcome a change? Oh, you'll like the new life that's to be -spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind -of 'behind the scenes' you have been doing for eighteen years. And a -pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new -scenery, new dresses, new backcloth----" - -"You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates -one sometimes, especially now, when----" - -"I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend -on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call -it--it's the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!--into your -fine new house. Pity but _He_ can't get a little whiff of it into his -comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, -perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don't cotton to each other, nor -never shall. He isn't my sort. I like a man that is a man, not a -society baa-lamb! Baa! I've no patience with such----" - -"Sh', Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her -paints in a corner so quietly there!" - -That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the -same. - -"We have never minded the child yet" (which was true), "and I don't see -why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold -her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father -well enough. What you've to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands -white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! -Cream's good, too. You have been George Taylor's upper servant too -long--Gracious, who's that at the front-door?" - -Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all -three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George's, when he is at -home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot -day--a dog-day, only we haven't any dogs, but the kittens were -tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for -coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little -clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of -dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. -But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door -such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never -had I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped -Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw. - -There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was -Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn't. I haven't got to her yet -in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing -at the door holding on to her cap that she'd forgotten to put a pin in. -Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn't like her to leave her caps -off to go to the door, even when George isn't here, out of principle, -and for once it told. - -"For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit -too strong to-day," cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, -and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came -in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the -carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and -a jump. - -"Please m'm!" she cried almost before she got into the room, "there's a -carriage-and-pair just called----" - -"Anything in it?" Mother said. - -"Two ladies, m'm, and here's their cards." - -I took one and Aunt Gerty the other. - -"Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!" Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady -Macbeth saying, "Out, dammed spot!" - -The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, -but it had got under the drawers. - -"I said you wasn't dressed, ma'am," Sarah said, looking at Mother's -apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves. - -"No more I am," said Mother, laughing. "Don't look so disappointed, -Gerty. I couldn't have seen them." - -"But you shouldn't have said your mistress wasn't dressed, Sarah," said -Aunt Gerty. "It isn't done like that in good houses. You should have -said, 'My mistress is gone out in _the_ carriage.'" - -"But that would have been a lie!" argued Sarah, "and I'm sure I don't -want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair." - -"Oh, where have you been before, Sarah," Aunt Gerty sighed, "not to know -that a society lie can't let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too -late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for -aristocratic swells like that, after all." - -"They didn't really want to see me," said Mother. "They only called on -me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of -Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She -is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I -have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your -hair. Off you go!" - -"And get a sunstroke," thought I. "Just because she wants to talk to -Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!" - -So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of not minding me that -they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun. - -Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting -visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies -coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the -bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she -with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was -continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only -had a nice slight figure, like she has. - -"Bead chains and pince-nezs won't do it as you seem to think," Mother -said. "And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!" - -"Happy!" screamed my Aunt Gertrude. "Who talked of being happy? You -don't go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought, -to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your -husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It -would me, that's all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher -than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to -take your call and go on--not before you've had a trip to Paris for your -clothes, though--and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor's -despised wife is. There's an object to live for! That's your ticket, and -you've got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn't he?" - -"Nothing else," said Mother sadly. - -"Nonsense! Weren't you--aren't you as good as he? You are the daughter -of a respectable Irish clergyman. Whose daughter--I mean son--is he? A -French tailor's, I expect. You married him eighteen years ago in Putney -Parish Church by special licence, when he was nothing and nobody cared -whom or what he married. Little flighty, undersized foreign-looking -creature! You have been a good wife to him, borne his children, nursed -him when he was ill, and kept a house going for him to come back to when -he was tired of the others, and if it's been done on the sly, it hasn't -been through any will of yours! And now that the matter has been taken -out of his hands, and a good thing too, and he's obliged to leave off -his dirty little tricks and own you, and send his grand friends to call -on you, and build a nice house to put you in, you want to back out and -hide yourself--lose your chance once for all and for ever! You are -good-looking, your children are sweet--you'll soon catch them all up, -and then you can be as haughty and stuck-up as the rest of them. If it -is _me_ you are thinking of, I shan't trouble you--I have my work and I -mean to stick to it!" - -"I shall never disown you, Gerty." - -"No, I dare say not, but I shan't put myself in the way of a snub. I've -got one thing that's been very useful to me in this life--that's tact. I -shan't make a nasty row or a talk, but you'll not see more of me than -you want to. I'm a lady--I'll never let anybody deny that--but I've -knocked about the world a bit, and it's a rough place, and that soft -dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one's own -battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, -largely. Where you're wearing chiffon, I'll be wearing linen, that's the -diff. Now I'm off--'on' first act and share a dresser with three other -cats, where there isn't room to swing one. Ta-ta! I'm not as vulgar as -you think!" - -She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went -away. Mother asked me why I hadn't been drying my hair in the garden all -this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I -answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found -a cool place and meditated on my sins. - -I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan -never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands -are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself. - -On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this -incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making -devils with George's name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt -it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality. - -There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or -rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my -room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, -or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said -immediately, "Now whatever have you been up to?" I told her that the -word "ever" was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected -to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less -expressive face. - -I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the -age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till -one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of -kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks' legs, and the -cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I -just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next -street but one, standing in front of the "Milliner's Arms," with nobody -in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I -got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly -thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the -very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply -hadn't the heart to miss the chance. - -A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her -dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter's -sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the -public-house floor. Yet I can't say she looked at all tipsy. - -"I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it." She -said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how -I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that for me, by -saying with a little sweet smile, "Well, you pretty child, how do you -like my motor-car?" - -"It is the first time I----" - -"Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?" - -I confessed I should, and she jumped in beside me, saying, "Sit still, -then, child!" and moved the crissy-cross starfish thing in front, and we -were off. - -Mercy, what a rate! Policemen seemed to hold up their hands in amazement -at us, and she looked pleased and flattered. We drove on and on, past -the Hounslow turning, through miles of nursery gardens and then miles of -slums, till at last the houses got smarter and bigger, and I guessed -this was the part of London where George lives, only I did not ask -questions. I hardly ever do. I did see a clock once, and I saw it was -nearly our lunch time. I realized that I had missed rice-pudding for -once, and was glad. She talked all the way along, and I listened. I find -that is what people like, for she kept telling me that I was a nice -child, and that she thought she should run away with me. - -"You _are_ running away with me," I said. - -"And you don't care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall -take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me." - -She amused _me_. She was a darling--so gay, so light, as if she didn't -care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. -If George's high-up friends are like this, I don't wonder he prefers -them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as amusing as anybody,--I am not -going to try to take Mother down--but even she can't pretend she is -happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,--the very dry -kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a -whole glassful between us. - -We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like -my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. -She told me about the houses as we went along. - -"That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives," she said, and -pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny -street. I knew that name--the name of the man George stays and shoots -with--but of course I didn't say anything. Then we passed a funny little -house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a -fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings. - -"You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside," she told me. "A -great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all -the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them -has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all -gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in -the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives -heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, -but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always -do you so well. I declare, if I wasn't going to see him this very -afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have -got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open -eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little -table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should -put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And -remind me to lend you one of his books,--that is, if your mother allows -you to read novels." - -I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us -on them. - -"Oh, does he? How interesting! I love authors! You must introduce him to -me some day. Bring him to one of my literary teas. I always make a point -of raising an author or so for the afternoon. It pleases my crowd so, -far better than music and recitations, and played-out amusements of that -kind; and then one doesn't have to pay them. They are only too glad to -come and get paid in kind looks that cost nothing. The queerer they are, -the more people believe in them. I used to have Socialists, but really -they were _too_ dirty! Some authors now are quite smart, and wear their -hair no longer than Lord Scilly, or so very little longer. Now, there is -Morrell Aix, the man who wrote _The Laundress_. I took him up, but he -had been obliged, he said, to live in the slums for two years to get up -his facts, and you could have grown mustard and cress on the creases of -his collar. And I do think, considering the advertisement he gave them, -the laundresses might have taken more trouble with the poor man's -shirts!" - -I knew Mr. Aix, of course, and I have often seen Mother take the -clothes-brush to him, but I said nothing, for I like to show I can hold -my tongue. Knowledge is power, if it's ever so unimportant. We didn't go -far from the house with walls like stopped teeth, before she pulled up -at another rather smart little door in a street called Curzon. - -"Here we are at my place, and there's Simmy Hermyre on the doorstep -waiting to be asked to lunch." - -It was a nice clean house with green shutters and lovely lace curtains -at the windows, that Ariadne would have been glad of for a dress, all -gathered and tucked and made to fit the sash as if it had been a person. -The young man standing at the front door had a coat with a waist, and a -nice clean face, and a collar that wouldn't let him turn his head -quickly. He helped us out, and she laughed at him as if he was hers. - -"Are you under the impression that I have asked you to lunch? Why, I -don't suppose there is any!" - -Imagine her saying that when she had brought me all the way from -Isleworth to have it! I didn't, of course, say anything, and she made me -go in, and the young man followed us, quite calm, although she had said -there wasn't anything for him to eat. - -"I would introduce you to this person" (I thought it so nice of her not -to stick on the offensive words little or young!) "only it strikes me I -don't know her name." She didn't ask it, but went on, "It's a most -original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in -a year, my dear boy!" - -Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadn't tried, and I do -think you should leave off calling children "it" after the first six -months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didn't think her quite polite, -I told her my name--Tempe Vero-Taylor--in a low voice so that she could -introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same -table. I thought there wouldn't be a children's table, as she didn't -speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have -no conversation. - -Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up -her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didn't -introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didn't suppose I should ever meet -him again, so it didn't matter. - -We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as -much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered -rice-pudding! I wouldn't have believed it, in a house like this. I -refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally -take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldn't taste champagne -when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, -and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often -says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild -beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not meet some this afternoon -at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (that's her name) said -she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldn't very well -say no. - -"You may come too, Simmy," she said to the young man; "it will be -exciting, I can promise you!" - -"Not if I know it," he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, "What is -the lecture about?" - -"The Uses of Fiction." - -"None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an -income." - -"That's a man's view." - -"It is," he said, "a man, and not a monkey's. You don't call your -literary crowd men, do you?" - -I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him -up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on-- - -"You're quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy -your receptions." - -"I don't see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because -you're a fifth cousin. That's the worst of being well connected, so many -people think they have the right to lecture one!" - -"All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were -not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow -you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine -and Ve----" - -Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldn't -come to the lecture he must go, and pushed me out of the room in front -of her and on up-stairs. - -"Good-bye!" she called to him over the bannisters. "Let yourself out, -and don't steal the spoons." - -That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We -went up into her bedroom, and her old nurse--I suppose it was her nurse, -for she wore no cap and bullied her like anything--came forward. - -"Put me into another gown, Miller!" she said, flopping into a chair. -Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, -and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying -me. - -"Don't bother. The child's all right. She's so pretty she can wear -anything." - -I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I -said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went -down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand -in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her -cheek that I hadn't noticed there before. It was real. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -We went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of -coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water -and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person -present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately -began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly -is a member of the committee. - -"Where will you sit, Lady Scilly?" said this person, and she asked a -good many other questions, using Lady Scilly's name very often. - -"I shall sit quite at the back this time," Lady Scilly answered. "Too -many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out!" As she -said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why. - -We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place -had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a -great friend of Lady Scilly's. He spoke to me while she was discussing -some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her. - -"How do you like going about with a fairy?" he asked me. - -"I'm not," I said. "She's a grown-up woman, old enough to know----" - -"Worse!" he interrupted me. "She is what I call a fairy!" - -"What is a fairy?" I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only -trying to make conversation. - -"A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likes--and as other -people sometimes don't like." - -"I see," I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, "just as -grown-up people do." - -"But she isn't pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a -fairy? No, I think not, you don't look as if you _could_ tell a lie." - -"I beg your pardon," I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent -him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we -went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn't like -that, and said "_Jeunesse oblige_," and "_Place aux dames_," and -"_Juniores ad priores_"--every language under the sun, winding up with -that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to -hang back and keep the king waiting. - -"Oh yes, I know that story," I said, just to prevent him going on -bothering. "It's in Ollendorff." - -The lecture-room was quite full, and we--Lady Scilly and I--squeezed -ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were -almost in the dark. - -"Sit tight, child, whatever happens!" she kept saying, and held my hand -as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in -I saw why, for it was George! - -Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, "Don't call out, child!" - -As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the -lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him -before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and -had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old -gentleman had called her a fairy--that meant a tease, and I wasn't going -to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still -as she told me, and George began. - -I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to -remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get -used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite -different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a -little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of -them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing-- - -"_A novel_," said my father, "_is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, -uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, -like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, -and bounded by the four walls of the author's experience. His duty is to -enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement -as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the -reader's own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly -disproportionate, to the whole great arcana_." (I do hope I got this -down right!) "_The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent._" (Once -I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child's play.) "_A -great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama -of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of -the supply._" (Loud applause.) "_The right man, or peradventure, the -right woman_" (he bowed at Lady Scilly), "_knows, or ought to know, so -many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of -that one!_" - -Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and -George went on-- - -"_I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways._" (What -works both ways? I must have left something out.) "_A Duchess of my -acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words--as indeed all her words -are pregnant and poignant_" (he bowed to an old corpulent lady in -another part of the room)--"_to me the other day. She said that her -novel of predilection was not a society novel. 'I know it all, don't I, -like the palm of my hand?' she objected. 'I know how to behave in a -drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!' So she complained. The -substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;--what she wants -is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her -drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, -the burglar at his work_----" - -Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he -was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on-- - -"_I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out -of our own lives, and put into somebody else's--to temporarily change -our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going -on below stairs. Bill Sykes and 'Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time -for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant -sprites._" (Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) "_The Highest or the -Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist's counsel of perfection. -There is no second class in the literary railway._ - -"_Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for -instance--only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here -will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my -illustration--if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual -dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting--even Clapham Rise or -Upper Tooting--we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the -better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the -halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of -the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world -that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes -her waking dreams 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' Que voulez vous? She -is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste -thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated -by the novelist's art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum -marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely -Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that -are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the -Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her -chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and -humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their -entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, -like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from -thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang -over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses----_" - -I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady -Scilly pinched me in several places at once. - -"Don't nip me, please," I said. "I think somebody ought to get up and -tell George he's drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will." - -"Bless the child!" she said. "You may answer him when he's done, if you -like, and can. It will be quite amusing." - -I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think -somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother's side. So I waited, -though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George -sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer -Mr. Vero-Taylor's speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that -George and all of them could see me, and I didn't feel a bit shy--no, -for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who -wasn't there to speak up for herself. - -"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said--I noticed that George began like -that--"I don't agree at all with what the gentleman--who is my -father--has been saying about Tooting--Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought -to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly -the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn't do it -unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell -everybody that Mother doesn't read novels about Duchesses or anybody. -She hasn't time, she's much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and -cooking specially for George, and so on. That's all!" - -I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I -hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted -him, perhaps! I don't know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I -didn't feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home. - -He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn't talk, but I -am sure he wasn't cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed -to know I was going to have a bad time. - -I did. Even Mother scolded me. - -Papa didn't come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I -might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me -truthful. Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn't so bad. She read to me about -Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the -other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that -always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn't -mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way-- - - "We left behind the painted buoy - That tosses at the harbour-mouth, - And madly danced our hearts with joy - As fast we fleeted to the South." - -While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and -the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she -could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as -if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had -lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world -will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don't -suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could -alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get the bit -between their teeth----! - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -It is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. -Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and -all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George -Vero-Taylor's little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there -and given him away--such fun, don't you know! It wasn't fun for me, for -I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in -Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn't have mattered -so much if George hadn't been at home a good deal about that time. I -think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, -though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with -his family, though wearing to the servants. - -George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and -thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new -line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into -the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a -volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He -settled to build a house--a house that should express him and shelter -his family as well. Mother didn't want to build. If we _had_ to move, -she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at -Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see -if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a -soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches -spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed -with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with -their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down -to the water's edge. George didn't stop our doing this and taking so -much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But -all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John's -Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, -and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, -made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the -blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the -world that he can do other things than write books. In _Who's Who_, he -doesn't mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of -his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, -Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that's what his friend Mr. -Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very -newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed. - -All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George -talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only -interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main -staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you -see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They -thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once. - -As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his -prices. He expects to get ten pounds per "thou." He told Middleman, his -literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per "thou." -for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for -the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge -establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint -sense of humour, and that's the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says -Middleman can run up an author's sales twenty per cent. in no time, if -he fancies you personally, or thinks there's money in you. - -George's new book is going to be not mediaeval this time; people have -imitated him and _The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful_ was -brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. -He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few -English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad -soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and -pay his expenses. - -Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief -in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother's face grew longer -and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped -George to arrange the furniture. - -Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some -interest in her own mansion. - -"I do," Mother said, "but at a distance. I couldn't be of any use -advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. -That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always -about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say -things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as -they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George's own money. He -earned it." - -"Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!" sneered my aunt. - -"I came to him without a penny, and I haven't the right to dictate so -much as the position of a wardrobe." - -"You're the man's lawful wife," said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One -got tired of the expression. - -"Yes, unfortunately," said Mother. "Or I'd have a better chance! But I -am _not_ going to fight over George with that minx!" - -How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never -seen! I once told her she needn't be cross with Lady Scilly, and how -harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of -Papa--snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt; and then she was -cross with _me_, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be -proud. - -Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for -blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we -took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and -George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room -and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, -and all George's furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept -saying-- - -"Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel -Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!" or else--"That -sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and -I"--something or other? - -She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, -and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her -laugh consumedly, so she said. It's extraordinary how he can make people -laugh--people out of his own family! - -She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present -Ariadne at the next Court. It's to please George, if she does remember -to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had -been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George -ought to insist on it, but he always says "Let them rave!" and that -means, Do as you like, but don't bother me. What he won't like will be -forking out forty pounds for Ariadne's dress, and it will end by her -staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising -curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not -condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so -poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she -can get, and make what she can out of George's "mash," when well -disposed. - -About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month's -yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody's yacht that they were -willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included -them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. -She asked George to go with them--"We shan't see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. -the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write -a yachting novel, like William Black's, and put old Pawky in. He is -quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say--dyspeptic -and all that. I can't stand him, but you might bear with him a little in -the interests of Art!" George had no objection to visiting the scene of -his new book at Mr. Pawky's expense, in the company of his own pals, and -accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. -Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of -the voyage? It would be just like them. - -George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He -said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come -home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and -everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, -inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work -abominably, and spoil the whole brewing! - -"Dear," said Mother, "I fear we shall do badly without you--you are a -man, at least--but I'll be good, and spare you cheerfully!" - -So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was -to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go -with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but -there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass -bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself -on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen -and kitchen utensils from "The Magnolias"--one could hardly suppose Lady -Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer -"moved" us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the -things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate--Sarah had gone, and -I never got any better reason than that she "had to"--received them at -Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near -the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to -her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, -wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes -first fell on it. - -We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where -they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had -got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own -house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. -She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door -knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away. - -She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, -"Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn't it! Right -alongside the front-door!" - -I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to -prevent unpleasantness. - -Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged -with marble like a church. "It strikes very cold to the feet!" she said -to Aunt Gerty. "Mine are like so much ice." - -"Oh, come along, and we'll brew you a glass of hot toddy!" Aunt Gerty -said cheerfully. "It's a bit chilly, I think, myself, but 'ansom, like -the big 'all where 'Amlet 'as the players!" - -Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h -or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne -and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study. - -"What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take -off my shoes and stockings to go up them!" - -"So you will, Aunt Gerty," said Ariadne. "It is one of George's rules. -He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them." - -"Took 'em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?" snorted -my aunt. "Well, I don't expect you will find me treading those golden -stairs very often. I ain't one of George's elect." - -"Such wretched things to keep clean," Mother complained. "The servants -are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am -sure one can't blame them, and such good ones as we've got, too, in -these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle -in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to -me?" - -Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way -about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a -servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had -escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and -tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and -put her muff before her face-- - -"Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady's eye coming into a -gentleman's house! Who's that mouldy old statue of?" - -I told her that was Autolycus. - -"Cover yourself, Tollie, I would," Aunt Gerty said, going past him -affectedly. "Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing -splits on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!" - -"I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself," said Mother. -"I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it." - -"And no proper grate, only the bare bricks left showing!" Aunt Gerty -wailed. "How could one get up any proper fireside feeling over a -contraption like that! The Lyceum scenery is nothing to it. It makes me -think of Shakespeare all the time--so _painfully_ meretricious----" - -Lady Castlewood in a basket under Mother's arm, suddenly began to mew -very sadly. Aunt Gerty had put Robert the Devil down on the floor, in -his hamper, and I suppose a draught got to him, for he spat loudly. -Ariadne and I let out the poor things and they bounced straight out on -to the parquet floor, and their feet slid from under them. I never saw -two cats look so silly! - -"Well, if a cat can't keep his feet on those wooden tiles," said Mother, -"I don't suppose I can," and she jumped, just to try, right into the -middle of a little square of blue carpet, which, true enough, slid along -with her. - -"You can give a nice hop here, at any rate," cried Aunt Gerty, catching -her round the waist, and waltzing all over the room, till both their -picture hats fell off, and hung down their backs by the pins. "Ask me -and all the boys, and give a nice sit-down supper, and do us as well as -the old villain will allow you." - -She was quite happy. That is just like an actress! Ariadne and I danced -too, and the cats mewed loudly for strangeness. Cats hate newness of any -kind, and they weren't easy till I got some newspaper, crackled it, and -let them sit on it, and then they were all right. Then Mother and Aunt -Gerty rang the queer-shaped bell, as if it would sting them, and got up -some coals which Mother had had the forethought to order in, and lit a -modest little fire in a great cave with brass images in front of it -under the kind of copper hood. It wouldn't draw at first, being used to -logs, and when it smoked we threw water on it, lest we dirtied the -beautiful silk hangings. At last we fetched Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -"Hout!" she said. "I'd like to see the fire that's going to get the -better of me!" - -She made it burn, sulkily, and Ariadne and I went to a shop we knew of -round the corner, and bought tea and sugar and condensed milk, to make -ourselves tea with the spirit-lamp Aunt Gerty had brought. We had no -butter or bread, only biscuits luckily, so we couldn't stain the Cinque -Cento chairs, whose gold trimmings were simply peeling off them. Sit on -them we dared not, they would have let us down on the floor for a -certainty. Mother and Aunt Gerty had a high old time blaming Lady Scilly -for all her foolish arrangements, and then we all went down to the -so-called kitchen to see how Elizabeth Cawthorne was getting on there. -She was in a rage, but trying to pass it off, like a good soul as she -is. - -"Well, I never! Here's a gold handle to my coal-cellar door! I shall -have to wipe my lily hands before I dare use it. And a fine lady of a -dresser that I shall be shy to set a plain dish on. Beetles here, do you -ask, woman?" (To Kate.) "They'd be ashamed to show their faces in such a -smart place as this, I'm thinking. And what's this couple of drucken -little candlesticks for the kitchen? Our Kate'll soon rive the fond bit -handles from off them, or she's not the girl I take her for!" - -She banged it hard against the dresser as servants do, to make it break, -but it didn't, and she looked disappointed. Mother then suggested she -should unpack a favourite frying-pan she never goes anywhere without, -and sent Kate out for a pound and a half of loin-chops, and cook was to -fry them for our dinners. - -The kitchen fire, after all, was the only one that would burn, so we ate -our chops there, and sat there till bed-time. Ariadne looked like a -picture, sitting at a trestle-table, and a thing like a torch burning at -the back of her head. She was thoroughly disgusted, and got quite cross, -and so did Elizabeth, as the evening went on. She hated trestles, and -flambeaus, and dark Rembrandtish corners, and couldn't lay her hand on -her things nohow, so that when we all went up to bed, Mother said to -her-- - -"Good-night, Elizabeth. You have been a bit upset, haven't you? I wonder -we have managed to get through the day without a row!" - -"So do I, ma'am," said the cook. "Heaps of times I'd have given you -warning for twopence, but you never gave me ought to lay hold on." - -A horrid wind sprang up and moaned us off to sleep. I thought once or -twice of George out on the Mediterranean on a tippity yacht, and didn't -quite want him to get drowned, though he had made us live in such an -uncomfortable house. I had tried to colonize a little, and put up a -photograph of Mother done at Ramsgate in a blue frame, to make me feel -more at home. Ariadne had hung up all her necklaces on a row of nails. -She has forty. There is one made of dried marrowfat peas, that she -nibbles when she is nervous, and another of horse's jesses, or whatever -you call them, sewn on red velvet. We have a bed each, costing -fourteen-and-six. They are apt to shut up with you in them. There is no -carpet in our room, and there are not to be any. We are to be hardy. -Nothing rouses one like a touch of cold floor in the mornings, and cools -one on hot nights better than the same. Our water-jug too is an odd -shape. I tilted all the water out of it on to the floor the first time I -tried to use it. It must be French, it is so small. I shall not wash my -hands very often in the days to come, I fancy. - -Ariadne began to get reconciled to our room when she had made up her -mind it was like the bower of a mediaeval chatelaine, or like Princess -Ursula's bedroom in Carpaccio, but I prefer Early Victorian, and cried -myself to sleep. - -Next morning Ben come along; he had stayed all night at the Hitchings', -in Corinth Road. Jessie Hitchings likes Ben best of the family. She may -marry him, when he is grown up, if she likes. He has birth, but no -education, so that will make them even. The only glimmering of hope I -see for Ben is that in this house there seems to be no bedroom for him, -unless it is a room at the top with all the water tanks in it, which -makes me think perhaps George is going to send him to school? For the -present we have arranged him a bed in the butler's pantry. Ben says -perhaps George means him to be butler, as he has laid it down as a rule -that only women servants are to be used in Cinque Cento House. They look -so much nicer than men, George says; he likes a houseful of waving -cap-ribbons. Mother thinks she can work a house best on one servant, and -better still on none. George doesn't mind her having any amount of boys -from the Home near here, but that doesn't suit Mother. She says one boy -isn't much good, that two boys is only one and a half, and that three -boys is no boy at all. I suppose they get playing together? Ariadne and -I would, in their place, I know, and human nature is the same, even in a -Home, though I can't call ours quite that. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -George makes a point of refusing to be interviewed. He hates it, unless -it is for one of the best papers. Then he says that it is a sheer -kindness, and that a successful man has no right to refuse some poor -devil or other the chance of making an honest pound or two. So he -suffers him gladly. He even is good enough to work on the thing a little -in the proof: just to give the poor fellow a lift, and prevent him -making a fool of himself and getting his facts all wrong. In the end -George writes the whole thing entirely from beginning to end, and makes -the man a present of a complete magazine article, and a very fine one -too! - -"I have been generous," he tells us. "I have offered myself up as a -burnt sacrifice. I have given myself all, without reservation. I have -nothing extenuated, everything set down in malice. I have owned to -strange sins that I never committed, to idiosyncrasies that took me all -my time to invent, and all to bump out an article by some one else. I -have been butchered to make a journalistic holiday!" - -This is all very nice and self-sacrificing of George, but this -particular interview read very well when it came out, and made George -seem a very interesting sort of man with some quaint habits, not half so -funny as his real ones, though, and I think the interviewer might just -as well have given those. - -So, when I got a chance of telling the truth, I did, meaning to act for -the best, and give Papa a good show and save him the trouble of telling -it all himself, but nobody gave me credit for my good intentions, and -kind heart. - -In the first place, how dared I put myself forward and offer to see -George's visitors! But the young man asked for me--at least, when he was -told that George was out, he said might he see one of the young ladies? -Of course I don't suppose that would have occurred to him, only I was -leaning over the new aluminium bannisters, and caught his eye. Then an -idea seemed to come into his head. The look of disappointment that had -come over him when he was told that George was out changed to a little -happy perky look, as if he had just thought of something amusing. He -crooked his little finger at me as I slid down the bannister, and said -would I do? and would he come in? Kate is a cheeky girl, but even the -cook admits that Kate is not a patch upon me. Kate evidently didn't -think it quite right, but she slunk away into the back premises, and -left me to deal with the young man. - -He handed me a card. I thought that very polite of him, and "_Mr. -Frederick Cook_," and Representative of _The Bittern_ down in the -corner, explained it all to me. We take in about a hundred rags, and -that's the name of one of them. It's called _The Bittern_ because it -booms people, so George says. - -"I suppose you have come to interview my Father," I said. "I'm sorry, -but he is out. Did you have an appointment?" - -"No, I didn't," said the young man right out. - -I liked his nice bold way of speaking; he was the least shy young man I -ever met. - -"I don't believe in appointments. The subject is conscious, primed, -braced up, ready with a series of cards, so to speak, which he wishes to -force on the patient public--a collection of least characteristic facts -which he would like dragged into prominence. It is as if a man should go -to the dentist with his mind made up as to the number of teeth that he -is to have pulled out, a decision which should always rest with any -dentist who respects himself." - -He went running on like that, not a bit shy, or anything, and amused me -very much. - -"But then the worst of that is, you've got no appointment with George, -and he is not here to have his teeth pulled out." - -I really so far wasn't quite sure if he was an interviewer or a dentist, -but I kept calm. - -"All the better, my dear young lady, that is if you are willing to aid -and abet me a little. Then we shall have a thundering good interview, I -can promise you. You see, in my theory of interviewing, the actual -collaboration of the patient--shall we call him?--is unnecessary. -Indeed, it is more in the nature of an impediment. My method, which of -course I have very few opportunities of practising, is to seek out his -nearest and dearest, those who have the privilege--or annoyance--of -seeing him at all hours, at all seasons, unawares. If a painter, 'tis -the wife of his brush that I would question; if an author, the partner -of his pen--do you take me?" - -Yes, I "took" him, and as George had called me a cockatrice--a very -favourite term of abuse with him--only that morning, and remembering how -she swaggers about being George's Egeria, I said, "You'll have to go to -Lady Scilly for that!" - -"Quite so!" he said very naturally. "Your distinguished parent dedicated -his last book to her, did he not? Did you approve, may I ask?" - -"No," I said. "People should always dedicate all their works to their -wife, whether they love her or not, that's what I think!" - -"Quite so," he said again. "I see we agree famously, and between us we -shall concoct a splendid interview. But now, if you would be so very -good, and happen to have a small portion of leisure at your -disposal----" - -"I'll do what I can for you," I said, delighted at his nice polite way -of putting things. "I'll take you round the house, shall I? Have you a -Kodak with you? Would you like to take a snapshot at George's -typewriter?" - -"Certainly, if she is pretty," said the silly man, and I explained that -Miss Mander was out, and that it was the machine I meant. He said one -machine was very like another, but that if he might see the study, -where so many beautiful thoughts had taken shape? He said it quite -gravely, but I felt he was laughing in his jacket all the time. - -"We'll take it all _seriam_!" I said, not wishing him to have all the -fine words. "And we will begin at the beginning--I mean the atrium." - -He had a little pocket-book in his hand, and he said, as I led the way -through the hall, "You won't mind my writing things down as they occur -to me?" - -"Not at all!" I said. "If you will let me look at what you have written. -I see you have put a lot already." - -He laughed and handed me his book, and I read-- - -"_Through dusky suites, lit by stained glass windows, whose dim -cloistral light, falling on lurid hangings and gorgeous masses of -Titianesque drapery, and antique ebon panelling, irresistibly suggest -the languorous mysteries of a mediaeval palace...._ Do you think your -father will like this style?" - -"You have made it rather stuffy--piled it on a good deal, the drapery -and hangings, I mean!" I said. "Now that I know the sort of thing you -write, I shan't want to read any more." - -"I thought you wouldn't," he said, taking it back. "I'll read it to you. -'_Behind this arras might lurk Benvenuto and his dagger----_'" - -"Not Ben's dagger, but Papa's bicycle." - -"We'll leave it there and keep it out of the interview," he said. "It -would spoil the unity of the effect. '_On, on, through softly-carpeted -ante-rooms where the footstep softer falls, than petals of blown roses -on the grass...._'" - -"I hate poetry!" I said. "And we mayn't walk on that part of the carpet -for fear of blurring the Magellanic clouds in the pattern. Do you know -anything about Magellanic clouds in carpets?" - -"No, I confess I have never trod them before," he said, becoming all at -once respectful to me. I expect he lives in a garret, and has no carpet -at all, and I thought I would be good to him, and help him to bump out -his article, and not cram him, but tell him where things really came -from. So I drew his attention particularly to the aluminium eagle, and -the pinchbeck serpent George picked up in Wardour Street. I left out -George's famous yarn about the sack of our ancestral Palace in Turin in -the fifteenth century, when the Veros were finally disseminated or -dissipated, whichever it is. I don't believe it myself, but George -always accounts for his swarthy complexion by his Italian grandmother. -Aunt Gerty says it is all his grandmother, or in other words, all liver! - -We went down-stairs into the study, which is the largest room in the -house. - -"Your father has realized the wish of the Psalmist," said _The Bittern_ -man. "_Set my feet in a large room!_" - -"He likes to have room to spread himself," I said, "and to swing -cats--books in, I mean." - -"So your father uses missiles in the fury of composition?" - -"Sometimes; but oftenest he swears, and that saves the books. He mostly -swears. Look here!" - -I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander's handwriting, and on -it was written, "Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. -Vero-Taylor during the last hour." - -_The Bittern_ man looked at them, and, "By Jove! these are corkers!" he -said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There -was Drayton, the ironmonger's bill lying about too, and I saw him raise -his eyebrows at the last item, "_To one chased brass handle for -coal-cellar door_." - -"That's what I call being thorough!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I'm -thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!" - -He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see -the pen George uses. "Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?" he asked. - -"Mercy, no!" I screamed out. "He would have an indigestion! This is his -pen--at least, it is this week's pen. George is wasteful of pens; he -eats one a week." - -"Very interesting!" said he. "Most authors have a fetish, but I never -heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat -paragraph. Come on!" - -You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I -showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey -carpet spread on it, instead of a white one--that was how they had it -in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable -Mediaeval was, and if it wasn't for the honour and glory of it, how much -we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors -reflect--there's not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne -can see herself in when she's dressing to go out to a party--or chairs -that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are -forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death! - -"Very hard lines!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I confess that this point of -view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my -article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its -votaries----" - -"Yes," I said. "Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne's -photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! 'To think -that any wife of his--' 'Caesar's wife must be above suspicion!' And as -for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue -plush." - -"Capital!" said _The Bittern_ man. "All good grist for the interview! -And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard -so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?" - -"Except that we are not allowed to go up them--Ariadne and me--without -taking our boots off first, for fear of scratching the polish. We have -to strip our feet in the housemaid's pantry, and carry them up in our -hands. That's rather a bore, you will admit!" - -"And your father? Does he bow to his own decrees?" - -"Oh, no!" I said. "Papa is the exception that proves the rule." - -"Capital!" again remarked _The Bittern_ man. "I am getting to know all -about the great Mr. Vero-Taylor in the fierce light that beats upon the -domestic hearth! But, by the way," he said, with a little crooked look -at me, "it is usual--shall I say something about Mrs. Vero-Taylor? -People generally like an allusion--just a hint of feminine presence--say -the mistress of the house flitting about, tending her ferns, or what -not?" - -"You must put her in the kitchen, then," I said, "tending her servants. -Would you like to see her?" - -"I should not like to disturb her," he said politely. "Will you describe -her for me?" - -"Oh, mother's nice and thin--a good figure--I should hate to have one of -those feather-beddy mothers, don't you know? But I don't really think -you need describe her. I don't think she cares about being in the -interview, thank you, but you may say that my sister Ariadne is -ravishingly beautiful, if you like?" - -"And what about you, Miss----?" he asked, looking at me. - -"Tempe Vero-Taylor," I said. "But whatever you do, don't put me in! -George would have a fit! He won't much like your mentioning Ariadne, -but I don't see why she shouldn't have a show, if I can give her one." - -"Very well," he said. "Your ladyship shall be obeyed. Now I really think -I have got enough, unless----" I saw his eyes straying up-stairs. - -"There's nothing much to see up those stairs, except George's bedroom, -and I daren't take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like -the rest of the house, but very, _very_ comfortable." - -"Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn't -trouble to black more than his face and arms," said _The Bittern_ man. -"And _your_ rooms?" - -"Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we -have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediaeval castle -would have. Now that's all, and----" - -The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought -it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. -George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This -reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. -_The Bittern_ man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked -me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how -he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had -told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on -that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, -and would gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the -circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at -least have a _succes de scandale_, at least I think that is what he -said, for I don't understand French very well. While he was making all -those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little -grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, -and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn't. George opened the -door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw _The -Bittern_ man and came forward, and _The Bittern_ man came forward too, -with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the -Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little. - -"I came from _The Bittern_," he said, and George nodded, to show he knew -what for. "To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview----" - -"I am sorry I happened to be out!" began George, and then I knew, by the -sound of his voice, that _The Bittern_ was a _good_ paper. "But if it is -not too late, I shall be happy----" - -"No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir," the interviewer -said, waving his hand a little. "I came, and I go not empty away, but -with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my -pocket. You left an admirable _locum tenens_ in the person of your -daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of -the necessity of troubling _you_. You will doubtless be relieved also. I -shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!" - -And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened -the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George -said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, -and _The Bittern_ man never sent a proof after all, so when the article -came out--"_Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe -Vero-Taylor_,"--I got some more. That is the first and last time I was -ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I -see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. -Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve -his ambition like that. George didn't punish him, of course, he is a -power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -I wonder if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering -and interfering in their affairs? I don't mind our having a -house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please -Lady Scilly. - -"A party! A party!" she said to George, clasping her hands in her silly -way. "My party on the table!" like the woman in the play of _Ibsen_. -"Ask all the dear, amusing literary people that I adore. And I'll bring -a large contingent of smart people, if I may, to meet them. Please, -_please_!" - -I don't know what a contingent is, but I fancy it's something -disagreeable. Lady Scilly is George's friend, not Mother's. She has only -called on Mother once, and that was in the old house, and then Mother -was not receiving as they call it, so she has never even seen the -mistress of the house where she is going to give the party. Christina -Mander, George's secretary, says that is quite the new way of doing -things, and she has been about a great deal, and ought to know. - -Miss Mander is a lady. She is very thin, one of those lath-and-plaster -women, you know, that seem to live to support a small waist that is -their greatest beauty, but when we first knew her, she was plump and -jolly-looking. We practically got her for George. Years ago, when we -were quite little and had had measles, we were sent down to a sort of -boarding-house at Ramsgate to an old lady, an ex-dresser in some theatre -Aunt Gerty knew, and who could neither see to mend or to keep us in -order, though she got thirty shillings a week for doing it. They never -got us up till nine; I suppose the slavey thought sufficient for the day -was the evil thereof, and tried to make the evil's day as short as -possible. One morning when it was quite nine, and the sun was shining -in, Ariadne and I were feeling frightfully bored, so we got up in our -night-gowns, moved a wardrobe, and found a door behind it into another -house. It was quite a smart house, with soft plush carpets and -nicely-varnished yellow doors. We went all over it. Only the cat was -awake, licking herself in the window-seat. The bedroom doors were all -shut except one, and we went in and found a nice girl in bed with her -gold hair all spread over the pillow. She didn't seem shocked at us, but -laughed, and when we had explained, she wished us to get into the bed -beside her. It had sheets trimmed with lace, and her initials, C. M., on -the pillow. We did this every morning till we went away. She kept us up, -afterwards sending us Christmas cards and so on, and when George -advertised for a secretary to help him to sub-edit _Wild Oats_, she -answered it, among the thousand others, and we remembered her name and -made George engage her. - -She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D'Auban's -dancing academy, and to Klondike--where all her hair got cut off, so -that she hasn't enough to spread over the pillow now--and behind the -scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper -once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new -arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed -for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her -mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when -George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, -tortoise-shell _pince-nez_ and all, but she took to Mother at first -sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this "new move of dear -Christina's." - -She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had -developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on -saying the name of George's new magazine, as if it shocked her very -much. - -"_Wild Oats!_ Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them -somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You'll look -after her, won't you? Is there any danger"--she looked towards the -study-door"--of her falling in love with her employer?" She laughed -carelessly. - -"Not the slightest!" said Mother, laughing too. "She will have her eyes -opened, that's all, to the seamy side of artistic life." - -"My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. -After all, it's only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they -must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But -we don't need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!" - -"I quite agree with you," said Mother. "Only if one happens to be the -scullery-maid----" - -Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I -was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual. - -"And," said Mrs. Mander, "she buys everything that comes out, especially -badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and -look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she -came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his -magazine--_Wild Oats_. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it -sounds so _very_ advanced!" - -"Oh, very," said Aunt Gerty. "But it won't live!" - -"You don't say so?" Mrs. Mander put up her _pince-nez_ and looked at -Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn't like. - -"None of my brother-in-law's things do!" Aunt Gerty went on calmly. "He -is a prize wrecker--of women and magazines!" - -Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the -conversation. - -"Oh, he's a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is," went on Aunt Gerty. -"But I don't think he'll convert Miss Mander to his views." - -"I hope not," said Mrs. Mander, "for I notice that if you make a law -unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! -At least as far as women are concerned." - -"People will always let you go your own way," said Mother; "but the -point is, will they come with you--join with you in a pleasant walk?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Mander, "my daughter is the most headstrong of young -women. I can't control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed -her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor." - -"I gathered as much," said Mother, not offended a bit. "But I will look -after her well!" She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make -her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week. - -Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecaenas! Ben says she a minx. Ben -hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a -cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but -then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother -won't go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that -George doesn't try to persuade her much. You see, he isn't used to -having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all -those years! - -George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina -is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should -he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide it under -a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she -says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She -says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the -hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old -house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; -anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, -for his Sundays were only for a select few--very selected. He only gave -tea and bread-and-butter--very little butter--and no table-cloth--plain -living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he -pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to -the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, -and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own -house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him -to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his -solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a -Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of -the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But -that would not do for George, for he isn't at all hermit-like, and he -can make epigrams! They say that is his _forte_. I hate them myself, I -think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people's feelings -so that they can't complain, but then, of course, the family gets them -in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home. - -George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He -said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out -of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he -would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging -from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, -and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and -peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat -on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the -smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other's -faces! That didn't suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much -as she could. - -Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still -Mediaeval, at six o'clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, -because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it -can't go all round. That's the reason we have finger-bowls now, and -little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to -eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can -see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own -trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that -loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen -Mother's face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said -she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers' -and the butchers' shops back a century? - -The first course, George explained, was quite easy--it was little bits -of toast with honey and hypocras. - -"Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?" Mother said, -meaning to be funny. "There's a very civil young man there might help -me?" - -"Next course, smoked eels," went on George. "Any soup you like, only it -must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have -venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, -oranges, capers in vinegar----" - -"It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and -ever, that's one good thing!" Mother said, "for nobody will care to try -that _menu_ twice!" - -"It would look well in the papers, though," George said. "What do you -say to barbecued pig?" - -But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and -Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not -obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at -twelve o'clock, and all the guests to unmask then. - -The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but -at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had -designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing -red splotch in one corner, which signified George's passionate Italian -nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with -Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to -open everything! - -"My Goodness!" she said. - -"Isn't it right?" I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at -it I was no wiser, for I couldn't see what was wrong. There it was, -written out very nicely, "_Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the -twenty-first_," and the address in the corner, and all those rules about -the dominos, and that was all. - -"Oh, dear darling Christina," I begged, deadly curious, "do tell me what -is wrong with that? I cannot guess." - -"It's just as well, perhaps," she said. "Preserve your sublime -ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can." - -And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that -being loyal to her employer. - -I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one -better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was -_Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home_! I think that was absurd, for -though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn't quite live -here yet! and Mother does, and what's more, Mother never goes out at all -except to take a servant's character, or scold the butcher, or something -of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from -him, and looked at it, and I'll swear I saw her smile before she tore it -up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn't tell me what was wrong -with the first card. - -We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole -morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, -though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I -don't believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now -and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted -asked--six, no less, if you please--and she's only been out six months! -And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a -card trick! But he didn't take any notice, and kept walking up and down -the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody -wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; -there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have -than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of -course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more -of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there -had been about it. I kept saying, "Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You -give me all the plain people to do." - -Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all -away after fifty had been written. - -Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to -do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he -was going to announce it in the pages of _The Bittern_, and that all his -friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how -should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that -depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know -that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that -you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and -find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real -friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the -acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and -lemonade. There should be a password, _Hot with_, and _cold without_, -and they roared when I told them this, but I didn't see why. Then the -party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where -they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn't call -themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn't be able to -come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems -to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They -have to be paid for coming, surely, and I'd rather see them than any of -the others. "If they don't come the party will be spoilt for me," I said -to Christina. - -"It will be all right," she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of -course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like. - -Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that -brother of Caesar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of -Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny -thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, -while I look like a big boy. My legs are very long. George has a monk's -costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of -looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very -nice. - -I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it -somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that -anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, -bell-like--I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but -he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others. - -The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs -of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved -away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently -lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in -moderation; it was rather fun--I felt as if I were planting bulbs. -George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be -put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to -put it on the fire. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -About nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o'clock the house was -overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger's -costume he had borrowed, with George's consent, and I do believe he -enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was -to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the -evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, -for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. -I'm sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people -didn't come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were -detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at -their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a -detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with -a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of -course, but the devil needs no domino. And _I_ knew all the time that it -was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for _The -Bittern_, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, -and I had no butter to my bread for a week because of him. How I was -supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I -can't see, only _The Bittern_ man knew well enough, I expect! Never, -_never_ again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer! - -There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them -discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get -jammed in behind, "powerless to move," as they say in the novels, even -if I had wanted to. People _are_ careless. I heard heaps of -conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, -without stopping to think whether or no I wasn't one of the family. I -suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn't -matter what they said, and it needn't count afterwards. - -The man I listened to was _The Bittern_ man, dressed as the devil. The -woman's domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any -colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. _The -Bittern_ man seemed to know her. - -"I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in -London?" - -The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask. - -"Not quite, but very nearly," she said. "I am a gas. Give me a name!" - -"I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?" - -"Is it a noxious gas?" she said, "for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I -only speak of things as I find them, and one must send up bright copy, -or one wouldn't be taken on. I tell the truth----" - -"Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!" said he. "The devil -and _The Bittern_ are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that -makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than -one. Now tell me, can't we exchange celebrities? I'll give you my names, -and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?" - -"All the world--and somebody else's wife!" she said quickly, and the -devil rubbed his hands. "But that is the rub--we can't know who they all -are till twelve o'clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will -decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest -mended." - -"Then we shall have to invent them!" he said. "The very form of -invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me -which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here." - -"Naturally! Wasn't it she who discovered George Vero-Taylor and made him -the fashion, you know?" - -"Do you suppose he was particularly obliged to her for digging his -family out as well?" - -"You naughty man! But it was a most extraordinary thing, wasn't it? -Delightful, and not too scandalous to use. For the man is really quite -harmless, only a frantic _poseur_ and----" - -"Ah, yes, and posed in London Society for ten years as an unmarried man! -Suppose some nice girl had gone and fallen in love with him?" - -"Ah, but he was careful, as careful as a good _parti_ has to be in the -London season. He lent them his books, and guanoed their minds -thoroughly, but he always sheered off when they showed signs of taking -him seriously." - -"Chose married women to flirt with, for preference? What does the wife -say?" - -"The wife? So there is a wife! But no one has ever seen her. Perpetual -hay-fever, or something of the sort." - -"That is what Vero-Taylor gives out." - -"Oh, I don't really think there is anything in--with Lady Scilly, I -mean. He is too selfish--they are both too selfish. Those sort of women -are like the Leaning Tower, they lean but never fall. It is an alliance -of interest, so to speak. He introduces the literary element into her -parties, and writes her novel for her, and in return she flatters him -and takes his daughter out. Poor girl, she would be quite pretty, if she -were properly dressed, but the mediaeval superstition, you know--she has -to dress like a Monna Somebody or other, so as to advertise his books. I -believe she did refuse to have her hair shaved off her forehead _a la -Rimini_, but she mostly has to comply----" - -"Well, I never heard of a man using his daughter as a sandwich-man -before. Which is she?" - -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen pointed out Ariadne, whose bath-towel was -tumbling all over her eyes. - -"She looks half-starved!" said _The Bittern_ man. - -"My dear man," said Sulphuretta Hydrogen, "don't you know that they -have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told -that they have a kind of buttery-hatch--a cold pie always cut in the -cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so -disposed." - -"Well, they are free, at any rate--free from the trammels of custom----" - -"Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!" - -I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told -about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the -buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman -that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said-- - -"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a -position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she -chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she -eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn't far behind-hand, -though he is yellow!" - -And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! -But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball? - -I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to -make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there's a will -there's a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to -like it. Though I don't believe young men marry the girls who make eyes -at them best, and as Ariadne's one object is to marry and get out of -this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong -way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was. - -"I am sure I don't know," she said crossly. - -"I'll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is," I said. "She is in the -party--in the room!" - -"Well, I can't help that!" said Ariadne, tossing her head. "Mother ought -to look after her better." - -I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in -her own house, and even her own daughter didn't seem to care whether she -was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady -Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn't, for I -thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino--I seemed to -remember having helped to hem it. They needn't say that eyes can't look -bright in a mask, for this woman's did. She went up to George, and she -didn't speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of -French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat. - -"_Eh, bien, beau masque!_" was what she said. "I know you, but you do -not know me!" - -"I know you by your eyes," he said. "Eyes like the sea----" - -Now, Lady Scilly's eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them -that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that -George was talking without thinking. - -"Eyes without their context mean nothing!" she said, and then I knew the -woman was Christina, for that was the very thing she had once said to -Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice. - -"Come!" she said to George. "Speak to me, say anything to me that the -hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!" - -"Madame!" said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but -after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had -no idea that Christina could have done it so well! - -"Come," she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown -impatient. "Come, a madrigal--a _ballade_, in any kind of china!" - -I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn't Lady -Scilly. She couldn't have managed that about ballads and lyrics. - -He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little--just a -little. - -"No, no, I dare not!" she cried out. "There is a hobgoblin called Ben in -the room--a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why -on earth don't you send that boy to school?" - -I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, -and he took the first chance of leaving the mask's side. There wasn't a -buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so -hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn't -say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying -themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only -time people are really gay, I observe, is at a funeral, or at _Every -man_, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn't be jolly. - -I was thinking sadly about my dear Mother, and wondering where she was, -when I ran against a Frenchman, a real Frenchman, and he asked me where -was the mistress of the house, and that showed me that other people -thought about her too; I didn't answer for a moment, and he went on in a -kind of dreamy voice-- - -"I was brought here to see an English interior----" - -"Well," I said. "It's inside four walls, isn't it?" - -"_Mon Dieu, mademoiselle_," said he, "I had made to myself another idea -of _le home Anglais_--the fireside--the _maitresse de la maison_ with -her keys depending from her girdle--the children--the sacred children, -standing round her--_bebe_ crowing----" - -"There isn't any baby!" I said, "and a good thing too! But this is a -party, don't you see, and we are all playing the fool, and we shall be -sensible to-morrow, and if you will excuse me, I am one of the sacred -children, and I am just looking for my mother's knee to go and stand -against." - -He made way for me with a "_Permettez, mademoiselle!_" and I went, -thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. -Ben didn't know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the -door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling -people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in -the street, with a man, who was George. There are tall bushes near our -door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door -gardens. Ben didn't know till I told him; he is the stupid child that -doesn't know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She -had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There's -a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn't, being a -poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it -couldn't be seen under her mask, and whined, - -"Oh, I'm so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!" - -"For beautiful women--I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes -of dialogue," George said; "there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck -your red pleasure from the teeth of pain." ... - -"Yes, I am very wicked," she said. "My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do -you know, I am almost afraid of myself." - -"As I am--as we all are," said George. - -"Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are -you so guarded, so unenterprising?" - -She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that -Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn't, so she couldn't think -why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was -bi-chaperoned--if that is the way to put it--for there was me too. Ben -and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don't think George did, because he could -not quite make a fool of himself before Ben. Besides, it was draughty -out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to -come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn't. She said she had -never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and -she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some -rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity -again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and -there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, -since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it. - -George looked at his watch, and said, "In ten minutes they will give the -signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better----?" - -"I shall leave the party," she said. "I shall walk straight home! It -will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet -again in the glare of----" - -"The lights are shaded," George put in. - -"I alluded to the glare of publicity!" she said. "I shall ask this -commissionaire," she said, "to call my carriage----" - -"Better not," said George hastily, "for you would have to give him your -name,--your name which I know. For my sake--won't you slip back into the -ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like -the rest? Believe me it is best." - -"It is my host commands, is it not?" she said slyly, to show him that -she had known it was he all the time, and ran past him, in a skittish -way. As if he hadn't known all the time that she knew that he knew that -she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in -pretending. - -Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up -a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which -seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted -so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the -devil was going with her. He was _The Bittern_ man, of course, only I -didn't know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly. - -"You know the way?" she was asking him. - -"I know the house, like the inside of a glove," he said, and indeed he -did, for hadn't I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me -instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, -rather like Puck was, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, so I thought I would -stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off -her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved -so badly in both. _The Bittern_ man offered to show her the way to -George's sanctum. - -"You see, you can go where you like in a show-house--or ought to be able -to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate." - -"The press is too much with us, soon and late," said she, laughing. - -"Ah, but confess, my lady, you can't do without us!" said this awful -young man--though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose -in everywhere in the interest of his paper. "You suffer us gladly." - -"I don't suffer at all--I shouldn't allow you to make me suffer," said -she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out -of the Bible. - -I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn't steal -the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs. - -"I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe," said -_The Bittern_ man. - -"Haven't you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less -eccentric as one goes up," said Lady Scilly. - -"Art is only skin-deep," said _The Bittern_ man. "Just look at that bed, -which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive -or artistic than Staple's.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and -let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear -our host give the word for unmasking." - -So they marched out of George's bedroom, for that was where they had got -to--and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and -modern--and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. -Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I -wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her -work, for though the supper was all sent in from a shop, there would be -sure to be something for her to do. - -These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in -a blaze of light and an empty kitchen--for the moment only, for one -heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, -and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady -Scilly and _The Bittern_ man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a -checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and -looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen -fire, which had caught her face on one side. - -Lady Scilly and _The Bittern_ man took no notice of her, but walked -about looking at things. - -"And so this is the Poet's kitchen!" Lady Scilly said, rather -scornfully. "How his pots shine!" - -"Very comfortable indeed!" said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise -George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask--"It's no end of a -privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet's use. -This is his soup-ladle, and----" - -Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook's sentence for -him. - -"And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat--and -I'm his wife!" - -Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of -polite. He isn't a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and -he began to come here. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -Smart women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in -the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn't got either of her own, so she is -always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom -asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age--too near. -That's what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene -about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the -thing, I don't care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly's motor is -always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We -run into something live--or else the kerb--most times we are out, and -it's extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though -once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get -into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is -just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. -I read an interview with her in _The Bittern_ the other day (she had to -start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it -said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was -the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how -could she be? There isn't room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, -unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely. - -Lord Scilly is very well born too, he's the eldest son of the Earl of -Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with -expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes -he would, but Lord Scilly doesn't, because he's not quite a beast. He is -very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding -her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have -heard that he doesn't think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering -herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn't understand -why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write -novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. -George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every -morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn't mind in the least her -collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; -but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to -collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different. - -I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who -tells me everything, doesn't think so much collaborating is quite what -is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, "blessed if she'd -let herself be put upon by a countess." - -Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy--that's what her name means, -Paquerette. That's what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a -grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it -makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. -Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she -is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all -times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won't. If she -gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may -say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and -listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am -always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish. - -The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve--Lady Scilly had -sent a messenger for me--she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue -tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was -writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a -few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly -all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers -with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and _La Femme -Polype_ was the name of one, and _Madame Belle-et-m'aime_ another. Lady -Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French -if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also -on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that -made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and -the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors -hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush -things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw -so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with "To darling, -from Kitty London," and as many more with "Best love, yours cordially, -Gladys Margate," and I have given up trying to count the ones of -actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy -forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote _The Sorrows of the Amethyst_, -and one of the K.C. who wrote _Duchesses in the Divorce Court_--the -Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play -called _The Up-and-Down Girl_, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces -once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his -volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I -think he's put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, -which isn't often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. -There's a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes--I don't -suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so -big it would burst the post-bag--and there are two sorts of racks on it, -one to hold her bills that she hasn't paid, and that's got printed on it -in gold "_Oh Horrors!_" and another with those she has paid with "_Thank -Heaven!_" on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays -bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends -something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however -broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker -would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances -are you'll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, -being dead, you can't be expected to pay! - -I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and -also, if they are writing, I can't help seeing what it is, and then if -it is "_Dearests_" and "_Darlings_" I do feel awkward. But to-day when -she had said "How do you do?" she handed me the writing-board. - -"Write for me, dear," she said, "to the most odious woman in London. And -the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she -dared to play Lady Ildegonde in _The Devey Devastator_ at a _matinee_ at -Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses--stood by the -management of course--and nails like a coal-heaver's. Now don't you -think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round -my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene -Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not -forgive her. Now you write. '_Dear thing!_' Don't be surprised, I can't -afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! '_You were wonderful -yesterday! I know what's what, and believe me that's it!_' I mean the -dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call -diplomacy. Don't say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will -see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything -for me, and _The Bittern_ will do anything for her. We will go and see -her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, -dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!" - -She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it -didn't matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and -then she seemed to feel better. - -"I wish I could do without Miller!" she said. "Old Miller hates me, and -I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good 'perks' for that. -She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her -one day. So they will! I can't afford to quarrel with a woman who can do -my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear -to-day, Miller?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Miller (she's Scotch, and she is rather stingy of -"ladyships"), "there's your blue that come home last week. It seems a -pity to leave it aside just yet." - -"You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can't -put that on, it's too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it." - -"Then there is the grey _panne_." - -"Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own -maid. No offence to you, Miller." - -"I don't intend to take any, my lady," said Miller, pursing up her -lips. "What about your black with sequins?" - -"Yes, let's have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child's hair. -You see, I dress to you, my dear." - -But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just -as she chooses her horses to be a pair. - -Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only -thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her -nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once -had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I -shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it--the -best paints--and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year. - -Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in -Paris--rather purplish--it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is -just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and -looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked -away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, -and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if -her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little -tendrils of hair down on her forehead. - -"Child, child," she said to me. "Do you know what makes me sigh?" - -"Indigestion?" I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn't, -that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so -diabolically, so preternaturally ugly. - -"Oh no, you look sweet!" I said. I really thought so, but Miller -grinned. - -"You are delightful!" Lady Scilly said. "And you can have that boa you -are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me -meretricious; and, child, when your times comes, don't ever--ever--have -anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can't leave it off, -and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to -subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the -time. Oh, _la, la_!" - -I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we -read of in a book. I've seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her -black and blue, and she kept saying, "Go on! Harder! Harder!" but as it -didn't seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn't do it again. But I -took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself. - -When Lady Scilly was ready she said--"We won't lunch in, we will go to -Prince's and have a _filet_. Scilly's in a bad temper because of bills. -Well, bills must come,--and I may go, I suppose. There's no reason one -shouldn't keep out of their way." - -She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she -told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us -at three o'clock. - -The butler said, "Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party -of ten!" all in the same voice. - -"So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!" and she flopped into a hall -seat. - -"Yes, my lady," Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door -again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude. - -So we took off our hats, at least I did--she wears a hat every time she -can, except in bed--and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and -her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I -know. - -Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, "You have got too much -on!" - -She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so -as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office -laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like -blackberries on every bush--one of the penalties of greatness. - -"I've never really seen your face, Paquerette," he said, "and I do -believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are -right not to make it too cheap. Who's coming? Smart people, or one of -your Bohemian crowds?" - -"You'll see," she said. "Mrs. Ptomaine, for one." - -"Dear Tommy!" said he. "I love her.... Desist, O wasp!" he said to one -that had come in by the window and was bothering him. "This is a -precursor of Tommy." - -"Tommy's all right, so long as she hasn't got her knife into you. She -favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see -that she doesn't make eyes at my tame millionaire." - -"Oh, Mr. Pawky!" said Simon. "Is he coming? You should put me opposite, -so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn't Tommy have a bit -of him? She's terribly thin!" - -"Because he isn't a very big millionaire--only half a one--and there's -only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may -flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else -is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and -mortally afraid of Lauderdale--and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I -nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should -like to have seen all your faces!" - -Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the -millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and -indigestible, and as if millionairing didn't agree with him. He could -only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little -"How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear" conversation with me, but he attended most -to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss -Lauderdale, and _Lady Ildegonde_ and the dresses, and discussing -Society, as it is now. - -"Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No, -the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can't -forgive is for people to bore us!" - -I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can't culture, -while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn't waste -her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society -takes count of that she didn't mention? - -"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to -Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale -now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour -into my life!" - -"Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly. - -"That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty -London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can -play billiards on his own back!" - -"Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant, -but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his -hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and -stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They -say he runs it? - -He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. -Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to -have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to -distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and -flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared -her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much -tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats -were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across -the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly -never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her -other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice -painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for -him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash -the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting -Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I -wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did -women, but I was born too late for that. - -When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a -leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but -waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at -it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the -flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, -and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the -drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent -somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes. - -At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady -Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs. -Ptomaine. - -"I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had -several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put -a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked -to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!" - -"What does she do?" I asked. - -"Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers. -Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to -make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free. -I don't care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if -their names are given, and then they don't worry so with their bills. -And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a -lesson--things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite -say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one's quarrels through -the press, isn't it? Here we are at Tommy's flat! Up at the very, very -top! The vulture in its eyrie--is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I -know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift! -One oughtn't to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!" - -I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door. - -"So soon, darling! Delightful!" she said. She didn't look very pleased -to see us, I thought, but she was "in to tea," I could see, for there -were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with -egg-powder. - -"I wanted to prime you about your critique of _Lady Ildegonde_, you -know. Now, Tommy, it is understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and -punished for her impertinence in daring to act _me_, in Camille's -dresses." - -"Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you -don't trust your Tommy." - -"Not so much darling dear, now, if you don't mind," said Lady Scilly. -"We are alone, and this child doesn't need impressing. It fidgets me." - -"All right, sweetheart--I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite -obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state. -"Is it too early for tea?" - -"Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a -headache?" - -"Three distinct headaches," said poor Tommy. "Did three first nights -last night, and got a separate headache for each." - -"How interesting!" said Lady Scilly. "I mean I am very sorry. Is there -nothing I can do?" - -"No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest -will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think -of nothing for an hour." - -Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were -just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire! - -Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very -pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her -in an undertone, "No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea. -_Must_ you go?" - -Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as -my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine," -in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more -"dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?" -and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have -serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink -toast-and-water in her house any more. - -"There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it," -she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after -another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon -motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?' -But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking -the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll -get him to give her a new carpet!" - -I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it -was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and -then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having -nothing marketable about her, not even a title. - -If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so -obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they -seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. -Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted -with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of -Frederick Cook, perhaps? - -She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write -Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. -Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the -night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office -and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. -Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to -take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to -change it for another and a nicer. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -It is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten -thousand copies of a book, you can't get any sort of useful advice on -the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner -consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice -from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can't in fairness -advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that -Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl, -she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a -room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to -ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too -shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see -if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl -like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious. -She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly's aunt, the Countess of -Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she -holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a -feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs -them to invent a fate for her. - -"Haven't I got a future like other people?" she whines, and then the -poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in -her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to -have three husbands, although she is already seventy. - -Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at -least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see -people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they -would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to -bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in -shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking -silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been -having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very -serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, -though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne -what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only -two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right -sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as -Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. -Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite -sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry, -and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece -of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as -she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in -the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than -usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very -smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the -Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never! - -Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed -Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a -nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least -that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we -were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to -help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything -countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all -that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds -unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to -go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can -ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good -wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that -George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It -is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and -so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of -one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never -going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. -I don't know how much that is. She will never tell. - -Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn't got. It is odd, how -taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, -dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And -fashion after all is only a matter of "bulge." You bulge in a different -place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave -off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you -may consider you are a well-dressed woman! - -Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence -a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every -week, from _The Bittern_, and for _Wild Oats_. George is "Pease Blossom" -on _The Bittern_. We don't need to subscribe to a library, we live in a -book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers' Row -afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the -smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready -George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in -together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of -_Darnel_, and people thought him clever but malicious. - -Papa doesn't know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the -novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has -no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time -for--it depends on how many Ariadne gives me--and then when she is doing -her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper -ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so -it's all right. - -Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn't invent, but -found ready made. "Up to the level of this author's reputation" is one; -"marks a distinct advance," "breezy," "strong, or convincing," and the -opposites, "unconvincing," "weak," "morbid," "effete," are useful ones. -She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions "a fine -sense of atmosphere" if she honestly can. - -She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She -flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their -books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and -what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not -one of the whole d--d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, -especially The _Bittern_, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that -ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and -gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote -her own words to her! - -Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the -reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of -course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a -pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as -to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he -allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, -there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but -one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She -was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for -heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up -her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error -and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel -action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society! - -It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, -because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have -the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother -listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner -to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up -and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about. - -"D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of -mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!" - -It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George, -you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a -regular corker of a review. - -"I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal -ineptitude of this author's_----'" - -I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though -I never saw it in print. - -Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all, -which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes -oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The -Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole -year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went -to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote -about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself -wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but -the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to -frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, -and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, -and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the -cookery-book. - -That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, -who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all -about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and -Countesses are interested in mediaeval knights and maidens, cooks--nor -yet laundresses--aren't. - -"The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!" he says -sometimes. "If I was proper, they wouldn't even look at me!" - -"Ay! the suburbs?" George says dreamily; "the kind, the mild, the -tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught -Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in Pall Mall and -Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy----" - -"You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!" says Mr. Aix. - -"I have shocked them--they love being shocked! I have startled -them--that does them good. I have puzzled them--not altogether -unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with -Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a -common, romantic denominator----" - -"You are like those useful earthworms of _le pere_ Darwin, bringing up -soil and interweaving strata," said Mr. Aix wearily. - -George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. "Yes, I dominate the -lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at -the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you -ever envisage Peckham?" - -"I lived there and sold matches once," said she, "and, moreover, I've -kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs." - -"Is there anything you haven't done?" said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a -woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living -among his raw material. When he was writing _The Serio-Comic_, in order -to get the serious atmosphere--which I should have thought gin would -have done for well enough--he went every night of his life to some music -hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their -frocks at the back for them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out -just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn't preach -for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn't have told him -anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend -that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina -calls this novel "The Sweetmeat in the Gutter," and loves it, though -George says it is as broad as it's long, and that ladies shouldn't read -it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it -doesn't matter. _I_ have read _The Serio-Comic_, and I can't see -anything wrong. There's more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie -Dulcimer's real name is Frances Raggles, and she's the mother of five in -the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there's a -brandy-and-soda in every chapter. - -Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like -Lady Scilly's pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears -spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says "Quite so," as -if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. -He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like. -Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would -knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks -anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an -exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a -telegram--so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different -ways, and Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for -the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both -at the same time. - -He is about the only person who doesn't think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne -naturally dislikes him. She can't help it. If we didn't let her think -she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that -sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won't consider himself snubbed. -It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him. -Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him -if it is to be called _The Dustman_ or _The General_, and what the -_locale_ is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside -London? - -I have an idea that it will be called _The Seamstress_, for he has -lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where -we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to -sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle -into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour. - -Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep -her eyes open, as she always is after a dance. - -"I have often wondered," he began, "what must be the sensations of a -young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled, -is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her -senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous beat of the time, -relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying -frivolity? Is she----?" - -He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted-- - -"I can tell you. She's thinking all the time, 'Is there a hair-pin -sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in -front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. ---- it -depends which Mister is there that evening--think of it all?" - -"Don't, Tempe!" said Ariadne. - -"No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell -me some more things about women." - -"Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a -hansom?" - -"No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?" - -"Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like," I said. "It is only because -there happens to be a looking-glass there." - -George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary -agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in -Surrey and tempted them--to sell him the rights of every novel they did -for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their -heads and said, "You must go to Middleman!" Then he took them to a -London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads -and sent him to Middleman, who makes all their bargains for them, but -he can't control all the reviews. - -One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in -his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go. -George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an -effort to be a hero to one's typewriter, or one's daughter. - -"I am in a rage!" Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he -looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. "Just let me get hold of -this fellow they have got on _The Bittern_, and see if I don't wring his -neck for him!" - -George didn't say anything, and so I asked--somebody had to--"What has -_The Bittern_ man done, please?" - -"Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that's all! I'd have the -fellow know that I'm read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England! -Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!" - -George read it--at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn't seem to want -to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying-- - -"Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth--one can -always learn something from criticism, or so I find!" - -"What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent -paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding, -that's what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it -him!" - -"Well, it wasn't me wrote it, Mr. Aix," I said, "nor Ariadne!" He isn't -supposed to know that George farms out his reviews. - -Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it -had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in -for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn't he trouble -to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were -growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have -said to _The Bittern_ editor, "Avaunt! Don't tempt an author to review -his friend's book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many -reasons!" That is my idea of literary morality. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -George came back from his yachting tour with the Scillys very brown and -cheerful, having collected enough sunshine for a new book, and Christina -is typing it at his dictation. - -George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in -touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can't -for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that -she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs -to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of -her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the -end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, -as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes -among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, -he says, and she doesn't mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows -he is being managed, which shows that he doesn't really think he is. I -asked her once why she didn't marry, but she said the profession of -typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off -your high stool if you wanted. - -Christina always says rude things about epigrams and marriage. She is -not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of -course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and -ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes -ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, -and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china -memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks -on Marriage. - -1. Man cannot live by epigram alone. - -2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at -a _bal masque_ at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards. - -3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in -the shape of conversation that grows near it. - -4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude. - -5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all -wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it. - -George's new novel is to be called _The Senior Epigrammatist_, and the -scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands. - -"Our well-known blend," said Mr. Aix, "of opaline sea and crystal -epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this -sunlight soap won't wash clothes. It isn't for home consumption. It -gladdens publishers' offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The -fires of passion----" - -"Don't talk to me of passion," said Christina. "I just detest the word. -Passion is piggish! It's a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, -and I wouldn't be seen dead with a temperament, in these days." - -She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She -typed something like this-- - -Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (----) C. Ball B B---- - -"Who is Ball?" said Mr. Aix anxiously. - -Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off. - -"A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in -his shoes." - -"The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!" - -I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She -hasn't said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him. - -It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen's Gate, that -she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, -that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever -you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, -though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, -I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she -would not marry, and that was a beard. - -He wished out loud that he hadn't got let in for the sitting-down seats, -so that he could not make a clean bolt of it when he had had enough of -Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so -though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us -quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that "she knew a bank!" -as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. -After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced -him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and -gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of -him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round -indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through -the programme though people shoo'd him, and then he stopped for a little -and apologized, and went on again. - -"I don't often turn up at this sort of function, do you?" he asked -Christina. - -"No, I do not," she replied, "I have too much to do as a general thing." - -"And stay at home and do it," said he; "you're wise." - -"I have to!" said Christina. "Oh," she sighed, "I am so dreadfully hot." - -It was June. - -"Why do you wear that bag?" he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which -was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every -one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a -different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like -every one else. - -"Get out of it, can't you, and let me take care of it for you, and that -boa thing you have got round your neck." - -She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him. - -"I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the -seat," she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. -So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers -with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking -at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn't -seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn't -seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he -would make George straighten his back! - -"I say," he said presently, "do you like gramophones?" - -"I love them," said Christina, and I knew it was a lie. - -"My people have a perfectly splendid one!" said he, and his whole face -lighted up. "I wish you could hear it." - -Christina wished she could, and he said-- - -"Oh, then, we will manage it somehow." - -When the concert was over he didn't bolt as he had said he wanted to, -but gave us ices, Christina one, me two, and then Christina put the bag -on again. - -"If you were in my motor in that thing in a shower you'd get drowned," -said he. "Why, it would _hold_ the water. I should like to drive you in -my motor all the same. I say, can't I call on you?" - -Christina told him very nicely that she was private secretary to the -author, Mr. George Vero-Taylor, and hadn't much time for herself. She -seemed to say that this made a call impossible. - -"Ah, I see! Live in, do you? Well, I'll call there, drop my pasteboard, -all straight and formal, you know, and then there can be no objection to -my giving you a spin in the motor. Right you are! Sinky Cento House. -What a rum name! Suggests drains! Never mind, I'll be there, and then -when I've made the acquaintance of your chaperon, she'll allow you to -come to tea with my mater, and make the acquaintance of the gramophone. -My mater's too old to go out. It's a ripper, the gramophone, I mean, -like some other people I am thinking of!" - -"What a breezy man!" said Christina, on the way home. "He reminds me of -The Northman I used to draw at South Kensington. I broke him, and had to -pay seven-and-six for him." Then she began to think--I believe it was -about Peter Ball. He _was_ handsome, for he had blue eyes and a little -short, straight nose like the Sovereigns in Madame Tussaud's. - -"Isn't he exactly like Harold of England?" I said to Christina. "I hope -George won't snub him when he comes to see you?" - -"He won't come," said she; "but if he did he wouldn't know he was being -snubbed." - -"No, he would say to George, 'Keep your snubs for a man of your own -size.' But, Christina dear, I always _thought_ you hated both marriage -and gramophones." - -"I am not so sure about gramophones," said she. "Perhaps a very big -one----?" - -"A six-footer, like Mr. Peter Ball, eh?" - -She was quite moody and absent in the 'bus going home, and wouldn't go -on top to please me. Then I accidentally stuck my umbrella in over the -top of her shoe as I walked beside her, and then she was too cross to -speak at all. I respected her mood. That is why I am beloved in the home -circle. But I have my own ideas, and they keep me amused. - -I was unfortunately out of the way when Mr. Peter Ball did call, three -days later. Mother and Christina were in, and Ariadne, who gave me a -true account of it all. She says the first thing he said to Christina -was, "I hope you don't think I have been too precipitate?" I suppose he -meant in calling? He stared about him a good deal at first, and she -thought that George's queer furniture made him feel shy, and that he -thought the ivory figure of Buddha quite indecent. She was sure he -didn't admire her (Ariadne), but only Christina, because Christina is a -"tailor-made" girl, that men like. Mother made the tea very strong that -afternoon, so as to make him feel at home, and then after all he didn't -touch tea. She kindly offered him a brandy-and-soda and he declined -that, but I expect it was only because it would have seemed -disrespectful to Christina. All men are alike, and prone to a b. and s. -if they can get it without disgrace. Mother was sure that he had fallen -head-over-ears in love with Christina, and she with him at the very -first sight. She told me so, and said she meant to help it on. - -"It is because Christina is so used to seeing George every day," said I. -"Peter Ball is very different, isn't he?" - -Mother said that there was no accounting for tastes, and that for her -part she considered George's type was the nicest. But whatever we did, -she said, we were not to chaff Christina about it, and put her off a -very good match. A girl of Christina's sort never took kindly to chaff, -and though she should be sorry to lose Christina as a secretary to -George, it being impossible to tell what sort of minx he might engage in -her place, she for one wouldn't like any personal consideration whatever -to interfere with Christina's establishment in life. Peter Ball is a -landed gentry. He is M.F.H. in the county of Northumberland to the -Rattenraw Hunt, and a capital shot and first-rate angler. When his old -mother dies he will be richer, but he is a good son, and often stays -with her in Leinster Gardens where he has asked me and Christina to go -to tea next week. - -I promised not to chaff, but if she had only known, it would have taken -a steam-crane to put Christina off that particular thing. She talked -lots about Peter. He was the "finest specimen of humanity she had ever -come across!" "Such a contrast to the little anaemic, effete, -ambisextrous (I hope I have got it right?) creatures that haunt Cinque -Cento House, who are all trying to get more out of their heads than is -in them!" "Greek in his simplicity, a sort of mixture of John Bull and -Antinoeus!" I say, just wait till you see his mother; nice men's mothers -are sometimes sad eye-openers, and Peter Ball is always talking about -his. Also it is quite on the cards that she may not like Christina, and -then I am sure he will never propose to her. He is an admirable son. I -believe he keeps a gramophone just to attract the girls he admires into -his mother's cave, and give her the opportunity of looking over them, -and making up her mind if they are fit to be her Peter's wife or no. - -When the eventful day came, Christina was on thorns. She didn't know how -to dress. She finally left off the chiffon bag and wore a fringe-net, -and her best-cut "tailor-made," and took out her ear-rings lest they -should damn her in his mother's eyes. Then at exactly five minutes to -four we rang the bell in 1000 Leinster Square. - -A proud butler opened the door. George will only let us have maids, -although he could afford ten butlers. - -The house was beautiful, and not a bit like ours. "Early Victorian," -Christina whispered me. She was dreadfully nervous, and made me too. I -dropped my umbrella in the rack with such a clatter that she blushed and -scolded me. Then a palm-leaf tickled my head as I went by, and I begged -its pardon, thinking some one behind was trying to attract my -attention. We were taken into a big room with pedestal things in gold -and stucco set down at intervals, and a clock with a bare pendulum which -looks simply undressed to me, and a bronze Father Time with his sickle -lying lazily across the top. On another clock there was a gilt man in a -gilt cart whipping up two gilt horses. The carpet had large bouquets of -roses on it, and I thought what a good game it would be to pretend they -were islands and hop across from one to the other. I began, but she -stopped me. In a corner was the gramophone, like a great brass ear put -out to hear what you were saying. It was playing when we went in, like -an old man with a wheeze, and in came Peter Ball looking as if he had -just got out of a bath, and said, "How-do-you-do! it is playing -'Coppelia.'" Then it played "Valse Bleue" and "Casey at the Wake," and -"Casey as Doctor," and "When other Lips," and then Peter Ball said his -mother was ready. - -Into another room we went, full of Berlin wool-work chairs, and screens -of Potiphar and his wife, and the curtains were of green rep with ropes -of silk to tie them back and gilt festoons to hide their beginnings, and -an old old lady in a big arm-chair and a lace cap with nodding bugles -was in a corner, just like another and older bit of furniture. - -We were introduced; she was very deaf and very blind, and I am not sure -she didn't think I was the girl Peter wanted to marry. However that -might be, she seemed pleased with us, and we talked of her son and the -house. Christina, who used to say she preferred a Cheret poster to a -Titian, and plain deal to mahogany, admired everything freely. The -rosewood wheelbarrow with silver fittings given to Peter Ball's father -when he laid a first stone somewhere, she said was superb and so -graceful; the picture of old Mrs. Ball by Ingres in a poke bonnet and -short waist she said was far superior to anything by Burne Jones. - -"Who is Burne Jones?" said the old lady, and Christina denied Burne -Jones cheerfully. I thought of my favourite piece of poetry-- - - "See, ye Ladies that are coy, - What the mighty Love can do!" - -Then we had tea (the cake in a silver basket on a fringed mat, if you -please!), and after we had talked a little more, we said good-bye, and -Peter took us out. He had rushed out of the room just five minutes -before, when the first symptoms of leave-taking manifested themselves, -and we saw why, when we passed out through the first room where the -gramophone was. It played us out with "The Wedding March," surely a -graceful thought of Peter Ball's! - -"He's very nice, but what a pity he hasn't got taste!" I said as we came -away. You see, I am used to Cinque Cento House, and I have always been -told that there is only one taste, and that ours is it. - -"Taste!" Christina mooned, as we got into a 'bus. "There's so much of it -about, isn't there? On my word, it will soon be quite _chic_ to be -vulgar." - -It was not difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing after that. -It was about this time that Mr. Aix found Christina typing her own name -and Peter's on a sheet of III Imperial. He hadn't even set eyes on Peter -Ball then, but he did a few days later, when Peter Ball came to tea, -holding his grey kid gloves in his hand. George, luckily, was out again, -really out, not pretending to be in his study, and Mr. Aix it was who -opened the front-door for Peter when he went away at seven. - -"A man!" he said, when he came back to us all in the winter garden, and -Christina was just going out--escaping to her own room to think over -Peter Ball, I dare say--and she said as she passed him-- - -"I could hug you for saying that, Mr. Aix." - -"No, you couldn't," said he. "I am popularly supposed to be repellent. A -lady said I was like a white stick of celery grown in a dark cellar. -Another, of music-hall celebrity, compared me to a blasted pipe-stem. I -do not look for success with your sex. It was kind of you to think of -it, though." - -Peter Ball meant business, or else we could not have all spoken of it so -openly. George was awfully cross at the idea of having to find a new -secretary. Lady Scilly said she thought he could do better than -Christina, who was too forward (and too pretty). She tried very hard to -flirt with Peter herself, but perhaps Peter thought _he_ could do -better, and wouldn't. She looked into his face and said, "You great big -beauty!" She told him "high" stories, as Christina and I call them, and -he wouldn't laugh. She asked him right out why he wouldn't, and he -answered equally right out, "Because I disapprove of all jesting with -regard to the relations of the sexes!" - -Lady Scilly looked disgusted, and left him severely alone, as he meant -her to. - -For weeks after this he was like a full pail of water one is afraid to -carry without spilling. At last he slopped over, and asked Christina to -be his wife. I wasn't in the room, of course, but Christina was nice and -told us afterwards. He went on his knees, she says, and I believe her, -because I found a cushion on the floor immediately after, before the -housemaid had tidied the room, and I think he had managed to put it -under his knees without her seeing. Our floor is bony. - -"The very moment," she said, "he had got me to say yes, he jumped up and -rushed out without his hat, to send a telegram to his mother with the -good news!" - -She thought this so nice of him and so flattering, as showing that he -hadn't made quite sure of her. For though we all knew she meant to take -him, he was not supposed to be aware of it. Considering that Christina -is grown up, she ought to be able to make a man think exactly what she -wishes him to think about her. Such power comes, or should come, with -advancing years, and is one of its compensations. Ariadne, of course, -isn't old enough to have left off being quite transparent, and regrets -it deeply in some of her poetry. - -Christina was married to Peter Ball almost directly, and Ariadne and I -were her bridesmaids. Mrs. Mander gave us our dresses and hats. They -were quite fashionable; she would have no nonsense or necklaces. Ariadne -looked smart and like other people, for once. She didn't look so pretty, -but it is a mistake to want to go about the streets looking like a -picture. Prettiness isn't everything, and the really smartest people -would disdain to look simply ready for an artist to paint them. - -Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly's best friend, was Peter Ball's best man. He -had met Ariadne at the Scillys', but at Christina's wedding he said that -he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. -She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never -did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and -George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own -asking. - -That can't be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the -iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did _rather_ like her, but he wasn't -quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that -means--and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry -about it, as of course she would be. At all events he didn't come--his -chief kept him in till six o'clock every day, or some excuse of that -sort. As if a man couldn't always manage a call if he wanted to, even if -he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars! - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -We never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton -or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of -course St. John's Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole -month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in -Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty--something about a company -that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn't care where -we went, as he isn't to be with us. He just forks out the money as -Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do -things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all -we _are_ his family, and everybody knows that now. - -I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn't so -much about. - -Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven't got an ounce of country fibre in them. -They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase -them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the -quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is -sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there's a wasp inside -it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They -haven't country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down -grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, -and offend everybody all round. - -So they weren't particularly happy in the first rooms we took, at a farm -just out of Whitby. There was one stuffy little best parlour, sealed up -like a bottle of medecine, and one mouldy geranium looking as if it -couldn't help it on the window-sill, and the "Seven Deadly Sins" in -chromo on the walls, and Rebecca at a well of Berlin wools over the -mantelpiece. They covered the family Bible with an antimacassar, and -Aunt Gerty's theatrical photos without which she never travels, and -suppressed the frosty ornament in a glass case of one of Mrs. Wilson's -wedding-cakes. Mrs. Wilson married early, she says, and I say she -married often, for there are three of them! It _was_ uncomfortable. -Mother didn't complain, Aunt Gerty did. She had nowhere to hang up her -dresses; they were all getting spoilt; she couldn't see to do her hair -in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass, and the room was so small -that she twice set fire to her bed-curtains, curling her hair, which she -did twenty times a day, for there was always wind or rain or something. -The walls were so thin that she could hear every word Mr. and Mrs. -Wilson said to each other in the next room, quarrelling and arranging -the bill and so on. She couldn't sleep with the window shut, and all -sorts of horrid buggy things came in if you left it open. It was so -dreadfully lonely here, and she had never "seen so much land" in her -life. - -Aunt Gerty has been on tour often enough to get used to uncomfortable -lodgings, lodgings not chosen by herself, very likely, and her luggage -all fetched away the day before she leaves by the baggage man! But it is -in a town, and that makes all the difference. Give her a strip of mirror -in the door of her wardrobe, and a gas-jet ready to set fire to her -window-curtains, and a row of shops outside to cheer her up, and she -won't think of grumbling. - -The landlady didn't consider us a particularly good "let." I used to -hear her in bed in the mornings explaining to Mr. Wilson, who is a -railway porter, how glad she would be to be "shot" of us if it wasn't -for the money. "Ay, lass!" he would answer, and then I used to hear him -turning over in bed and going to sleep again. - -"They're better to keep a week than a fortnight!" she used to say. "What -with their late dinners and breakfasts in bed, and their black coffee, -and all sitting down for an hour o' mornings polishing up them ondacent -brown boots--they darsen't trust the help, no, not since she went and -rubbed them with lard--poor girl, she meant well,--and she fit to rive -her legs off answering the parlour bell every minute! Well, the sooner I -see their backs, the better pleased I shall be!" - -We took the hint and gave up the rooms, and got some nicer ones in town -on the quay. Aunt Gerty left off bothering Mother to have late dinner -and strong coffee, and we lived on herrings and cream cheeses, the -cheapest things in Whitby. I mean the herrings. When they have a good -catch, they sell them at a halfpenny each on the quay-side, or slap -their children with them, or shy them at strangers. Anything to keep the -market up! - -Mrs. Bennison, our new landlady, isn't a Whitby woman, but her husband -is, and owns a boat, and takes Ben out sailing, and tries to make a man -of him. We hardly ever see him, so we know he is happy. Mother and Aunt -Gerty sit one on each side of the bow window the greater part of the -day, and make blouses, and read at the same time. George would throw -their books into the harbour if he caught them in their hands; they are -the sort he disapproves of. I won't say who the authors of these are, as -being a literary man's daughter it might give offence, but they are by -women mostly. George vetoes women's books too, for they are generally -bad, and if they are good, they have no business to be. - -Just now, George isn't here to object, he is at Homburg, doing a cure. -He always gets brain fag towards the end of the season like his other -friends. It seems to me the smartest illness to have, except -appendicitis. The moment Goodwood is over, they all troop off to Germany -or Switzerland and pay pounds to some doctor who only makes them leave -off eating and drinking too much, and go to bed a little before -daylight. It is kill and then cure with the smart set, every year. -George does what is right and usual--bathes in champagne at Wiesbaden, -and drinks the water rotten eggs have been boiled in at Homburg. He does -it in good company, to take the taste away. Mr. Aix drew us a picture of -George and a Duchess walking up and down a parade, with a glass tube -connected with a tumbler, in their mouths, talking about emulating "The -Life of the Busy Bee" as they went along. - -About the middle of August we heard he had come back to England and was -paying his usual round of visits to Barefront, and Baddeley and -Fylingdales Tower. Nearly all these places have real battlements and -ghosts. Fylingdales Tower is near here. Mother and I and Aunt Gerty -joined a cheap trip to it, the other day, and were taken all over the -house for a shilling. I don't even believe The Family was away, but -stowed away _pro tem._ and staring at us through some chink and loathing -us. I did manage to persuade Aunt Gerty not to throw away her sandwich -paper in the grate of the fire-place of the room where Edward the Third -had slept on his way to Alnwick, but kindly keep it till we were got -into the Park. But she was very irreverent all the same, and insisted on -setting her hat straight in the glass of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, and -that was the only picture she looked at at all. I don't care for -pictures much. I like the house, which is old and grey and bleached, as -if it never got a good night's sleep. Too many spirits to break its -rest. I don't believe in ghosts really, but I often wonder what are the -white things one sees? I don't see so many as I did when I was quite a -child. Aunt Gerty shivered and went Brr! She hated it all, she is so -very modern. She admitted that she only went with us because she had -hoped George might be actually staying there, and would see his own -sister-in-law among the trippers and get a nasty jar. Mother is a lady, -and knew quite well that he wasn't there, or else she would not have let -Aunt Gerty go, or gone herself, even _incog._ George _had_ been there -recently, though, for the black-satin housekeeper said so, and that she -read his books herself when she had time, or a headache. "He's quite a -pet of her ladyship's," she told Aunt Gerty, who had spotted one of -George's books on a table and asked questions. She was dying to tell the -old thing that we were relations of the great Mr. Vero-Taylor, but -dursn't, for Mother's eye was on her. Mother looked as pleased as Punch -though, and gazed at the chairs (behind plush railings) that her husband -had sat on, and at the portrait in Greek dress, by Sir Alma Tadema, of -the lady who "made a pet of him." - -George had written from Homburg once or twice to me, and I used to read -his letters out to Mother, who naturally wanted to hear his news. She -was a little annoyed because he didn't mention if he was wearing the -thicker vests as the weather was getting chilly, and begged me to ask -him to be explicit in my next, but I did not, because it might have -shamed him in the eyes of his countesses if he left the letter about, as -of course he would. George respects the sanctity of private -communication so much, that he never tore up a letter in his life; the -housemaid collects them when she is doing his room, and brings them to -Mother, who hasn't time to read them, any more than the housemaid has. - -The third week in August George wrote to me, and told me to engage him -rooms in Fylingdales Crescent on the East Cliff. You might have knocked -me down with a feather! - -Mother was hurt at George's having written to me, not her, on such a -pure matter of business, until I explained that he merely did it to -please the child! One doesn't mind making oneself out a baby to avoid -hurting a mother's feelings. I don't know if Mother quite accepted this -explanation, but she said no more about it, and told Mr. Aix the good -news. He is in lodgings here, to be near us--Aunt Gerty thinks it is to -be near her, and he lets her think anything she likes. He looks forward -to George's coming with great interest, and says he will look like some -rare exotic on the beach, such as a humming-bird or a gazelle. Aunt -Gerty at once got hold of the visitors' list. - -"Let's see which of his little lot is coming to Whitby?" she said, and -hunted carefully through three columns till she found that Adelaide -Countess of Fylingdales, Mr. Sidney Robinson, nurse baby and suite, were -at the Fylingdales Hotel, on the East Cliff. Lord Fylingdales, her -eldest son, is the widower of a Gaiety girl who actually died after she -had been a Countess a year, poor dear! Aunt Gerty knew her. He is Lord -of the Manor here, and his portrait is all over the place. - -"Old Adelaide's a shocking frump, Lucy; you needn't distress yourself -about her!" said Aunt Gerty consolingly to Mother. - -"I am not distressing myself about her, Gertrude," replied my Mother, -and she didn't look at all distressed in her neat short blue serge -seaside dress, and shady hat. She looked ten. - -"I know her son," Aunt Gerty went on. "A fish without a backbone. I very -nearly had the privilege of leading him astray myself. It is Irene -Lauderdale now, I hear." - -"I wish you'd stow your theatrical recollections, Gerty," said Mother. -"Come, Tempe, get your things on, we will go and take rooms for your -father and my husband." - -"Brava!" said Mr. Aix. "Capital accent there." - -"Oh, you go along!" said Mother, and we went off at once and engaged -George's rooms. We got very nice large ones, with dark green outside -shutters to the windows, and took a great deal of trouble to explain -George's little ways to them, for their sake as well as his. Ben will -valet him. Mother told the people that he is bringing his man, who will, -however, sleep out. George never gets up till twelve, French fashion. - -Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn't -ornamental just now. He can't speak, he can only croak, and though he -isn't very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing inside himself -and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly -man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his -face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them -and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he -doesn't care at all what he does, he doesn't even mind playing servant -for a bit, if George would like it. Mother tells him he is a good boy -and the comfort of her life, and that if she can manage it, she will get -him sent to college after this, only he had better please the mammon of -unrighteousness all he can. So he means to be a good valet to the -Mammon. - -The Fylingdales Hotel is in the best part of the town, on the East -Cliff, and they dine late there every evening, and don't pull the blinds -down, and the townspeople walk backwards and forwards, and watch the -people dining at seven-thirty, dressed in their nudity. I think evening -dress looks quite wrong at the seaside. Aunt Gerty and Mother put on a -different blouse every evening, and look nice and cosy and comfortable, -though George does say sarcastic things about the tyranny of the blouse, -and the way Aunt Gerty will call it Blowse. I wash my face, that is all -the dressing _I_ do. Ben puts on an old smoker of George's, and flattens -out his hair to support the character of being the only gentleman of the -party, unless Mr. Aix is there to supper, and the less said about Mr. -Aix's clothes the better. - -Ben makes boats all day, when he isn't in one, and Ariadne makes poetry. -Her one idea, having come to the sea for her health, is to avoid it, -and seek the rather scrubby sort of woods which is all you can expect at -the seaside. So every afternoon nearly we take a donkey to Ruswarp or to -Cock Mill, and "ride and tie." We used to pick out a very smart donkey, -but a very naughty one. He was called Bishop Beck, perhaps for that -reason, and he went slow,--that was to be expected, but when he stopped -quite still and wouldn't move for an hour or more in the middle of Cock -Mill Wood, long, long after one had stopped beating him (for he looked -at us and made us feel ridiculous), Ariadne said she would rather do -without adventitious aid of this kind, for it interfered with her -afflatus. - -She walks up and down in the wood paths, finding rhymes, which seems the -hardest part of poetry. - -"Dreams--streams--gleams--" she goes on. - -"Breams?" I suggest. - -"Not a poetical image!" - -"It isn't an image, it is a fish." - -"It won't do. Am I writing this poem or are you?" - -I don't argue. It doesn't really matter much how Ariadne's poems turn -out. Being Papa's daughter she is sure to find a hearty reception for -her initial volume of verse. - -We used to stay out till what Ariadne called Dryad time. She thought she -saw white figures hiding behind the trees in the dusk. Little pellets -made of nuts and acorns and dead leaves, and so on, used to fall on us -out of the thickets, and Ariadne said it was the Dryads pelting us. She -thinks trees are alive, and that one of the reasons you hear ghosts in -all old houses, is the wood creaking because in the night it remembers -it was once a tree. I prefer to believe in ordinary solid ghosts instead -of rational explanations like that. But still Ariadne's funny ideas make -a walk quite interesting. Of course we never talk of such things at -home, among materialists and realists like Aunt Gerty and Mother and -George. George makes plenty of use of birds in his books, but he once -came home from a visit to St. John's College at Cambridge, and told us -that he had been kept awake all night by a beastly nightingale under his -window. Now I have never heard this much-vaunted bird, but I am sure, -from Matthew Arnold's poem where he calls it Eugenia, it must be a -heavenly sound, quite worth while being kept awake by. - -Ariadne and I stay out very late till it is getting dark, hoping to hear -it, in Cock Mill Wood, and then we go home and race through supper, and -then go out again, on the quays and piers this time. We don't know or -care what George and his friends are doing, up above us, in the smart -hotel on the cliff. What I should just love would be for some of them -and George to come down for a walk in the dark and perhaps meet us, and -for George to say, "Who are those little wandering vagabonds flitting -about like bats? Why doesn't their father or mother keep them at home in -the evenings?" It would be so nice, and Arabian Nightish! - -At very high tides, we stay out very late, and take a shawl, and sit on -a capstan and tuck it round us, and listen for a certain noise we love. -It is when the water gets into a little corner in the heap of stones by -the Scotch Head, and gets sucked in among them somehow, and then we hear -a sort of sob that is better than any ghost. Ariadne and I put our heads -under the shawl when we hear it, but not quite, so as to prevent us -hearing properly. - -The harbour smells at low water, and the town children yell and scream, -and it isn't poetical then. So Ariadne and I like to go away on the -Scaur and put our fingers in anemones' mouths, and pop seaweed purses, -and pretend we are lovers cut off by the tide, as they are in novels. In -the afternoons when the harbour is full we sit on the mound above the -Khyber Pass, and watch the water filling up the hole between the -opposite cliff and the cliff ladder. It is all quite quiet then. We -don't hear any town cries, for the children that make the noise are -turned out of their playground, and their mothers out of their good -drying-ground, and the boats begin to go out of the harbour in a long, -soft, slow procession-- - - _And the stately ships go on_ - _To their haven under the hill._ - -I am sure Tennyson meant Whitby when he wrote that. - -One night we could not sleep because the woman next door had had her -"man" drowned, and cried and moaned for hours. He was a fisherman, and -we had seen his boat go out third in the row the day before. He is -supposed to have fallen overboard in the night? Next day, Mother went in -and gave her five shillings and she stopped crying. - -Mr. Aix had a try to paint the view in front of our windows. At least he -said there was no such thing in nature as a "view," and left out the -Church and the Abbey, because they "conventionalized" things so. He -belongs, he said, to the Impressionist School, if any. He got quite -excited about his drawing, and at last went and borrowed a station truck -to sit on; it raised him a little. One day a chance lady sat down on one -of the handles, and over he went. It served him right for leaving out -the two best things in Whitby. - -When George came, Ariadne and I used to take turns to go and lunch with -him at his breakfast, where we had French cookery. There were leathery -omelets that bounced up like the stick in the boys' game when you -touched the end of them with a spoon, and fillets that you wouldn't have -condescended to have for a pillow, but still, it was French. - -We were dressed nicely and took our clean gloves in our hands, and -George wasn't ashamed of us, and introduced us to his friends. Lady -Fylingdales' Mr. Sidney Robinson said I was like George--that I had his -nose. I went to bed that night with a clothes-peg out of the yard on it, -to improve its shape. But the old lady was half blind, and all made of -manner. I also saw the Lord Aunt Gerty might have led astray, and he -hadn't a manner of any sort, and his nose wanted to run away with his -chin. - -George had no fault whatever to find with the arrangements Mother had -made for his comfort, and he told her so, the first time he saw her, in -Baxter Gate, coming out of the Post Office. The first place George flies -to in a town is the Post Office, to send telegrams. He corresponds -entirely by telegram with some people; he says it is paying five-pence -more for the privilege of saying less. We had been shopping. George -spotted us, and Mother thought he had rather not be recognized, but he -was good that day and he actually left Mr. Sidney Robinson--a commoner, -married to a countess, and that exactly describes him, Aunt Gerty -says--to say a word to his own wife. It was market day, and we had -bought several things in the Hall across the water. A pound of -blackberries and a cream cheese, and a chicken and a cabbage, each from -a different old woman with a covered basket. Mother had a net and I a -basket to put them in. I was glad that George did not offer to "relieve" -us of them, like the young men Aunt Gerty picks up here; but he stopped -and talked to us quite nicely for a long time. He and Mother seemed to -have a great deal to say to each other, and the basket-handle began to -cut my arm in half. Also it was a very hot day. George had on a white -linen suit, and a straw hat from Panama. He looked quite cool, and like -Lohengrin or the Baker's man. Mother didn't. She looked hot. I touched -her elbow, not so much because of my arm that ached, but because she -looked like that, nor did I think it looks well to stand talking in the -street to gentlemen, even if it is your own husband. - -"Well, George," she said, taking my hint at once, "we must be going on. -The butter is melting and the chicken grilling and the cabbage wilting -while I stand here talking to you." - -"Charming!" said George, but he wasn't thinking of us, but of Mr. -Robinson, who was champing a few yards away. We said "Good-bye" without -shaking hands. George, I think, might have lifted his hat. I have read -of fine gentlemen who lifted their hat to an apple-woman, let alone -their wife and child. - -George and his friend walked off together. I suppose the Robinson man -was too well-bred to ask George who his lady-friend was, as any of Aunt -Gerty's men would do, but he certainly stared a good deal. Of course he -knows who we are, everybody in Whitby does, I should think, and they -most likely conclude that it is less unkindness than the eccentricity of -genius. If you haven't got that blasted thing called genius, I suppose -you can bear to live in the same house with your wife! - -We walked slowly home with our purchases. Mother had a headache all -dinner, and lay down in the afternoon. - -"I met your father, Ben," she said at supper. "His boots want a little -attention." - -"I don't believe," said Ben crossly, "that any one ever had a more -tiresome man to valet. He will wear his clothes all wrong, and then is -always ragging and jawing at a fellow because they don't look nice." - -"Hush, Ben, he is your father." - -"Hah, I was forgetting!" said Ben, and gave one of his great laughs, as -if you were breaking up coal, or something. Ben is now so changeable and -nervous that you never know where to have him. He is growing up all -wrong, but what can you expect of a boy brought up by women? He never -sees a boy of his own position, though I know that in London he has some -low companions he daren't bring to the house. The Hitchings are his only -respectable friends, but they live such a long way off now. Jessie -Hitchings is devoted to Ben, but she is only a girl like Ariadne and me. -Mr. Hitchings told mother, years ago, that the boy was being ruined, and -Mother cried and said she knew it, but could do nothing, for his father -was by way of educating him at home till something could be settled. -Snaps of Latin, and snacks of Greek, that is all George gives the poor -boy when he has a moment, and that is never. - -This is the only grievance Mother has, although Aunt Gerty is always -trying to persuade her she has several, and putting her back up. Mother -ends by getting cross with her. - -"For goodness' sake, you Job's comforter, you, leave off your eternal -girding at George. Can't you see, that as long as a man has his career -to establish--his way to make----" - -"His blessed thoroughfare is made long ago, or ought to be. That is what -I can't get over----" - -"You aren't asked to get over it. It is not your funeral, it is mine, so -shut up. A man like George, who is dependant on the public favour, needs -to be most absurdly particular, and careful what he does lest he injure -his prestige. Look at yourself! You know very well in your own -profession how very damaging it is for an actor to be married; that if -an actress marries her manager, he has to pay dear for it in the -receipts. She had better not figure as his wife in the bills, if she -wants him to get on. You can't eat your cake--I mean your title--and -have it. No, it's bound to be Miss Gertrude Jennynge on the bills, even -if it is Mrs. What-do-you-call-it in the lodgings, with a ring on her -finger, and every right to call herself a married woman. The public -don't care for spliced idols. An artist has to stand clear, and preserve -his individuality, such as it is!" - -"And run straight all the time. I'll give George credit for that. But -there, whatever's the good of it to you? A man can make a woman pretty -fairly miserable, even if he is stone-faithful to her. It's then it -seems all wrong somehow, and doesn't give her a chance of paying him in -his own coin!" - -I think Aunt Gerty is the reason why George fights so shy of his family. -He hates her style, and yet he can hardly forbid Mother seeing as much -as she likes of her own sister. The trail of the stage is over us all. -Not that I see anything a bit wicked about the stage myself! I have -never noticed anything at all wrong, and actors and actresses are the -kindest people in the world! But there is a queer, worn, threadbare, -rough, second-rate feeling about them. Off the stage--and I have never -seen them on--they are tired and slouchy and easy-going. Aunt Gerty is -most good-tempered and will do anything to help a pal, and takes things -as they come; those are her good points. But she talks such a lot about -herself, and never opens a book that isn't a novel, and wears cheap -muslins and beaded slippers in the street, and lots of chains that seem -to be always getting caught on men's buttons. She calls men "fellows." -She is always going to play Juliet at one of the London houses. Meantime -she puts up with provincial companies. She makes the best of it, and she -tells us she is going to play Nerissa in the Bacon Company, as if she -had got engaged for a parlourmaid in a good house, and discusses Ariel -as if Ariel were a tweeny or up-and-down girl between the sky and the -earth, and Puck a smart clever Buttons. She speaks of her nice legs as a -workman might of his bag of tools. She can sing and dance, when she -isn't asked to act. She has cut all her hair short to make it easier for -wigs. Her great extravagance is in wigs. She calls them "sliding roofs" -for convenience in talking about them in trains and omnibuses. When she -did wear her own hair she dyed it, so I like the wigs better, as there's -no deception. - -If Mother was ever an actress, which I don't somehow believe, though -Jessie Hitchings said once that she had heard people say so, it has all -been knocked out of her. She dresses very well, always in simpler things -than Aunt Gerty. She left off her waist years ago, to please George, and -now that it is the fashion not to have one, she is in the right box--I -mean stays. Her hair is brown, and she mayn't frizzle it, so it is soft -and pretty like a baby's. She generally wears black, over lovely white -frilled petticoats that she gets up herself to keep the bills down. She -has such little hands that she can pick her gloves out of the -five-and-a-half boxes at sales, which are always much reduced. So few -people have small hands. She may not wear high heels, and that is a -grief to her, as she isn't very tall, but hers are very pretty feet, and -she can dance. - -George doesn't know that she can dance. I do. Once Mr. Aix asked her to -dance for him when I was in the room. Aunt Gerty played on the -tin-kettle piano. Mother danced a cake-walk, which I thought very ugly, -and then a queer step that a friend had taught her when she was a child. -In one part of it she was dancing on her hands and her feet at the same -time. It was the queerest thing, and she left her dress down for that -and it lay in swirls about the carpet. Mr. Aix said it was the dance -that Salome must have danced before Herod, and he quite understood John -the Baptist, and where did she get it? But Mother wouldn't tell him. -She said it was a memory of her stormy youth in the East End. - -Mr. Aix said that she could make her fortune doing it as a turn at a -Society music hall, as it would be something quite new and decadent. -That is just what Society wants--the slight, morbid flavour! Then Mother -put on her short skirt and did the ordinary vulgar kind of dance they -teach now, and I liked it best. She was everywhere at once, smart and -spreading out in all directions, like spun glass on a Christmas card. -Her eyes danced too. Ben said he couldn't have believed she was his -mother! - -Then Aunt Gerty performed, and she is professional. But it was not the -same thing. Aunt Gerty's legs are thick, and compared with Mother's like -forced asparagus to the little pretty, thin, field-grown kind. Mother's -dancing was emphatically dramatic, Mr. Aix said. - -I asked him if Mother could act, and he answered, "My dear child, your -mother can do anything she has a mind to." - -"Then why doesn't she have a mind?" I at once said, forgetting how it -would upset our household and George if she were to go on the stage. -Mother naturally remembers this, and stays domestic out of virtue. - -"I wish you would write a play for me, Mr. Aix," said Aunt Gerty, "and I -would get a millionaire to run it. I wonder, now, what one could do with -Mr. Bowser?" - -She went off in a brown study, and Mr. Aix said rudely, "I will write a -play for Lucy sooner," looking at Mother, who was sitting fanning -herself with her pocket-handkerchief. "She has got the stuff in her, I -do believe. Gad! What a chance! What a lever! What a facer--!" - -And he dropped off into a brown study too! Mother went and mended Ben's -blazer. - -Mr. Aix isn't staying with us, we have no room in our house; he has a -room over the coast-guard's wife, but he comes in to us for his meals. I -don't believe George realizes this, or he would tell him he is throwing -himself away, and losing a good chance of advertising his books. Mr. -Aix's books seem to go without advertising, more than George's do--I -suppose it is because they are so improper. - -At any rate, he prefers to throw in his lot with us. One day we were all -having a picnic-tea at Cock Mill. The party consisted of Mother, me and -Ariadne, Aunt Gerty and Mr. Aix, and an actor friend of hers and his -wife, who was acting for a week at the Saloon Theatre. Mr. Bowser, whom -Aunt Gerty wants either to marry or get a theatre out of, was with us -too. They call him the King of Whitby, because he owns so many plots in -it, and is going to stand for it in the brewing interest next election. -We had secured the nicest table, the one nearest the stream, and had -just tucked our legs neatly under it, when a carriage drove up. Aunt -Gerty and the King of Whitby were at that moment in the old woman's -cottage who gives us the hot water, toasting tea-cakes. - -The Fylingdales' party got out of that carriage, and George got slowly -down off the box. They trooped into the enclosure, and Mr. Sidney -Robinson, trying to be funny, asked the old woman if she could see her -way to giving them some tea. - -"Here o' puppose, Sir!" said she, as of course she is. She pointed out -the table that was left and that led them past us. - -If Aunt Gerty had been there with Mr. Bowser she would certainly have -claimed George as a relation and said something awkward, but she was -luckily toasting tea-cakes, and had perhaps not even seen them. I saw -George just look at Mother, and I saw her smile a very little, and make -him a sign that he was to go right past us, and not speak or seem to -know us before. Of course Mr. Aix never spoils any one's game, not even -George's. So he went on talking hard to the actor's wife, though I saw -his lip curl. I, of course, never need be given a cue twice, so I kicked -Mother hard under the table for sympathy, but preserved a calm superior. - -Aunt Gerty and Mr. Bowser came out with plates full of tea-cakes they -had cooked, and I didn't know if it was the fire or Mr. Bowser had made -Aunt Gerty's cheeks so red--I hoped the latter for her sake. They had no -idea of what had happened while they had been toasting and flirting, it -appeared from their manners, which were bad. Aunt Gerty always puts an -extra polish on hers when George is present, and even Mr. Bowser would -have added a frill or so to suit the aristocracy. - -Our party was very gay. Actors all can make you laugh if they can do -nothing else, and our shrieks of laughter must have made the other party -quite envious, for they were as quiet as a mouse and as dull as the -stream all overshadowed with nut-bushes and alders that grew over it -just there. - -Suddenly George got up, and left them, and came over to us, and Aunt -Gerty swallowed her tea the wrong way round, and had to have her -shoulder thumped. - -George took no notice of her, but put his hand on Mr. Aix's shoulder and -said something to him in a low voice. - -"Not if I know it!" Mr. Aix answered, quite violently, adding, "Many -thanks, old fellow, I am happier where I am." - -George looked awfully put out. Of course I knew what he wanted. Those -smart people up at the other table had expressed a wish to see Mr. Aix. -He is a successful though painfully realistic novelist, and George had -told them he was actually sitting at the next table, and had promised to -bring him over to them to be introduced. In his disappointment, he -glared at us all, especially the actor, who didn't care a brass farthing -for George's displeasure, and went on eating tea-cake _ad nauseam_. - -"Oh, all right!" said George, to cover his vexation, "if you prefer to -bury yourself in a----" - -"Easy all!" Mr. Aix said. "Leave everybody to enjoy themselves in their -own way. And we are depriving your delightful friends of----" - -George had turned and gone back to his delightful friends long before -Mr. Aix had finished his sentence, and Aunt Gerty patted the poor man on -the back till he wriggled. - -"Loyal fellow!" she said several times. She had got well on to it now, -and she started a fit of giggles that lasted all the rest of the time we -were there. It didn't matter much, for we were all quite drunk on weak -tea and laughter. - -But we turned as silent as mice as the Fylingdales' party, having had -enough of their dull tea, streamed past us, and got into their carriage, -and rolled away. George was not with them. I dare say he had got over -the hedge and gone round to meet the break by the road, not wanting to -walk past our party again, and to avoid unpleasantness. I supposed he -had paid for the tea; but no, this grand party forgot to do that, so -that in the end Mr. Aix paid for their refreshment for the old woman's -sake that she should not suffer. - -When they had gone, we felt relieved; but it sobered us somehow. Aunt -Gerty and the gentlemen smoked quietly, and we were so still that we -could hear the little beck bubbling over the loose stones beside us. -Then Aunt Gerty was persuaded to recite something, and she did "Loraine, -Loraine, Loree!" in a shy, modest voice. You see these were all her real -bosses, and she valued their approval, and the actor's wife is -considered very stiff in the profession. She herself sang "The banks of -Allan Water" very sadly and solidly, and Aunt Gerty cried. To cheer us -all up again the actor--rather a famous one, Mr. D--L----, did one of -his humorous recitations out of his London repertory for us, so that we -nearly died with laughing, and Aunt Gerty dried her tears, and whispered -to me that trying to laugh like a lady was so painful that she longed to -take a short cut out of her stays. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -Lady Scilly came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda's Terrace. - -"They can't be parted long, poor things!" Aunt Gerty said, and Mother -hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her, -for a good blow, before she went to America. - -Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in "smalls" as Dick -Turpin, and Irene as "The Pumpeydore," and Irene as Greek Slave, and -Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the -principal stationers' windows. I should have thought she would have been -ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row -of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid--what Aunt -Gerty calls "la-di-dah" sort of people--can stand anything, so long as -it's public. - -When she wasn't dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just -a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out -a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two -gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with -her, and its lead kept getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and -round my father's legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He -wouldn't have stood that from any one but a popular favourite. - -I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt -Gerty. They stopped at Truelove's and looked at the picture-postcards. -She became very serious all at once. - -"I must go in and procure Myself!" she said to George, sniggling. In -they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove's -shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as -good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained -from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to -ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for -one never knows how a daughter's presence may interfere with a father's -plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don't want to injure his sales! - -Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not -approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her -face altogether. - -"The blighted idiot!" she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, "has -completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly -meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!" - -She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket, -and she sang out loud, while Aunt Gerty's open mouth betrayed her shock -at her audacity-- - - "Oh, I'm Contrition Eliza, - And she's Salvation Jane. - We once were wrong, we now are right, - We'll never go wrong again." - -"I can't quite promise that, alas! My friends won't let me. I will send -Salvation Jane to Lord R----y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen -dozen, please; isn't that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you -pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?" - -"Good business!" said my Aunt. "Let me see? How much has she rooked -him?" - -"Please don't ask me to do sums," said I. "Besides, George has a perfect -right to do as he pleases with his own money!" - -George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them. - -"Whatever do you want them for?" asked Irene. (He never lets me say -whatever.) - -"To send to my children." - -"Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked. - -"In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in -the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, -however. - -"And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great -book." - -"There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and -made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove -sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would -bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. -George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), -and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The -Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero -really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked -blank. - -"I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----" - -George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_, -that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or -_The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of -them." - -Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary! -Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty -soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of -sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, -dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of -imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with -light----" - -It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty -didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand -suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water. - -"Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept -saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who -had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own -stupidity in upsetting the water. - -"Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew -well enough. - -"Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say -what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even -then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago. -She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the -sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind." - -"Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing. - -"Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be -electrified!" - -But Mother wasn't a bit electrified. - -"All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who -chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my -wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead -in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so -civil to her." - -"Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?" snorted Aunt -Gerty. - -"Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly's best friend." - -"Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural -friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always in -each other's pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there -she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I -don't believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may -well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take -it all out of one poor woman's life!" - -"I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure." - -"You sham it." - -"That is the next best thing to being it." - -"A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and -have got a husband that doesn't come within a hundred miles of -appreciating you." - -"Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do; -I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted -on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of -them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn't -condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!" -said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so -mild. - -I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty -thought so too, for she screamed out, "Bravo, Luce!" Mother burst into -tears. I don't think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother's tears, -so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at -something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever to go into -the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that -was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the -head, not hard--Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the -shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away. - -A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see -George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these -Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of -George, don't understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn't -like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is -death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for -half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches -cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing -with him--George _believes_ himself into his colds. He says that the -sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic -temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn't that, what he has is -the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this -may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and -that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to -talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother -came to him. - -"My dear boy, no!" Mother said, and George groaned as he always does -when she calls him boy, but invalids can't be choosers of phrases. "You -aren't going to die just yet." She went on, kindly banging his pillows -about--"I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to -look after you. I shouldn't wonder if they didn't make objections in the -house. There will be a bit of a fuss." - -"Who will make a fuss, Mother?" I asked, "and why should they?" - -"Don't ask questions about what you don't understand," Mother said -sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? "Run home -and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or -two, and that she is to send my things, just what I'll want for a couple -of nights." - -"Night-gown and toothbrush," said I. As I left George put out his hand -to Mother and said quite nicely-- - -"You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the -sick man's pillow?" - -Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his -cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She -kept saying, "I _know_ they'll think I am not respectable." - -The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left -them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty -chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said-- - -"This will clear up George's ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly -illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely, -don't he? Is its blessed poet's nose a good deal swollen?" - -I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture of the Pope and -Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things. -George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over -his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too -active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he -begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat -Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George's chest to soothe him. -It did, and he played with my hair. - -"I am an angel when I am ill," he said; "don't you find me so? Strong -natures like mine----" - -Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,--seaside roses always -look coarse, I think--and a lot of cards. - -"Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and -Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has -left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it, -for I don't mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room, -exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them, -though I don't suppose you can smell anything just now." - -She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene's card was on the top. It -had a monogram in one corner--a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard -of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one -lives and learns. - -"I don't, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman," -George said. "But what, as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as -an actress?" - -"I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half -her chances," Mother said eagerly. - -"No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances! -Irene has a genius for advertisement." - -"Look after the 'ads,'" said my Mother, "and the acts will take care of -themselves." - -"Good!" said George, "I should like to have said that myself." - -"I dare say you will, George," said Mother quite nicely, "when once I -get you well again." - -I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less -than a week, but she didn't let him out once during that time, and had -him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering -about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the -house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they -were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who -we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them. -I was too proud, but Ariadne's decision was complicated by a hopeless -attachment she had started. "Love is enough!" she used to say, "and I -_must_ go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!" - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly, -and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first -time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came -here, though they had both taken part in Christina's wedding. He had -just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength -of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn't; he would call now -if she asked him, but we don't want him coming to the house on the quay, -for we couldn't insulate Aunt Gerty. - -He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda's -Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never -to be in her company more than he can help! That's one to us. - -His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there -once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little -recitation on what he observed in his friend's house. Whatever isn't -ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the -house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and -squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler, -excessively _collet monte_, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the -family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices _decollete a -outrance_. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of -Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn't. Prayers, bed -at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don't think -George will ever be asked again, but I don't wonder Lady Scilly was able -to get hold of Simon. _She_ doesn't frown over her _decollete_ bodices, -and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those -young fox-hound puppies "at walk" that one sees in the villages, and -Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. -I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that -Lady Scilly doesn't, or else she would not let him out so freely. She -would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil's finishing his -term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to -preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from -Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don't -make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don't -count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used -for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they -have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and -Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes -meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and -Ariadne won't let him carry them for her, she doesn't like him to know -that she is reading all about Love. - -Simon doesn't really want to find out. He never wants very much -anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and -hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always -scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the -country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I -wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell -me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if -he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to -hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon's eyes were bigger, he -really would be very handsome. Ariadne's, however, are big enough for -two. - -This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it -hurts--women. It doesn't hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up -his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want -when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only -sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who -is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most -marriages are made--hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true -benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the -bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In -refusing, you must remember to hope after you have said that it can -never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to -accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your -burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you -come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing -neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves. - -Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to -resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an -affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a -man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A -harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew--from novels--that -that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must -unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to -sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and -went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the -back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the -crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was -her consolation. - -Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards--she met him turning out of the -reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt -Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it -was Mr. Bowser. - -Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all -with any man--and she does get on with Simon, that is certain--is to -collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities -of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine -instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched -feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the -idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it, -and manage it himself, and then--squash it! - -Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn't in it with -them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite -casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves, -though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they -can get it into their heads that they won't be conspicuous by their -absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When -one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit -stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at -those doors in despair you would find it no go! - -So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don't see it. I sit -tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned. -And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to -is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not -talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes -comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn't -said a word more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her. - -"Excelsior!" I said. "I do really believe he is thinking of it." - -Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars -in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that -goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you -come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare? -He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on -hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn't ride -as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow. -He would see better to ride if he wasn't short-sighted, anyway. I don't -believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge's Tour and Mr. Jorrocks' -something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a -little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn't be -surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of -his, and that Caedmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales' -estate. - -I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately, -and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but -because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he -never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne -is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if -it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her. I am -not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do -that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love -latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne. - -She hates herrings now, and doesn't care for cream. She lives -principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go -about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and -cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and -shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade -through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and -the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a -pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the -world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long. -She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won't go -to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to -the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never -moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn't show in her face that -she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short -fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds -altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for -her. She doesn't let Simon know that she publishes, for it would -discredit her in his eyes. He says there's no harm in girls scribbling -if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn't. - -Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a "splendid girl." -She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland, -and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected. -Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless -barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don't mean we actually -want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where -one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put -the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once -kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always -betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are. - -The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the -poor boats can't always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier -when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene -Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It -can't blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with -Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt -Gerty refused to do. - -I don't know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters -chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends -with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord -Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady -Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and -she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form, not because she -is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton -abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre -as "one of us." The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his -cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears -plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has -the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw--a _front candide_ with a -vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like -that. - -Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some -one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are -generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near -relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these -questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he -takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the -pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says "what is the -good of being a gentleman if you can't wear a shabby coat?" and does -wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don't show it. -They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of -housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a -break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met -Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry -he has there, I believe. - -"Did you wish to see me?" he asked the front tourist politely. - -"Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?" said the tourist. It was of course -all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard -that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of -beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. -Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see -the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he -stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though -he isn't exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear -what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in -disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, -and when he didn't understand her, he just shook his head and grinned -and turned away. - -Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully -afraid of his father, who isn't proud of him, but of Almeria, who he -says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the -boy. - -Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne's fringe proved -an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria's naked forehead made -her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as -that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make -friends with Simon's sister, for he had obviously a great respect for -the girl's opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald -forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at -each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a -mutual bond between them. - -"My sister writes a little," he said. - -"Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine," said Almeria, witheringly. - ---"And goes about," he went on, "with a hammer collecting----" - -"Bedlamites and Amorites," said I, to make them laugh. - -They didn't laugh, and Simon continued-- - -"And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins." - -Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the -conversation. - -"And isn't it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their -mouth--well, they are all mouth, aren't they?" - -"And stomach!" said Almeria, turning away politely. - -Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But -any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as -she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose, -just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as -fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that -Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly -civil--but civility is the greatest preserver of distances there is if -people only knew. - -Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne, -but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so -compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn't any, but she is -gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow -masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for -her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not -because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn't conceited enough -to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for -her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty -all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic, -unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that -go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let -the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She -has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow -here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair. -"Always at work!" he says suddenly, and Ariadne's guilty hands go down -like clockwork. It isn't rude, the way he says it. He looks at her -kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like, -and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne. - -She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to -detest. Sometimes he looks quite glum when she is ordering him about, -but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves -as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don't want to? -And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants -to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month's wages to be allowed -to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going -down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are -strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady -Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon's cooling off, and just now -prefers to give him his orders from a distance. - -She calls Lord Scilly "Silly-Billy," and "my harmless, necessary -husband." He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she -really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one -made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord -Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, -and yet I don't think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life -that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and -Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks -his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should -much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader -than George's, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn't married -to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the -junket--it turns it! - -He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn't at all -anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her--even to me. That -is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these -smart people don't realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had -one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn't choose -to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won't go out with him, -though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as -it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we -are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don't, or he -would soon chuck us. - -Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties -they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I -think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and -attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don't believe -much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of -view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either -side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it -seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said-- - -"I back the little 'un!" - -He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and -it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a -notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she -alluded to Ariadne's frock as worn by "a very young girl." Lord Scilly -thinks a girl ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing -her. - -Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day -fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood's Bay. Simon sent her a present by the -first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to -London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented--I suppose -he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without -some excuse like that?--and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave -her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she -expected, and not even that. - -However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her -that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only -teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood's -Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment. - -The moment he got to Robin Hood's Bay, he was off by himself, and away -quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he -gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was -looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with -"A Present for a Good Girl" on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, -only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they -will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating. - -I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if -she would stay a lady in her great disappointment? She did. She thanked -him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw -her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so -was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As -for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence -of Ariadne's discretion. - -It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and -talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and -beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they -did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was -looking, and the women used _papier poudree_ slyly in their -handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer -force of will. I was all right, being only a child. - -Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem -to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got-- - - "The patient world about their feet - Lay still, and weltered in the heat." - -"What else could it do but lie still?" I said, and suddenly just then -Simon got up-- - -"I say! I'm going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, -Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn't fall -and break her nose on the cliff steps." - -After the mug incident I don't see how anybody could have objected, or -tried to prevent Ariadne from taking the advantages of being treated as -a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got -up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known -fact that Lady Scilly can't stand the sea in small quantities like what -you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None -of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take -any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as -she passed him. - -We had a lovely sail of a whole hour's duration. We had an old boatman -wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a -smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged -couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on -to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to -borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon's and tie a knot in it at all -four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she -had on a crown, not a hat. - -When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, "Oh, my -poor Ariadne!" and helped her to hide herself more or less in the -waggonette going home. I didn't know before how becoming the cap was! - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -When George came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls -at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty -may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing -as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother's -guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at -George's bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement -in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up -with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne's umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came -off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the -cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much -mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of -lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre's people won't have -anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon -and Bowser had previously married Ariadne's legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty -does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in -cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser -would be the ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says -sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty -trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and -very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to -make her anxious to please _him_. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the -Bowser business, on condition she doesn't try to squeeze herself into -the Saloon dancing set where George's friends go. - -The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for -going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch -it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of -water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to -tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. -The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long -evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the -great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in -the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung -over the sea. - -There is a nice boy I like--he is twelve, quite young, and doesn't need -conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people -meeting me and saying, the way they do, "What, child, all _alo-one_ by -yourself?" which is so irritating. - -He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir -Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat -horses and drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to -like him, so he brought me a list of his father's yearlings, with their -names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his -own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must -have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran -away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing? - - Witch, ch. f. (II.B.), 2 yrs., Mr. Brooks, 21 guins. - Milkmaid (h.h.), 3 yrs., " Wingate, 30 guins. - Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.), Foal, 6 yrs., Lord Manham, 35 guins. - -And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but -I saw he meant it, and didn't tease him. - -Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not -etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is -why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don't dance. I don't -care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I -suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs -and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me. - -Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it -is _de rigueur_. And when they are not dancing they are talking of -money. I have heard them. I don't mind listening, for, of course, money -isn't private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight -nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas, which -puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals -or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is -at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about -stocks to please her. - -Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does -not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying -themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly? - -One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but -before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, -Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn't been -raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own -forehead. - -"Phew! I'm hot," he said. "It's a weary old world! Hope I die soon!" - -Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon's -partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy--that's what the -grown-up women always call their special men!--just as Simon had taken -out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that -I envy him so. - -"Blow these wretched figures! They won't come!" I heard him say. - -"On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions," Lady -Scilly had answered pettishly; "what I complain of is that they won't -go! See if you can't pull me through, dear boy." - -I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on -a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can -see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of -dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into -it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey's iron -building. - -And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said -nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing -to say, and as he evidently didn't want her to say it, it didn't matter. -She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white -in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine's, so she is repaid -for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked -at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall -when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple -or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn't, -but sighed instead and said-- - -"I wish I had a mother!" That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I -nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say. - -"Do you?" she said. "I have." - -Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed -to like it, for the next thing he said was-- - -"Why don't I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like -you." - -I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, -not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very -moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They -came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put -her hand on Simon's shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on -Ariadne's. - -Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. -Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as -if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was "giving this -woman away" quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows -it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly. - -Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. "I love this thing, you know," she said -to George. Then, going a little way back--"Just look at them! Isn't it -idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of -over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to -listen to. And I--poor I--am Romeo's deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline -take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?" - -She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way -and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all -this if she hadn't felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn't been -silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne. - -"I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the -piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare--I mean flirt well!" - -They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth. - -"I consider all that in _beastly_ taste!" he said, whacking the rail -with Ariadne's fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a -baby when you have smashed its favourite toy. - -Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. -Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such -is man--and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne. - -"I'll give you a new one. I'll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in -and dance--dance like the devil!" - -Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. -He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the -Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present -moment she hasn't got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and -betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow -money off George--just once--for that would choke him off her soonest of -anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother? - -Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, -eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the -time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She was vexed -because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being -jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when -he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary -considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And -Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular -walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it. - -Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied -he would be. Then an untoward event happened. - -There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror -came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying -one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but -there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. -The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other -side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir -Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in -attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had -to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It -couldn't have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and -joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would -have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, -with his little _retrousse_ nose next to his father's beak, and -Almeria's large knuckle-duster of a proboscis framing them. I don't -suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way -behind, and he doesn't love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. -Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty's mash, as she calls him. I believe -she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at -being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate -party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white -muslin she had made herself--window-curtain stuff from Equality's sale. -It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the -seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made -her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. -I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we -were in. - -I wasn't attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. -Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a -sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into -the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would -tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the -platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the -gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a -victim--and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne! - -He didn't ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this -liberty, but just seized Ariadne by her thin muslin shoulder, and -pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had -time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was -acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt -Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came -plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely -excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear. - -He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and -shook her, saying, "This is the victim!" - -It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she -might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own -class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the -rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the -stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course -turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and -Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,--just once--and I saw his -scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him -look like that before. It was awful! - -The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been -thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, "I can't stand any more of this. -I believe I shall faint!" - -That wasn't true, I knew, she can't faint if she tries, but still any -one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable. - -I said to my aunt, "We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if -you like." - -And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic--that was the -worst of it--faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and -scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a -victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then -she burst out crying. - -"He will never speak to me again. I know he won't. He is very proud, and -I have disgraced him--disgraced him before his order!" - -"You can't disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and -now you never will be." - -"No," Ariadne said, meekly, "I am unworthy of him." - -"You are very weak!" said I, "but on the whole I consider it was Aunt -Gerty's fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!" - -Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I -tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call -next day to show that _noblesse oblige_, and that he didn't think -anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn't suppose -he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser -and then by Dapping, again. - -All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the -eye of Whitby. It rained luckily. Next day she still wouldn't, and as -it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was -going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her. - -"No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else," I said; -"and they can't see that your shoulder is black and blue under your -gown." - -"I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin -too," she moaned, though I don't know what she meant, that it had made a -more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what. - -"I know one thing," she gulped. "Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall -cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him--cut him dead." - -"Why not? He murdered you." - -I think this was Ariadne's first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She -would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother -encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she -said several times, "Never again!" which is the most awful thing to say -to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn't to be trusted with girls, -and especially George's girls. Mother gave it her well. - -"You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! -I shall never hear the end of it from George." - -"George indeed! Why wasn't George looking after his own precious kids -then? I don't think he's got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be -having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much -surprised!" - -"You hold your wicked, lying tongue!" was all Mother said to her. -Mother, somehow, hasn't the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty. - -I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He -can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. "Paquerette -knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is -a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a -bit! She and I understand each other!" - -He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly -doesn't agree with him, or says she doesn't. "Scilly and I," she once -said to Ariadne, "are an astigmatic couple." She meant, she explained, -that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the -long-sighted eye. - -Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were -concerned. George's scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and -she couldn't possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne -could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn't stir out of -the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. -Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing -them into each other's arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If -Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon's being near her made her look -quite old and anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored. - -One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the -quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it's fashionable, and if -you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen -by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats -were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed -sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on -the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure -and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as -they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and -took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much -that he didn't ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of -Simon Hermyre's is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses -to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be -rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no -criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still -think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy. - -"Do let me have the pleasure," he kept saying, and "Do let me!" and -goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I -suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be -trying to do what they want in spite of themselves. - -"Then that is settled, thank the Lord!" I heard him say at last. (My -sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and -rather drowned their conversation.) "Just look at that sheet of silver -on the floor of the boat--all one night's haul! Suppose it was shillings -and half-crowns?" - -"Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as -you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is -very like a full court-train, isn't it, the one you are going to have -the privilege of paying for?" - -Simon said yes it was, but he didn't seem to like her quite so much as -he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have -grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched -look come over his face. - -Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come -there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my -sailor and came round behind her and said, "How do you do?" - -Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to -speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their -bathe. - -"How is your sister?" Simon asked me. - -"Very well, thank you--at least I mean not very well----" - -"I don't wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night." - -"Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did." - -"Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute -Bowser some injury I'll---- And the people she was with----? I beg your -pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both--wasn't it her -business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor's good-nature being imposed upon?" - -He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was -best to do for the best of all. - -"Oh, _that_ person," said I. "She wasn't anything to do with us. Miss -Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?" - -"I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like -that alone." - -"Why, I was with her!" - -"What earthly good are you, you small elf?" asked Simon seriously and -kindly, smiling down at me. "I wish to goodness _my_ sister----" - -I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take -to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn't say it. He is so prim and -reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, -and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called -Henderland in Northumberland. - -"Henderland," said I, "that's near where Christina lives." - -"Who is Christina?" - -"Why, George's old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best -man." - -"Peter Ball's! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. _'Have you forgotten, -love, so soon--That_ church _in June?'_ Yes, of course I used to call -her the Woman who Would--marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over -there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation." - -He wouldn't say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little -way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now -Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina -for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this -talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down -to a time, but I was wiser. I said "Good-bye" quite shortly, as if I -wasn't at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little -ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her -before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty -Aunt Gertys can't hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin -her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did -it at lunch. - -"Please, Aunt Gerty," I said, "if you meet me on the quays or anywhere -when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be -familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I -gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were." - -"Oh, did he ask?" said Aunt Gerty, jumping about. "He must have seen me -somewhere. In _Trixy's Trust_ perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, -you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course." - -"All right," said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now -don't you call that eating your cake and having it! - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -We all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough -to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly -that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the -air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it -more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she -completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which -she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the -brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very -patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was -feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented -it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken -heart. - -George left for Scotland. He _says_ he is going to shoot with the -Scillys. I don't know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben -Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn't matter. It was settled -that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland. - -Ariadne didn't like going straight on from Whitby, because she would -have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the -difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious -things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we -should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a -penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The -all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three -hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written -up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few -months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George's black velvet -fencing costume and his neat legs. - -George has _so_ much taste. He simply lives at Christie's. He cannot -help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says -they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them. - -The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina's. -I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after -a proper _bona fide_ shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George -gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and -another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing -mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the -out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She -has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All -types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a -_Miriam's Home Journal_, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the -Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye -Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a -heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling -about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn't scold them -lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and -the little tailor kept saying, "A pleat here would be beneficial to it, -Madam," or to his assistant, "Remove that fulness there!" till there -wasn't a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge. - -Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came -home. "Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne," I said to her, -imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him -and made him take ten shillings off the bill. - -I couldn't help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, -when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the -privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with "real cow" -as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her -shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, -that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and -considered herself little better than a murderer! - -Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and -told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his -opinion. So long as he didn't tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not -matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody -mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in -connection with Ariadne's new dress. I was sure we should see him -somewhere in Northumberland. It isn't as big as America, and where there -is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of -him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock's -wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for -I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given -her a moorcock's feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of -fools to shoot them. - -I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, -and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How -it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love -for a long while to come. I don't care if it never comes my way at all. -But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for -it yet, anyway. I don't believe that Love is a woman's whole existence -any more than it is a man's. We are like ships, made in water-tight -compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the -whole concern isn't done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole -compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others -wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out -yet watching it through the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices -now and then. - -I don't study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento -House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady -Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise -for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for -himself. - -Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt -Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off -could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving -by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for -Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far -off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them -_Funny Bits_ and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children -often profit by their elders' foolish fancies. - -Mother wouldn't even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear -the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on -suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular -affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it -called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where -the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as -the Scotch Express rattled by. - -To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about -something, and kept sticking her hip out in an engaging way she has, -and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her -an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not -quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, -if they only could all get the man they want _at the time_ they want -him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All -grown-up people's tempers come because they can't get what they want. -And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn't got what she wanted, for a -whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. -She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream -and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my -Aunt Gerty's, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy -it. - -Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly -started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put -on--Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as -other women do--and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, -and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched -her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor -had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she -said-- - -"No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!" - -A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I -wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was -anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at -Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I -think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn't know she was -pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to -keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon's set, -they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she -has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so -as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids. - -"It doesn't matter how you look," I said, "there is nobody but porters -to see you, and you don't want to mash them and distract them from their -work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you -preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George's -dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look -as repulsive as we can." - -George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to -do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a -prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be -by ourselves all the way. - -Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and -brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked -in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from -scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and -looked ugly for two. I was interested in the country. It is quite -hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an -industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and -keeping warm (coal) didn't mean so many people having to live black, and -whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don't think I approve of -civilization, if this is what it comes out of? - -When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to -Ariadne, "I told you so!" for there was Christina Ball in a muslin -dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was -sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn't be hers; -we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild -to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one -of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And -besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and -so she did). - -We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony -and couldn't get down--and it was arranged that our luggage was to come -on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart -new dog-cart. - -Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like -the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and -countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and -said to Christina, "Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the -pond!" - -The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said -nothing, but looked it. - -"Oh, the duck-weed!" said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be -amused by anything she says. "Miss Emerson Tree here--allow me to -introduce Peter's American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree--calls it the -'stagnance.'" - -The ugly child still didn't say anything, though "stagnance" was just as -absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite -afraid of one who, though so young, didn't seem to want to fly out. She -turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of -Ariadne's shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina -went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of -things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do -believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before -Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves. - -It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly -child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant -upon the last syllable of the word _despise_ was the nastiest thing I -ever heard. - -"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been -looking at it all the way we've come." - -Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its -socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary -child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying -a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. -Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the -country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first. - -"But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good -thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I -have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance." - -"Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I. - -"I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the -offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was -saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post -haste, to hatch some chickens----" - -"I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne. - -"Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to -kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of -the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every -hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----" - -"You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly. - -"Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants -shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five -more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then -some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an -electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a -blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood." - -"How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused. - -I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been -used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to -the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery -and unfamiliar death. - -"Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne, -and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an -unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated -at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am -fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them -to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so -why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat -back, take the reins a minute!" - -Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody -always sees at once that I am the practical one. - -When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on. - -"Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the -school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven't had tea with myself -for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don't know! Peter says I -lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the -Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron's, your -father's, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so -shocked when I recommended him _The Road to Rome_! It's a book of -travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he -told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder -whether you'll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are -possible." - -"I am not a flirt--now," said Ariadne. - -She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at -least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. "My God, pony!" she -said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose. - -"And there's Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more -than ten miles off." - -Ariadne at once sat tight--too tight. It was almost painful, and showed -in her face too. - -Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree -spoke again, and actually about Ariadne's body. - -"Any way, it's on all crooked," she said, as if she was continuing the -previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. -They couldn't, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the -coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her -hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were having tea. She -had hers "laced"--I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and -thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She -certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her -mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, -people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I -would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person's things to her -face as I would of--kissing Emerson Tree's very ugly mug, though I -wouldn't tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. -Peter calls her "the little witch." - -"The little witch," he says, "was being neglected, or thought she was, -at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, 'I -say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!' You -should have seen the old boy's face!" - -I did see the old boy's face. He was waiting at tea. - -Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly -as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, "Dash it -all! why it's bald!" How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her -with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the -pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to -catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd -things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat--as if a cat -ever stayed to be aspinalled!--and gunpowder into ovens, and frogs into -boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the -clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once -when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked -before her, she had given away the furniture. - -"She went solemnly down the village," said Christina, "making presents -of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn't want and I -did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray -door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it -came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I -had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day." - -We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I -disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a -child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, -after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because -we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off -discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to -have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used -to put us head first down rabbit-holes. - -"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man. - -"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital -shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!" - -"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party -point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always -seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I -am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make -my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane -brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for -idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in -with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of -straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'" - -"I don't like that phrase, Christina!" - -"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!" - -Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not -bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little -consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for -the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil -to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather, -but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Ariadne got fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl -in her position. I can't say that she kept that up at all well, beyond -looking sad, sometimes when she wasn't thinking, or at meals. She has to -pretend to be _distraite_, for really she is very all there, and likes -her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up -in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won't answer his -question whether she wants some more?--"Thinking of the old 'un, what?" -He doesn't know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows -nothing of Ariadne's affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word -for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex. - -Jane Emerson Tree doesn't take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; -she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is -a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather -patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has -lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the -billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn't a hat, it is a tile, and so -can't either become or unbecome. - -Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham's, or at -Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes' place; neither places are more than ten miles -or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina -wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only -other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the -Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, -and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is -what becomes of all our old families. He isn't old, but very wrinkled. -That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy -velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as -Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, -here, till Christina's "shoots" come off, and Ariadne egged him on--the -amount of egging on a shy man takes!--to ask her, and then accepted to -go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in -a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew -the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked -her if she felt chilly ("Chilly!" she thought) about sixteen times, and -said By Gosh when he didn't catch anything, which was frequent, and -"What in thunder's got 'em?" alluding to the trout, when at last in -despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to -the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without -being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squires ought to be -like Mr. Heathcliff in _Wuthering Heights_ and hide a burning lava of -passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester -is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up -in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a -real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank -bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding -disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not -catching fish! - -He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages "for the -ladies" at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all -Christina's rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as -much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says -Ariadne must take care and not to be like "Miss Baxter (whoever she was) -who refused a gent before he asked her." - -Christina thinks he _is_ a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing -for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and -that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be -able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin -than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and -get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by -way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him -sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes the side -of the woman--_esprit de corpse_, I think they call it. I myself think -there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great -mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love -with Simon. I even threatened her with this _expose_, and she turned -round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she _wasn't_ in love with -Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half -of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first -go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because -she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for -one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual -pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she -cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could -get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very -afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that! - -Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. -We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the -places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening -up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise -done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we -called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons. - -At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and -Ariadne answered demurely that it was getting a nice pea-green, or a -good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that -they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse -than ever. - -Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of -them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we -had to make a rule that we wouldn't allow gentlemen in the church during -decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers -instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men's button-holes -instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss -Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really -keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn't care for so -many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady -work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she -_reely_ could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from -him! We were only decorating for three days. - -During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on -very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in -the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had -taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we -did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day's -ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double -dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church just -as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their -own, in either case. - -Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no -wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not -look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she -had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then. - -At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the -village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a -want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is -all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to -make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne's untidiness is -trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as -book-markers, and butter--well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! -Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the -door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne's cakes, when made, will -form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of -breaking the nastiest fall. - -Christina's cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave -her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the -Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get -fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing -good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for -giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status -was preserved. - -On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter -Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of -the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside -while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them -to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of -them said, "Ay, Sir, but aren't we men the buttresses a-leaning up -against it and propping it up like?" Peter was only shocked. - -We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more -than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our -eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our -flowers wouldn't topple suddenly because we hadn't tied them securely -enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, -standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and -a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he -said, "Why, that wor t' Kern babby!" I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who -dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a -pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll -on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his -answer; he was pleased. - - "MY DEAR MISS VERO-TAYLOR, - - "Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in - one so young. The little mannikin--or rather womankin--is, as you - aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the - very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the - custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to - dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the - streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, - and the people dance round it singing: - - 'Blest be the day that Christ was born! - We've getten Mell of _Ball's_ corn! - It's well bun' and better shorn! - Hip! Hip! Hurray!' - - "This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly - scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the - Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps - during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this - grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the - goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called - Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, passim--" - -"Oh yes, pass him, pass him!" said Peter impatiently, who won't however -let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for -saying, - -"Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn't it?" - -"Well," she remarked to Ariadne later on, "you had better be getting up -your mythology" (meaning the Bible, only Peter didn't twig anything so -wrapped up as this), "because you will be sure to be subpoena'd to -take a class in the Sunday school after you have fished for it. _Nemo -Dodd impune lacessit!_" - -"Can't Dodd lace his boots with impunity?" I asked Peter. I knew it -wasn't that, any more than _Res angusta domi_ means "Please to keep -Augusta at home," and some others like that I have made. - -Sure enough, Mr. Dodd made Ariadne take a class in his Sunday school, -and Christina chuckled. It is the price of Mr. Dodd's admiration, and he -admired Ariadne very much. She is not really any happier for it, rather -bored by it in fact. She spent three whole days getting up Sacred -History for fear the school children, who have of course been properly -brought up and grounded, should floor her, a poor feckless literary -man's daughter. Peter Ball gave her a little arithmetic. She got as far -as Proportion with him. There was one sum about how many men it would -take to build a wall of so many feet in so many hours. If it was Inverse -Proportion, which it might be, and then again it mightn't, you put the -men under the wall and divide by the hours; as many of them as are left -after such treatment is the answer. It came, stupidly enough, -two-and-a-half, so I suggested to Ariadne, as I was helping her, to put -_Two men and a boy_. Peter said she didn't repay teaching, and saw -nothing to laugh at, though his wife seemed to. - -Then Ariadne started an essay club with prizes. The Squire bought those -for her in Morpeth when he went in to sell pelts and hides. Fancy -touching his hand after that! They were bits of his poor beasts that he -had killed! Billy Scott's short essay on the elephant, "_an animal with -a leg at each corner and a tail at both ends,_" was funny; and Sally -Moscrop's description of "_any animal she liked to choose._" She -invented "_The Proc,_" a beast with four legs, "_two of whom are bigger -and longer than the others, for the Proc lives all around a hill._" -Grace Paterson's essay was quite long. "_The Pin is an exceedingly -useful article. It has saved the lives of many men, many women and many -children by not swallering of them._" - -Grace is fourteen and the beauty of the village. She has begun a tale in -ten chapters. She has to write it up in the apple-tree, for fear her -father should "warm" her. - -She and Ariadne were the two belles of the Ball in the Parish Room on -Monday evening. They both danced with the Squire, who said he was in -luck to get two literary ladies to dance with him on the same night. But -Ariadne walked home with him, and I went with Christina. Mr. Rochester -had one of his own roses Ariadne had given him back, in his button-hole. -She is so unhappy about Simon that she doesn't care who proposes to her. -That is the way girls take it--a very selfish way, but they are selfish -all through when they are in love. Ariadne actually thinks the Squire -thinks he proposed to her going home that night. I don't. It was pitch -dark as we went home, the village is not lighted, and it is a very -wicked village. She says, long arms like tentacles came groping out from -the wall in the dark, and the Squire dragged her past them. As the -village young men couldn't see, they thought her one of their own -sweethearts, for by then the party had broken up and was all over the -place. The chucker-out had been very much occupied and had found the -brook near the school-house door very handy. - -But I don't myself think the Squire did propose. He offered to take care -of her, past the tentacles, but not for life. I think if a girl is -always dreading proposals and thinking of how men will feel it when -refused, proposals never come to them. That is what Christina said, and -that Peter Ball took her entirely by surprise, when he asked her. I knew -better, for I had chaperoned that affair. She says Peter wears very -well, and that there's some gilt left on the gingerbread still. The -gramophone is still in all its glory, and when she was ill up-stairs, -when Jim was born, Peter used to send up a message by the nurse for her -to leave the door of her room open for half-an-hour before dinner, and -then she would hear it. The nurse always forbade it, but Christina -always insisted on it, to please Peter, and lay with her ears stopped up -with sheet till the half hour was over. It is a new gramophone, not the -one he had in Leinster Gardens. That shouted itself out, I suppose? -Christina found an entry in his old pocket-book-- - -_"July 19--a memorable year in my life. I bought a new gramophone and I -got married. I won't say anything about my wife here, but the gramophone -was a beauty when she was new----"_ - -Ariadne was disgusted. She doesn't believe Simon would say such a coarse -thing. Well, I wish she had some experience on the subject, what Simon -would say, that's all! - -When Simon did come over to shoot, Ariadne hardly spoke to him during -the three days he was here. No one did, much. He is so fearfully -eligible that all the nice girls feel they must snub him, and he hardly -gets a cup of tea. If Christina hadn't known nice girls only, Ariadne -would have had a better chance. What is the good of being a nice modest -girl among other nice modest girls? And though Ariadne would not believe -it, she did badly without her foil Lady Scilly, who showed up her -niceness and made Simon draw comparisons. Then there was another adverse -circumstance. The Squire came and followed Ariadne about with his eyes, -till it really wasn't safe to sit in a line with them both. That put -Simon off. He is too nice to prefer a girl because another man is making -himself unhappy about her. - -Indeed Simon looked most uncomfortably serious and even sad. He has got -his first wrinkle fixed between his eyebrows. He looks at Ariadne often, -but in a puzzled sort of way, and takes himself up with a jerk, shaking -his head, that the curls are cut off from too short to waggle. - -"He cares for me--yes, he cares desperately," said Ariadne one night, -just as she was arranging her watch and her handkerchief on the chair -beside our bed, and his photograph under her pillow. I have to take that -away every morning lest the housemaid should see it and make fun of her. -Ariadne forgets. We also arrange the strap of our box down the middle of -the bed so that neither of us should encroach in the other's part, and -all these arrangements take time. Ariadne, though she is so gentle and -so in love, always looks sharply to her rights, and more than her -rights, and I generally find myself lying on the very rim of the bed. -She is the eldest, unfortunately, and once she took the strap out of the -bed to me when I objected. - -"He loves me--oh, he does!" she moaned, "only he is not free." - -"He is in the power of a wicked witch, like the one who enchanted -Jorinde and Joringel in Grimm!" I said, and tried to go to sleep and -thought a little. Lady Scilly isn't old, like the German witch, but I -remember what the Ollendorff man said to me about her being a "fairy," -and I know there is some connection between them. Fairies are those who -would do harm if they had the power; witches have the power, but only -because they are old and don't care for the things they cared for when -they were young. Ariadne will never be a fairy when she grows up, she -will always be too silly, and get put upon in society, though in private -life she is quite up to her rights, and talks as loud as any one and -doesn't trouble to be die-away. Men never see that side of girls, -mercifully they are able to keep it out of sight till they are at least -married, and on the pig's back, as Peter says. It is the unromantic -things they are ashamed of. Ariadne wouldn't mind Simon knowing she had -appendicitis, but not for worlds that she had a corn on her foot and had -to have it cut, or a chilblain, and it burst. - -Presently she woke up and said, "Will any one tell me why a woman like -that should be allowed to ruin his young life?" - -"All young men have nine lives like a cat, there will be eight left for -you to ruin, when you get him--but you never will." I always add this -not to raise false hopes. "And, goodness me, you can't expect to get a -young man all to yourself, as fresh and shining as a new pin!" - -"Yes, I do!" said Ariadne crossly. "I want a safety-pin even. I am a new -pin myself--I have never loved anybody but Simon, now have I?" - -I didn't answer that, but said I did wish we might turn over and go to -sleep, when Christina rapped on the wall with a hairbrush and begged us -to be quiet. - -"Yes. All right! We will!" I yelled, and I certainly wouldn't have said -another word, but Ariadne began again, five minutes later. - -"Tempe, why do these wretched married women--I'd be ashamed to be -one--always want everybody at once? She has got Mr. Pawky, and----" - -"Mr. Pawky is only for money," I said. I was not going to tell her -about her dear Simon paying Lady Scilly's bills as well as poor Pawky. - -"And Simon's for love, then--oh dear! And George for literature. I am -prettier than her, Tempe? Say I am--oh say I am, I want to hear you say -it." - -"I won't say it. You are far too conceited already." - -"That is the same as saying it," answered Ariadne, and got calmer. "And -at all events I am real, and that's more than she can say. I don't have -to peel off my charms and put them away in a drawer like she has to." -(Ariadne is able to put her poems quite in grammar, but I suppose she -thinks it unnecessary to be always at a stretch.) - -"I don't believe realness counts at all with young men," I said. "I -believe they really and truly enjoy kissing paint, and groping about the -floor for pin curls when they've done, and powder on their shoulders -when they go out into the street from calling." - -"Goodness!" cried Ariadne, almost shrieking, "you don't suppose Simon -ever went as far as kissing her? If I thought that, I'd----" - -"What?" - -"Never let him kiss me again. He hasn't of course, yet! Oh, Tempe, I -wish he had!" - -"There you go!" I cried out, sick of her changeableness. "First you want -him not to, then you wish he had. And the poor thing must kiss -somebody--he's got no mother, and kissing Almeria would be like kissing -a cactus or cuddling a porcupine. Do please keep to your own part of the -bed, you don't respect the strap a bit! I shall be on the floor in a -minute. I'm lying right in the hem of the sheet now." - -Ariadne kindly made a little more room for me as I was patiently -listening to her, and went on. - -"Tempe, I have learned in three short seasons some of the bitter truths -of so-called society----" - -Just then, as any one could have foretold from the noise we were making, -Christina walked right into the room. - -"Will you two children be quiet! Why are you crying, Ariadne?" - -Ariadne said she wasn't crying, and at the same time asked Christina to -be good enough, as she was up, to get her a clean pocket-handkerchief -out of the drawer, one of those tied up with blue ribbon, not pink, for -they are larger and plainer. Christina got it and then came and sat on -my foot, which she could scarcely help doing, as I was only just but -tumbling out of the bed altogether. She was exceedingly nice and -sympathetic and agreed that Lady Scilly ought to put Simon back, for he -was too little a fish for her to hook, being only twenty-four and she -thirty-eight. She assured Ariadne, much as Mother used to assure me, -that there were no ghosts--then if there aren't, what are the white -things one sees hanging about the doors of rooms?--that Simon didn't -really care for an old thing like that, and that if he did, her -attraction must naturally wear out in the course of ages, and that -Simon wouldn't be so very old by the time that happened, and would know -a nice girl when he saw one, with his unjaundiced eyes. - -She also thought Ariadne should not put upon me so, and should give me a -bigger piece of bed. - -I was thinking all the time she was talking of George, and how Mother -too as well as Ariadne was unhappy because of this evil fairy. I wished -the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, -and that Simon mightn't be in it when that happened. - -When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made -Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever -married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let -all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems -unattached, you may be pretty sure there's a girl worrying about him -somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! That's my motto, and -indeed a woman now-a-days is lucky if she gets a whole man to herself as -Christina has Peter, and well she knows when she is well off, and only -laughs when her Peter says, as he did at breakfast, when she offered him -Quaker Oats, "Woman, haven't you learnt that my constitution clashes -with cereals?" - -Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his -friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went -out into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched -it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we -could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne's best silk ties, -and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don't know if it did Lady Scilly -any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the -columns of the _Morning Post_ every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, -or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to -Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of -best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, -and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of -her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, _i. e._ Lady -Scilly's having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks -that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same -room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular -dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when -it comes to preserving Peter. - -The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the -seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One -can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson. - -She is a substantial farmer's daughter, in spite of her thinking she can -write. But she can wring a fowl's neck, and make butter, two things that -Ariadne never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other -from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire's -position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a -gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor -spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on -beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the -figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had -consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. -I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! -Devil! Devil!" repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that -was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the -best. - -Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if -possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a -novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandiere. I suppose it is -Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores -Ouida, and Dore is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's -wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it -looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully -afraid of beetles! - -Christina came on to us for a few days after staying with her -mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and -taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears -so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was -learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was -an advent. - -Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with -holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her -undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, -do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not -young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above -all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in -our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George's -request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does -not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, -Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about -making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death -about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I -used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up -in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which -Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would -disapprove of it. - -Ariadne managed to "sneak" a waist, and George never noticed. That is -the odd part of it; we all think that that inch more or less makes such -a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, -and to the outward eye look as thick as ever! - -Ariadne's figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find -out one's best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of -friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but -doesn't want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn't come out in -self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut -fibre, _I_ think, but Papa's friends admire it, and she gets the -reputation of being a beauty on it in our set. - -But in Lady Scilly's set, that is Simon's set more or less, they think -her a pretty girl, badly turned out! - -"Ah, you are your father's daughter, I see!" Christina said at once to -her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, -because she couldn't find a white one. I did not mention that I myself -had begun to sew one of Ariadne's iron pills on to my shoe, and only -stopped because it didn't seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we -have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes -down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes -out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing -and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor -points out to her that she hasn't got on any waistband, and another in -the hall sticks a pin in somewhere, that shines in the sun, when she -gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and -looks at it fixedly. - -"_Degagee_, as usual!" he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was -two years at a crammer's to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in -Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something -better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least -shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon -says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one -be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not -Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can't stand chaff as a general thing. -Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her. - -Simon has curly hair--not at all neat--which he can neither help nor -disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict's so as -to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and -Ariadne's estimation. "Can't help it. Couldn't bear to look like one of -those chaps." - -He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here -sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his -visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic -now. She can't bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, -and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who -come to describe it and photograph it for the Art papers, and wonders -if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different -from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he -seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at -all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won't -let Highsam be done for _Rural Life_, or lend Mary Queen of Scots' -cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria's -portrait in _The Bittern_ with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria -wrote him such a letter, _almost_ rude, giving him her mind about -interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon -has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I -grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know -of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy -the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the "festive gee" now, he -says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and -frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam -Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they -aren't the same as Ariadne's. - -"Great Scott!" he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one -afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that -George had specially designed for her. "If Almeria saw you in that -frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won't -wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg's on the -twenty-fourth! If you do, I swear I won't dance with you in it!" - -Of course he didn't mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in -her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it -seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to -please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington's dance had been sent -out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time -to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a -ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her -marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in -a county family, not a Bohemian one. - -Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost -ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting -either of us. Christina said _Quem Deus vult_--and that though you might -look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look -smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne's body was all over the place, -with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn't. When it was -basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were -working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are -three Empire mirrors in that room, you can't see yourself in any one of -them, so we had to tell her it didn't do, and never would do. - -"Take the beastly thing off then!" said Ariadne, almost crying, and -pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia's head. -(Amelia is the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) "I won't -wear anything at all!" - -"And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!" I said to tease -and console her, but she wouldn't be, and she left the body clinging to -Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good -thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in. - -"Dear me!" Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of -lying in bed late. "You look like Burne-Jones' _Laus Veneris_--'all the -maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.' I persuaded your father to bring me -up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make -all your own dresses." - -So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses -grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers' bills. - -"The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her," said -George. - -"Ninepence-halfpenny isn't going to express me!" Ariadne said, under her -breath. "It covers me, and that's all!" - -"I always think," George maundered, "that the symbolic note struck in -the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, -of the prevailing wind of a woman's mood. Her moods should be variable. -She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, -some mad scarlet incoherent thing another----" - -"I don't see how you are going to do all that on ninepence-halfpenny," -Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to -listen to her impertinence. "Why you can't even get the colour!" - -"It is every woman's duty to set an example of beautiful dressing -without extravagance!" and he looked at Lady Scilly's pretty pink -fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go. - -"Oh, this," she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it -was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. "This! This cost nothing at all! -I have a clever maid, you know?" - -"If all the women had clever maids that say they have," Christina -whispered to me. "What would become of Camille, I wonder?" - -George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, "You must never quit -an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable." - -"My dresses quit me," said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so -that the hole in it didn't show. "I'm jealous of the sofa! It's better -covered than me." - -I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she -is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear "this -creation." - -"At Lady Islington's," Ariadne answered rather sulkily. - -"Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, -my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to -dance in--it is too _debutantish_ for me, and I do wish some one would -wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will -do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?" - -"The day after to-morrow!" I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with -gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly's little dresses were like. -Camille's "little" would beat Ariadne's biggest. - -"Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall -be so much obliged." - -Ariadne said "thank you," a little ashamed to think that Simon was -coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to -dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, -and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady -Scilly's little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when -she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick -and no mistake, and I really thought so. - -But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress -into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress -didn't come. "Put not thy trust in smart women!" she said, and as it -happened, she was right, for the dress never did! - -At five o'clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn't a sign of it, -and Ariadne hadn't let herself worry over it, by my and Christina's -advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to -carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn't -worry, but she was very angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes -so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would -be all right. The dress wasn't so very bad either; we had given up all -attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell -that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. -Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her "girl" when she was dressed, she -nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet. - -"That'll get him, that'll get him, Miss Ariadne, you'll see!" she kept -saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love -that she couldn't help liking it. She had taken particular care of her -hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten -curlers in to make sure of it's looking nice. And it did, like Moses in -the burning bush. - -At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, -and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o'clock. I was just jumping in -(I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting -stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. -Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. -And she is learning to drop her h's in the south. - -"'Ere!" she said. "'Ere!" and shoved a great card-board box under my -nose. "_With Lady Scilly's love and compliments._" - -I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the -string, and there was a ball-dress--_the_ ball-dress! - -I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne--so near -and yet so far--dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre's -affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked -home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless -on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I -indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. -It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe -it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed -to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. -It said-- - - "DEAR CHILD, - - "My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must - be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and - I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with - my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste. - - "Ever yours, - - "PAQUERETTE SCILLY." - -"That's all she cares about--that George should think her generous! But -if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed -to get it here in time. I don't care for misplaced generosity." - -"Suppose, Miss," said Elizabeth, "that you was to take a cab and go to -where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I -say." - -"My sister isn't a music-hall artist," I regret to say was what I -answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn't -altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get -Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the -dress out on Ariadne's bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with -my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed. - -I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it -was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was -Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her -off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would -tease her a little first. - -"Well, did you have a good time?" I asked her. - -"Fairly," answered Ariadne. - -"Did you have any offers--in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure -you would." - -"I believe I am all torn to bits?" said Ariadne, walking round and round -her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take -any notice of my question. - -"Now don't expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!" - -Ariadne said, "I shall not touch it. I don't mean to wear it again, but -hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful -dress!" - -"Don't drivel!" I said, "unless there is really something particular -about the dress that I don't know." - -She didn't even rise to that, so I said, "I wonder you don't light up, -and have a good look at it." - -"There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?" Ariadne said, -sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn't mean to go -to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly's dress on her bed, and -was keeping calm just to tease me. - -"Did any one see you home?" I asked. - -"Yes, some one did," she answered, still in a sort of dream. - -"Did he kiss you in the cab?" I at last asked her, thinking that if -anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could -tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she -wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was -riled to extinction. - -"Oh, for Goodness' sake, get to bed!" I cried. "And if you are going to -undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get -into your bed very _very_ carefully!" - -That did it. - -"You naughty girl," she said quite quickly. "Have you been putting Lady -Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It's too bad of you!" - -She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She -saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it. - -"So you have come?" she said, talking to it as if it were a person. "You -are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you." - -"Well," said I, "you _are_ condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one -might ask?" - -"Mr. Hermyre." - -"Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! -I believe she's shy? How often did you dance with _Mister_ Hermyre?" - -"Oh, don't tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid." - -"Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, -there!" - -"He is going to," said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn't -know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night! - -I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it. - -"Did you--did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, -as we have always agreed you would?" - -"I may have--I don't know--I hope not!" - -"You hope you didn't, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not -run into him, or put his eye out or something?" - -"Beast, what do you mean?" - -"Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, -and I presume it has been there all the evening!" - -Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and -told me all about it quite nicely. - -As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight -difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a -Count--fancy, at Lady Islington's?--and he had been rude to Ariadne -about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn't so -near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other -man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite -him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new "mash" he was. I -believe he's the German chauffeur I saw in her car. - -But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought -it on--that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he -had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of -course never mentioned it to Simon. - -Lady Islington is Simon's Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. -After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange -and frightened--he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they -are riled--and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery -sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she -could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. -She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold -hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her -spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn't say anything, he -seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or -other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything -else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would -get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby--that he would take -hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, -imagining his taking hold of it, "willing" him to do it. She wanted him -to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; -but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own -free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not -begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow -that he was thinking of this too, or something like it--something to do -with her, at any rate. - -She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always -solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer -took place. - -Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of -them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon -take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, "Have you got a -fan?" - -Ariadne didn't know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all -part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite -truly-- - -"I haven't got one. You broke it." - -"And didn't I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! -Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn't see me?" - -And he kissed her. - -This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, -quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he -then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly -all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter -that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, -except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And -of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine. - -Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be -married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, -subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was -able to assure Simon that George won't, he doesn't care about keeping -Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre's _fiancee_ -she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course -Simon won't let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And -she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all -engaged girls. She bores me. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -Dear Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne -in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane -Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am -told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her -bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood -next her, couldn't prevent it, for she hadn't a single pin on her she -could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that -stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her -what she thought of Ariadne's "waist" this time, and didn't she wish she -could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found -time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne's dress was -made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, -the coal-agent's daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. -Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who -adores her, and doesn't see that she is a bit common. Men in love never -do. Still, she is our only childhood's friend, so Simon and even Almeria -didn't make the least objection to have her included in the procession. -They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to -afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out -wonderfully, and I really don't mind her at all. As the bridesmaids' hat -wouldn't set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it -to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and -stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much -softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at -Highsam later on and learn to ride. - -George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so--a set of his own -works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always -had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave -her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter -Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her -his mother's best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or -beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had -practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon -said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she -meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a -joke, and that _Punch_ wouldn't put in; but Ariadne never noticed and -was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, -I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the -Latin word _Donec_ engraved on it. I did not know what that meant, and -Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog's collar -afterwards. - -Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took -note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so -shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn't care for her -own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in -Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to -make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, -_after_ marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair. - -They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father's six places. He has -given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and -is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas. - -George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all -to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a -plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and -plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all -the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right -time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any -ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she -can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over -the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and gets -us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one -dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all -of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don't know if George -would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd -circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody's -fault but the plumber's, who came to put them right last time and -carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule -has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don't burst at all. - -When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, -and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect -Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were -undoing a few, and damned "this whirling season of string and brown -paper!" - -"I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post -early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all -mention of the egregious subject!" - -And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our -bedrooms in future. - -The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn't mind obeying him, we were -so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed -having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took -to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and -poor Ben's chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite -desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother to make some arrangement by -which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside -for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he -might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn't get much better -there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, -she couldn't save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any -rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She -would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some -books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly -to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, -since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can't do without him, -and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George -swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching -trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he -doesn't get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the -money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him -that she meant to pay the cost of Ben's education, for it is money, she -is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind -which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a -necessary evil for the sons of men. - -I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with--"he is the -devil for country houses!" Mr. Aix says, "he has got them in the -blood,"--I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to -breakfast--he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at -home--they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and -three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful -guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses -where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, -and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at -the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him -madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer. - -George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. -His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a -sad deer's. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to -wearing stays. I don't believe this. I am the only one in the house who -sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on -hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of -him, so I don't know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is -always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written -about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a -"singularly colourless personage," whom Mother likes very much. She -isn't half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more -suitable. - -After Christmas was over, George left us and went to "The Hutch," Lady -Scilly's place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says -she has piped all hands on deck--I mean all the people who are helping -her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor -among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will -drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I -am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be -fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It's such a good -old title. - -I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never -stayed so long at "The Hutch" before. He has his own suite there, and -all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or -characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment? - -Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there--Never no more!--but she has a lady -friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get -"restive." - -Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; -she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky -episode. - -"And I didn't make much of him, after all!" she told Mother and Aunt -Gerty. "Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn't trust women -any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty -purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy -any one--even a millionaire's--confidence in human nature. She borrows -of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it's quite -awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your -sweet innocent daughter rescued him from the wiles of Scilly, and -perhaps Charybdis--who knows? He looked weak!" - -"And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his -hands!" said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn't "quite -eighteen carat," Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a -woman's own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and -journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to -get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its -inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press -in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. -Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty -of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house -except the study. Mother won't let them go in there at all while George -is away. I hear them talking between the puffs-- - -"You can engage to work so and so, eh?" or "Have you got thingumbob?" - -Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes -them, and gets Mother to speak the woman's part for him, so that he sees -how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her -continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on -him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to -understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he -takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix -always speaks the brutal truth--he can't wrap anything up--he is as -"crude as the day," so George often says--I don't see Mother's -cleverness. - -They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. "Mustn't christen it before -it is brought into the world," and "One thing you can confidently -predict about it, it can't be born prematurely!" and so on. They use the -study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George's swivel-chair, and -Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman's part out -aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often -calls out, "Oh, you darling!" when she has said a particular piece. -"What a divine accent you give it!" "That will knock them!" "Wicked to -hide such a talent!" and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to -read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises -Mother all the time. - -"Pooh, pooh!" says Mr. Aix, "leave her to her intuitions! You battered -professionals don't know the value of a new note." - -So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George -married her. And a good thing too! - -Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be -finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his -study of course, but we hadn't the remotest idea of his arriving when he -did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time. - -We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah -blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was -in George's swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George -was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a -slap. - -"Our child comes on bravely!" he was just saying to Mother, as George -appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth. - -Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, "I'll bet you Lord Scilly has had him -kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!" and bolted into the hall, -forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk. - -"Welcome back, old fellow!" said Mr. Aix, turning round in the -swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty's blouseries. -They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George -turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught -it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a -great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as -servants always do when it is a question of not paying one's just debts. - -She began "If you please, sir, the cabman----" but her voice was quite -drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and -George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time. - -"Won't you pay your cab, George?" said Mother gently, "and then you can -abuse me at your leisure!" - -Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the -room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother -like a little school-girl before him. I don't know what they said to -each other, but George wouldn't come out to dinner, but had a plate sent -in. - -Mother didn't alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix. - -George's plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own -father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been -kicked out of "The Hutch" as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady -Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel -she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion. - -He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was -on his hands among Aunt Gerty's blouse trimmings. - -"Shall I take these away?" I asked. "Don't they make you angry?" - -"I haven't noticed." - -I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty's horrid pink shape all -over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn't even -scold me. - -"Where is Lucy--my wife?" he asked me presently. - -"My Mother?" said I. "She's gone to the theatre." - -"Is that usual?" - -"Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty -has gone with them." - -"Chaperons them, eh?" - -I didn't like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix _them_ in that -insulting bracketting way, so I said-- - -"Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change." - -"Aix?" said he, "for a change! God!" - -"She's collaborating with Mr. Aix." - -"Damn him and his play too." - -"Oh, not his play, George. Mother would be _so_ grieved." - -Then George suddenly pulled a paper out of his pocket and said, "Read -that aloud, child." - -"Is it a bit of your new novel?" - -"Yes, it is a bit of my new novel. Read." - -I did. - -"_We talk and talk, and never act. Oh, this curse of civilization! You -make excuses for S----, for your bitter enemy. Magnanimous, but effete! -He is behaving well, but so unpicturesquely. He offers a woman no excuse -for staying with him. Oh, Italy! Italy! You, magician, have made me long -for the life of Italy, the silver incandescent sands, the passionate -brown of the olives--but why should I try to outdo you in your own -imitable manner?_" - -"_In_imitable, you mean, don't you, child? But no, we will not trust -this white devil of Italy. Go and fetch me a plateful of cold meat. And -here are the keys; go down to the cellar and get a bottle of Burgundy. -Corton eighty-eight. You'll see the label. We will carouse." - -I was delighted. George and I finished the bottle between us, and he -ate a good supper, and said no more of Mr. Aix, or Mother either. - -I almost liked George just then. I saw why Lady Scilly liked him. He is -funny and gentle. I asked him to choose a school for Ben, and he said he -would think about it. It is the oddest feeling to suddenly become "pals" -with one's own father. I had never known it before. There is some good -in George, and his eyes are very bright. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -My mother is changed--not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly -every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than -ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that -simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George -and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more -than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has -taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her -because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to -speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she -gads about so much, she doesn't neglect her household duties. She sees -after George's comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the -house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He -shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for -him--it took her two hours--and then he said half-laughing, "A bad sign, -Tempe! Read your Balzac." - -I don't read Balzac, and I don't know what George means. I don't try, -and I find that is the best sort of sympathy one can give. At any rate, -he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to -type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under -his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not -so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at. - -We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was -married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come -to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She -simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch, -had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see -George, and she could have seen him more easily at "The Hutch" or her -town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel, -but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down -her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few -women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you -soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written -copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the -literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to -their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and -written her a polite letter about it, though that won't prevent him -slating it in _The Bittern_ if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says. - -I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to -hit George back with when he came and found us doing dressmaking in his -sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his -house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more -use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and -perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on -George's side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never -approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto. - -Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn't "look -that pleased to see her," as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards. -Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on -with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at -the Islingtons', at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a -Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly's chauffeur. He was waiting -outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took -him to her aunt's ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to -pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished. - -Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, "A female to see -you, sir." - -"Paquerette!" said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and -when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on -one knee and looked up into George's face, saying, as I have heard the -French do to their professors of painting or music,--"_Cher maitre!_" - -George had taught her to do this in the days when he was really her -professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the -Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I -could tell that she had no further use for him. - -I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I -were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they -didn't think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at -first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the _entente -cordiale_ we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like -doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want -myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw -me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet -we had not quarrelled. George put on his "pretty woman" manner, and -raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited -her. - -"How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell -you, she is leaving me." - -I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn't -come to see Mother, and hadn't thought of asking whether she was out or -not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity-- - -"You put it crudely." - -"I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall -not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know -the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow -that I am--_coeur de celibat_, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John's -Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens----" - -"No woman's such a fool as to leave a place like this----" - -"What does Shelley say? _Love first leaves the well-built nest----_" - -"You certainly are a most extraordinary man!" she mumbled. George -puzzled her by changing about so. - -"Yes," he answered her, smiling. "Come, take off your furs and make -yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the -rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am -weak, I shall not." - -"Are you quite sure you won't be stronger by the end of this interview?" - -"Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the -steed after the horse--I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge -success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of _The Bittern_ writes -me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to -beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive -woman. What more do you want?" - -"D. the novel! I want _you!_" she said, stamping her foot. - -"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed -forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a -chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the -heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's -holiday." - -"You _are_ unkind." - -"Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new -novel you propose we should work out together." - -"I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----" - -"Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking -it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never -do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours. -It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of -popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about -it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, -and you know how much that is!" - -"Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she -said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----" - -"It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of -Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best -as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast -is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open -the windows. When the novel is done----" - -"I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face. - -"Women hate realism." - -"Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay -our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it -will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The -Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb -down----" - -George shook his head. - -"No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure -if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go -now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for." - -"Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously -irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and -timely assistance, your----" - -"Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was -kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was -going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who -kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy -foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix -would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has -helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so -much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, -and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty -to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the -public-house that first day. - -"Good-bye--then--George!" she said, with something between a sneer and a -sob. "We meet again--in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross." - -What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George -bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in -the car as large as life--and as a German. Though indeed he is very -good-looking. - -"I can see that he is cross in every line of his back," Lady Scilly -whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them, -and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and -it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant. - -George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing, -and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded. - -"She will probably bolt with him before the year is out," he said, as we -went back to the study shivering. He played cat's-cradle with me till -dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game -appeared to amuse him, I didn't mind making a fool of myself for once. - -About Mother's going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it -really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don't see -who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is -George's greatest friend, as well as Mother's, and people don't run away -with perfect strangers, as a rule. - -Mother was certainly up to something, for her eyes were as bright as -glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say -while these were going on, slapping Mother's palms and vinaigretting -her--"It is natural, you know--the excitement." The excitement of -running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and -"nurse her energy," for she "would want it all!" Mother was by far the -most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of -George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was -always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her -life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the -Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a -club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog. - -George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he -knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements -questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and -grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced -a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his -foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack, -who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he -seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively -stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and -translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father -Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very -good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine -Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so -hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. -People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her -family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty -shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. -It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being -praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the -shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the -poor woman meant well. - -Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to -be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. -She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, -as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I -believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice -man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his -influence. - -One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant -or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. -George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things -Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest -before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for -the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would -not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find -out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine -eternity; one has nothing to go on. - -We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I -felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great -difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I -slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had -trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into -her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out -of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare -arms. - -"Oh, my pretty little Mother," I said. "I do love you." - -"You are just like every one else," she answered me pettishly. - -"I'm not," I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does -love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown. - -"Did George ever see you like this?" I asked. - -"Often. Is he gone to bed?" - -"Yes, with a headache." - -She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking -off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a -noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other -was still by the side of his bed. - -"Hold the candle, Tempe!" Mother said quickly. It was that she might go -down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt -and cried. - -"Oh, George, I am doing it for the best--I am, I am! For my poor -neglected boy--my poor Ben." - -She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation -with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on -the sheet near George's arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, -that I at once shut the stable-door--I mean blew out the candle and made -a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I -was--Father Mack hasn't cured George quite of swearing!--and we made a -clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began -to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a -honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to -catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her. - -"Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to -run away." - -"Run away! Who says I am going to run away?" - -"George." - -"He told you?" - -"He told Lady Scilly." - -"Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true." She laughed, a -laugh I did not like at all. It wasn't her laugh, but I have said she -was quite changed. - -"Oh, Mother, don't laugh like that!" - -"You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a -wicked mother's heart! Well, my dear, I'll promise you one thing. I will -never run away without you. Will that be all right?" - -"That will be all right," I answered, much relieved. For although I am -so much more "pally" with George and sorry for him, I don't want to be -left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the -_Marguerite_ from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and -mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing -for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather -tell me all in her own time. - -I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is -social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away -is chiefly the want of society. - -That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried -away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won't affect -her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a -mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have -suited Simon's stiff relations. It might have prevented him from -proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited. - -One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I -hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when -you only throw two or three things into a bag? A couple of bottles of -eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in _To Leeward?_ I, at -any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without -it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient. -Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets -so dreadfully condemned in novels. - -George's new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is -not so _farouche_ as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George -keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn't go to see -Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was "off" dear Father Mack, and -he says last time he went to see him it was the Father's supper-time, -and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting -his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish -off a plateful of bullock's eyes. Just like George to be put off his -salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if -Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner -like George. - -Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix's play. -George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain -old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can't act, -as "lead." - -"Who's your Parthenia?" he asked him. - -Mr. Aix answered, "Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the -suburban drama--the usual way." - -"Any good?" asked George casually. - -"I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me -as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one," said Mr. Aix, glancing -across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed. - -"I will take Tempe to your first night," said George suddenly. - -"A play of Jim Aix's for the child's first play!" cried Mother in a -fright. "I shouldn't think of it." - -"Children never see impropriety, or ought not to," George said. "But if -you don't wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead. -It will do the play good." - -"It's a fond delusion," said Aix, "that the aristocracy can even damn a -play." - -Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be -free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night, -after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o'clock mail that we -should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered -why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after -all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the -curtain if called, and that wouldn't possibly be till about ten o'clock, -too late for the train? - -Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love -that. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -"Shall I type your Good-bye to George?" I asked Mother. She said, "What -do you mean?" I said, "The one you will leave pinned to your pincushion -in the usual place?" - -She laughed, and I again thought her most fearfully casual. There was no -packing done, although one would have thought she would have liked her -clothes nice and fresh and lots of them, so that she shouldn't feel -shabby at Boulogne, and let Mr. Aix and herself down. As for my -clothes--I really only had one--one dress I mean--and it was hanging -loose where it shouldn't, and with a large ink-spot in front nobody had -troubled to take out with salts of lemon or anything. - -But I began to think some things had been sent on beforehand, as advance -luggage or so forth, for Mr. Aix came in one evening, and when Aunt -Gerty raised her eyebrows at him, he said "A 1!" That I fancied was the -ticket number for the luggage, so I felt more at ease. - -One eventful evening, after Mother had been lying down all day, I was -told to put on my sun-ray pleated, and to mend it if it wanted it. I did -mend it and I put a toothbrush in the pocket of it, and I kissed all -the cats until they hated me. Cats don't like kissing, but then I didn't -know when I should see them again? I supposed some time, for running -away never is a permanent thing. People always come back and take up -housekeeping again, in the long run. - -The funny thing was, they had chosen the day of Mr. Aix's first night to -run away on. I suppose it was in case he was boo-ed. Then the manager -could come on and say, "The author is not in the house, having gone to -Boulogne with a lady and little girl, by the nine o'clock mail!" That, -of course, was the train we were to catch. I looked it out, I am good at -trains. - -George took Lady Scilly to dine at the Paxton that night, and on to the -theatre where some others were to meet them. I have never been to a -theatre myself, only music halls. At six o'clock George went off, all -grin and gardenia. The grin was as forced as the gardenia. I observed -that. - -Aunt Gerty badly wanted to go with Mr. Aix and hold his hand, as he was -as nervous as a cat. But he wouldn't have her with him, and I don't -wonder. It would have been impossible to shake her off by nine o'clock, -and he would have missed the boat-train, and Mother and me. - -After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and -told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn't intrude on her -privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye to her old home, as I -was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes' list of -horses--for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only -love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of -her room smiling, and her pockets didn't stick out a bit. She is calm in -the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a -fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight -from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started -unconsciously. - -"Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!" - -I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I -held on to the toothbrush. - -"Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!" Mother said, as -we got into a hansom. - -"I won't; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?" - -"Mr. Aix? I am sure I don't know. He will be about, I suppose, unless -they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don't talk." - -She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to -keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn't help -thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what -Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne -tried seven cures, and none of them saved her. - -It was ridiculously early, only seven o'clock. As we drove on and on I -began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it -was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn't the door of a -station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his -hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, -up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be -building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and -that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on -wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a -landscape of an orchard on it. - -"What is it?" I asked one of the people standing about--a man in a white -jacket. - -"That, Missie--that's the back cloth to the first scene," and then he -mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to -show I didn't understand. - -"Oh, yes, quite so," I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once -been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening -dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort -of inappropriate man. - -"Where's my mother?" - -"Oh, your mother! Yes, she's gone to her room. I'll take you to her." - -"But are you going to make us live _here?_" I asked; but bless the man! -he was too nervous to take any more notice of me and my remarks. We -muddled along; I tumbled over a lump in the middle of the floor with -grass sown on it, and caught my foot in a carpet, made of the same. Mr. -Aix quite forgot me and I lost him. - -"Mind! Mind!" everybody kept saying, and shouldering past me with bits -of the very walls in their arms. They left the brick perfectly bare, as -bare as our old coal-cellar at Isleworth. (The one in Cinque Cento House -is panelled.) I saw an ordinary tree, as I thought, but I was quite -upset to find it was flat, like a free-hand drawing. My eyes were -dazzled with electric lights, mounted on strings, like a necklace, only -stiff, that they pushed about everywhere they liked. There were things -like our nursery fire-guard all round the gas, that was there as well as -electric. I noticed a girl go and look through a hole in a bit of canvas -or tapestry that took up all one side of the wall, and went near her. - -"Pretty fair house!" she said. She was a funny-looking little thing, -with hardly enough on, and what there was was dirty, or dyed a dirty -colour. In fact no two persons there were dressed alike; it was like a -fancy-dress party, such as the Hitchings have at their Christmas-tree. -The noise was deafening, they were shoving heavy weights about here and -there, without knowing particularly or caring where they were going. My -new friend had an American accent, and was as gentle as a cat. She went -a little way back from the curtain with me and stood by a man she seemed -rather to like, though he didn't seem to like her. He was very tall and -big, and when she had been talking to him a little while, she said -suddenly-- - -"Excuse me! I must not let myself get stiff!" and took hold of a great -leather belt he wore, and propped herself up by it and began to dip up -and down, opening her knees wide. The man didn't seem to like it much, -but he was kind and chaffed her, till I got tired of her see-sawing up -and down, and talking of her Greekness, and asked one or the other of -them to be kind enough to take me to my mother. - -"Certainly, little 'un," said the man; "kindly point the young lady out -to me. There's so many in the Greek chorus!" - -"It is Miss Lucy Jennings' daughter," said somebody near. - -"I'll take you to her after my dance," said the girl. "Wait. Watch me! I -go on!" - -It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering -about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not -more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and -watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no -stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work -boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no -wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an -ordinary game of blindman's-buff, and said to me, "Now, pussy, I will -escort you to your mommer." - -She took me to the edge of the wall where a little stairs came down, -and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other -green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his -cheeks and a baby's rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were -streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, -natural mother. - -But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and -answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in -front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and -she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a -waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow! - -That finished me, and I screamed, "Oh, Mother, where have you put your -black hair?" - -Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to -shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said-- - -"It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will -kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!" - -So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, -nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the -effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid. - -The others didn't think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, "Really, Lucy, I -wouldn't have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor -women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the cheek, Kate. The -lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know." - -So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit -of an animal's foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, -she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said -something at the door--"Garden scene on!" and went away. The nurse -called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down -the stairs. - -Then for the first time I twigged what it was--a _Theatre!_ The people -were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but -what I didn't know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard -Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, -and terribly disillusioned as well. - -The play was all the running away there was to be! Mother was going to -be no more to Mr. Aix than taking a leading part in his play amounted -to. My toothbrush literally burned in my pocket. I had been made a fool -of. - -But when I came to think it over quietly, I did not know but what I was -not rather glad. It would have been a horrid upset, this running-away -idea, and I believe George secretly felt it very much, though he did -swagger so and pretend he didn't care. The only thing was, perhaps he -would mind Mother going on the stage even worse than running away? I -longed to see him and hear what he had to say about it. - -Mr. Aix was standing quite near us, between a flat green tree and the -wall of a temple. He looked almost handsome; I suppose it was the aroma -of success, for certainly this _was_ a success. The audience seemed -delighted with Mr. Bell, a great fat actor in boots, with frilled tops -like an ancient Roman, who stood in the very middle of the stage raging -away at Mother about something or other she had done. - -"Bell's in capital form to-night," said Mr. Aix, quite loud. "I'm -pleased with him." - -"I hope I shall content you too," said Mother, who was shivering all -over, and I don't wonder, for the draughts in this place were terrific. -Kate handed her a bottle of smelling-salts. - -"Better by far have a B. and S.," said Mr. Aix. - -"No Dutch courage for me, thank you!" said Mother. "Tell me at once, is -George and the cat in the box?" - -"They are, and Mr. Sidney Robinson and the Countess of Fylingdales. You -must buck up, little woman, and show them what you can do!" - -"And what you can do!" she answered politely. "I shan't forget you have -entrusted me with your play." - -"And, by Jove! you'll bring it out as no other woman could. You can----" - -"I'm on!" said Mother, suddenly, and shunted the shawl, and pushed -forward and began to act. - -They clapped her at first and nearly drowned her voice, but she went -right on and abused Mr. Bell in blank verse. I was glad Mr. Aix hadn't -made her a laundress or a serio, but something nice and Greek and -respectable. - -I stood there with Kate and Mother's shawl and Aunt Gerty, and never -knew what it was to be so excited before! The Greek girl came up to me -and said-- - -"Say, your mommer'll knock them!" - -Then they seemed to come to a sort of proper place to stop, and the -curtain began to rattle down, and Mother and Mr. Bell were holding each -other tight, like lovers, only I heard her say in a whisper, "Mind my -hair!" - -They stayed there a long time looking stupid, even while the curtain was -down and people were clapping all round. Then I saw why they did it, for -it went up again, and again, and then they parted and took hands the -last time, and looked straight in front of them and panted, while people -shouted their names. Then the curtain came down again and Mr. Bell -limped off, for, as he said, politely, Mother had been standing all the -while on his best corn. She was so sorry, and he said it didn't matter, -and he hoped he hadn't disarranged her hair. - -Oddly enough the clapping began again. Aunt Gerty jogged Mother, who -stood near me looking quite giddy, and said "Take your call, silly!" - -Mr. Bell took her by the hand and made her walk along in front of the -curtain that a man held back for her by main force, and then we heard -the people roaring again, till it seemed more as if they thirsted for -their blood than wanted to praise them. This happened twice. When they -didn't seem inclined to clap any more she went off to her room with -Kate, while Mr. Aix thanked her for making his play. - -"Come and look at them!" said Aunt Gerty to me, and we went and looked -through the rent in the curtain, for that was the hole in the wall the -girl looked through. There was George and Lady Scilly talking away as if -Mother and her triumph hadn't existed. I think George was cross, but I -really couldn't tell. - -Mother wouldn't have me in her room at all this time, and I lounged -about with Aunt Gerty till it all began again. Mother didn't do this -next act so well, at least Aunt Gerty said not, and scolded her. - -"I can't help it, Gertrude," Mother said. "I thought George would -have----" - -"Never fear! He'll hold out till the end of the play. Then he'll be -round here bothering as sure as my name is Gertrude Jenynge!" - -And her name is Gertrude Jennings, which is pretty near, and in the -third piece of acting, when Mother was not on much, I heard George's -voice asking to be taken to her. - -"Miss Jennings left word she was not to be disturbed this wait." - -"I'm her husband." - -"Very likely, sir!" The man sneered. - -He didn't get in, and he stood there neglected by the staircase till the -beginning of the next and last act, as they said it was. I dared not go -and speak to him, for he looked so cross, and I was also afraid he -would carry me away to the box with Lady Scilly, so I just slipped -behind a bit of scenery and observed. - -Presently Mother came softly out of her room and passed George leaning -on the rail of the staircase leading to her dressing-room. - -She nodded and laughed. - -"Wait for me, George, please. Kate, take this gentleman to my room----" - -And she went gaily on to the stage. - -I followed George and Kate to Mother's room, and discovered myself to -him. He made no fuss, simply looked right through me, and began walking -up and down while Kate sewed a button on to something. - -We heard the clapping from the front quite distinctly. George ground his -teeth. Then Kate slipped out and Mother came in alone, panting, and took -hold of the dressing-table as if she was drowning. - -"I've saved the piece!" said she almost to herself, and then to George, -"I'm an artist. Oh, George, why weren't you in front to see me in the -best moment of my life?" - -"When I married you, Lucy----" George stuttered. - -"Yes, but that wasn't nearly such an occasion! Oh, George, forgive me, -and don't spoil all my pleasure." - -"Pleasure!" said George, as if he was disgusted. - -"Here comes Jim Aix to congratulate me. Poor Aix, he is so pleased...." - -She burst into tears as Mr. Aix came in. He took absolutely no notice of -George, but just caught hold of Mother's hands and said several times -over-- - -"Thank you! Thank you! Bless you! Bless you! Good God! You are -crying----" - -"It is my husband there, who grudges me my success! He does, he does! -Oh, George, for shame! I did it for Ben--for our son--to be able to send -him to college. I have made a hit--quite by accident--and you grudge it -me!" - -"He doesn't, he doesn't grudge you your artistic expansion!" said Mr. -Aix, and went to George and put his hand on his shoulder. "Old George is -the best sort in the world at the bottom. Pull yourself together, dear -old man, and be thankful you have a clever wife, as well as a good one. -She's a genius--she's better, she's a brick. I can tell you she's a -heaven-born actress, and you know what sort of a wife she has been to -you. Speak to her, man, don't let her cry her heart out now, in the hour -of her triumph. What's a triumph? At the best but short-lived! Don't -grudge it her! Congratulate her----" - -George came out of his corner and took Mother's hand and kissed it -nicely, as I have seen him kiss Lady Scilly's hand, but Mother's never. - -"One can only beg your pardon, Lucy, for this, and everything else. Can -you forgive me?" - -I re-open my MS. to add a few facts of interest. - -1. Ariadne got a baby in June; his name is Almeric Peter Frederick. - -2. Aunt Gerty got her brewer, and Mrs. Bowser has left the stage. - -3. Ben was sent to school, and they say he is clever, though I never -could see it. - -4. Lady Scilly has run away with the chauffeur and, so far, hasn't come -back. - -5. I am going to stay with Ernie Fynes' mother, Lady Fynes, at Barsom. -Ernie will be away at Eton, but he loves me. - -THE END - -_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ - - -THE BEST BOOKS - -TO ASK FOR - -AT ALL LIBRARIES - -AND - -BOOKSELLERS - - -NEW NOVELS BY POPULAR WRITERS - -Price 6/-each - -VIOLET HUNT -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME -By VIOLET HUNT, Author of "The Maiden's Progress," -"A Hard Woman," etc. (Fourth Edition.) - -MARY STUART BOYD -THE MAN IN THE WOOD -By MARY STUART BOYD, Author of "Our Stolen -Summer," "With Clipped Wings," etc. - -ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW -THE SHULAMITE -By ALICE and CLAUDE ASKEW - -KEBLE HOWARD -THE GOD IN THE GARDEN -By KEBLE HOWARD, Author of "Love and a Cottage." -With Illustrations by FRANK REYNOLDS. - -H. C. BAILEY -RIMINGTONS -By H. C. 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Price 3s. -and 3s. 6d. net per volume._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Anything in it?" mother said.=> "Anything in it?" Mother said. {pg 26} - -look of dsappointment=> look of disappointment {pg 62} - -one of the man who did=> one of the men who did {pg 101} - -when your times comes=> when your times comes {pg 105} - -The fortune-seller doesn't=> The fortune-teller doesn't {pg 115} - -though the first room=> through the first room {pg 137} - -I dare said he had got=> I dare say he had got {pg 165} - -it is the only times in his life=> it is the only time in his life {pg -199} - -"The Survival of the fittest"=> "The Survival of the Fittest" {pg 284} - -Gerty and mother think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556.txt or 41556.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - -BY VIOLET HUNT - -AUTHOR OF 'A HARD WOMAN' - -_FOURTH EDITION_ - -LONDON - -CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. - -1904 - - - - -Tempe, a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north, and -Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the -Ægean.--_Lemprière._ - - - - -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -They say that a child's childhood is the happiest time of its life! - -Mine isn't. - -For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is -nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It -is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a -cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too -soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy"--no grown-up person understands -that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. -It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be -despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the -quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest -thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get -that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too -cross to admit that you do! - -I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as -Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead. - -I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying -children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down -everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I -mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in -prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me -insensibly into the habit of composition. George--my father--we always -call him by his Christian name by request--offered to look it over for -me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want -to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up -people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the -worst--I mean the truth--about everybody, including myself. That is what -makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short -commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have -seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be -discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, -however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw -me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a -specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality -and _verve_. I do adore _verve_! - -George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and -vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for -it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two -following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never -knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be -daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the -education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he -has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am -apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a -scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a -long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, -dried-up tone teachers put on,--"Did she see?" And when he asked me, I -didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness. - -I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook -says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook -beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place -somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after -that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil--plain devil when he -is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, -for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she -get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, -but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She -never says a sharp word--can't! George says she is bound to get left, -like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white -like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my -favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without -any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings. - -I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of -us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would -never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been -exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the -tantamount of Mount Täygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly -babies. We aren't allowed to read Lemprière. I do. What brutes those -Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George -says! - -I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that -the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children -"go in and out so," and even Aunt Gerty says that "fancy children never -last," and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count -on keeping up to their own standard. - -I cannot tell you if our looks come from our father, or our mother? -George is small, with a very brown skin. He says he descends "from the -little dark, persistent races" that come down from the mountains and -take the other savages' sheep and cows. He has good eyes. They dance and -flash. His hair is black, brushed back from his forehead like a -Frenchman, and very nice white teeth. He has a mouth like a Jesuit, I -have heard Aunt Gerty say. He never sits very still. He is about -thirty-seven, but he does not like us chattering about his age. - -Mother looks awfully young for hers--thirty-six; and she would look -prettier if she didn't burn her eyes out over the fire making dishes for -George, and prick her fingers darning his socks till he doesn't find out -they are darned, or else he wouldn't wear them again, and spoil her -figure stooping, sewing and ironing. George won't have a sewing machine -in the house. Her head is a very good shape, and she does her hair plain -over the top to show it. George made her. Sometimes when he isn't there, -she does it as she used before she was married, all waved and floating, -more like Aunt Gerty, who is an actress, and dresses her head sunning -over with curls like Maud. George has never caught Mother like that, or -he would be very angry. He considers that she has the bump of -domesticity highly developed (though even when her hair is done plain I -never can see it?), and that is why she enjoys being wife, mother, and -upper housemaid all in one. - -We only keep two out here at Isleworth, though my brother Ben is very -useful as handy boy about the place, blacking our boots and browning -George's, and cleaning the windows and stopping them from rattling at -nights--a thing that George can't stand when he is here. When he isn't -we just let them rave, and it is a perfect concert, for this is a very -old Georgian house. Mother makes everything, sheets, window-curtains, -and our frocks and her own. She makes them all by the same pattern, -quite straight like sacks. George likes to see us dressed simply, and of -course it saves dressmakers' bills, or board of women working in the -house, who simply eat you out of it in no time. We did have one once to -try, and when she wasn't lapping up cocoa to keep the cold out, she was -sucking her thimble to fill up the vacuum. We are dressed strictly -utilitarian, and wear our hair short like Ben, and when it gets long -mother puts a pudding basin on our heads and snips away all that shows. -At last Ariadne cried herself into leave to let hers grow. - -The new cook says that if we weren't dressed so queer, Ariadne and me, -we should make some nice friends, but that is just what George doesn't -want. He likes us to be self-contained, and says that there is no one -about here that he would care to have us associate with. Our doorstep -will never wear down with people coming in, for except Aunt Gerty, and -Mr. Aix, the oldest friend of the family, not a soul ever crosses the -threshold! - -I am forgetting the house-agent's little girl, round the corner into -Corinth Road. She comes here to tea with us sometimes. She is exactly -between Ariadne and me in age, so we share her as a friend equally. We -got to know her through our cat Robert the Devil choosing to go and stay -in Corinth Road once. At the end of a week her people had the bright -thought of looking at the name and address on his collar, and sent him -back by Jessie, who then made friends with us. George said, when he was -told of it, that the Hitchings are so much lower in the social scale -than we are, that it perhaps does not matter our seeing a little of each -other. She is better dressed than us, in spite of her low social scale. -She has got a real osprey in her hat, and a mink stole to wear to -church, that is so long it keeps getting its ends in the mud. She -doesn't like our George, though we like hers. George came out of his -study once and passed through the dining-room, where Jessie was having -tea with us. - -"Isn't he a _cure_?" said she, with her mouth full of his -bread-and-butter. - -We told her that our George was no more of a cure than hers, which shut -her up; and was quite safe, as neither Ariadne nor I know what a "cure" -is. She isn't really a bad sort of girl. We teach her poetry, and -mythology, and she teaches us dancing and religion. She has a governess -all to herself every morning, and goes to church regularly. She once -said that her mamma called us poor, neglected children, and pitied us. -We hit her for her mother, and there was an end of that. We love each -other dearly now, and have promised to be bridesmaids to each other, and -godmothers to each other's children. I am going to have ten. - -Ariadne went to her birthday party at Christmas, and did a very silly -thing, that Mother advised her not to tell George about. Every one at -home agreed that poor Ariadne had been dreadfully rude, but I can't see -it? I adore sincerity. When Mr. Hitchings asked her what she would like -out of the bran-pie when it was opened, same as they asked all the -other children, Ariadne only said quite modestly, "A new papa, please!" - -Their faces frightened her so, that she tried to improve it away, and -explain she meant that she should like an every-day papa, like Mr. -Hitchings, not only a Sunday one, like George. I know of course what she -meant, a papa that one sees only from Saturdays to Mondays, and not -always then, is only half a papa. - -Ariadne's real name is Ariadne Florentina, after one of George's -friends' books. She has nice hair. It is reddish and yet soft, but it -won't curl by itself, which is a great grief and sorrow to her. But at -any rate, her eyelashes are awfully long and dark, and she likes to put -the bed-clothes right over her head and listen to her eyelashes -scrabbling about on the sheet quite loud. She has big eyes like nursery -saucers. The new cook calls them loving eyes. On the whole, Ariadne is -pretty, she would think she was even if she wasn't, so it is a good -thing she is. She considers herself wasted, for she is over eighteen -now, and she has never been to a party or worn a low neck in her life. -We have neither of us ever seen a low neck, but we know what it is from -books, and from them also we learn that eighteen is the age when it -takes less stuff to cover you. The new cook says that all her young -ladies at her last place came out when they were only seventeen. What is -outness? I asked George once, and he said it was a device of the -Philistines. I then told him that the new cook said that Ariadne would -never be married and off his hands unless he gave her her chance like -other young ladies, and he said something about a girl called Beatrice -who was out and married and dead before she was nine. Her surname was -Porter, if I recollect. The new cook said "Hout!" and that Beatrice -Porter was all her eye and just an excuse for selfishness! - -Anyhow it is Ariadne's affair, and she doesn't seem to care much, except -when the new cook fills her head with ideas of revolt. She walks about -the green garden reading novels, and waiting for the Prince, for she has -a nice nature. I myself should just turn down the collar of my dress, -put on a wreath and go out and find a Prince, or know the reason why! - -We keep no gardener, only Ben. Ben is short for Benvenuto Cellini, -another of George's friends. He is thirteen, old enough to go to school, -only George hasn't yet been able to make up his mind where to send him. -It is a good thing Ben has plenty of work to do, for he is very cross, -and talks sometimes of running away to sea, only that he has the North -border to dig, or Cat Corner to clear. - -That is the corner George calls The Pleasaunce--it is we who call it Cat -Corner. Not only dead cats come there, but brickbats and tin kettles -with just one little hole in them, and brown-paper parcels that we open -with a poker. I hope there will be a dead baby in one some day, to -reward us. The trees are so dirty that we don't like to touch them, and -the birds that scurry about in the bushes would be yellow, like -canaries, Sarah says, only for the dirt of London. I hardly believe it, -I should like to catch one and wash it. In the opposite corner George -has built a grotto, and we have to keep it dusted, and he sits there and -writes and smokes. The next garden is the garden of a mad-house. The -doctor keeps a donkey and a pony. Once a table-knife came flying over -the wall to us. George's nerves were so thoroughly upset that he could -not bear anything but Ouida and Miss Braddon read aloud to him all the -rest of the day. Mother happens to like those authors and another -Italian lady's books that we are forbidden to mention in this house. She -never reads George's own works; she says she has promised to be a good -wife to him, but that that wasn't in the bond. She knows them too well, -having heard them all in the rough. Behind the scenes in a novel is as -dull as behind the scenes in a theatre, you never know what the play is -about. Aunt Gerty says that all George's things are rank, and quite -undramatic, and George says he is glad to hear it, for he doesn't like -Aunt Gerty. - -The other persons in the house are George's cats. There are three. The -grey cat, the only one who has kittens, I call Lady Castlewood, out of -_Esmond_ by Thackeray. George sometimes says "that little cat of a Lady -Castlewood"--it occurred to me that "that little Lady Castlewood of a -cat" just suits ours, for she is a jealous beast, a cantankerous beast, -and goes Nap with her claws all over your face in no time! She hates her -children once they are grown up, and is merely on bowing terms with -them, or you might call it licking terms--for she doesn't mind giving -them a wash and a brush-up whenever they come her way. Robert the Devil -was the one that stayed away a week. He is very big and mild; he can lie -down and wrap himself in his fur till he looks all over alike, and you -couldn't find any particular part of him, no more than if he were a kind -of soft hedgehog. George talks to them and tells them things about -himself. - -"I am sure they are welcome to his confidence!" that is what the new -cook said. She likes them better than she likes him. She is quite kind -to cats, though she gives them a hoist with her foot sometimes, when -they get in her way. They are valuable, you see. I wish I was, for then -people care what you eat and give you medecines, which I love. It isn't -often you are disappointed in a new bottle of medecine, except when -there's gentian in it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -You don't get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother -says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who -knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good -servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and -without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, -which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a -servant best through its stomach, and don't give them beer, or -beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I -suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I -know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) -is worth, and I value my right of free entry. - -Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, -and sees germs in everything. It doesn't make her any happier. But as -for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan -for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our -mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the -wrong place, chivied here and there, with no resting-place for the sole -of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she -makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to -see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don't believe any servant was -ever ashamed in her life. 'Tisn't in their natures. They just grin and -bear with it--with the dust, and the scolding too. - -"It's 'er little way," I heard Sarah say once, not a bit unkindly or -disagreeably, though, after Mother had come down on her about something. -But once I caught the very same girl shaking her fist at George's back -and calling him "an old beast!" - -"Sarah," I said, "whom are you addressing?" - -"The doctor's donkey, miss," she said, as quick as lightning, pointing -to it grazing in the doctor's garden next door. People were always -overloading that donkey, and shaking their fists at it. - -I must get to the new cook. The last one gave Mother notice, and I never -could find out why, because she was fond of Mother and could stand the -cats. - -"Oh, I like _you_, ma'am," I heard her say, just as if she disliked some -one else. Mother took no notice, but left the kitchen, and Cook took a -currant off her elbow and pulled down her sleeves, and mumbled to Sarah, -"It isn't right, and I for one ain't going to help countenance it. -A-visiting his family now and then between jobs, just like a burglar--or -some-think worse!" - -What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the scullery window, and -Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of -them both, so that it made a mist and she didn't see me. I knew, though, -she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she "shouldn't -reely," she muttered something more about a "neglected angel!" I did -think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor's donkey as usual, -but then the words didn't fit either of us? I asked her straight if she -did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was -minding his own business and I had better do the same. - -She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for -really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at -the back door, and she kept saying, "A poor girl's only got her -character, mum, and she is bound to think of it--" and Mother said, -"Yes, yes, you did quite right!" and seemed just to want her out of the -house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment -Sarah's back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the -middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into -every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the -towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the -corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its -back like a horse kicking. - -Of course George wasn't allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him -where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester's for the shooting -(George shooting! My eye!--and the keeper's legs!) and said he had -better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to -be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built -my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and -that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and -didn't bother to tuck them in. It isn't necessary to do so when we turn -head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three -times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice -lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson's, Monkey Soap, -and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn't a speck of dirt, or pattern -either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat -one's meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of -one's soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the -joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn't scold -us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them -in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we -black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the -walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that -shows it was shabby and ready for death. - -Mother said afterwards that she couldn't see any improvement anywhere, -but anyhow we enjoyed ourselves and that is everything. We spent money -on it, for we bought _décalcomanie_ pictures, and did bouquets all over -the mantelpieces, but Mother insisted we should peel all these off again -before George came back. He couldn't come back till we got that cook, -for George is most absurdly particular about our servants. Sarah has got -used to him, and there seems to be no idea of her going. She has to -valet him, for he is always beautifully dressed. She has to take the -greatest care of her own appearance, and get her nails manicured and her -hair waved when he is at home. That is about all for her. But the cook -he calls the keeper of his conscience, that is to say, his digestion. -His digestion is as jumpy as he is. Sometimes it wants everything quite -plain, and he will eat nothing but our rice-puddings and cold shapes of -tapioca, etc.; at another time he calls it "apparition," and says the -very name of it makes him shiver. I am used to cold shapes, alas! He -sometimes brings things down from town himself--caviare and "patty de -foy." Children are not supposed to like that sort of thing, but we do, -and George gives them us; he is not mean in trifles. Sometimes it is -pheasants and partridges, that he has shot himself on ducal acres. They -are shot very badly, not tidily, with the shot all in one place as it -ought to be: Mr. Aix explained this to me. They are not to be cooked -till they are ready, and when they are they are a little too ready for -Mother and us, so Papa and Mr. Aix have to eat it all. George belongs to -the sect of the Epicureans; I heard him tell the cook so, also that he -is the reincarnation of a gentleman called Villon. - -For a month Mother "sat in" for cooks, and all sorts of fat and lean -women came and went. Our establishment didn't seem attractive. George -bespoke a fat one, by letter, but Mother inclined to lean. These women -sat on the best chairs and prodded the pattern of the carpets with their -dusty umbrellas, and asked tons of questions,--far more than she asked -them, it seemed to me, and this one that we have at last got was the -coolest of all, but in rather a nice way. She was tall and thin, with a -long nose with a dip in it just before the tip, which was particularly -broad. Ariadne said afterwards that a nose like that seemed to need a -bustle. She said she was a north-country woman, and that is about all -she did tell us about herself, except her name, Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -She sat and asked questions. When she came to the usual "And if you -please, ma'am, how many is there in family?" Mother answered, "Myself -and my son and my two daughters,--and my sister--she is -professional--and is here for long visits--that is all." - -"Then I take it you are a widow, ma'am?" - -Mother, getting very red, explained that George is very little at home, -so that in one way he didn't count, but in another way he did, for he is -very particular and has to be cooked for specially. Being an author, he -has got a very delicate appetite. - -"A proud stomach, I understand ye. Well, I shall hope to give him -satisfaction." She said that as if she would have liked to add, "or I'll -know the reason why." - -She seemed quite to have settled in her own mind that she was going to -take our place. She "blessed Mother's bonny face" before that interview -was over, and passed me over entirely. - -She came in in a week, and the first time she saw George she was "doing -her hall." Ariadne and I were there as George's hansom drove up and he -got out and began a shindy with the cabman. - -"Honeys, this will be your father, I'm thinking!" she said. - -Perhaps she expected us to rush into his arms, but we didn't; we knew -better. We just said "Hallo!" and waited till he was disengaged with the -cabman, who wanted too much, as we are beyond the radius. George didn't -give it to him, but a good talking to instead. The new cook stopped -sweeping--servants always stop their work when there is something going -on that doesn't concern them, and looked quite pleased with George. - -"He can explain himself, and no mistake!" she said to Sarah afterwards, -and she cooked a splendid dinner that night, for, says she to Sarah, -"seemed to her he was the kind of master who'd let a woman know if she -didn't suit him." - -She doesn't "make much account of childer," in fact I think she hates -them, for when Ariadne showed her the young shoots in a pot of snowdrops -she was bringing up, and said, "See, cook, they have had babies in the -night!" Elizabeth, meaning to be civil, said, "Dis_gust_ing things, -miss!" - -Still, she isn't really unkind to children, and admits that they have a -right to exist. She will boil me my glue-pot and make me paste, and lets -Ariadne heat her curling-tongs between the bars of the kitchen fire. She -doesn't "matter" cats, but she gives them their meals regular and -doesn't hold with them loafing in the kitchen, and getting tit-bits -stolen or bestowed. And they know she is just, though not generous, and -never forgets their supper. They were all hid, as it happened, when she -came about the place, but she said she knew she had got into a cat house -as soon as she found herself eating fluff with her tea, and she thinks -she ought to have been told. George laughs at her and calls her "stern -daughter of the north," but he wasn't a bit cross when she told him that -Ben ought to be sent to school. He even agreed, but Ben isn't sent. Ben -is still eating his heart out, and he keeps telling Elizabeth Cawthorne -so. He is much in the kitchen. She is very sensible. She just stuffs a -jam tart into his mouth, and says, "Tak' that atween whiles then, my -bonny bairn, to distract ye." Ben takes it like a lamb, and it does -distract him, or at any rate it distends him; he has got fat since she -came. - -She orders Mother about as if she were a child. Mother _does_ look very -young, as I have said. She ought, and so ought Aunt Gerty, considering -the trouble they both take to keep the cloven hoof of age off their -faces. They go to bed with poultices of oatmeal on them, and Aunt Gerty -once tried the raw-beef plaster. But what she does in the night she -undoes in the day, with the grease paint and sticky messes that are part -of her profession. - -She lives with us except when she is on tour, and is only here when she -is "resting" in the _Era_, and all that time she is dreadfully cross, -because she would rather be doing than resting, for "resting" is only a -polite way of saying no one has wanted to engage her, and that she is -"out of a shop," which all actresses hate. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -I have forced George's hand, so I am told, and neither he nor mother -take any notice of me. - -But Aunt Gerty hugged me all over when she heard what I had done, and -scolded Mother for not being nice to me. - -"I don't see why you need put that poor child in Coventry?" she said. -"You had more need to be grateful to her than not. How much longer was -it going to go on, I want to know? Hiding away his lawful wife like an -old Bluebeard, and me Sister Anne boiling over and wanting to call it -all from the house-tops!" - -"Well, Gerty, you seem to have got it a bit mixed!" said Mother. "But, -talking of Bluebeard, I always envied the first Mrs. B. the lots of -cupboard room she must have had! I wonder if she was a hoarder, like me, -who never have the heart to throw anything away? If I do happen to see -the plans for the new house, I will speak up for lots of cupboards, and -that is all I care about." - -"See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn't it your right? You must -make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your -own comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in -the cold, and 'specially with a husband like you've got!" - -"Bother moving!" said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has -been overdoing it, as she has lately. "It is an odious wrench; just like -having all one's teeth out at once." - -"Hadn't need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and -don't you forget it." - -"The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose." - -"You can get used to something bad, can't you, but that's no reason you -are not to welcome a change? Oh, you'll like the new life that's to be -spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind -of 'behind the scenes' you have been doing for eighteen years. And a -pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new -scenery, new dresses, new backcloth----" - -"You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates -one sometimes, especially now, when----" - -"I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend -on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call -it--it's the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!--into your -fine new house. Pity but _He_ can't get a little whiff of it into his -comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, -perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don't cotton to each other, nor -never shall. He isn't my sort. I like a man that is a man, not a -society baa-lamb! Baa! I've no patience with such----" - -"Sh', Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her -paints in a corner so quietly there!" - -That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the -same. - -"We have never minded the child yet" (which was true), "and I don't see -why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold -her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father -well enough. What you've to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands -white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! -Cream's good, too. You have been George Taylor's upper servant too -long--Gracious, who's that at the front-door?" - -Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all -three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George's, when he is at -home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot -day--a dog-day, only we haven't any dogs, but the kittens were -tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for -coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little -clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of -dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. -But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door -such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never -had I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped -Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw. - -There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was -Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn't. I haven't got to her yet -in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing -at the door holding on to her cap that she'd forgotten to put a pin in. -Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn't like her to leave her caps -off to go to the door, even when George isn't here, out of principle, -and for once it told. - -"For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit -too strong to-day," cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, -and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came -in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the -carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and -a jump. - -"Please m'm!" she cried almost before she got into the room, "there's a -carriage-and-pair just called----" - -"Anything in it?" Mother said. - -"Two ladies, m'm, and here's their cards." - -I took one and Aunt Gerty the other. - -"Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!" Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady -Macbeth saying, "Out, dammed spot!" - -The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, -but it had got under the drawers. - -"I said you wasn't dressed, ma'am," Sarah said, looking at Mother's -apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves. - -"No more I am," said Mother, laughing. "Don't look so disappointed, -Gerty. I couldn't have seen them." - -"But you shouldn't have said your mistress wasn't dressed, Sarah," said -Aunt Gerty. "It isn't done like that in good houses. You should have -said, 'My mistress is gone out in _the_ carriage.'" - -"But that would have been a lie!" argued Sarah, "and I'm sure I don't -want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair." - -"Oh, where have you been before, Sarah," Aunt Gerty sighed, "not to know -that a society lie can't let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too -late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for -aristocratic swells like that, after all." - -"They didn't really want to see me," said Mother. "They only called on -me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of -Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She -is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I -have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your -hair. Off you go!" - -"And get a sunstroke," thought I. "Just because she wants to talk to -Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!" - -So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of not minding me that -they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun. - -Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting -visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies -coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the -bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she -with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was -continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only -had a nice slight figure, like she has. - -"Bead chains and pince-nezs won't do it as you seem to think," Mother -said. "And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!" - -"Happy!" screamed my Aunt Gertrude. "Who talked of being happy? You -don't go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought, -to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your -husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It -would me, that's all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher -than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to -take your call and go on--not before you've had a trip to Paris for your -clothes, though--and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor's -despised wife is. There's an object to live for! That's your ticket, and -you've got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn't he?" - -"Nothing else," said Mother sadly. - -"Nonsense! Weren't you--aren't you as good as he? You are the daughter -of a respectable Irish clergyman. Whose daughter--I mean son--is he? A -French tailor's, I expect. You married him eighteen years ago in Putney -Parish Church by special licence, when he was nothing and nobody cared -whom or what he married. Little flighty, undersized foreign-looking -creature! You have been a good wife to him, borne his children, nursed -him when he was ill, and kept a house going for him to come back to when -he was tired of the others, and if it's been done on the sly, it hasn't -been through any will of yours! And now that the matter has been taken -out of his hands, and a good thing too, and he's obliged to leave off -his dirty little tricks and own you, and send his grand friends to call -on you, and build a nice house to put you in, you want to back out and -hide yourself--lose your chance once for all and for ever! You are -good-looking, your children are sweet--you'll soon catch them all up, -and then you can be as haughty and stuck-up as the rest of them. If it -is _me_ you are thinking of, I shan't trouble you--I have my work and I -mean to stick to it!" - -"I shall never disown you, Gerty." - -"No, I dare say not, but I shan't put myself in the way of a snub. I've -got one thing that's been very useful to me in this life--that's tact. I -shan't make a nasty row or a talk, but you'll not see more of me than -you want to. I'm a lady--I'll never let anybody deny that--but I've -knocked about the world a bit, and it's a rough place, and that soft -dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one's own -battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, -largely. Where you're wearing chiffon, I'll be wearing linen, that's the -diff. Now I'm off--'on' first act and share a dresser with three other -cats, where there isn't room to swing one. Ta-ta! I'm not as vulgar as -you think!" - -She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went -away. Mother asked me why I hadn't been drying my hair in the garden all -this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I -answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found -a cool place and meditated on my sins. - -I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan -never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands -are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself. - -On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this -incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making -devils with George's name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt -it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality. - -There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or -rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my -room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, -or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said -immediately, "Now whatever have you been up to?" I told her that the -word "ever" was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected -to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less -expressive face. - -I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the -age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till -one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of -kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks' legs, and the -cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I -just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next -street but one, standing in front of the "Milliner's Arms," with nobody -in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I -got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly -thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the -very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply -hadn't the heart to miss the chance. - -A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her -dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter's -sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the -public-house floor. Yet I can't say she looked at all tipsy. - -"I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it." She -said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how -I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that for me, by -saying with a little sweet smile, "Well, you pretty child, how do you -like my motor-car?" - -"It is the first time I----" - -"Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?" - -I confessed I should, and she jumped in beside me, saying, "Sit still, -then, child!" and moved the crissy-cross starfish thing in front, and we -were off. - -Mercy, what a rate! Policemen seemed to hold up their hands in amazement -at us, and she looked pleased and flattered. We drove on and on, past -the Hounslow turning, through miles of nursery gardens and then miles of -slums, till at last the houses got smarter and bigger, and I guessed -this was the part of London where George lives, only I did not ask -questions. I hardly ever do. I did see a clock once, and I saw it was -nearly our lunch time. I realized that I had missed rice-pudding for -once, and was glad. She talked all the way along, and I listened. I find -that is what people like, for she kept telling me that I was a nice -child, and that she thought she should run away with me. - -"You _are_ running away with me," I said. - -"And you don't care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall -take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me." - -She amused _me_. She was a darling--so gay, so light, as if she didn't -care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. -If George's high-up friends are like this, I don't wonder he prefers -them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as amusing as anybody,--I am not -going to try to take Mother down--but even she can't pretend she is -happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,--the very dry -kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a -whole glassful between us. - -We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like -my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. -She told me about the houses as we went along. - -"That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives," she said, and -pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny -street. I knew that name--the name of the man George stays and shoots -with--but of course I didn't say anything. Then we passed a funny little -house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a -fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings. - -"You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside," she told me. "A -great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all -the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them -has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all -gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in -the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives -heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, -but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always -do you so well. I declare, if I wasn't going to see him this very -afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have -got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open -eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little -table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should -put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And -remind me to lend you one of his books,--that is, if your mother allows -you to read novels." - -I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us -on them. - -"Oh, does he? How interesting! I love authors! You must introduce him to -me some day. Bring him to one of my literary teas. I always make a point -of raising an author or so for the afternoon. It pleases my crowd so, -far better than music and recitations, and played-out amusements of that -kind; and then one doesn't have to pay them. They are only too glad to -come and get paid in kind looks that cost nothing. The queerer they are, -the more people believe in them. I used to have Socialists, but really -they were _too_ dirty! Some authors now are quite smart, and wear their -hair no longer than Lord Scilly, or so very little longer. Now, there is -Morrell Aix, the man who wrote _The Laundress_. I took him up, but he -had been obliged, he said, to live in the slums for two years to get up -his facts, and you could have grown mustard and cress on the creases of -his collar. And I do think, considering the advertisement he gave them, -the laundresses might have taken more trouble with the poor man's -shirts!" - -I knew Mr. Aix, of course, and I have often seen Mother take the -clothes-brush to him, but I said nothing, for I like to show I can hold -my tongue. Knowledge is power, if it's ever so unimportant. We didn't go -far from the house with walls like stopped teeth, before she pulled up -at another rather smart little door in a street called Curzon. - -"Here we are at my place, and there's Simmy Hermyre on the doorstep -waiting to be asked to lunch." - -It was a nice clean house with green shutters and lovely lace curtains -at the windows, that Ariadne would have been glad of for a dress, all -gathered and tucked and made to fit the sash as if it had been a person. -The young man standing at the front door had a coat with a waist, and a -nice clean face, and a collar that wouldn't let him turn his head -quickly. He helped us out, and she laughed at him as if he was hers. - -"Are you under the impression that I have asked you to lunch? Why, I -don't suppose there is any!" - -Imagine her saying that when she had brought me all the way from -Isleworth to have it! I didn't, of course, say anything, and she made me -go in, and the young man followed us, quite calm, although she had said -there wasn't anything for him to eat. - -"I would introduce you to this person" (I thought it so nice of her not -to stick on the offensive words little or young!) "only it strikes me I -don't know her name." She didn't ask it, but went on, "It's a most -original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in -a year, my dear boy!" - -Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadn't tried, and I do -think you should leave off calling children "it" after the first six -months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didn't think her quite polite, -I told her my name--Tempe Vero-Taylor--in a low voice so that she could -introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same -table. I thought there wouldn't be a children's table, as she didn't -speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have -no conversation. - -Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up -her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didn't -introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didn't suppose I should ever meet -him again, so it didn't matter. - -We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as -much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered -rice-pudding! I wouldn't have believed it, in a house like this. I -refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally -take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldn't taste champagne -when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, -and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often -says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild -beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not meet some this afternoon -at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (that's her name) said -she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldn't very well -say no. - -"You may come too, Simmy," she said to the young man; "it will be -exciting, I can promise you!" - -"Not if I know it," he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, "What is -the lecture about?" - -"The Uses of Fiction." - -"None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an -income." - -"That's a man's view." - -"It is," he said, "a man, and not a monkey's. You don't call your -literary crowd men, do you?" - -I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him -up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on-- - -"You're quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy -your receptions." - -"I don't see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because -you're a fifth cousin. That's the worst of being well connected, so many -people think they have the right to lecture one!" - -"All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were -not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow -you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine -and Ve----" - -Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldn't -come to the lecture he must go, and pushed me out of the room in front -of her and on up-stairs. - -"Good-bye!" she called to him over the bannisters. "Let yourself out, -and don't steal the spoons." - -That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We -went up into her bedroom, and her old nurse--I suppose it was her nurse, -for she wore no cap and bullied her like anything--came forward. - -"Put me into another gown, Miller!" she said, flopping into a chair. -Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, -and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying -me. - -"Don't bother. The child's all right. She's so pretty she can wear -anything." - -I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I -said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went -down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand -in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her -cheek that I hadn't noticed there before. It was real. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -We went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of -coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water -and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person -present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately -began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly -is a member of the committee. - -"Where will you sit, Lady Scilly?" said this person, and she asked a -good many other questions, using Lady Scilly's name very often. - -"I shall sit quite at the back this time," Lady Scilly answered. "Too -many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out!" As she -said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why. - -We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place -had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a -great friend of Lady Scilly's. He spoke to me while she was discussing -some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her. - -"How do you like going about with a fairy?" he asked me. - -"I'm not," I said. "She's a grown-up woman, old enough to know----" - -"Worse!" he interrupted me. "She is what I call a fairy!" - -"What is a fairy?" I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only -trying to make conversation. - -"A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likes--and as other -people sometimes don't like." - -"I see," I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, "just as -grown-up people do." - -"But she isn't pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a -fairy? No, I think not, you don't look as if you _could_ tell a lie." - -"I beg your pardon," I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent -him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we -went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn't like -that, and said "_Jeunesse oblige_," and "_Place aux dames_," and -"_Juniores ad priores_"--every language under the sun, winding up with -that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to -hang back and keep the king waiting. - -"Oh yes, I know that story," I said, just to prevent him going on -bothering. "It's in Ollendorff." - -The lecture-room was quite full, and we--Lady Scilly and I--squeezed -ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were -almost in the dark. - -"Sit tight, child, whatever happens!" she kept saying, and held my hand -as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in -I saw why, for it was George! - -Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, "Don't call out, child!" - -As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the -lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him -before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and -had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old -gentleman had called her a fairy--that meant a tease, and I wasn't going -to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still -as she told me, and George began. - -I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to -remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get -used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite -different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a -little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of -them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing-- - -"_A novel_," said my father, "_is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, -uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, -like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, -and bounded by the four walls of the author's experience. His duty is to -enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement -as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the -reader's own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly -disproportionate, to the whole great arcana_." (I do hope I got this -down right!) "_The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent._" (Once -I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child's play.) "_A -great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama -of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of -the supply._" (Loud applause.) "_The right man, or peradventure, the -right woman_" (he bowed at Lady Scilly), "_knows, or ought to know, so -many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of -that one!_" - -Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and -George went on-- - -"_I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways._" (What -works both ways? I must have left something out.) "_A Duchess of my -acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words--as indeed all her words -are pregnant and poignant_" (he bowed to an old corpulent lady in -another part of the room)--"_to me the other day. She said that her -novel of predilection was not a society novel. 'I know it all, don't I, -like the palm of my hand?' she objected. 'I know how to behave in a -drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!' So she complained. The -substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;--what she wants -is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her -drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, -the burglar at his work_----" - -Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he -was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on-- - -"_I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out -of our own lives, and put into somebody else's--to temporarily change -our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going -on below stairs. Bill Sykes and 'Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time -for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant -sprites._" (Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) "_The Highest or the -Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist's counsel of perfection. -There is no second class in the literary railway._ - -"_Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for -instance--only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here -will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my -illustration--if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual -dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting--even Clapham Rise or -Upper Tooting--we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the -better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the -halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of -the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world -that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes -her waking dreams 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' Que voulez vous? She -is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste -thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated -by the novelist's art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum -marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely -Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that -are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the -Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her -chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and -humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their -entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, -like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from -thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang -over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses----_" - -I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady -Scilly pinched me in several places at once. - -"Don't nip me, please," I said. "I think somebody ought to get up and -tell George he's drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will." - -"Bless the child!" she said. "You may answer him when he's done, if you -like, and can. It will be quite amusing." - -I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think -somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother's side. So I waited, -though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George -sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer -Mr. Vero-Taylor's speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that -George and all of them could see me, and I didn't feel a bit shy--no, -for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who -wasn't there to speak up for herself. - -"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said--I noticed that George began like -that--"I don't agree at all with what the gentleman--who is my -father--has been saying about Tooting--Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought -to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly -the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn't do it -unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell -everybody that Mother doesn't read novels about Duchesses or anybody. -She hasn't time, she's much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and -cooking specially for George, and so on. That's all!" - -I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I -hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted -him, perhaps! I don't know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I -didn't feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home. - -He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn't talk, but I -am sure he wasn't cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed -to know I was going to have a bad time. - -I did. Even Mother scolded me. - -Papa didn't come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I -might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me -truthful. Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn't so bad. She read to me about -Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the -other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that -always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn't -mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way-- - - "We left behind the painted buoy - That tosses at the harbour-mouth, - And madly danced our hearts with joy - As fast we fleeted to the South." - -While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and -the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she -could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as -if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had -lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world -will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don't -suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could -alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get the bit -between their teeth----! - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -It is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. -Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and -all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George -Vero-Taylor's little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there -and given him away--such fun, don't you know! It wasn't fun for me, for -I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in -Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn't have mattered -so much if George hadn't been at home a good deal about that time. I -think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, -though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with -his family, though wearing to the servants. - -George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and -thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new -line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into -the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a -volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He -settled to build a house--a house that should express him and shelter -his family as well. Mother didn't want to build. If we _had_ to move, -she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at -Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see -if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a -soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches -spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed -with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with -their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down -to the water's edge. George didn't stop our doing this and taking so -much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But -all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John's -Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, -and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, -made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the -blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the -world that he can do other things than write books. In _Who's Who_, he -doesn't mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of -his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, -Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that's what his friend Mr. -Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very -newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed. - -All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George -talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only -interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main -staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you -see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They -thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once. - -As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his -prices. He expects to get ten pounds per "thou." He told Middleman, his -literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per "thou." -for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for -the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge -establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint -sense of humour, and that's the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says -Middleman can run up an author's sales twenty per cent. in no time, if -he fancies you personally, or thinks there's money in you. - -George's new book is going to be not mediæval this time; people have -imitated him and _The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful_ was -brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. -He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few -English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad -soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and -pay his expenses. - -Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief -in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother's face grew longer -and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped -George to arrange the furniture. - -Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some -interest in her own mansion. - -"I do," Mother said, "but at a distance. I couldn't be of any use -advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. -That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always -about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say -things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as -they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George's own money. He -earned it." - -"Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!" sneered my aunt. - -"I came to him without a penny, and I haven't the right to dictate so -much as the position of a wardrobe." - -"You're the man's lawful wife," said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One -got tired of the expression. - -"Yes, unfortunately," said Mother. "Or I'd have a better chance! But I -am _not_ going to fight over George with that minx!" - -How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never -seen! I once told her she needn't be cross with Lady Scilly, and how -harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of -Papa--snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt; and then she was -cross with _me_, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be -proud. - -Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for -blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we -took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and -George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room -and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, -and all George's furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept -saying-- - -"Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel -Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!" or else--"That -sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and -I"--something or other? - -She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, -and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her -laugh consumedly, so she said. It's extraordinary how he can make people -laugh--people out of his own family! - -She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present -Ariadne at the next Court. It's to please George, if she does remember -to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had -been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George -ought to insist on it, but he always says "Let them rave!" and that -means, Do as you like, but don't bother me. What he won't like will be -forking out forty pounds for Ariadne's dress, and it will end by her -staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising -curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not -condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so -poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she -can get, and make what she can out of George's "mash," when well -disposed. - -About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month's -yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody's yacht that they were -willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included -them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. -She asked George to go with them--"We shan't see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. -the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write -a yachting novel, like William Black's, and put old Pawky in. He is -quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say--dyspeptic -and all that. I can't stand him, but you might bear with him a little in -the interests of Art!" George had no objection to visiting the scene of -his new book at Mr. Pawky's expense, in the company of his own pals, and -accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. -Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of -the voyage? It would be just like them. - -George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He -said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come -home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and -everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, -inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work -abominably, and spoil the whole brewing! - -"Dear," said Mother, "I fear we shall do badly without you--you are a -man, at least--but I'll be good, and spare you cheerfully!" - -So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was -to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go -with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but -there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass -bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself -on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen -and kitchen utensils from "The Magnolias"--one could hardly suppose Lady -Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer -"moved" us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the -things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate--Sarah had gone, and -I never got any better reason than that she "had to"--received them at -Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near -the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to -her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, -wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes -first fell on it. - -We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where -they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had -got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own -house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. -She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door -knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away. - -She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, -"Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn't it! Right -alongside the front-door!" - -I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to -prevent unpleasantness. - -Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged -with marble like a church. "It strikes very cold to the feet!" she said -to Aunt Gerty. "Mine are like so much ice." - -"Oh, come along, and we'll brew you a glass of hot toddy!" Aunt Gerty -said cheerfully. "It's a bit chilly, I think, myself, but 'ansom, like -the big 'all where 'Amlet 'as the players!" - -Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h -or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne -and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study. - -"What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take -off my shoes and stockings to go up them!" - -"So you will, Aunt Gerty," said Ariadne. "It is one of George's rules. -He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them." - -"Took 'em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?" snorted -my aunt. "Well, I don't expect you will find me treading those golden -stairs very often. I ain't one of George's elect." - -"Such wretched things to keep clean," Mother complained. "The servants -are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am -sure one can't blame them, and such good ones as we've got, too, in -these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle -in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to -me?" - -Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way -about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a -servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had -escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and -tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and -put her muff before her face-- - -"Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady's eye coming into a -gentleman's house! Who's that mouldy old statue of?" - -I told her that was Autolycus. - -"Cover yourself, Tollie, I would," Aunt Gerty said, going past him -affectedly. "Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing -splits on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!" - -"I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself," said Mother. -"I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it." - -"And no proper grate, only the bare bricks left showing!" Aunt Gerty -wailed. "How could one get up any proper fireside feeling over a -contraption like that! The Lyceum scenery is nothing to it. It makes me -think of Shakespeare all the time--so _painfully_ meretricious----" - -Lady Castlewood in a basket under Mother's arm, suddenly began to mew -very sadly. Aunt Gerty had put Robert the Devil down on the floor, in -his hamper, and I suppose a draught got to him, for he spat loudly. -Ariadne and I let out the poor things and they bounced straight out on -to the parquet floor, and their feet slid from under them. I never saw -two cats look so silly! - -"Well, if a cat can't keep his feet on those wooden tiles," said Mother, -"I don't suppose I can," and she jumped, just to try, right into the -middle of a little square of blue carpet, which, true enough, slid along -with her. - -"You can give a nice hop here, at any rate," cried Aunt Gerty, catching -her round the waist, and waltzing all over the room, till both their -picture hats fell off, and hung down their backs by the pins. "Ask me -and all the boys, and give a nice sit-down supper, and do us as well as -the old villain will allow you." - -She was quite happy. That is just like an actress! Ariadne and I danced -too, and the cats mewed loudly for strangeness. Cats hate newness of any -kind, and they weren't easy till I got some newspaper, crackled it, and -let them sit on it, and then they were all right. Then Mother and Aunt -Gerty rang the queer-shaped bell, as if it would sting them, and got up -some coals which Mother had had the forethought to order in, and lit a -modest little fire in a great cave with brass images in front of it -under the kind of copper hood. It wouldn't draw at first, being used to -logs, and when it smoked we threw water on it, lest we dirtied the -beautiful silk hangings. At last we fetched Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -"Hout!" she said. "I'd like to see the fire that's going to get the -better of me!" - -She made it burn, sulkily, and Ariadne and I went to a shop we knew of -round the corner, and bought tea and sugar and condensed milk, to make -ourselves tea with the spirit-lamp Aunt Gerty had brought. We had no -butter or bread, only biscuits luckily, so we couldn't stain the Cinque -Cento chairs, whose gold trimmings were simply peeling off them. Sit on -them we dared not, they would have let us down on the floor for a -certainty. Mother and Aunt Gerty had a high old time blaming Lady Scilly -for all her foolish arrangements, and then we all went down to the -so-called kitchen to see how Elizabeth Cawthorne was getting on there. -She was in a rage, but trying to pass it off, like a good soul as she -is. - -"Well, I never! Here's a gold handle to my coal-cellar door! I shall -have to wipe my lily hands before I dare use it. And a fine lady of a -dresser that I shall be shy to set a plain dish on. Beetles here, do you -ask, woman?" (To Kate.) "They'd be ashamed to show their faces in such a -smart place as this, I'm thinking. And what's this couple of drucken -little candlesticks for the kitchen? Our Kate'll soon rive the fond bit -handles from off them, or she's not the girl I take her for!" - -She banged it hard against the dresser as servants do, to make it break, -but it didn't, and she looked disappointed. Mother then suggested she -should unpack a favourite frying-pan she never goes anywhere without, -and sent Kate out for a pound and a half of loin-chops, and cook was to -fry them for our dinners. - -The kitchen fire, after all, was the only one that would burn, so we ate -our chops there, and sat there till bed-time. Ariadne looked like a -picture, sitting at a trestle-table, and a thing like a torch burning at -the back of her head. She was thoroughly disgusted, and got quite cross, -and so did Elizabeth, as the evening went on. She hated trestles, and -flambeaus, and dark Rembrandtish corners, and couldn't lay her hand on -her things nohow, so that when we all went up to bed, Mother said to -her-- - -"Good-night, Elizabeth. You have been a bit upset, haven't you? I wonder -we have managed to get through the day without a row!" - -"So do I, ma'am," said the cook. "Heaps of times I'd have given you -warning for twopence, but you never gave me ought to lay hold on." - -A horrid wind sprang up and moaned us off to sleep. I thought once or -twice of George out on the Mediterranean on a tippity yacht, and didn't -quite want him to get drowned, though he had made us live in such an -uncomfortable house. I had tried to colonize a little, and put up a -photograph of Mother done at Ramsgate in a blue frame, to make me feel -more at home. Ariadne had hung up all her necklaces on a row of nails. -She has forty. There is one made of dried marrowfat peas, that she -nibbles when she is nervous, and another of horse's jesses, or whatever -you call them, sewn on red velvet. We have a bed each, costing -fourteen-and-six. They are apt to shut up with you in them. There is no -carpet in our room, and there are not to be any. We are to be hardy. -Nothing rouses one like a touch of cold floor in the mornings, and cools -one on hot nights better than the same. Our water-jug too is an odd -shape. I tilted all the water out of it on to the floor the first time I -tried to use it. It must be French, it is so small. I shall not wash my -hands very often in the days to come, I fancy. - -Ariadne began to get reconciled to our room when she had made up her -mind it was like the bower of a mediæval chatelaine, or like Princess -Ursula's bedroom in Carpaccio, but I prefer Early Victorian, and cried -myself to sleep. - -Next morning Ben come along; he had stayed all night at the Hitchings', -in Corinth Road. Jessie Hitchings likes Ben best of the family. She may -marry him, when he is grown up, if she likes. He has birth, but no -education, so that will make them even. The only glimmering of hope I -see for Ben is that in this house there seems to be no bedroom for him, -unless it is a room at the top with all the water tanks in it, which -makes me think perhaps George is going to send him to school? For the -present we have arranged him a bed in the butler's pantry. Ben says -perhaps George means him to be butler, as he has laid it down as a rule -that only women servants are to be used in Cinque Cento House. They look -so much nicer than men, George says; he likes a houseful of waving -cap-ribbons. Mother thinks she can work a house best on one servant, and -better still on none. George doesn't mind her having any amount of boys -from the Home near here, but that doesn't suit Mother. She says one boy -isn't much good, that two boys is only one and a half, and that three -boys is no boy at all. I suppose they get playing together? Ariadne and -I would, in their place, I know, and human nature is the same, even in a -Home, though I can't call ours quite that. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -George makes a point of refusing to be interviewed. He hates it, unless -it is for one of the best papers. Then he says that it is a sheer -kindness, and that a successful man has no right to refuse some poor -devil or other the chance of making an honest pound or two. So he -suffers him gladly. He even is good enough to work on the thing a little -in the proof: just to give the poor fellow a lift, and prevent him -making a fool of himself and getting his facts all wrong. In the end -George writes the whole thing entirely from beginning to end, and makes -the man a present of a complete magazine article, and a very fine one -too! - -"I have been generous," he tells us. "I have offered myself up as a -burnt sacrifice. I have given myself all, without reservation. I have -nothing extenuated, everything set down in malice. I have owned to -strange sins that I never committed, to idiosyncrasies that took me all -my time to invent, and all to bump out an article by some one else. I -have been butchered to make a journalistic holiday!" - -This is all very nice and self-sacrificing of George, but this -particular interview read very well when it came out, and made George -seem a very interesting sort of man with some quaint habits, not half so -funny as his real ones, though, and I think the interviewer might just -as well have given those. - -So, when I got a chance of telling the truth, I did, meaning to act for -the best, and give Papa a good show and save him the trouble of telling -it all himself, but nobody gave me credit for my good intentions, and -kind heart. - -In the first place, how dared I put myself forward and offer to see -George's visitors! But the young man asked for me--at least, when he was -told that George was out, he said might he see one of the young ladies? -Of course I don't suppose that would have occurred to him, only I was -leaning over the new aluminium bannisters, and caught his eye. Then an -idea seemed to come into his head. The look of disappointment that had -come over him when he was told that George was out changed to a little -happy perky look, as if he had just thought of something amusing. He -crooked his little finger at me as I slid down the bannister, and said -would I do? and would he come in? Kate is a cheeky girl, but even the -cook admits that Kate is not a patch upon me. Kate evidently didn't -think it quite right, but she slunk away into the back premises, and -left me to deal with the young man. - -He handed me a card. I thought that very polite of him, and "_Mr. -Frederick Cook_," and Representative of _The Bittern_ down in the -corner, explained it all to me. We take in about a hundred rags, and -that's the name of one of them. It's called _The Bittern_ because it -booms people, so George says. - -"I suppose you have come to interview my Father," I said. "I'm sorry, -but he is out. Did you have an appointment?" - -"No, I didn't," said the young man right out. - -I liked his nice bold way of speaking; he was the least shy young man I -ever met. - -"I don't believe in appointments. The subject is conscious, primed, -braced up, ready with a series of cards, so to speak, which he wishes to -force on the patient public--a collection of least characteristic facts -which he would like dragged into prominence. It is as if a man should go -to the dentist with his mind made up as to the number of teeth that he -is to have pulled out, a decision which should always rest with any -dentist who respects himself." - -He went running on like that, not a bit shy, or anything, and amused me -very much. - -"But then the worst of that is, you've got no appointment with George, -and he is not here to have his teeth pulled out." - -I really so far wasn't quite sure if he was an interviewer or a dentist, -but I kept calm. - -"All the better, my dear young lady, that is if you are willing to aid -and abet me a little. Then we shall have a thundering good interview, I -can promise you. You see, in my theory of interviewing, the actual -collaboration of the patient--shall we call him?--is unnecessary. -Indeed, it is more in the nature of an impediment. My method, which of -course I have very few opportunities of practising, is to seek out his -nearest and dearest, those who have the privilege--or annoyance--of -seeing him at all hours, at all seasons, unawares. If a painter, 'tis -the wife of his brush that I would question; if an author, the partner -of his pen--do you take me?" - -Yes, I "took" him, and as George had called me a cockatrice--a very -favourite term of abuse with him--only that morning, and remembering how -she swaggers about being George's Egeria, I said, "You'll have to go to -Lady Scilly for that!" - -"Quite so!" he said very naturally. "Your distinguished parent dedicated -his last book to her, did he not? Did you approve, may I ask?" - -"No," I said. "People should always dedicate all their works to their -wife, whether they love her or not, that's what I think!" - -"Quite so," he said again. "I see we agree famously, and between us we -shall concoct a splendid interview. But now, if you would be so very -good, and happen to have a small portion of leisure at your -disposal----" - -"I'll do what I can for you," I said, delighted at his nice polite way -of putting things. "I'll take you round the house, shall I? Have you a -Kodak with you? Would you like to take a snapshot at George's -typewriter?" - -"Certainly, if she is pretty," said the silly man, and I explained that -Miss Mander was out, and that it was the machine I meant. He said one -machine was very like another, but that if he might see the study, -where so many beautiful thoughts had taken shape? He said it quite -gravely, but I felt he was laughing in his jacket all the time. - -"We'll take it all _seriam_!" I said, not wishing him to have all the -fine words. "And we will begin at the beginning--I mean the atrium." - -He had a little pocket-book in his hand, and he said, as I led the way -through the hall, "You won't mind my writing things down as they occur -to me?" - -"Not at all!" I said. "If you will let me look at what you have written. -I see you have put a lot already." - -He laughed and handed me his book, and I read-- - -"_Through dusky suites, lit by stained glass windows, whose dim -cloistral light, falling on lurid hangings and gorgeous masses of -Titianesque drapery, and antique ebon panelling, irresistibly suggest -the languorous mysteries of a mediæval palace...._ Do you think your -father will like this style?" - -"You have made it rather stuffy--piled it on a good deal, the drapery -and hangings, I mean!" I said. "Now that I know the sort of thing you -write, I shan't want to read any more." - -"I thought you wouldn't," he said, taking it back. "I'll read it to you. -'_Behind this arras might lurk Benvenuto and his dagger----_'" - -"Not Ben's dagger, but Papa's bicycle." - -"We'll leave it there and keep it out of the interview," he said. "It -would spoil the unity of the effect. '_On, on, through softly-carpeted -ante-rooms where the footstep softer falls, than petals of blown roses -on the grass...._'" - -"I hate poetry!" I said. "And we mayn't walk on that part of the carpet -for fear of blurring the Magellanic clouds in the pattern. Do you know -anything about Magellanic clouds in carpets?" - -"No, I confess I have never trod them before," he said, becoming all at -once respectful to me. I expect he lives in a garret, and has no carpet -at all, and I thought I would be good to him, and help him to bump out -his article, and not cram him, but tell him where things really came -from. So I drew his attention particularly to the aluminium eagle, and -the pinchbeck serpent George picked up in Wardour Street. I left out -George's famous yarn about the sack of our ancestral Palace in Turin in -the fifteenth century, when the Veros were finally disseminated or -dissipated, whichever it is. I don't believe it myself, but George -always accounts for his swarthy complexion by his Italian grandmother. -Aunt Gerty says it is all his grandmother, or in other words, all liver! - -We went down-stairs into the study, which is the largest room in the -house. - -"Your father has realized the wish of the Psalmist," said _The Bittern_ -man. "_Set my feet in a large room!_" - -"He likes to have room to spread himself," I said, "and to swing -cats--books in, I mean." - -"So your father uses missiles in the fury of composition?" - -"Sometimes; but oftenest he swears, and that saves the books. He mostly -swears. Look here!" - -I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander's handwriting, and on -it was written, "Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. -Vero-Taylor during the last hour." - -_The Bittern_ man looked at them, and, "By Jove! these are corkers!" he -said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There -was Drayton, the ironmonger's bill lying about too, and I saw him raise -his eyebrows at the last item, "_To one chased brass handle for -coal-cellar door_." - -"That's what I call being thorough!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I'm -thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!" - -He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see -the pen George uses. "Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?" he asked. - -"Mercy, no!" I screamed out. "He would have an indigestion! This is his -pen--at least, it is this week's pen. George is wasteful of pens; he -eats one a week." - -"Very interesting!" said he. "Most authors have a fetish, but I never -heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat -paragraph. Come on!" - -You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I -showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey -carpet spread on it, instead of a white one--that was how they had it -in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable -Mediæval was, and if it wasn't for the honour and glory of it, how much -we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors -reflect--there's not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne -can see herself in when she's dressing to go out to a party--or chairs -that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are -forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death! - -"Very hard lines!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I confess that this point of -view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my -article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its -votaries----" - -"Yes," I said. "Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne's -photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! 'To think -that any wife of his--' 'Cæsar's wife must be above suspicion!' And as -for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue -plush." - -"Capital!" said _The Bittern_ man. "All good grist for the interview! -And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard -so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?" - -"Except that we are not allowed to go up them--Ariadne and me--without -taking our boots off first, for fear of scratching the polish. We have -to strip our feet in the housemaid's pantry, and carry them up in our -hands. That's rather a bore, you will admit!" - -"And your father? Does he bow to his own decrees?" - -"Oh, no!" I said. "Papa is the exception that proves the rule." - -"Capital!" again remarked _The Bittern_ man. "I am getting to know all -about the great Mr. Vero-Taylor in the fierce light that beats upon the -domestic hearth! But, by the way," he said, with a little crooked look -at me, "it is usual--shall I say something about Mrs. Vero-Taylor? -People generally like an allusion--just a hint of feminine presence--say -the mistress of the house flitting about, tending her ferns, or what -not?" - -"You must put her in the kitchen, then," I said, "tending her servants. -Would you like to see her?" - -"I should not like to disturb her," he said politely. "Will you describe -her for me?" - -"Oh, mother's nice and thin--a good figure--I should hate to have one of -those feather-beddy mothers, don't you know? But I don't really think -you need describe her. I don't think she cares about being in the -interview, thank you, but you may say that my sister Ariadne is -ravishingly beautiful, if you like?" - -"And what about you, Miss----?" he asked, looking at me. - -"Tempe Vero-Taylor," I said. "But whatever you do, don't put me in! -George would have a fit! He won't much like your mentioning Ariadne, -but I don't see why she shouldn't have a show, if I can give her one." - -"Very well," he said. "Your ladyship shall be obeyed. Now I really think -I have got enough, unless----" I saw his eyes straying up-stairs. - -"There's nothing much to see up those stairs, except George's bedroom, -and I daren't take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like -the rest of the house, but very, _very_ comfortable." - -"Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn't -trouble to black more than his face and arms," said _The Bittern_ man. -"And _your_ rooms?" - -"Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we -have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediæval castle -would have. Now that's all, and----" - -The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought -it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. -George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This -reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. -_The Bittern_ man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked -me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how -he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had -told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on -that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, -and would gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the -circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at -least have a _succès de scandale_, at least I think that is what he -said, for I don't understand French very well. While he was making all -those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little -grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, -and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn't. George opened the -door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw _The -Bittern_ man and came forward, and _The Bittern_ man came forward too, -with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the -Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little. - -"I came from _The Bittern_," he said, and George nodded, to show he knew -what for. "To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview----" - -"I am sorry I happened to be out!" began George, and then I knew, by the -sound of his voice, that _The Bittern_ was a _good_ paper. "But if it is -not too late, I shall be happy----" - -"No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir," the interviewer -said, waving his hand a little. "I came, and I go not empty away, but -with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my -pocket. You left an admirable _locum tenens_ in the person of your -daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of -the necessity of troubling _you_. You will doubtless be relieved also. I -shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!" - -And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened -the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George -said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, -and _The Bittern_ man never sent a proof after all, so when the article -came out--"_Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe -Vero-Taylor_,"--I got some more. That is the first and last time I was -ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I -see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. -Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve -his ambition like that. George didn't punish him, of course, he is a -power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -I wonder if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering -and interfering in their affairs? I don't mind our having a -house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please -Lady Scilly. - -"A party! A party!" she said to George, clasping her hands in her silly -way. "My party on the table!" like the woman in the play of _Ibsen_. -"Ask all the dear, amusing literary people that I adore. And I'll bring -a large contingent of smart people, if I may, to meet them. Please, -_please_!" - -I don't know what a contingent is, but I fancy it's something -disagreeable. Lady Scilly is George's friend, not Mother's. She has only -called on Mother once, and that was in the old house, and then Mother -was not receiving as they call it, so she has never even seen the -mistress of the house where she is going to give the party. Christina -Mander, George's secretary, says that is quite the new way of doing -things, and she has been about a great deal, and ought to know. - -Miss Mander is a lady. She is very thin, one of those lath-and-plaster -women, you know, that seem to live to support a small waist that is -their greatest beauty, but when we first knew her, she was plump and -jolly-looking. We practically got her for George. Years ago, when we -were quite little and had had measles, we were sent down to a sort of -boarding-house at Ramsgate to an old lady, an ex-dresser in some theatre -Aunt Gerty knew, and who could neither see to mend or to keep us in -order, though she got thirty shillings a week for doing it. They never -got us up till nine; I suppose the slavey thought sufficient for the day -was the evil thereof, and tried to make the evil's day as short as -possible. One morning when it was quite nine, and the sun was shining -in, Ariadne and I were feeling frightfully bored, so we got up in our -night-gowns, moved a wardrobe, and found a door behind it into another -house. It was quite a smart house, with soft plush carpets and -nicely-varnished yellow doors. We went all over it. Only the cat was -awake, licking herself in the window-seat. The bedroom doors were all -shut except one, and we went in and found a nice girl in bed with her -gold hair all spread over the pillow. She didn't seem shocked at us, but -laughed, and when we had explained, she wished us to get into the bed -beside her. It had sheets trimmed with lace, and her initials, C. M., on -the pillow. We did this every morning till we went away. She kept us up, -afterwards sending us Christmas cards and so on, and when George -advertised for a secretary to help him to sub-edit _Wild Oats_, she -answered it, among the thousand others, and we remembered her name and -made George engage her. - -She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D'Auban's -dancing academy, and to Klondike--where all her hair got cut off, so -that she hasn't enough to spread over the pillow now--and behind the -scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper -once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new -arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed -for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her -mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when -George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, -tortoise-shell _pince-nez_ and all, but she took to Mother at first -sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this "new move of dear -Christina's." - -She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had -developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on -saying the name of George's new magazine, as if it shocked her very -much. - -"_Wild Oats!_ Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them -somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You'll look -after her, won't you? Is there any danger"--she looked towards the -study-door"--of her falling in love with her employer?" She laughed -carelessly. - -"Not the slightest!" said Mother, laughing too. "She will have her eyes -opened, that's all, to the seamy side of artistic life." - -"My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. -After all, it's only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they -must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But -we don't need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!" - -"I quite agree with you," said Mother. "Only if one happens to be the -scullery-maid----" - -Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I -was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual. - -"And," said Mrs. Mander, "she buys everything that comes out, especially -badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and -look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she -came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his -magazine--_Wild Oats_. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it -sounds so _very_ advanced!" - -"Oh, very," said Aunt Gerty. "But it won't live!" - -"You don't say so?" Mrs. Mander put up her _pince-nez_ and looked at -Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn't like. - -"None of my brother-in-law's things do!" Aunt Gerty went on calmly. "He -is a prize wrecker--of women and magazines!" - -Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the -conversation. - -"Oh, he's a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is," went on Aunt Gerty. -"But I don't think he'll convert Miss Mander to his views." - -"I hope not," said Mrs. Mander, "for I notice that if you make a law -unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! -At least as far as women are concerned." - -"People will always let you go your own way," said Mother; "but the -point is, will they come with you--join with you in a pleasant walk?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Mander, "my daughter is the most headstrong of young -women. I can't control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed -her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor." - -"I gathered as much," said Mother, not offended a bit. "But I will look -after her well!" She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make -her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week. - -Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecænas! Ben says she a minx. Ben -hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a -cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but -then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother -won't go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that -George doesn't try to persuade her much. You see, he isn't used to -having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all -those years! - -George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina -is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should -he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide it under -a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she -says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She -says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the -hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old -house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; -anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, -for his Sundays were only for a select few--very selected. He only gave -tea and bread-and-butter--very little butter--and no table-cloth--plain -living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he -pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to -the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, -and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own -house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him -to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his -solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a -Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of -the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But -that would not do for George, for he isn't at all hermit-like, and he -can make epigrams! They say that is his _forte_. I hate them myself, I -think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people's feelings -so that they can't complain, but then, of course, the family gets them -in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home. - -George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He -said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out -of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he -would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging -from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, -and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and -peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat -on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the -smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other's -faces! That didn't suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much -as she could. - -Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still -Mediæval, at six o'clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, -because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it -can't go all round. That's the reason we have finger-bowls now, and -little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to -eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can -see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own -trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that -loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen -Mother's face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said -she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers' -and the butchers' shops back a century? - -The first course, George explained, was quite easy--it was little bits -of toast with honey and hypocras. - -"Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?" Mother said, -meaning to be funny. "There's a very civil young man there might help -me?" - -"Next course, smoked eels," went on George. "Any soup you like, only it -must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have -venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, -oranges, capers in vinegar----" - -"It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and -ever, that's one good thing!" Mother said, "for nobody will care to try -that _menu_ twice!" - -"It would look well in the papers, though," George said. "What do you -say to barbecued pig?" - -But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and -Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not -obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at -twelve o'clock, and all the guests to unmask then. - -The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but -at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had -designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing -red splotch in one corner, which signified George's passionate Italian -nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with -Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to -open everything! - -"My Goodness!" she said. - -"Isn't it right?" I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at -it I was no wiser, for I couldn't see what was wrong. There it was, -written out very nicely, "_Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the -twenty-first_," and the address in the corner, and all those rules about -the dominos, and that was all. - -"Oh, dear darling Christina," I begged, deadly curious, "do tell me what -is wrong with that? I cannot guess." - -"It's just as well, perhaps," she said. "Preserve your sublime -ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can." - -And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that -being loyal to her employer. - -I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one -better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was -_Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home_! I think that was absurd, for -though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn't quite live -here yet! and Mother does, and what's more, Mother never goes out at all -except to take a servant's character, or scold the butcher, or something -of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from -him, and looked at it, and I'll swear I saw her smile before she tore it -up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn't tell me what was wrong -with the first card. - -We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole -morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, -though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I -don't believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now -and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted -asked--six, no less, if you please--and she's only been out six months! -And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a -card trick! But he didn't take any notice, and kept walking up and down -the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody -wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; -there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have -than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of -course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more -of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there -had been about it. I kept saying, "Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You -give me all the plain people to do." - -Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all -away after fifty had been written. - -Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to -do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he -was going to announce it in the pages of _The Bittern_, and that all his -friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how -should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that -depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know -that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that -you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and -find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real -friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the -acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and -lemonade. There should be a password, _Hot with_, and _cold without_, -and they roared when I told them this, but I didn't see why. Then the -party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where -they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn't call -themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn't be able to -come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems -to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They -have to be paid for coming, surely, and I'd rather see them than any of -the others. "If they don't come the party will be spoilt for me," I said -to Christina. - -"It will be all right," she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of -course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like. - -Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that -brother of Cæsar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of -Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny -thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, -while I look like a big boy. My legs are very long. George has a monk's -costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of -looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very -nice. - -I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it -somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that -anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, -bell-like--I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but -he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others. - -The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs -of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved -away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently -lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in -moderation; it was rather fun--I felt as if I were planting bulbs. -George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be -put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to -put it on the fire. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -About nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o'clock the house was -overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger's -costume he had borrowed, with George's consent, and I do believe he -enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was -to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the -evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, -for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. -I'm sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people -didn't come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were -detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at -their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a -detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with -a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of -course, but the devil needs no domino. And _I_ knew all the time that it -was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for _The -Bittern_, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, -and I had no butter to my bread for a week because of him. How I was -supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I -can't see, only _The Bittern_ man knew well enough, I expect! Never, -_never_ again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer! - -There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them -discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get -jammed in behind, "powerless to move," as they say in the novels, even -if I had wanted to. People _are_ careless. I heard heaps of -conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, -without stopping to think whether or no I wasn't one of the family. I -suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn't -matter what they said, and it needn't count afterwards. - -The man I listened to was _The Bittern_ man, dressed as the devil. The -woman's domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any -colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. _The -Bittern_ man seemed to know her. - -"I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in -London?" - -The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask. - -"Not quite, but very nearly," she said. "I am a gas. Give me a name!" - -"I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?" - -"Is it a noxious gas?" she said, "for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I -only speak of things as I find them, and one must send up bright copy, -or one wouldn't be taken on. I tell the truth----" - -"Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!" said he. "The devil -and _The Bittern_ are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that -makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than -one. Now tell me, can't we exchange celebrities? I'll give you my names, -and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?" - -"All the world--and somebody else's wife!" she said quickly, and the -devil rubbed his hands. "But that is the rub--we can't know who they all -are till twelve o'clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will -decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest -mended." - -"Then we shall have to invent them!" he said. "The very form of -invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me -which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here." - -"Naturally! Wasn't it she who discovered George Vero-Taylor and made him -the fashion, you know?" - -"Do you suppose he was particularly obliged to her for digging his -family out as well?" - -"You naughty man! But it was a most extraordinary thing, wasn't it? -Delightful, and not too scandalous to use. For the man is really quite -harmless, only a frantic _poseur_ and----" - -"Ah, yes, and posed in London Society for ten years as an unmarried man! -Suppose some nice girl had gone and fallen in love with him?" - -"Ah, but he was careful, as careful as a good _parti_ has to be in the -London season. He lent them his books, and guanoed their minds -thoroughly, but he always sheered off when they showed signs of taking -him seriously." - -"Chose married women to flirt with, for preference? What does the wife -say?" - -"The wife? So there is a wife! But no one has ever seen her. Perpetual -hay-fever, or something of the sort." - -"That is what Vero-Taylor gives out." - -"Oh, I don't really think there is anything in--with Lady Scilly, I -mean. He is too selfish--they are both too selfish. Those sort of women -are like the Leaning Tower, they lean but never fall. It is an alliance -of interest, so to speak. He introduces the literary element into her -parties, and writes her novel for her, and in return she flatters him -and takes his daughter out. Poor girl, she would be quite pretty, if she -were properly dressed, but the mediæval superstition, you know--she has -to dress like a Monna Somebody or other, so as to advertise his books. I -believe she did refuse to have her hair shaved off her forehead _à la -Rimini_, but she mostly has to comply----" - -"Well, I never heard of a man using his daughter as a sandwich-man -before. Which is she?" - -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen pointed out Ariadne, whose bath-towel was -tumbling all over her eyes. - -"She looks half-starved!" said _The Bittern_ man. - -"My dear man," said Sulphuretta Hydrogen, "don't you know that they -have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told -that they have a kind of buttery-hatch--a cold pie always cut in the -cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so -disposed." - -"Well, they are free, at any rate--free from the trammels of custom----" - -"Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!" - -I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told -about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the -buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman -that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said-- - -"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a -position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she -chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she -eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn't far behind-hand, -though he is yellow!" - -And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! -But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball? - -I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to -make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there's a will -there's a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to -like it. Though I don't believe young men marry the girls who make eyes -at them best, and as Ariadne's one object is to marry and get out of -this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong -way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was. - -"I am sure I don't know," she said crossly. - -"I'll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is," I said. "She is in the -party--in the room!" - -"Well, I can't help that!" said Ariadne, tossing her head. "Mother ought -to look after her better." - -I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in -her own house, and even her own daughter didn't seem to care whether she -was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady -Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn't, for I -thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino--I seemed to -remember having helped to hem it. They needn't say that eyes can't look -bright in a mask, for this woman's did. She went up to George, and she -didn't speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of -French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat. - -"_Eh, bien, beau masque!_" was what she said. "I know you, but you do -not know me!" - -"I know you by your eyes," he said. "Eyes like the sea----" - -Now, Lady Scilly's eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them -that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that -George was talking without thinking. - -"Eyes without their context mean nothing!" she said, and then I knew the -woman was Christina, for that was the very thing she had once said to -Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice. - -"Come!" she said to George. "Speak to me, say anything to me that the -hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!" - -"Madame!" said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but -after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had -no idea that Christina could have done it so well! - -"Come," she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown -impatient. "Come, a madrigal--a _ballade_, in any kind of china!" - -I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn't Lady -Scilly. She couldn't have managed that about ballads and lyrics. - -He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little--just a -little. - -"No, no, I dare not!" she cried out. "There is a hobgoblin called Ben in -the room--a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why -on earth don't you send that boy to school?" - -I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, -and he took the first chance of leaving the mask's side. There wasn't a -buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so -hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn't -say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying -themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only -time people are really gay, I observe, is at a funeral, or at _Every -man_, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn't be jolly. - -I was thinking sadly about my dear Mother, and wondering where she was, -when I ran against a Frenchman, a real Frenchman, and he asked me where -was the mistress of the house, and that showed me that other people -thought about her too; I didn't answer for a moment, and he went on in a -kind of dreamy voice-- - -"I was brought here to see an English interior----" - -"Well," I said. "It's inside four walls, isn't it?" - -"_Mon Dieu, mademoiselle_," said he, "I had made to myself another idea -of _le home Anglais_--the fireside--the _maîtresse de la maison_ with -her keys depending from her girdle--the children--the sacred children, -standing round her--_bébé_ crowing----" - -"There isn't any baby!" I said, "and a good thing too! But this is a -party, don't you see, and we are all playing the fool, and we shall be -sensible to-morrow, and if you will excuse me, I am one of the sacred -children, and I am just looking for my mother's knee to go and stand -against." - -He made way for me with a "_Permettez, mademoiselle!_" and I went, -thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. -Ben didn't know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the -door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling -people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in -the street, with a man, who was George. There are tall bushes near our -door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door -gardens. Ben didn't know till I told him; he is the stupid child that -doesn't know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She -had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There's -a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn't, being a -poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it -couldn't be seen under her mask, and whined, - -"Oh, I'm so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!" - -"For beautiful women--I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes -of dialogue," George said; "there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck -your red pleasure from the teeth of pain." ... - -"Yes, I am very wicked," she said. "My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do -you know, I am almost afraid of myself." - -"As I am--as we all are," said George. - -"Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are -you so guarded, so unenterprising?" - -She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that -Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn't, so she couldn't think -why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was -bi-chaperoned--if that is the way to put it--for there was me too. Ben -and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don't think George did, because he could -not quite make a fool of himself before Ben. Besides, it was draughty -out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to -come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn't. She said she had -never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and -she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some -rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity -again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and -there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, -since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it. - -George looked at his watch, and said, "In ten minutes they will give the -signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better----?" - -"I shall leave the party," she said. "I shall walk straight home! It -will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet -again in the glare of----" - -"The lights are shaded," George put in. - -"I alluded to the glare of publicity!" she said. "I shall ask this -commissionaire," she said, "to call my carriage----" - -"Better not," said George hastily, "for you would have to give him your -name,--your name which I know. For my sake--won't you slip back into the -ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like -the rest? Believe me it is best." - -"It is my host commands, is it not?" she said slyly, to show him that -she had known it was he all the time, and ran past him, in a skittish -way. As if he hadn't known all the time that she knew that he knew that -she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in -pretending. - -Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up -a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which -seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted -so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the -devil was going with her. He was _The Bittern_ man, of course, only I -didn't know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly. - -"You know the way?" she was asking him. - -"I know the house, like the inside of a glove," he said, and indeed he -did, for hadn't I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me -instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, -rather like Puck was, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, so I thought I would -stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off -her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved -so badly in both. _The Bittern_ man offered to show her the way to -George's sanctum. - -"You see, you can go where you like in a show-house--or ought to be able -to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate." - -"The press is too much with us, soon and late," said she, laughing. - -"Ah, but confess, my lady, you can't do without us!" said this awful -young man--though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose -in everywhere in the interest of his paper. "You suffer us gladly." - -"I don't suffer at all--I shouldn't allow you to make me suffer," said -she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out -of the Bible. - -I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn't steal -the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs. - -"I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe," said -_The Bittern_ man. - -"Haven't you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less -eccentric as one goes up," said Lady Scilly. - -"Art is only skin-deep," said _The Bittern_ man. "Just look at that bed, -which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive -or artistic than Staple's.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and -let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear -our host give the word for unmasking." - -So they marched out of George's bedroom, for that was where they had got -to--and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and -modern--and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. -Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I -wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her -work, for though the supper was all sent in from a shop, there would be -sure to be something for her to do. - -These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in -a blaze of light and an empty kitchen--for the moment only, for one -heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, -and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady -Scilly and _The Bittern_ man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a -checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and -looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen -fire, which had caught her face on one side. - -Lady Scilly and _The Bittern_ man took no notice of her, but walked -about looking at things. - -"And so this is the Poet's kitchen!" Lady Scilly said, rather -scornfully. "How his pots shine!" - -"Very comfortable indeed!" said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise -George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask--"It's no end of a -privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet's use. -This is his soup-ladle, and----" - -Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook's sentence for -him. - -"And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat--and -I'm his wife!" - -Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of -polite. He isn't a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and -he began to come here. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -Smart women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in -the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn't got either of her own, so she is -always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom -asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age--too near. -That's what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene -about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the -thing, I don't care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly's motor is -always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We -run into something live--or else the kerb--most times we are out, and -it's extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though -once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get -into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is -just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. -I read an interview with her in _The Bittern_ the other day (she had to -start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it -said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was -the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how -could she be? There isn't room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, -unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely. - -Lord Scilly is very well born too, he's the eldest son of the Earl of -Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with -expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes -he would, but Lord Scilly doesn't, because he's not quite a beast. He is -very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding -her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have -heard that he doesn't think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering -herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn't understand -why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write -novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. -George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every -morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn't mind in the least her -collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; -but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to -collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different. - -I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who -tells me everything, doesn't think so much collaborating is quite what -is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, "blessed if she'd -let herself be put upon by a countess." - -Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy--that's what her name means, -Paquerette. That's what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a -grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it -makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. -Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she -is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all -times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won't. If she -gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may -say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and -listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am -always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish. - -The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve--Lady Scilly had -sent a messenger for me--she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue -tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was -writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a -few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly -all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers -with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and _La Femme -Polype_ was the name of one, and _Madame Belle-et-m'aime_ another. Lady -Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French -if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also -on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that -made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and -the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors -hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush -things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw -so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with "To darling, -from Kitty London," and as many more with "Best love, yours cordially, -Gladys Margate," and I have given up trying to count the ones of -actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy -forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote _The Sorrows of the Amethyst_, -and one of the K.C. who wrote _Duchesses in the Divorce Court_--the -Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play -called _The Up-and-Down Girl_, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces -once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his -volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I -think he's put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, -which isn't often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. -There's a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes--I don't -suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so -big it would burst the post-bag--and there are two sorts of racks on it, -one to hold her bills that she hasn't paid, and that's got printed on it -in gold "_Oh Horrors!_" and another with those she has paid with "_Thank -Heaven!_" on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays -bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends -something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however -broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker -would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances -are you'll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, -being dead, you can't be expected to pay! - -I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and -also, if they are writing, I can't help seeing what it is, and then if -it is "_Dearests_" and "_Darlings_" I do feel awkward. But to-day when -she had said "How do you do?" she handed me the writing-board. - -"Write for me, dear," she said, "to the most odious woman in London. And -the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she -dared to play Lady Ildegonde in _The Devey Devastator_ at a _matinée_ at -Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses--stood by the -management of course--and nails like a coal-heaver's. Now don't you -think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round -my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene -Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not -forgive her. Now you write. '_Dear thing!_' Don't be surprised, I can't -afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! '_You were wonderful -yesterday! I know what's what, and believe me that's it!_' I mean the -dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call -diplomacy. Don't say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will -see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything -for me, and _The Bittern_ will do anything for her. We will go and see -her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, -dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!" - -She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it -didn't matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and -then she seemed to feel better. - -"I wish I could do without Miller!" she said. "Old Miller hates me, and -I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good 'perks' for that. -She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her -one day. So they will! I can't afford to quarrel with a woman who can do -my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear -to-day, Miller?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Miller (she's Scotch, and she is rather stingy of -"ladyships"), "there's your blue that come home last week. It seems a -pity to leave it aside just yet." - -"You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can't -put that on, it's too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it." - -"Then there is the grey _panne_." - -"Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own -maid. No offence to you, Miller." - -"I don't intend to take any, my lady," said Miller, pursing up her -lips. "What about your black with sequins?" - -"Yes, let's have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child's hair. -You see, I dress to you, my dear." - -But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just -as she chooses her horses to be a pair. - -Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only -thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her -nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once -had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I -shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it--the -best paints--and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year. - -Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in -Paris--rather purplish--it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is -just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and -looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked -away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, -and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if -her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little -tendrils of hair down on her forehead. - -"Child, child," she said to me. "Do you know what makes me sigh?" - -"Indigestion?" I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn't, -that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so -diabolically, so preternaturally ugly. - -"Oh no, you look sweet!" I said. I really thought so, but Miller -grinned. - -"You are delightful!" Lady Scilly said. "And you can have that boa you -are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me -meretricious; and, child, when your times comes, don't ever--ever--have -anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can't leave it off, -and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to -subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the -time. Oh, _la, la_!" - -I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we -read of in a book. I've seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her -black and blue, and she kept saying, "Go on! Harder! Harder!" but as it -didn't seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn't do it again. But I -took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself. - -When Lady Scilly was ready she said--"We won't lunch in, we will go to -Prince's and have a _filet_. Scilly's in a bad temper because of bills. -Well, bills must come,--and I may go, I suppose. There's no reason one -shouldn't keep out of their way." - -She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she -told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us -at three o'clock. - -The butler said, "Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party -of ten!" all in the same voice. - -"So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!" and she flopped into a hall -seat. - -"Yes, my lady," Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door -again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude. - -So we took off our hats, at least I did--she wears a hat every time she -can, except in bed--and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and -her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I -know. - -Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, "You have got too much -on!" - -She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so -as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office -laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like -blackberries on every bush--one of the penalties of greatness. - -"I've never really seen your face, Paquerette," he said, "and I do -believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are -right not to make it too cheap. Who's coming? Smart people, or one of -your Bohemian crowds?" - -"You'll see," she said. "Mrs. Ptomaine, for one." - -"Dear Tommy!" said he. "I love her.... Desist, O wasp!" he said to one -that had come in by the window and was bothering him. "This is a -precursor of Tommy." - -"Tommy's all right, so long as she hasn't got her knife into you. She -favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see -that she doesn't make eyes at my tame millionaire." - -"Oh, Mr. Pawky!" said Simon. "Is he coming? You should put me opposite, -so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn't Tommy have a bit -of him? She's terribly thin!" - -"Because he isn't a very big millionaire--only half a one--and there's -only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may -flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else -is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and -mortally afraid of Lauderdale--and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I -nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should -like to have seen all your faces!" - -Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the -millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and -indigestible, and as if millionairing didn't agree with him. He could -only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little -"How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear" conversation with me, but he attended most -to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss -Lauderdale, and _Lady Ildegonde_ and the dresses, and discussing -Society, as it is now. - -"Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No, -the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can't -forgive is for people to bore us!" - -I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can't culture, -while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn't waste -her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society -takes count of that she didn't mention? - -"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to -Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale -now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour -into my life!" - -"Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly. - -"That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty -London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can -play billiards on his own back!" - -"Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant, -but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his -hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and -stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They -say he runs it? - -He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. -Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to -have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to -distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and -flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared -her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much -tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats -were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across -the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly -never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her -other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice -painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for -him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash -the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting -Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I -wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did -women, but I was born too late for that. - -When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a -leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but -waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at -it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the -flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, -and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the -drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent -somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes. - -At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady -Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs. -Ptomaine. - -"I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had -several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put -a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked -to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!" - -"What does she do?" I asked. - -"Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers. -Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to -make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free. -I don't care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if -their names are given, and then they don't worry so with their bills. -And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a -lesson--things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite -say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one's quarrels through -the press, isn't it? Here we are at Tommy's flat! Up at the very, very -top! The vulture in its eyrie--is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I -know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift! -One oughtn't to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!" - -I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door. - -"So soon, darling! Delightful!" she said. She didn't look very pleased -to see us, I thought, but she was "in to tea," I could see, for there -were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with -egg-powder. - -"I wanted to prime you about your critique of _Lady Ildegonde_, you -know. Now, Tommy, it is understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and -punished for her impertinence in daring to act _me_, in Camille's -dresses." - -"Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you -don't trust your Tommy." - -"Not so much darling dear, now, if you don't mind," said Lady Scilly. -"We are alone, and this child doesn't need impressing. It fidgets me." - -"All right, sweetheart--I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite -obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state. -"Is it too early for tea?" - -"Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a -headache?" - -"Three distinct headaches," said poor Tommy. "Did three first nights -last night, and got a separate headache for each." - -"How interesting!" said Lady Scilly. "I mean I am very sorry. Is there -nothing I can do?" - -"No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest -will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think -of nothing for an hour." - -Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were -just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire! - -Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very -pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her -in an undertone, "No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea. -_Must_ you go?" - -Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as -my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine," -in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more -"dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?" -and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have -serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink -toast-and-water in her house any more. - -"There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it," -she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after -another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon -motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?' -But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking -the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll -get him to give her a new carpet!" - -I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it -was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and -then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having -nothing marketable about her, not even a title. - -If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so -obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they -seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. -Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted -with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of -Frederick Cook, perhaps? - -She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write -Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. -Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the -night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office -and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. -Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to -take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to -change it for another and a nicer. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -It is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten -thousand copies of a book, you can't get any sort of useful advice on -the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner -consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice -from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can't in fairness -advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that -Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl, -she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a -room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to -ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too -shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see -if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl -like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious. -She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly's aunt, the Countess of -Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she -holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a -feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs -them to invent a fate for her. - -"Haven't I got a future like other people?" she whines, and then the -poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in -her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to -have three husbands, although she is already seventy. - -Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at -least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see -people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they -would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to -bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in -shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking -silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been -having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very -serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, -though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne -what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only -two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right -sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as -Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. -Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite -sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry, -and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece -of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as -she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in -the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than -usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very -smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the -Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never! - -Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed -Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a -nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least -that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we -were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to -help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything -countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all -that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds -unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to -go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can -ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good -wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that -George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It -is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and -so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of -one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never -going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. -I don't know how much that is. She will never tell. - -Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn't got. It is odd, how -taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, -dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And -fashion after all is only a matter of "bulge." You bulge in a different -place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave -off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you -may consider you are a well-dressed woman! - -Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence -a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every -week, from _The Bittern_, and for _Wild Oats_. George is "Pease Blossom" -on _The Bittern_. We don't need to subscribe to a library, we live in a -book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers' Row -afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the -smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready -George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in -together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of -_Darnel_, and people thought him clever but malicious. - -Papa doesn't know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the -novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has -no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time -for--it depends on how many Ariadne gives me--and then when she is doing -her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper -ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so -it's all right. - -Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn't invent, but -found ready made. "Up to the level of this author's reputation" is one; -"marks a distinct advance," "breezy," "strong, or convincing," and the -opposites, "unconvincing," "weak," "morbid," "effete," are useful ones. -She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions "a fine -sense of atmosphere" if she honestly can. - -She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She -flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their -books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and -what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not -one of the whole d--d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, -especially The _Bittern_, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that -ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and -gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote -her own words to her! - -Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the -reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of -course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a -pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as -to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he -allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, -there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but -one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She -was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for -heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up -her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error -and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel -action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society! - -It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, -because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have -the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother -listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner -to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up -and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about. - -"D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of -mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!" - -It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George, -you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a -regular corker of a review. - -"I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal -ineptitude of this author's_----'" - -I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though -I never saw it in print. - -Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all, -which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes -oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The -Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole -year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went -to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote -about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself -wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but -the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to -frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, -and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, -and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the -cookery-book. - -That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, -who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all -about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and -Countesses are interested in mediæval knights and maidens, cooks--nor -yet laundresses--aren't. - -"The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!" he says -sometimes. "If I was proper, they wouldn't even look at me!" - -"Ay! the suburbs?" George says dreamily; "the kind, the mild, the -tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught -Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in Pall Mall and -Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy----" - -"You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!" says Mr. Aix. - -"I have shocked them--they love being shocked! I have startled -them--that does them good. I have puzzled them--not altogether -unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with -Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a -common, romantic denominator----" - -"You are like those useful earthworms of _le père_ Darwin, bringing up -soil and interweaving strata," said Mr. Aix wearily. - -George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. "Yes, I dominate the -lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at -the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you -ever envisage Peckham?" - -"I lived there and sold matches once," said she, "and, moreover, I've -kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs." - -"Is there anything you haven't done?" said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a -woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living -among his raw material. When he was writing _The Serio-Comic_, in order -to get the serious atmosphere--which I should have thought gin would -have done for well enough--he went every night of his life to some music -hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their -frocks at the back for them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out -just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn't preach -for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn't have told him -anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend -that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina -calls this novel "The Sweetmeat in the Gutter," and loves it, though -George says it is as broad as it's long, and that ladies shouldn't read -it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it -doesn't matter. _I_ have read _The Serio-Comic_, and I can't see -anything wrong. There's more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie -Dulcimer's real name is Frances Raggles, and she's the mother of five in -the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there's a -brandy-and-soda in every chapter. - -Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like -Lady Scilly's pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears -spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says "Quite so," as -if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. -He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like. -Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would -knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks -anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an -exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a -telegram--so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different -ways, and Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for -the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both -at the same time. - -He is about the only person who doesn't think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne -naturally dislikes him. She can't help it. If we didn't let her think -she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that -sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won't consider himself snubbed. -It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him. -Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him -if it is to be called _The Dustman_ or _The General_, and what the -_locale_ is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside -London? - -I have an idea that it will be called _The Seamstress_, for he has -lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where -we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to -sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle -into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour. - -Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep -her eyes open, as she always is after a dance. - -"I have often wondered," he began, "what must be the sensations of a -young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled, -is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her -senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous beat of the time, -relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying -frivolity? Is she----?" - -He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted-- - -"I can tell you. She's thinking all the time, 'Is there a hair-pin -sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in -front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. ---- it -depends which Mister is there that evening--think of it all?" - -"Don't, Tempe!" said Ariadne. - -"No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell -me some more things about women." - -"Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a -hansom?" - -"No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?" - -"Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like," I said. "It is only because -there happens to be a looking-glass there." - -George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary -agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in -Surrey and tempted them--to sell him the rights of every novel they did -for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their -heads and said, "You must go to Middleman!" Then he took them to a -London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads -and sent him to Middleman, who makes all their bargains for them, but -he can't control all the reviews. - -One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in -his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go. -George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an -effort to be a hero to one's typewriter, or one's daughter. - -"I am in a rage!" Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he -looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. "Just let me get hold of -this fellow they have got on _The Bittern_, and see if I don't wring his -neck for him!" - -George didn't say anything, and so I asked--somebody had to--"What has -_The Bittern_ man done, please?" - -"Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that's all! I'd have the -fellow know that I'm read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England! -Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!" - -George read it--at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn't seem to want -to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying-- - -"Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth--one can -always learn something from criticism, or so I find!" - -"What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent -paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding, -that's what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it -him!" - -"Well, it wasn't me wrote it, Mr. Aix," I said, "nor Ariadne!" He isn't -supposed to know that George farms out his reviews. - -Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it -had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in -for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn't he trouble -to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were -growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have -said to _The Bittern_ editor, "Avaunt! Don't tempt an author to review -his friend's book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many -reasons!" That is my idea of literary morality. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -George came back from his yachting tour with the Scillys very brown and -cheerful, having collected enough sunshine for a new book, and Christina -is typing it at his dictation. - -George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in -touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can't -for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that -she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs -to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of -her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the -end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, -as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes -among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, -he says, and she doesn't mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows -he is being managed, which shows that he doesn't really think he is. I -asked her once why she didn't marry, but she said the profession of -typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off -your high stool if you wanted. - -Christina always says rude things about epigrams and marriage. She is -not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of -course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and -ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes -ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, -and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china -memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks -on Marriage. - -1. Man cannot live by epigram alone. - -2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at -a _bal masqué_ at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards. - -3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in -the shape of conversation that grows near it. - -4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude. - -5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all -wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it. - -George's new novel is to be called _The Senior Epigrammatist_, and the -scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands. - -"Our well-known blend," said Mr. Aix, "of opaline sea and crystal -epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this -sunlight soap won't wash clothes. It isn't for home consumption. It -gladdens publishers' offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The -fires of passion----" - -"Don't talk to me of passion," said Christina. "I just detest the word. -Passion is piggish! It's a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, -and I wouldn't be seen dead with a temperament, in these days." - -She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She -typed something like this-- - -Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (----) C. Ball B B---- - -"Who is Ball?" said Mr. Aix anxiously. - -Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off. - -"A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in -his shoes." - -"The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!" - -I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She -hasn't said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him. - -It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen's Gate, that -she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, -that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever -you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, -though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, -I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she -would not marry, and that was a beard. - -He wished out loud that he hadn't got let in for the sitting-down seats, -so that he could not make a clean bolt of it when he had had enough of -Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so -though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us -quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that "she knew a bank!" -as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. -After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced -him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and -gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of -him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round -indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through -the programme though people shoo'd him, and then he stopped for a little -and apologized, and went on again. - -"I don't often turn up at this sort of function, do you?" he asked -Christina. - -"No, I do not," she replied, "I have too much to do as a general thing." - -"And stay at home and do it," said he; "you're wise." - -"I have to!" said Christina. "Oh," she sighed, "I am so dreadfully hot." - -It was June. - -"Why do you wear that bag?" he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which -was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every -one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a -different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like -every one else. - -"Get out of it, can't you, and let me take care of it for you, and that -boa thing you have got round your neck." - -She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him. - -"I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the -seat," she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. -So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers -with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking -at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn't -seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn't -seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he -would make George straighten his back! - -"I say," he said presently, "do you like gramophones?" - -"I love them," said Christina, and I knew it was a lie. - -"My people have a perfectly splendid one!" said he, and his whole face -lighted up. "I wish you could hear it." - -Christina wished she could, and he said-- - -"Oh, then, we will manage it somehow." - -When the concert was over he didn't bolt as he had said he wanted to, -but gave us ices, Christina one, me two, and then Christina put the bag -on again. - -"If you were in my motor in that thing in a shower you'd get drowned," -said he. "Why, it would _hold_ the water. I should like to drive you in -my motor all the same. I say, can't I call on you?" - -Christina told him very nicely that she was private secretary to the -author, Mr. George Vero-Taylor, and hadn't much time for herself. She -seemed to say that this made a call impossible. - -"Ah, I see! Live in, do you? Well, I'll call there, drop my pasteboard, -all straight and formal, you know, and then there can be no objection to -my giving you a spin in the motor. Right you are! Sinky Cento House. -What a rum name! Suggests drains! Never mind, I'll be there, and then -when I've made the acquaintance of your chaperon, she'll allow you to -come to tea with my mater, and make the acquaintance of the gramophone. -My mater's too old to go out. It's a ripper, the gramophone, I mean, -like some other people I am thinking of!" - -"What a breezy man!" said Christina, on the way home. "He reminds me of -The Northman I used to draw at South Kensington. I broke him, and had to -pay seven-and-six for him." Then she began to think--I believe it was -about Peter Ball. He _was_ handsome, for he had blue eyes and a little -short, straight nose like the Sovereigns in Madame Tussaud's. - -"Isn't he exactly like Harold of England?" I said to Christina. "I hope -George won't snub him when he comes to see you?" - -"He won't come," said she; "but if he did he wouldn't know he was being -snubbed." - -"No, he would say to George, 'Keep your snubs for a man of your own -size.' But, Christina dear, I always _thought_ you hated both marriage -and gramophones." - -"I am not so sure about gramophones," said she. "Perhaps a very big -one----?" - -"A six-footer, like Mr. Peter Ball, eh?" - -She was quite moody and absent in the 'bus going home, and wouldn't go -on top to please me. Then I accidentally stuck my umbrella in over the -top of her shoe as I walked beside her, and then she was too cross to -speak at all. I respected her mood. That is why I am beloved in the home -circle. But I have my own ideas, and they keep me amused. - -I was unfortunately out of the way when Mr. Peter Ball did call, three -days later. Mother and Christina were in, and Ariadne, who gave me a -true account of it all. She says the first thing he said to Christina -was, "I hope you don't think I have been too precipitate?" I suppose he -meant in calling? He stared about him a good deal at first, and she -thought that George's queer furniture made him feel shy, and that he -thought the ivory figure of Buddha quite indecent. She was sure he -didn't admire her (Ariadne), but only Christina, because Christina is a -"tailor-made" girl, that men like. Mother made the tea very strong that -afternoon, so as to make him feel at home, and then after all he didn't -touch tea. She kindly offered him a brandy-and-soda and he declined -that, but I expect it was only because it would have seemed -disrespectful to Christina. All men are alike, and prone to a b. and s. -if they can get it without disgrace. Mother was sure that he had fallen -head-over-ears in love with Christina, and she with him at the very -first sight. She told me so, and said she meant to help it on. - -"It is because Christina is so used to seeing George every day," said I. -"Peter Ball is very different, isn't he?" - -Mother said that there was no accounting for tastes, and that for her -part she considered George's type was the nicest. But whatever we did, -she said, we were not to chaff Christina about it, and put her off a -very good match. A girl of Christina's sort never took kindly to chaff, -and though she should be sorry to lose Christina as a secretary to -George, it being impossible to tell what sort of minx he might engage in -her place, she for one wouldn't like any personal consideration whatever -to interfere with Christina's establishment in life. Peter Ball is a -landed gentry. He is M.F.H. in the county of Northumberland to the -Rattenraw Hunt, and a capital shot and first-rate angler. When his old -mother dies he will be richer, but he is a good son, and often stays -with her in Leinster Gardens where he has asked me and Christina to go -to tea next week. - -I promised not to chaff, but if she had only known, it would have taken -a steam-crane to put Christina off that particular thing. She talked -lots about Peter. He was the "finest specimen of humanity she had ever -come across!" "Such a contrast to the little anæmic, effete, -ambisextrous (I hope I have got it right?) creatures that haunt Cinque -Cento House, who are all trying to get more out of their heads than is -in them!" "Greek in his simplicity, a sort of mixture of John Bull and -Antinöus!" I say, just wait till you see his mother; nice men's mothers -are sometimes sad eye-openers, and Peter Ball is always talking about -his. Also it is quite on the cards that she may not like Christina, and -then I am sure he will never propose to her. He is an admirable son. I -believe he keeps a gramophone just to attract the girls he admires into -his mother's cave, and give her the opportunity of looking over them, -and making up her mind if they are fit to be her Peter's wife or no. - -When the eventful day came, Christina was on thorns. She didn't know how -to dress. She finally left off the chiffon bag and wore a fringe-net, -and her best-cut "tailor-made," and took out her ear-rings lest they -should damn her in his mother's eyes. Then at exactly five minutes to -four we rang the bell in 1000 Leinster Square. - -A proud butler opened the door. George will only let us have maids, -although he could afford ten butlers. - -The house was beautiful, and not a bit like ours. "Early Victorian," -Christina whispered me. She was dreadfully nervous, and made me too. I -dropped my umbrella in the rack with such a clatter that she blushed and -scolded me. Then a palm-leaf tickled my head as I went by, and I begged -its pardon, thinking some one behind was trying to attract my -attention. We were taken into a big room with pedestal things in gold -and stucco set down at intervals, and a clock with a bare pendulum which -looks simply undressed to me, and a bronze Father Time with his sickle -lying lazily across the top. On another clock there was a gilt man in a -gilt cart whipping up two gilt horses. The carpet had large bouquets of -roses on it, and I thought what a good game it would be to pretend they -were islands and hop across from one to the other. I began, but she -stopped me. In a corner was the gramophone, like a great brass ear put -out to hear what you were saying. It was playing when we went in, like -an old man with a wheeze, and in came Peter Ball looking as if he had -just got out of a bath, and said, "How-do-you-do! it is playing -'Coppelia.'" Then it played "Valse Bleue" and "Casey at the Wake," and -"Casey as Doctor," and "When other Lips," and then Peter Ball said his -mother was ready. - -Into another room we went, full of Berlin wool-work chairs, and screens -of Potiphar and his wife, and the curtains were of green rep with ropes -of silk to tie them back and gilt festoons to hide their beginnings, and -an old old lady in a big arm-chair and a lace cap with nodding bugles -was in a corner, just like another and older bit of furniture. - -We were introduced; she was very deaf and very blind, and I am not sure -she didn't think I was the girl Peter wanted to marry. However that -might be, she seemed pleased with us, and we talked of her son and the -house. Christina, who used to say she preferred a Chéret poster to a -Titian, and plain deal to mahogany, admired everything freely. The -rosewood wheelbarrow with silver fittings given to Peter Ball's father -when he laid a first stone somewhere, she said was superb and so -graceful; the picture of old Mrs. Ball by Ingres in a poke bonnet and -short waist she said was far superior to anything by Burne Jones. - -"Who is Burne Jones?" said the old lady, and Christina denied Burne -Jones cheerfully. I thought of my favourite piece of poetry-- - - "See, ye Ladies that are coy, - What the mighty Love can do!" - -Then we had tea (the cake in a silver basket on a fringed mat, if you -please!), and after we had talked a little more, we said good-bye, and -Peter took us out. He had rushed out of the room just five minutes -before, when the first symptoms of leave-taking manifested themselves, -and we saw why, when we passed out through the first room where the -gramophone was. It played us out with "The Wedding March," surely a -graceful thought of Peter Ball's! - -"He's very nice, but what a pity he hasn't got taste!" I said as we came -away. You see, I am used to Cinque Cento House, and I have always been -told that there is only one taste, and that ours is it. - -"Taste!" Christina mooned, as we got into a 'bus. "There's so much of it -about, isn't there? On my word, it will soon be quite _chic_ to be -vulgar." - -It was not difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing after that. -It was about this time that Mr. Aix found Christina typing her own name -and Peter's on a sheet of III Imperial. He hadn't even set eyes on Peter -Ball then, but he did a few days later, when Peter Ball came to tea, -holding his grey kid gloves in his hand. George, luckily, was out again, -really out, not pretending to be in his study, and Mr. Aix it was who -opened the front-door for Peter when he went away at seven. - -"A man!" he said, when he came back to us all in the winter garden, and -Christina was just going out--escaping to her own room to think over -Peter Ball, I dare say--and she said as she passed him-- - -"I could hug you for saying that, Mr. Aix." - -"No, you couldn't," said he. "I am popularly supposed to be repellent. A -lady said I was like a white stick of celery grown in a dark cellar. -Another, of music-hall celebrity, compared me to a blasted pipe-stem. I -do not look for success with your sex. It was kind of you to think of -it, though." - -Peter Ball meant business, or else we could not have all spoken of it so -openly. George was awfully cross at the idea of having to find a new -secretary. Lady Scilly said she thought he could do better than -Christina, who was too forward (and too pretty). She tried very hard to -flirt with Peter herself, but perhaps Peter thought _he_ could do -better, and wouldn't. She looked into his face and said, "You great big -beauty!" She told him "high" stories, as Christina and I call them, and -he wouldn't laugh. She asked him right out why he wouldn't, and he -answered equally right out, "Because I disapprove of all jesting with -regard to the relations of the sexes!" - -Lady Scilly looked disgusted, and left him severely alone, as he meant -her to. - -For weeks after this he was like a full pail of water one is afraid to -carry without spilling. At last he slopped over, and asked Christina to -be his wife. I wasn't in the room, of course, but Christina was nice and -told us afterwards. He went on his knees, she says, and I believe her, -because I found a cushion on the floor immediately after, before the -housemaid had tidied the room, and I think he had managed to put it -under his knees without her seeing. Our floor is bony. - -"The very moment," she said, "he had got me to say yes, he jumped up and -rushed out without his hat, to send a telegram to his mother with the -good news!" - -She thought this so nice of him and so flattering, as showing that he -hadn't made quite sure of her. For though we all knew she meant to take -him, he was not supposed to be aware of it. Considering that Christina -is grown up, she ought to be able to make a man think exactly what she -wishes him to think about her. Such power comes, or should come, with -advancing years, and is one of its compensations. Ariadne, of course, -isn't old enough to have left off being quite transparent, and regrets -it deeply in some of her poetry. - -Christina was married to Peter Ball almost directly, and Ariadne and I -were her bridesmaids. Mrs. Mander gave us our dresses and hats. They -were quite fashionable; she would have no nonsense or necklaces. Ariadne -looked smart and like other people, for once. She didn't look so pretty, -but it is a mistake to want to go about the streets looking like a -picture. Prettiness isn't everything, and the really smartest people -would disdain to look simply ready for an artist to paint them. - -Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly's best friend, was Peter Ball's best man. He -had met Ariadne at the Scillys', but at Christina's wedding he said that -he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. -She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never -did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and -George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own -asking. - -That can't be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the -iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did _rather_ like her, but he wasn't -quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that -means--and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry -about it, as of course she would be. At all events he didn't come--his -chief kept him in till six o'clock every day, or some excuse of that -sort. As if a man couldn't always manage a call if he wanted to, even if -he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars! - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -We never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton -or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of -course St. John's Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole -month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in -Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty--something about a company -that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn't care where -we went, as he isn't to be with us. He just forks out the money as -Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do -things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all -we _are_ his family, and everybody knows that now. - -I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn't so -much about. - -Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven't got an ounce of country fibre in them. -They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase -them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the -quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is -sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there's a wasp inside -it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They -haven't country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down -grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, -and offend everybody all round. - -So they weren't particularly happy in the first rooms we took, at a farm -just out of Whitby. There was one stuffy little best parlour, sealed up -like a bottle of medecine, and one mouldy geranium looking as if it -couldn't help it on the window-sill, and the "Seven Deadly Sins" in -chromo on the walls, and Rebecca at a well of Berlin wools over the -mantelpiece. They covered the family Bible with an antimacassar, and -Aunt Gerty's theatrical photos without which she never travels, and -suppressed the frosty ornament in a glass case of one of Mrs. Wilson's -wedding-cakes. Mrs. Wilson married early, she says, and I say she -married often, for there are three of them! It _was_ uncomfortable. -Mother didn't complain, Aunt Gerty did. She had nowhere to hang up her -dresses; they were all getting spoilt; she couldn't see to do her hair -in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass, and the room was so small -that she twice set fire to her bed-curtains, curling her hair, which she -did twenty times a day, for there was always wind or rain or something. -The walls were so thin that she could hear every word Mr. and Mrs. -Wilson said to each other in the next room, quarrelling and arranging -the bill and so on. She couldn't sleep with the window shut, and all -sorts of horrid buggy things came in if you left it open. It was so -dreadfully lonely here, and she had never "seen so much land" in her -life. - -Aunt Gerty has been on tour often enough to get used to uncomfortable -lodgings, lodgings not chosen by herself, very likely, and her luggage -all fetched away the day before she leaves by the baggage man! But it is -in a town, and that makes all the difference. Give her a strip of mirror -in the door of her wardrobe, and a gas-jet ready to set fire to her -window-curtains, and a row of shops outside to cheer her up, and she -won't think of grumbling. - -The landlady didn't consider us a particularly good "let." I used to -hear her in bed in the mornings explaining to Mr. Wilson, who is a -railway porter, how glad she would be to be "shot" of us if it wasn't -for the money. "Ay, lass!" he would answer, and then I used to hear him -turning over in bed and going to sleep again. - -"They're better to keep a week than a fortnight!" she used to say. "What -with their late dinners and breakfasts in bed, and their black coffee, -and all sitting down for an hour o' mornings polishing up them ondacent -brown boots--they darsen't trust the help, no, not since she went and -rubbed them with lard--poor girl, she meant well,--and she fit to rive -her legs off answering the parlour bell every minute! Well, the sooner I -see their backs, the better pleased I shall be!" - -We took the hint and gave up the rooms, and got some nicer ones in town -on the quay. Aunt Gerty left off bothering Mother to have late dinner -and strong coffee, and we lived on herrings and cream cheeses, the -cheapest things in Whitby. I mean the herrings. When they have a good -catch, they sell them at a halfpenny each on the quay-side, or slap -their children with them, or shy them at strangers. Anything to keep the -market up! - -Mrs. Bennison, our new landlady, isn't a Whitby woman, but her husband -is, and owns a boat, and takes Ben out sailing, and tries to make a man -of him. We hardly ever see him, so we know he is happy. Mother and Aunt -Gerty sit one on each side of the bow window the greater part of the -day, and make blouses, and read at the same time. George would throw -their books into the harbour if he caught them in their hands; they are -the sort he disapproves of. I won't say who the authors of these are, as -being a literary man's daughter it might give offence, but they are by -women mostly. George vetoes women's books too, for they are generally -bad, and if they are good, they have no business to be. - -Just now, George isn't here to object, he is at Homburg, doing a cure. -He always gets brain fag towards the end of the season like his other -friends. It seems to me the smartest illness to have, except -appendicitis. The moment Goodwood is over, they all troop off to Germany -or Switzerland and pay pounds to some doctor who only makes them leave -off eating and drinking too much, and go to bed a little before -daylight. It is kill and then cure with the smart set, every year. -George does what is right and usual--bathes in champagne at Wiesbaden, -and drinks the water rotten eggs have been boiled in at Homburg. He does -it in good company, to take the taste away. Mr. Aix drew us a picture of -George and a Duchess walking up and down a parade, with a glass tube -connected with a tumbler, in their mouths, talking about emulating "The -Life of the Busy Bee" as they went along. - -About the middle of August we heard he had come back to England and was -paying his usual round of visits to Barefront, and Baddeley and -Fylingdales Tower. Nearly all these places have real battlements and -ghosts. Fylingdales Tower is near here. Mother and I and Aunt Gerty -joined a cheap trip to it, the other day, and were taken all over the -house for a shilling. I don't even believe The Family was away, but -stowed away _pro tem._ and staring at us through some chink and loathing -us. I did manage to persuade Aunt Gerty not to throw away her sandwich -paper in the grate of the fire-place of the room where Edward the Third -had slept on his way to Alnwick, but kindly keep it till we were got -into the Park. But she was very irreverent all the same, and insisted on -setting her hat straight in the glass of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, and -that was the only picture she looked at at all. I don't care for -pictures much. I like the house, which is old and grey and bleached, as -if it never got a good night's sleep. Too many spirits to break its -rest. I don't believe in ghosts really, but I often wonder what are the -white things one sees? I don't see so many as I did when I was quite a -child. Aunt Gerty shivered and went Brr! She hated it all, she is so -very modern. She admitted that she only went with us because she had -hoped George might be actually staying there, and would see his own -sister-in-law among the trippers and get a nasty jar. Mother is a lady, -and knew quite well that he wasn't there, or else she would not have let -Aunt Gerty go, or gone herself, even _incog._ George _had_ been there -recently, though, for the black-satin housekeeper said so, and that she -read his books herself when she had time, or a headache. "He's quite a -pet of her ladyship's," she told Aunt Gerty, who had spotted one of -George's books on a table and asked questions. She was dying to tell the -old thing that we were relations of the great Mr. Vero-Taylor, but -dursn't, for Mother's eye was on her. Mother looked as pleased as Punch -though, and gazed at the chairs (behind plush railings) that her husband -had sat on, and at the portrait in Greek dress, by Sir Alma Tadema, of -the lady who "made a pet of him." - -George had written from Homburg once or twice to me, and I used to read -his letters out to Mother, who naturally wanted to hear his news. She -was a little annoyed because he didn't mention if he was wearing the -thicker vests as the weather was getting chilly, and begged me to ask -him to be explicit in my next, but I did not, because it might have -shamed him in the eyes of his countesses if he left the letter about, as -of course he would. George respects the sanctity of private -communication so much, that he never tore up a letter in his life; the -housemaid collects them when she is doing his room, and brings them to -Mother, who hasn't time to read them, any more than the housemaid has. - -The third week in August George wrote to me, and told me to engage him -rooms in Fylingdales Crescent on the East Cliff. You might have knocked -me down with a feather! - -Mother was hurt at George's having written to me, not her, on such a -pure matter of business, until I explained that he merely did it to -please the child! One doesn't mind making oneself out a baby to avoid -hurting a mother's feelings. I don't know if Mother quite accepted this -explanation, but she said no more about it, and told Mr. Aix the good -news. He is in lodgings here, to be near us--Aunt Gerty thinks it is to -be near her, and he lets her think anything she likes. He looks forward -to George's coming with great interest, and says he will look like some -rare exotic on the beach, such as a humming-bird or a gazelle. Aunt -Gerty at once got hold of the visitors' list. - -"Let's see which of his little lot is coming to Whitby?" she said, and -hunted carefully through three columns till she found that Adelaide -Countess of Fylingdales, Mr. Sidney Robinson, nurse baby and suite, were -at the Fylingdales Hotel, on the East Cliff. Lord Fylingdales, her -eldest son, is the widower of a Gaiety girl who actually died after she -had been a Countess a year, poor dear! Aunt Gerty knew her. He is Lord -of the Manor here, and his portrait is all over the place. - -"Old Adelaide's a shocking frump, Lucy; you needn't distress yourself -about her!" said Aunt Gerty consolingly to Mother. - -"I am not distressing myself about her, Gertrude," replied my Mother, -and she didn't look at all distressed in her neat short blue serge -seaside dress, and shady hat. She looked ten. - -"I know her son," Aunt Gerty went on. "A fish without a backbone. I very -nearly had the privilege of leading him astray myself. It is Irene -Lauderdale now, I hear." - -"I wish you'd stow your theatrical recollections, Gerty," said Mother. -"Come, Tempe, get your things on, we will go and take rooms for your -father and my husband." - -"Brava!" said Mr. Aix. "Capital accent there." - -"Oh, you go along!" said Mother, and we went off at once and engaged -George's rooms. We got very nice large ones, with dark green outside -shutters to the windows, and took a great deal of trouble to explain -George's little ways to them, for their sake as well as his. Ben will -valet him. Mother told the people that he is bringing his man, who will, -however, sleep out. George never gets up till twelve, French fashion. - -Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn't -ornamental just now. He can't speak, he can only croak, and though he -isn't very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing inside himself -and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly -man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his -face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them -and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he -doesn't care at all what he does, he doesn't even mind playing servant -for a bit, if George would like it. Mother tells him he is a good boy -and the comfort of her life, and that if she can manage it, she will get -him sent to college after this, only he had better please the mammon of -unrighteousness all he can. So he means to be a good valet to the -Mammon. - -The Fylingdales Hotel is in the best part of the town, on the East -Cliff, and they dine late there every evening, and don't pull the blinds -down, and the townspeople walk backwards and forwards, and watch the -people dining at seven-thirty, dressed in their nudity. I think evening -dress looks quite wrong at the seaside. Aunt Gerty and Mother put on a -different blouse every evening, and look nice and cosy and comfortable, -though George does say sarcastic things about the tyranny of the blouse, -and the way Aunt Gerty will call it Blowse. I wash my face, that is all -the dressing _I_ do. Ben puts on an old smoker of George's, and flattens -out his hair to support the character of being the only gentleman of the -party, unless Mr. Aix is there to supper, and the less said about Mr. -Aix's clothes the better. - -Ben makes boats all day, when he isn't in one, and Ariadne makes poetry. -Her one idea, having come to the sea for her health, is to avoid it, -and seek the rather scrubby sort of woods which is all you can expect at -the seaside. So every afternoon nearly we take a donkey to Ruswarp or to -Cock Mill, and "ride and tie." We used to pick out a very smart donkey, -but a very naughty one. He was called Bishop Beck, perhaps for that -reason, and he went slow,--that was to be expected, but when he stopped -quite still and wouldn't move for an hour or more in the middle of Cock -Mill Wood, long, long after one had stopped beating him (for he looked -at us and made us feel ridiculous), Ariadne said she would rather do -without adventitious aid of this kind, for it interfered with her -afflatus. - -She walks up and down in the wood paths, finding rhymes, which seems the -hardest part of poetry. - -"Dreams--streams--gleams--" she goes on. - -"Breams?" I suggest. - -"Not a poetical image!" - -"It isn't an image, it is a fish." - -"It won't do. Am I writing this poem or are you?" - -I don't argue. It doesn't really matter much how Ariadne's poems turn -out. Being Papa's daughter she is sure to find a hearty reception for -her initial volume of verse. - -We used to stay out till what Ariadne called Dryad time. She thought she -saw white figures hiding behind the trees in the dusk. Little pellets -made of nuts and acorns and dead leaves, and so on, used to fall on us -out of the thickets, and Ariadne said it was the Dryads pelting us. She -thinks trees are alive, and that one of the reasons you hear ghosts in -all old houses, is the wood creaking because in the night it remembers -it was once a tree. I prefer to believe in ordinary solid ghosts instead -of rational explanations like that. But still Ariadne's funny ideas make -a walk quite interesting. Of course we never talk of such things at -home, among materialists and realists like Aunt Gerty and Mother and -George. George makes plenty of use of birds in his books, but he once -came home from a visit to St. John's College at Cambridge, and told us -that he had been kept awake all night by a beastly nightingale under his -window. Now I have never heard this much-vaunted bird, but I am sure, -from Matthew Arnold's poem where he calls it Eugenia, it must be a -heavenly sound, quite worth while being kept awake by. - -Ariadne and I stay out very late till it is getting dark, hoping to hear -it, in Cock Mill Wood, and then we go home and race through supper, and -then go out again, on the quays and piers this time. We don't know or -care what George and his friends are doing, up above us, in the smart -hotel on the cliff. What I should just love would be for some of them -and George to come down for a walk in the dark and perhaps meet us, and -for George to say, "Who are those little wandering vagabonds flitting -about like bats? Why doesn't their father or mother keep them at home in -the evenings?" It would be so nice, and Arabian Nightish! - -At very high tides, we stay out very late, and take a shawl, and sit on -a capstan and tuck it round us, and listen for a certain noise we love. -It is when the water gets into a little corner in the heap of stones by -the Scotch Head, and gets sucked in among them somehow, and then we hear -a sort of sob that is better than any ghost. Ariadne and I put our heads -under the shawl when we hear it, but not quite, so as to prevent us -hearing properly. - -The harbour smells at low water, and the town children yell and scream, -and it isn't poetical then. So Ariadne and I like to go away on the -Scaur and put our fingers in anemones' mouths, and pop seaweed purses, -and pretend we are lovers cut off by the tide, as they are in novels. In -the afternoons when the harbour is full we sit on the mound above the -Khyber Pass, and watch the water filling up the hole between the -opposite cliff and the cliff ladder. It is all quite quiet then. We -don't hear any town cries, for the children that make the noise are -turned out of their playground, and their mothers out of their good -drying-ground, and the boats begin to go out of the harbour in a long, -soft, slow procession-- - - _And the stately ships go on_ - _To their haven under the hill._ - -I am sure Tennyson meant Whitby when he wrote that. - -One night we could not sleep because the woman next door had had her -"man" drowned, and cried and moaned for hours. He was a fisherman, and -we had seen his boat go out third in the row the day before. He is -supposed to have fallen overboard in the night? Next day, Mother went in -and gave her five shillings and she stopped crying. - -Mr. Aix had a try to paint the view in front of our windows. At least he -said there was no such thing in nature as a "view," and left out the -Church and the Abbey, because they "conventionalized" things so. He -belongs, he said, to the Impressionist School, if any. He got quite -excited about his drawing, and at last went and borrowed a station truck -to sit on; it raised him a little. One day a chance lady sat down on one -of the handles, and over he went. It served him right for leaving out -the two best things in Whitby. - -When George came, Ariadne and I used to take turns to go and lunch with -him at his breakfast, where we had French cookery. There were leathery -omelets that bounced up like the stick in the boys' game when you -touched the end of them with a spoon, and fillets that you wouldn't have -condescended to have for a pillow, but still, it was French. - -We were dressed nicely and took our clean gloves in our hands, and -George wasn't ashamed of us, and introduced us to his friends. Lady -Fylingdales' Mr. Sidney Robinson said I was like George--that I had his -nose. I went to bed that night with a clothes-peg out of the yard on it, -to improve its shape. But the old lady was half blind, and all made of -manner. I also saw the Lord Aunt Gerty might have led astray, and he -hadn't a manner of any sort, and his nose wanted to run away with his -chin. - -George had no fault whatever to find with the arrangements Mother had -made for his comfort, and he told her so, the first time he saw her, in -Baxter Gate, coming out of the Post Office. The first place George flies -to in a town is the Post Office, to send telegrams. He corresponds -entirely by telegram with some people; he says it is paying five-pence -more for the privilege of saying less. We had been shopping. George -spotted us, and Mother thought he had rather not be recognized, but he -was good that day and he actually left Mr. Sidney Robinson--a commoner, -married to a countess, and that exactly describes him, Aunt Gerty -says--to say a word to his own wife. It was market day, and we had -bought several things in the Hall across the water. A pound of -blackberries and a cream cheese, and a chicken and a cabbage, each from -a different old woman with a covered basket. Mother had a net and I a -basket to put them in. I was glad that George did not offer to "relieve" -us of them, like the young men Aunt Gerty picks up here; but he stopped -and talked to us quite nicely for a long time. He and Mother seemed to -have a great deal to say to each other, and the basket-handle began to -cut my arm in half. Also it was a very hot day. George had on a white -linen suit, and a straw hat from Panama. He looked quite cool, and like -Lohengrin or the Baker's man. Mother didn't. She looked hot. I touched -her elbow, not so much because of my arm that ached, but because she -looked like that, nor did I think it looks well to stand talking in the -street to gentlemen, even if it is your own husband. - -"Well, George," she said, taking my hint at once, "we must be going on. -The butter is melting and the chicken grilling and the cabbage wilting -while I stand here talking to you." - -"Charming!" said George, but he wasn't thinking of us, but of Mr. -Robinson, who was champing a few yards away. We said "Good-bye" without -shaking hands. George, I think, might have lifted his hat. I have read -of fine gentlemen who lifted their hat to an apple-woman, let alone -their wife and child. - -George and his friend walked off together. I suppose the Robinson man -was too well-bred to ask George who his lady-friend was, as any of Aunt -Gerty's men would do, but he certainly stared a good deal. Of course he -knows who we are, everybody in Whitby does, I should think, and they -most likely conclude that it is less unkindness than the eccentricity of -genius. If you haven't got that blasted thing called genius, I suppose -you can bear to live in the same house with your wife! - -We walked slowly home with our purchases. Mother had a headache all -dinner, and lay down in the afternoon. - -"I met your father, Ben," she said at supper. "His boots want a little -attention." - -"I don't believe," said Ben crossly, "that any one ever had a more -tiresome man to valet. He will wear his clothes all wrong, and then is -always ragging and jawing at a fellow because they don't look nice." - -"Hush, Ben, he is your father." - -"Hah, I was forgetting!" said Ben, and gave one of his great laughs, as -if you were breaking up coal, or something. Ben is now so changeable and -nervous that you never know where to have him. He is growing up all -wrong, but what can you expect of a boy brought up by women? He never -sees a boy of his own position, though I know that in London he has some -low companions he daren't bring to the house. The Hitchings are his only -respectable friends, but they live such a long way off now. Jessie -Hitchings is devoted to Ben, but she is only a girl like Ariadne and me. -Mr. Hitchings told mother, years ago, that the boy was being ruined, and -Mother cried and said she knew it, but could do nothing, for his father -was by way of educating him at home till something could be settled. -Snaps of Latin, and snacks of Greek, that is all George gives the poor -boy when he has a moment, and that is never. - -This is the only grievance Mother has, although Aunt Gerty is always -trying to persuade her she has several, and putting her back up. Mother -ends by getting cross with her. - -"For goodness' sake, you Job's comforter, you, leave off your eternal -girding at George. Can't you see, that as long as a man has his career -to establish--his way to make----" - -"His blessed thoroughfare is made long ago, or ought to be. That is what -I can't get over----" - -"You aren't asked to get over it. It is not your funeral, it is mine, so -shut up. A man like George, who is dependant on the public favour, needs -to be most absurdly particular, and careful what he does lest he injure -his prestige. Look at yourself! You know very well in your own -profession how very damaging it is for an actor to be married; that if -an actress marries her manager, he has to pay dear for it in the -receipts. She had better not figure as his wife in the bills, if she -wants him to get on. You can't eat your cake--I mean your title--and -have it. No, it's bound to be Miss Gertrude Jennynge on the bills, even -if it is Mrs. What-do-you-call-it in the lodgings, with a ring on her -finger, and every right to call herself a married woman. The public -don't care for spliced idols. An artist has to stand clear, and preserve -his individuality, such as it is!" - -"And run straight all the time. I'll give George credit for that. But -there, whatever's the good of it to you? A man can make a woman pretty -fairly miserable, even if he is stone-faithful to her. It's then it -seems all wrong somehow, and doesn't give her a chance of paying him in -his own coin!" - -I think Aunt Gerty is the reason why George fights so shy of his family. -He hates her style, and yet he can hardly forbid Mother seeing as much -as she likes of her own sister. The trail of the stage is over us all. -Not that I see anything a bit wicked about the stage myself! I have -never noticed anything at all wrong, and actors and actresses are the -kindest people in the world! But there is a queer, worn, threadbare, -rough, second-rate feeling about them. Off the stage--and I have never -seen them on--they are tired and slouchy and easy-going. Aunt Gerty is -most good-tempered and will do anything to help a pal, and takes things -as they come; those are her good points. But she talks such a lot about -herself, and never opens a book that isn't a novel, and wears cheap -muslins and beaded slippers in the street, and lots of chains that seem -to be always getting caught on men's buttons. She calls men "fellows." -She is always going to play Juliet at one of the London houses. Meantime -she puts up with provincial companies. She makes the best of it, and she -tells us she is going to play Nerissa in the Bacon Company, as if she -had got engaged for a parlourmaid in a good house, and discusses Ariel -as if Ariel were a tweeny or up-and-down girl between the sky and the -earth, and Puck a smart clever Buttons. She speaks of her nice legs as a -workman might of his bag of tools. She can sing and dance, when she -isn't asked to act. She has cut all her hair short to make it easier for -wigs. Her great extravagance is in wigs. She calls them "sliding roofs" -for convenience in talking about them in trains and omnibuses. When she -did wear her own hair she dyed it, so I like the wigs better, as there's -no deception. - -If Mother was ever an actress, which I don't somehow believe, though -Jessie Hitchings said once that she had heard people say so, it has all -been knocked out of her. She dresses very well, always in simpler things -than Aunt Gerty. She left off her waist years ago, to please George, and -now that it is the fashion not to have one, she is in the right box--I -mean stays. Her hair is brown, and she mayn't frizzle it, so it is soft -and pretty like a baby's. She generally wears black, over lovely white -frilled petticoats that she gets up herself to keep the bills down. She -has such little hands that she can pick her gloves out of the -five-and-a-half boxes at sales, which are always much reduced. So few -people have small hands. She may not wear high heels, and that is a -grief to her, as she isn't very tall, but hers are very pretty feet, and -she can dance. - -George doesn't know that she can dance. I do. Once Mr. Aix asked her to -dance for him when I was in the room. Aunt Gerty played on the -tin-kettle piano. Mother danced a cake-walk, which I thought very ugly, -and then a queer step that a friend had taught her when she was a child. -In one part of it she was dancing on her hands and her feet at the same -time. It was the queerest thing, and she left her dress down for that -and it lay in swirls about the carpet. Mr. Aix said it was the dance -that Salome must have danced before Herod, and he quite understood John -the Baptist, and where did she get it? But Mother wouldn't tell him. -She said it was a memory of her stormy youth in the East End. - -Mr. Aix said that she could make her fortune doing it as a turn at a -Society music hall, as it would be something quite new and decadent. -That is just what Society wants--the slight, morbid flavour! Then Mother -put on her short skirt and did the ordinary vulgar kind of dance they -teach now, and I liked it best. She was everywhere at once, smart and -spreading out in all directions, like spun glass on a Christmas card. -Her eyes danced too. Ben said he couldn't have believed she was his -mother! - -Then Aunt Gerty performed, and she is professional. But it was not the -same thing. Aunt Gerty's legs are thick, and compared with Mother's like -forced asparagus to the little pretty, thin, field-grown kind. Mother's -dancing was emphatically dramatic, Mr. Aix said. - -I asked him if Mother could act, and he answered, "My dear child, your -mother can do anything she has a mind to." - -"Then why doesn't she have a mind?" I at once said, forgetting how it -would upset our household and George if she were to go on the stage. -Mother naturally remembers this, and stays domestic out of virtue. - -"I wish you would write a play for me, Mr. Aix," said Aunt Gerty, "and I -would get a millionaire to run it. I wonder, now, what one could do with -Mr. Bowser?" - -She went off in a brown study, and Mr. Aix said rudely, "I will write a -play for Lucy sooner," looking at Mother, who was sitting fanning -herself with her pocket-handkerchief. "She has got the stuff in her, I -do believe. Gad! What a chance! What a lever! What a facer--!" - -And he dropped off into a brown study too! Mother went and mended Ben's -blazer. - -Mr. Aix isn't staying with us, we have no room in our house; he has a -room over the coast-guard's wife, but he comes in to us for his meals. I -don't believe George realizes this, or he would tell him he is throwing -himself away, and losing a good chance of advertising his books. Mr. -Aix's books seem to go without advertising, more than George's do--I -suppose it is because they are so improper. - -At any rate, he prefers to throw in his lot with us. One day we were all -having a picnic-tea at Cock Mill. The party consisted of Mother, me and -Ariadne, Aunt Gerty and Mr. Aix, and an actor friend of hers and his -wife, who was acting for a week at the Saloon Theatre. Mr. Bowser, whom -Aunt Gerty wants either to marry or get a theatre out of, was with us -too. They call him the King of Whitby, because he owns so many plots in -it, and is going to stand for it in the brewing interest next election. -We had secured the nicest table, the one nearest the stream, and had -just tucked our legs neatly under it, when a carriage drove up. Aunt -Gerty and the King of Whitby were at that moment in the old woman's -cottage who gives us the hot water, toasting tea-cakes. - -The Fylingdales' party got out of that carriage, and George got slowly -down off the box. They trooped into the enclosure, and Mr. Sidney -Robinson, trying to be funny, asked the old woman if she could see her -way to giving them some tea. - -"Here o' puppose, Sir!" said she, as of course she is. She pointed out -the table that was left and that led them past us. - -If Aunt Gerty had been there with Mr. Bowser she would certainly have -claimed George as a relation and said something awkward, but she was -luckily toasting tea-cakes, and had perhaps not even seen them. I saw -George just look at Mother, and I saw her smile a very little, and make -him a sign that he was to go right past us, and not speak or seem to -know us before. Of course Mr. Aix never spoils any one's game, not even -George's. So he went on talking hard to the actor's wife, though I saw -his lip curl. I, of course, never need be given a cue twice, so I kicked -Mother hard under the table for sympathy, but preserved a calm superior. - -Aunt Gerty and Mr. Bowser came out with plates full of tea-cakes they -had cooked, and I didn't know if it was the fire or Mr. Bowser had made -Aunt Gerty's cheeks so red--I hoped the latter for her sake. They had no -idea of what had happened while they had been toasting and flirting, it -appeared from their manners, which were bad. Aunt Gerty always puts an -extra polish on hers when George is present, and even Mr. Bowser would -have added a frill or so to suit the aristocracy. - -Our party was very gay. Actors all can make you laugh if they can do -nothing else, and our shrieks of laughter must have made the other party -quite envious, for they were as quiet as a mouse and as dull as the -stream all overshadowed with nut-bushes and alders that grew over it -just there. - -Suddenly George got up, and left them, and came over to us, and Aunt -Gerty swallowed her tea the wrong way round, and had to have her -shoulder thumped. - -George took no notice of her, but put his hand on Mr. Aix's shoulder and -said something to him in a low voice. - -"Not if I know it!" Mr. Aix answered, quite violently, adding, "Many -thanks, old fellow, I am happier where I am." - -George looked awfully put out. Of course I knew what he wanted. Those -smart people up at the other table had expressed a wish to see Mr. Aix. -He is a successful though painfully realistic novelist, and George had -told them he was actually sitting at the next table, and had promised to -bring him over to them to be introduced. In his disappointment, he -glared at us all, especially the actor, who didn't care a brass farthing -for George's displeasure, and went on eating tea-cake _ad nauseam_. - -"Oh, all right!" said George, to cover his vexation, "if you prefer to -bury yourself in a----" - -"Easy all!" Mr. Aix said. "Leave everybody to enjoy themselves in their -own way. And we are depriving your delightful friends of----" - -George had turned and gone back to his delightful friends long before -Mr. Aix had finished his sentence, and Aunt Gerty patted the poor man on -the back till he wriggled. - -"Loyal fellow!" she said several times. She had got well on to it now, -and she started a fit of giggles that lasted all the rest of the time we -were there. It didn't matter much, for we were all quite drunk on weak -tea and laughter. - -But we turned as silent as mice as the Fylingdales' party, having had -enough of their dull tea, streamed past us, and got into their carriage, -and rolled away. George was not with them. I dare say he had got over -the hedge and gone round to meet the break by the road, not wanting to -walk past our party again, and to avoid unpleasantness. I supposed he -had paid for the tea; but no, this grand party forgot to do that, so -that in the end Mr. Aix paid for their refreshment for the old woman's -sake that she should not suffer. - -When they had gone, we felt relieved; but it sobered us somehow. Aunt -Gerty and the gentlemen smoked quietly, and we were so still that we -could hear the little beck bubbling over the loose stones beside us. -Then Aunt Gerty was persuaded to recite something, and she did "Loraine, -Loraine, Loree!" in a shy, modest voice. You see these were all her real -bosses, and she valued their approval, and the actor's wife is -considered very stiff in the profession. She herself sang "The banks of -Allan Water" very sadly and solidly, and Aunt Gerty cried. To cheer us -all up again the actor--rather a famous one, Mr. D--L----, did one of -his humorous recitations out of his London repertory for us, so that we -nearly died with laughing, and Aunt Gerty dried her tears, and whispered -to me that trying to laugh like a lady was so painful that she longed to -take a short cut out of her stays. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -Lady Scilly came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda's Terrace. - -"They can't be parted long, poor things!" Aunt Gerty said, and Mother -hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her, -for a good blow, before she went to America. - -Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in "smalls" as Dick -Turpin, and Irene as "The Pumpeydore," and Irene as Greek Slave, and -Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the -principal stationers' windows. I should have thought she would have been -ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row -of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid--what Aunt -Gerty calls "la-di-dah" sort of people--can stand anything, so long as -it's public. - -When she wasn't dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just -a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out -a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two -gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with -her, and its lead kept getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and -round my father's legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He -wouldn't have stood that from any one but a popular favourite. - -I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt -Gerty. They stopped at Truelove's and looked at the picture-postcards. -She became very serious all at once. - -"I must go in and procure Myself!" she said to George, sniggling. In -they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove's -shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as -good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained -from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to -ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for -one never knows how a daughter's presence may interfere with a father's -plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don't want to injure his sales! - -Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not -approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her -face altogether. - -"The blighted idiot!" she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, "has -completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly -meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!" - -She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket, -and she sang out loud, while Aunt Gerty's open mouth betrayed her shock -at her audacity-- - - "Oh, I'm Contrition Eliza, - And she's Salvation Jane. - We once were wrong, we now are right, - We'll never go wrong again." - -"I can't quite promise that, alas! My friends won't let me. I will send -Salvation Jane to Lord R----y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen -dozen, please; isn't that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you -pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?" - -"Good business!" said my Aunt. "Let me see? How much has she rooked -him?" - -"Please don't ask me to do sums," said I. "Besides, George has a perfect -right to do as he pleases with his own money!" - -George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them. - -"Whatever do you want them for?" asked Irene. (He never lets me say -whatever.) - -"To send to my children." - -"Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked. - -"In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in -the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, -however. - -"And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great -book." - -"There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and -made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove -sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would -bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. -George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), -and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The -Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero -really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked -blank. - -"I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----" - -George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_, -that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or -_The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of -them." - -Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary! -Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty -soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of -sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, -dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of -imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with -light----" - -It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty -didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand -suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water. - -"Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept -saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who -had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own -stupidity in upsetting the water. - -"Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew -well enough. - -"Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say -what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even -then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago. -She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the -sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind." - -"Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing. - -"Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be -electrified!" - -But Mother wasn't a bit electrified. - -"All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who -chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my -wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead -in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so -civil to her." - -"Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?" snorted Aunt -Gerty. - -"Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly's best friend." - -"Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural -friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always in -each other's pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there -she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I -don't believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may -well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take -it all out of one poor woman's life!" - -"I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure." - -"You sham it." - -"That is the next best thing to being it." - -"A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and -have got a husband that doesn't come within a hundred miles of -appreciating you." - -"Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do; -I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted -on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of -them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn't -condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!" -said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so -mild. - -I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty -thought so too, for she screamed out, "Bravo, Luce!" Mother burst into -tears. I don't think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother's tears, -so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at -something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever to go into -the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that -was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the -head, not hard--Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the -shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away. - -A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see -George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these -Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of -George, don't understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn't -like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is -death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for -half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches -cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing -with him--George _believes_ himself into his colds. He says that the -sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic -temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn't that, what he has is -the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this -may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and -that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to -talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother -came to him. - -"My dear boy, no!" Mother said, and George groaned as he always does -when she calls him boy, but invalids can't be choosers of phrases. "You -aren't going to die just yet." She went on, kindly banging his pillows -about--"I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to -look after you. I shouldn't wonder if they didn't make objections in the -house. There will be a bit of a fuss." - -"Who will make a fuss, Mother?" I asked, "and why should they?" - -"Don't ask questions about what you don't understand," Mother said -sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? "Run home -and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or -two, and that she is to send my things, just what I'll want for a couple -of nights." - -"Night-gown and toothbrush," said I. As I left George put out his hand -to Mother and said quite nicely-- - -"You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the -sick man's pillow?" - -Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his -cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She -kept saying, "I _know_ they'll think I am not respectable." - -The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left -them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty -chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said-- - -"This will clear up George's ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly -illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely, -don't he? Is its blessed poet's nose a good deal swollen?" - -I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture of the Pope and -Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things. -George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over -his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too -active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he -begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat -Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George's chest to soothe him. -It did, and he played with my hair. - -"I am an angel when I am ill," he said; "don't you find me so? Strong -natures like mine----" - -Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,--seaside roses always -look coarse, I think--and a lot of cards. - -"Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and -Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has -left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it, -for I don't mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room, -exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them, -though I don't suppose you can smell anything just now." - -She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene's card was on the top. It -had a monogram in one corner--a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard -of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one -lives and learns. - -"I don't, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman," -George said. "But what, as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as -an actress?" - -"I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half -her chances," Mother said eagerly. - -"No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances! -Irene has a genius for advertisement." - -"Look after the 'ads,'" said my Mother, "and the acts will take care of -themselves." - -"Good!" said George, "I should like to have said that myself." - -"I dare say you will, George," said Mother quite nicely, "when once I -get you well again." - -I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less -than a week, but she didn't let him out once during that time, and had -him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering -about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the -house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they -were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who -we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them. -I was too proud, but Ariadne's decision was complicated by a hopeless -attachment she had started. "Love is enough!" she used to say, "and I -_must_ go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!" - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly, -and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first -time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came -here, though they had both taken part in Christina's wedding. He had -just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength -of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn't; he would call now -if she asked him, but we don't want him coming to the house on the quay, -for we couldn't insulate Aunt Gerty. - -He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda's -Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never -to be in her company more than he can help! That's one to us. - -His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there -once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little -recitation on what he observed in his friend's house. Whatever isn't -ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the -house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and -squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler, -excessively _collet monté_, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the -family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices _décolleté à -outrance_. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of -Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn't. Prayers, bed -at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don't think -George will ever be asked again, but I don't wonder Lady Scilly was able -to get hold of Simon. _She_ doesn't frown over her _décolleté_ bodices, -and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those -young fox-hound puppies "at walk" that one sees in the villages, and -Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. -I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that -Lady Scilly doesn't, or else she would not let him out so freely. She -would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil's finishing his -term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to -preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from -Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don't -make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don't -count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used -for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they -have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and -Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes -meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and -Ariadne won't let him carry them for her, she doesn't like him to know -that she is reading all about Love. - -Simon doesn't really want to find out. He never wants very much -anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and -hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always -scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the -country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I -wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell -me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if -he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to -hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon's eyes were bigger, he -really would be very handsome. Ariadne's, however, are big enough for -two. - -This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it -hurts--women. It doesn't hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up -his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want -when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only -sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who -is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most -marriages are made--hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true -benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the -bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In -refusing, you must remember to hope after you have said that it can -never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to -accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your -burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you -come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing -neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves. - -Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to -resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an -affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a -man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A -harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew--from novels--that -that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must -unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to -sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and -went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the -back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the -crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was -her consolation. - -Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards--she met him turning out of the -reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt -Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it -was Mr. Bowser. - -Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all -with any man--and she does get on with Simon, that is certain--is to -collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities -of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine -instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched -feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the -idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it, -and manage it himself, and then--squash it! - -Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn't in it with -them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite -casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves, -though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they -can get it into their heads that they won't be conspicuous by their -absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When -one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit -stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at -those doors in despair you would find it no go! - -So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don't see it. I sit -tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned. -And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to -is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not -talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes -comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn't -said a word more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her. - -"Excelsior!" I said. "I do really believe he is thinking of it." - -Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars -in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that -goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you -come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare? -He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on -hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn't ride -as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow. -He would see better to ride if he wasn't short-sighted, anyway. I don't -believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge's Tour and Mr. Jorrocks' -something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a -little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn't be -surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of -his, and that Cædmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales' -estate. - -I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately, -and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but -because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he -never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne -is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if -it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her. I am -not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do -that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love -latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne. - -She hates herrings now, and doesn't care for cream. She lives -principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go -about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and -cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and -shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade -through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and -the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a -pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the -world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long. -She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won't go -to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to -the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never -moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn't show in her face that -she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short -fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds -altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for -her. She doesn't let Simon know that she publishes, for it would -discredit her in his eyes. He says there's no harm in girls scribbling -if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn't. - -Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a "splendid girl." -She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland, -and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected. -Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless -barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don't mean we actually -want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where -one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put -the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once -kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always -betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are. - -The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the -poor boats can't always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier -when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene -Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It -can't blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with -Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt -Gerty refused to do. - -I don't know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters -chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends -with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord -Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady -Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and -she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form, not because she -is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton -abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre -as "one of us." The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his -cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears -plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has -the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw--a _front candide_ with a -vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like -that. - -Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some -one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are -generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near -relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these -questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he -takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the -pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says "what is the -good of being a gentleman if you can't wear a shabby coat?" and does -wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don't show it. -They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of -housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a -break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met -Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry -he has there, I believe. - -"Did you wish to see me?" he asked the front tourist politely. - -"Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?" said the tourist. It was of course -all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard -that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of -beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. -Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see -the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he -stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though -he isn't exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear -what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in -disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, -and when he didn't understand her, he just shook his head and grinned -and turned away. - -Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully -afraid of his father, who isn't proud of him, but of Almeria, who he -says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the -boy. - -Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne's fringe proved -an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria's naked forehead made -her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as -that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make -friends with Simon's sister, for he had obviously a great respect for -the girl's opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald -forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at -each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a -mutual bond between them. - -"My sister writes a little," he said. - -"Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine," said Almeria, witheringly. - ---"And goes about," he went on, "with a hammer collecting----" - -"Bedlamites and Amorites," said I, to make them laugh. - -They didn't laugh, and Simon continued-- - -"And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins." - -Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the -conversation. - -"And isn't it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their -mouth--well, they are all mouth, aren't they?" - -"And stomach!" said Almeria, turning away politely. - -Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But -any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as -she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose, -just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as -fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that -Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly -civil--but civility is the greatest preserver of distances there is if -people only knew. - -Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne, -but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so -compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn't any, but she is -gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow -masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for -her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not -because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn't conceited enough -to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for -her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty -all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic, -unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that -go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let -the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She -has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow -here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair. -"Always at work!" he says suddenly, and Ariadne's guilty hands go down -like clockwork. It isn't rude, the way he says it. He looks at her -kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like, -and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne. - -She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to -detest. Sometimes he looks quite glum when she is ordering him about, -but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves -as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don't want to? -And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants -to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month's wages to be allowed -to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going -down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are -strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady -Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon's cooling off, and just now -prefers to give him his orders from a distance. - -She calls Lord Scilly "Silly-Billy," and "my harmless, necessary -husband." He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she -really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one -made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord -Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, -and yet I don't think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life -that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and -Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks -his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should -much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader -than George's, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn't married -to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the -junket--it turns it! - -He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn't at all -anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her--even to me. That -is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these -smart people don't realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had -one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn't choose -to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won't go out with him, -though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as -it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we -are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don't, or he -would soon chuck us. - -Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties -they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I -think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and -attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don't believe -much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of -view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either -side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it -seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said-- - -"I back the little 'un!" - -He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and -it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a -notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she -alluded to Ariadne's frock as worn by "a very young girl." Lord Scilly -thinks a girl ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing -her. - -Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day -fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood's Bay. Simon sent her a present by the -first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to -London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented--I suppose -he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without -some excuse like that?--and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave -her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she -expected, and not even that. - -However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her -that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only -teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood's -Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment. - -The moment he got to Robin Hood's Bay, he was off by himself, and away -quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he -gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was -looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with -"A Present for a Good Girl" on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, -only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they -will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating. - -I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if -she would stay a lady in her great disappointment? She did. She thanked -him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw -her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so -was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As -for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence -of Ariadne's discretion. - -It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and -talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and -beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they -did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was -looking, and the women used _papier poudrée_ slyly in their -handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer -force of will. I was all right, being only a child. - -Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem -to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got-- - - "The patient world about their feet - Lay still, and weltered in the heat." - -"What else could it do but lie still?" I said, and suddenly just then -Simon got up-- - -"I say! I'm going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, -Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn't fall -and break her nose on the cliff steps." - -After the mug incident I don't see how anybody could have objected, or -tried to prevent Ariadne from taking the advantages of being treated as -a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got -up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known -fact that Lady Scilly can't stand the sea in small quantities like what -you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None -of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take -any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as -she passed him. - -We had a lovely sail of a whole hour's duration. We had an old boatman -wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a -smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged -couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on -to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to -borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon's and tie a knot in it at all -four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she -had on a crown, not a hat. - -When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, "Oh, my -poor Ariadne!" and helped her to hide herself more or less in the -waggonette going home. I didn't know before how becoming the cap was! - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -When George came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls -at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty -may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing -as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother's -guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at -George's bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement -in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up -with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne's umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came -off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the -cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much -mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of -lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre's people won't have -anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon -and Bowser had previously married Ariadne's legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty -does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in -cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser -would be the ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says -sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty -trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and -very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to -make her anxious to please _him_. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the -Bowser business, on condition she doesn't try to squeeze herself into -the Saloon dancing set where George's friends go. - -The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for -going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch -it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of -water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to -tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. -The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long -evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the -great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in -the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung -over the sea. - -There is a nice boy I like--he is twelve, quite young, and doesn't need -conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people -meeting me and saying, the way they do, "What, child, all _alo-one_ by -yourself?" which is so irritating. - -He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir -Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat -horses and drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to -like him, so he brought me a list of his father's yearlings, with their -names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his -own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must -have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran -away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing? - - Witch, ch. f. (II.B.), 2 yrs., Mr. Brooks, 21 guins. - Milkmaid (h.h.), 3 yrs., " Wingate, 30 guins. - Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.), Foal, 6 yrs., Lord Manham, 35 guins. - -And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but -I saw he meant it, and didn't tease him. - -Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not -etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is -why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don't dance. I don't -care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I -suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs -and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me. - -Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it -is _de rigueur_. And when they are not dancing they are talking of -money. I have heard them. I don't mind listening, for, of course, money -isn't private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight -nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas, which -puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals -or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is -at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about -stocks to please her. - -Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does -not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying -themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly? - -One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but -before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, -Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn't been -raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own -forehead. - -"Phew! I'm hot," he said. "It's a weary old world! Hope I die soon!" - -Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon's -partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy--that's what the -grown-up women always call their special men!--just as Simon had taken -out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that -I envy him so. - -"Blow these wretched figures! They won't come!" I heard him say. - -"On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions," Lady -Scilly had answered pettishly; "what I complain of is that they won't -go! See if you can't pull me through, dear boy." - -I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on -a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can -see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of -dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into -it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey's iron -building. - -And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said -nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing -to say, and as he evidently didn't want her to say it, it didn't matter. -She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white -in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine's, so she is repaid -for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked -at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall -when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple -or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn't, -but sighed instead and said-- - -"I wish I had a mother!" That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I -nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say. - -"Do you?" she said. "I have." - -Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed -to like it, for the next thing he said was-- - -"Why don't I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like -you." - -I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, -not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very -moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They -came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put -her hand on Simon's shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on -Ariadne's. - -Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. -Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as -if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was "giving this -woman away" quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows -it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly. - -Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. "I love this thing, you know," she said -to George. Then, going a little way back--"Just look at them! Isn't it -idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of -over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to -listen to. And I--poor I--am Romeo's deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline -take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?" - -She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way -and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all -this if she hadn't felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn't been -silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne. - -"I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the -piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare--I mean flirt well!" - -They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth. - -"I consider all that in _beastly_ taste!" he said, whacking the rail -with Ariadne's fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a -baby when you have smashed its favourite toy. - -Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. -Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such -is man--and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne. - -"I'll give you a new one. I'll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in -and dance--dance like the devil!" - -Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. -He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the -Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present -moment she hasn't got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and -betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow -money off George--just once--for that would choke him off her soonest of -anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother? - -Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, -eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the -time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She was vexed -because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being -jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when -he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary -considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And -Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular -walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it. - -Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied -he would be. Then an untoward event happened. - -There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror -came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying -one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but -there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. -The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other -side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir -Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in -attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had -to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It -couldn't have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and -joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would -have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, -with his little _retroussé_ nose next to his father's beak, and -Almeria's large knuckle-duster of a proboscis framing them. I don't -suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way -behind, and he doesn't love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. -Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty's mash, as she calls him. I believe -she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at -being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate -party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white -muslin she had made herself--window-curtain stuff from Equality's sale. -It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the -seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made -her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. -I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we -were in. - -I wasn't attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. -Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a -sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into -the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would -tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the -platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the -gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a -victim--and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne! - -He didn't ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this -liberty, but just seized Ariadne by her thin muslin shoulder, and -pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had -time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was -acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt -Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came -plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely -excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear. - -He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and -shook her, saying, "This is the victim!" - -It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she -might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own -class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the -rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the -stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course -turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and -Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,--just once--and I saw his -scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him -look like that before. It was awful! - -The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been -thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, "I can't stand any more of this. -I believe I shall faint!" - -That wasn't true, I knew, she can't faint if she tries, but still any -one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable. - -I said to my aunt, "We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if -you like." - -And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic--that was the -worst of it--faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and -scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a -victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then -she burst out crying. - -"He will never speak to me again. I know he won't. He is very proud, and -I have disgraced him--disgraced him before his order!" - -"You can't disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and -now you never will be." - -"No," Ariadne said, meekly, "I am unworthy of him." - -"You are very weak!" said I, "but on the whole I consider it was Aunt -Gerty's fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!" - -Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I -tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call -next day to show that _noblesse oblige_, and that he didn't think -anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn't suppose -he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser -and then by Dapping, again. - -All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the -eye of Whitby. It rained luckily. Next day she still wouldn't, and as -it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was -going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her. - -"No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else," I said; -"and they can't see that your shoulder is black and blue under your -gown." - -"I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin -too," she moaned, though I don't know what she meant, that it had made a -more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what. - -"I know one thing," she gulped. "Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall -cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him--cut him dead." - -"Why not? He murdered you." - -I think this was Ariadne's first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She -would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother -encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she -said several times, "Never again!" which is the most awful thing to say -to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn't to be trusted with girls, -and especially George's girls. Mother gave it her well. - -"You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! -I shall never hear the end of it from George." - -"George indeed! Why wasn't George looking after his own precious kids -then? I don't think he's got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be -having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much -surprised!" - -"You hold your wicked, lying tongue!" was all Mother said to her. -Mother, somehow, hasn't the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty. - -I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He -can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. "Paquerette -knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is -a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a -bit! She and I understand each other!" - -He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly -doesn't agree with him, or says she doesn't. "Scilly and I," she once -said to Ariadne, "are an astigmatic couple." She meant, she explained, -that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the -long-sighted eye. - -Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were -concerned. George's scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and -she couldn't possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne -could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn't stir out of -the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. -Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing -them into each other's arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If -Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon's being near her made her look -quite old and anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored. - -One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the -quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it's fashionable, and if -you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen -by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats -were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed -sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on -the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure -and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as -they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and -took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much -that he didn't ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of -Simon Hermyre's is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses -to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be -rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no -criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still -think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy. - -"Do let me have the pleasure," he kept saying, and "Do let me!" and -goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I -suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be -trying to do what they want in spite of themselves. - -"Then that is settled, thank the Lord!" I heard him say at last. (My -sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and -rather drowned their conversation.) "Just look at that sheet of silver -on the floor of the boat--all one night's haul! Suppose it was shillings -and half-crowns?" - -"Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as -you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is -very like a full court-train, isn't it, the one you are going to have -the privilege of paying for?" - -Simon said yes it was, but he didn't seem to like her quite so much as -he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have -grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched -look come over his face. - -Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come -there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my -sailor and came round behind her and said, "How do you do?" - -Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to -speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their -bathe. - -"How is your sister?" Simon asked me. - -"Very well, thank you--at least I mean not very well----" - -"I don't wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night." - -"Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did." - -"Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute -Bowser some injury I'll---- And the people she was with----? I beg your -pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both--wasn't it her -business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor's good-nature being imposed upon?" - -He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was -best to do for the best of all. - -"Oh, _that_ person," said I. "She wasn't anything to do with us. Miss -Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?" - -"I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like -that alone." - -"Why, I was with her!" - -"What earthly good are you, you small elf?" asked Simon seriously and -kindly, smiling down at me. "I wish to goodness _my_ sister----" - -I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take -to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn't say it. He is so prim and -reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, -and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called -Henderland in Northumberland. - -"Henderland," said I, "that's near where Christina lives." - -"Who is Christina?" - -"Why, George's old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best -man." - -"Peter Ball's! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. _'Have you forgotten, -love, so soon--That_ church _in June?'_ Yes, of course I used to call -her the Woman who Would--marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over -there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation." - -He wouldn't say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little -way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now -Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina -for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this -talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down -to a time, but I was wiser. I said "Good-bye" quite shortly, as if I -wasn't at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little -ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her -before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty -Aunt Gertys can't hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin -her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did -it at lunch. - -"Please, Aunt Gerty," I said, "if you meet me on the quays or anywhere -when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be -familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I -gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were." - -"Oh, did he ask?" said Aunt Gerty, jumping about. "He must have seen me -somewhere. In _Trixy's Trust_ perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, -you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course." - -"All right," said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now -don't you call that eating your cake and having it! - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -We all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough -to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly -that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the -air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it -more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she -completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which -she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the -brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very -patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was -feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented -it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken -heart. - -George left for Scotland. He _says_ he is going to shoot with the -Scillys. I don't know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben -Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn't matter. It was settled -that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland. - -Ariadne didn't like going straight on from Whitby, because she would -have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the -difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious -things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we -should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a -penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The -all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three -hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written -up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few -months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George's black velvet -fencing costume and his neat legs. - -George has _so_ much taste. He simply lives at Christie's. He cannot -help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says -they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them. - -The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina's. -I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after -a proper _bonâ fide_ shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George -gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and -another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing -mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the -out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She -has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All -types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a -_Miriam's Home Journal_, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the -Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye -Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a -heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling -about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn't scold them -lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and -the little tailor kept saying, "A pleat here would be beneficial to it, -Madam," or to his assistant, "Remove that fulness there!" till there -wasn't a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge. - -Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came -home. "Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne," I said to her, -imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him -and made him take ten shillings off the bill. - -I couldn't help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, -when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the -privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with "real cow" -as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her -shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, -that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and -considered herself little better than a murderer! - -Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and -told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his -opinion. So long as he didn't tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not -matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody -mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in -connection with Ariadne's new dress. I was sure we should see him -somewhere in Northumberland. It isn't as big as America, and where there -is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of -him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock's -wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for -I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given -her a moorcock's feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of -fools to shoot them. - -I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, -and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How -it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love -for a long while to come. I don't care if it never comes my way at all. -But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for -it yet, anyway. I don't believe that Love is a woman's whole existence -any more than it is a man's. We are like ships, made in water-tight -compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the -whole concern isn't done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole -compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others -wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out -yet watching it through the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices -now and then. - -I don't study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento -House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady -Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise -for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for -himself. - -Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt -Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off -could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving -by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for -Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far -off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them -_Funny Bits_ and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children -often profit by their elders' foolish fancies. - -Mother wouldn't even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear -the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on -suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular -affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it -called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where -the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as -the Scotch Express rattled by. - -To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about -something, and kept sticking her hip out in an engaging way she has, -and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her -an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not -quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, -if they only could all get the man they want _at the time_ they want -him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All -grown-up people's tempers come because they can't get what they want. -And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn't got what she wanted, for a -whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. -She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream -and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my -Aunt Gerty's, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy -it. - -Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly -started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put -on--Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as -other women do--and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, -and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched -her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor -had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she -said-- - -"No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!" - -A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I -wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was -anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at -Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I -think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn't know she was -pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to -keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon's set, -they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she -has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so -as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids. - -"It doesn't matter how you look," I said, "there is nobody but porters -to see you, and you don't want to mash them and distract them from their -work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you -preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George's -dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look -as repulsive as we can." - -George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to -do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a -prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be -by ourselves all the way. - -Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and -brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked -in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from -scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and -looked ugly for two. I was interested in the country. It is quite -hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an -industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and -keeping warm (coal) didn't mean so many people having to live black, and -whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don't think I approve of -civilization, if this is what it comes out of? - -When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to -Ariadne, "I told you so!" for there was Christina Ball in a muslin -dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was -sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn't be hers; -we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild -to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one -of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And -besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and -so she did). - -We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony -and couldn't get down--and it was arranged that our luggage was to come -on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart -new dog-cart. - -Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like -the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and -countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and -said to Christina, "Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the -pond!" - -The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said -nothing, but looked it. - -"Oh, the duck-weed!" said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be -amused by anything she says. "Miss Emerson Tree here--allow me to -introduce Peter's American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree--calls it the -'stagnance.'" - -The ugly child still didn't say anything, though "stagnance" was just as -absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite -afraid of one who, though so young, didn't seem to want to fly out. She -turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of -Ariadne's shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina -went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of -things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do -believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before -Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves. - -It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly -child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant -upon the last syllable of the word _despise_ was the nastiest thing I -ever heard. - -"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been -looking at it all the way we've come." - -Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its -socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary -child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying -a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. -Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the -country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first. - -"But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good -thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I -have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance." - -"Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I. - -"I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the -offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was -saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post -haste, to hatch some chickens----" - -"I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne. - -"Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to -kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of -the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every -hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----" - -"You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly. - -"Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants -shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five -more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then -some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an -electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a -blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood." - -"How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused. - -I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been -used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to -the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery -and unfamiliar death. - -"Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne, -and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an -unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated -at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am -fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them -to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so -why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat -back, take the reins a minute!" - -Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody -always sees at once that I am the practical one. - -When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on. - -"Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the -school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven't had tea with myself -for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don't know! Peter says I -lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the -Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron's, your -father's, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so -shocked when I recommended him _The Road to Rome_! It's a book of -travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he -told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder -whether you'll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are -possible." - -"I am not a flirt--now," said Ariadne. - -She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at -least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. "My God, pony!" she -said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose. - -"And there's Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more -than ten miles off." - -Ariadne at once sat tight--too tight. It was almost painful, and showed -in her face too. - -Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree -spoke again, and actually about Ariadne's body. - -"Any way, it's on all crooked," she said, as if she was continuing the -previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. -They couldn't, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the -coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her -hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were having tea. She -had hers "laced"--I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and -thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She -certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her -mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, -people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I -would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person's things to her -face as I would of--kissing Emerson Tree's very ugly mug, though I -wouldn't tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. -Peter calls her "the little witch." - -"The little witch," he says, "was being neglected, or thought she was, -at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, 'I -say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!' You -should have seen the old boy's face!" - -I did see the old boy's face. He was waiting at tea. - -Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly -as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, "Dash it -all! why it's bald!" How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her -with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the -pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to -catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd -things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat--as if a cat -ever stayed to be aspinalled!--and gunpowder into ovens, and frogs into -boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the -clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once -when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked -before her, she had given away the furniture. - -"She went solemnly down the village," said Christina, "making presents -of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn't want and I -did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray -door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it -came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I -had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day." - -We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I -disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a -child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, -after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because -we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off -discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to -have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used -to put us head first down rabbit-holes. - -"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man. - -"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital -shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!" - -"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party -point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always -seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I -am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make -my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane -brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for -idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in -with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of -straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'" - -"I don't like that phrase, Christina!" - -"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!" - -Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not -bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little -consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for -the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil -to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather, -but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Ariadne got fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl -in her position. I can't say that she kept that up at all well, beyond -looking sad, sometimes when she wasn't thinking, or at meals. She has to -pretend to be _distraite_, for really she is very all there, and likes -her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up -in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won't answer his -question whether she wants some more?--"Thinking of the old 'un, what?" -He doesn't know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows -nothing of Ariadne's affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word -for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex. - -Jane Emerson Tree doesn't take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; -she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is -a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather -patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has -lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the -billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn't a hat, it is a tile, and so -can't either become or unbecome. - -Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham's, or at -Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes' place; neither places are more than ten miles -or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina -wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only -other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the -Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, -and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is -what becomes of all our old families. He isn't old, but very wrinkled. -That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy -velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as -Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, -here, till Christina's "shoots" come off, and Ariadne egged him on--the -amount of egging on a shy man takes!--to ask her, and then accepted to -go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in -a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew -the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked -her if she felt chilly ("Chilly!" she thought) about sixteen times, and -said By Gosh when he didn't catch anything, which was frequent, and -"What in thunder's got 'em?" alluding to the trout, when at last in -despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to -the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without -being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squires ought to be -like Mr. Heathcliff in _Wuthering Heights_ and hide a burning lava of -passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester -is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up -in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a -real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank -bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding -disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not -catching fish! - -He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages "for the -ladies" at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all -Christina's rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as -much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says -Ariadne must take care and not to be like "Miss Baxter (whoever she was) -who refused a gent before he asked her." - -Christina thinks he _is_ a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing -for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and -that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be -able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin -than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and -get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by -way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him -sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes the side -of the woman--_esprit de corpse_, I think they call it. I myself think -there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great -mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love -with Simon. I even threatened her with this _exposé_, and she turned -round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she _wasn't_ in love with -Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half -of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first -go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because -she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for -one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual -pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she -cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could -get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very -afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that! - -Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. -We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the -places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening -up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise -done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we -called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons. - -At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and -Ariadne answered demurely that it was getting a nice pea-green, or a -good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that -they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse -than ever. - -Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of -them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we -had to make a rule that we wouldn't allow gentlemen in the church during -decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers -instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men's button-holes -instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss -Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really -keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn't care for so -many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady -work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she -_reely_ could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from -him! We were only decorating for three days. - -During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on -very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in -the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had -taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we -did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day's -ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double -dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church just -as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their -own, in either case. - -Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no -wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not -look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she -had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then. - -At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the -village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a -want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is -all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to -make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne's untidiness is -trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as -book-markers, and butter--well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! -Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the -door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne's cakes, when made, will -form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of -breaking the nastiest fall. - -Christina's cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave -her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the -Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get -fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing -good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for -giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status -was preserved. - -On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter -Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of -the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside -while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them -to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of -them said, "Ay, Sir, but aren't we men the buttresses a-leaning up -against it and propping it up like?" Peter was only shocked. - -We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more -than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our -eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our -flowers wouldn't topple suddenly because we hadn't tied them securely -enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, -standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and -a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he -said, "Why, that wor t' Kern babby!" I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who -dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a -pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll -on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his -answer; he was pleased. - - "MY DEAR MISS VERO-TAYLOR, - - "Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in - one so young. The little mannikin--or rather womankin--is, as you - aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the - very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the - custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to - dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the - streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, - and the people dance round it singing: - - 'Blest be the day that Christ was born! - We've getten Mell of _Ball's_ corn! - It's well bun' and better shorn! - Hip! Hip! Hurray!' - - "This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly - scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the - Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps - during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this - grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the - goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called - Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, passim--" - -"Oh yes, pass him, pass him!" said Peter impatiently, who won't however -let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for -saying, - -"Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn't it?" - -"Well," she remarked to Ariadne later on, "you had better be getting up -your mythology" (meaning the Bible, only Peter didn't twig anything so -wrapped up as this), "because you will be sure to be subpoena'd to -take a class in the Sunday school after you have fished for it. _Nemo -Dodd impune lacessit!_" - -"Can't Dodd lace his boots with impunity?" I asked Peter. I knew it -wasn't that, any more than _Res angusta domi_ means "Please to keep -Augusta at home," and some others like that I have made. - -Sure enough, Mr. Dodd made Ariadne take a class in his Sunday school, -and Christina chuckled. It is the price of Mr. Dodd's admiration, and he -admired Ariadne very much. She is not really any happier for it, rather -bored by it in fact. She spent three whole days getting up Sacred -History for fear the school children, who have of course been properly -brought up and grounded, should floor her, a poor feckless literary -man's daughter. Peter Ball gave her a little arithmetic. She got as far -as Proportion with him. There was one sum about how many men it would -take to build a wall of so many feet in so many hours. If it was Inverse -Proportion, which it might be, and then again it mightn't, you put the -men under the wall and divide by the hours; as many of them as are left -after such treatment is the answer. It came, stupidly enough, -two-and-a-half, so I suggested to Ariadne, as I was helping her, to put -_Two men and a boy_. Peter said she didn't repay teaching, and saw -nothing to laugh at, though his wife seemed to. - -Then Ariadne started an essay club with prizes. The Squire bought those -for her in Morpeth when he went in to sell pelts and hides. Fancy -touching his hand after that! They were bits of his poor beasts that he -had killed! Billy Scott's short essay on the elephant, "_an animal with -a leg at each corner and a tail at both ends,_" was funny; and Sally -Moscrop's description of "_any animal she liked to choose._" She -invented "_The Proc,_" a beast with four legs, "_two of whom are bigger -and longer than the others, for the Proc lives all around a hill._" -Grace Paterson's essay was quite long. "_The Pin is an exceedingly -useful article. It has saved the lives of many men, many women and many -children by not swallering of them._" - -Grace is fourteen and the beauty of the village. She has begun a tale in -ten chapters. She has to write it up in the apple-tree, for fear her -father should "warm" her. - -She and Ariadne were the two belles of the Ball in the Parish Room on -Monday evening. They both danced with the Squire, who said he was in -luck to get two literary ladies to dance with him on the same night. But -Ariadne walked home with him, and I went with Christina. Mr. Rochester -had one of his own roses Ariadne had given him back, in his button-hole. -She is so unhappy about Simon that she doesn't care who proposes to her. -That is the way girls take it--a very selfish way, but they are selfish -all through when they are in love. Ariadne actually thinks the Squire -thinks he proposed to her going home that night. I don't. It was pitch -dark as we went home, the village is not lighted, and it is a very -wicked village. She says, long arms like tentacles came groping out from -the wall in the dark, and the Squire dragged her past them. As the -village young men couldn't see, they thought her one of their own -sweethearts, for by then the party had broken up and was all over the -place. The chucker-out had been very much occupied and had found the -brook near the school-house door very handy. - -But I don't myself think the Squire did propose. He offered to take care -of her, past the tentacles, but not for life. I think if a girl is -always dreading proposals and thinking of how men will feel it when -refused, proposals never come to them. That is what Christina said, and -that Peter Ball took her entirely by surprise, when he asked her. I knew -better, for I had chaperoned that affair. She says Peter wears very -well, and that there's some gilt left on the gingerbread still. The -gramophone is still in all its glory, and when she was ill up-stairs, -when Jim was born, Peter used to send up a message by the nurse for her -to leave the door of her room open for half-an-hour before dinner, and -then she would hear it. The nurse always forbade it, but Christina -always insisted on it, to please Peter, and lay with her ears stopped up -with sheet till the half hour was over. It is a new gramophone, not the -one he had in Leinster Gardens. That shouted itself out, I suppose? -Christina found an entry in his old pocket-book-- - -_"July 19--a memorable year in my life. I bought a new gramophone and I -got married. I won't say anything about my wife here, but the gramophone -was a beauty when she was new----"_ - -Ariadne was disgusted. She doesn't believe Simon would say such a coarse -thing. Well, I wish she had some experience on the subject, what Simon -would say, that's all! - -When Simon did come over to shoot, Ariadne hardly spoke to him during -the three days he was here. No one did, much. He is so fearfully -eligible that all the nice girls feel they must snub him, and he hardly -gets a cup of tea. If Christina hadn't known nice girls only, Ariadne -would have had a better chance. What is the good of being a nice modest -girl among other nice modest girls? And though Ariadne would not believe -it, she did badly without her foil Lady Scilly, who showed up her -niceness and made Simon draw comparisons. Then there was another adverse -circumstance. The Squire came and followed Ariadne about with his eyes, -till it really wasn't safe to sit in a line with them both. That put -Simon off. He is too nice to prefer a girl because another man is making -himself unhappy about her. - -Indeed Simon looked most uncomfortably serious and even sad. He has got -his first wrinkle fixed between his eyebrows. He looks at Ariadne often, -but in a puzzled sort of way, and takes himself up with a jerk, shaking -his head, that the curls are cut off from too short to waggle. - -"He cares for me--yes, he cares desperately," said Ariadne one night, -just as she was arranging her watch and her handkerchief on the chair -beside our bed, and his photograph under her pillow. I have to take that -away every morning lest the housemaid should see it and make fun of her. -Ariadne forgets. We also arrange the strap of our box down the middle of -the bed so that neither of us should encroach in the other's part, and -all these arrangements take time. Ariadne, though she is so gentle and -so in love, always looks sharply to her rights, and more than her -rights, and I generally find myself lying on the very rim of the bed. -She is the eldest, unfortunately, and once she took the strap out of the -bed to me when I objected. - -"He loves me--oh, he does!" she moaned, "only he is not free." - -"He is in the power of a wicked witch, like the one who enchanted -Jorinde and Joringel in Grimm!" I said, and tried to go to sleep and -thought a little. Lady Scilly isn't old, like the German witch, but I -remember what the Ollendorff man said to me about her being a "fairy," -and I know there is some connection between them. Fairies are those who -would do harm if they had the power; witches have the power, but only -because they are old and don't care for the things they cared for when -they were young. Ariadne will never be a fairy when she grows up, she -will always be too silly, and get put upon in society, though in private -life she is quite up to her rights, and talks as loud as any one and -doesn't trouble to be die-away. Men never see that side of girls, -mercifully they are able to keep it out of sight till they are at least -married, and on the pig's back, as Peter says. It is the unromantic -things they are ashamed of. Ariadne wouldn't mind Simon knowing she had -appendicitis, but not for worlds that she had a corn on her foot and had -to have it cut, or a chilblain, and it burst. - -Presently she woke up and said, "Will any one tell me why a woman like -that should be allowed to ruin his young life?" - -"All young men have nine lives like a cat, there will be eight left for -you to ruin, when you get him--but you never will." I always add this -not to raise false hopes. "And, goodness me, you can't expect to get a -young man all to yourself, as fresh and shining as a new pin!" - -"Yes, I do!" said Ariadne crossly. "I want a safety-pin even. I am a new -pin myself--I have never loved anybody but Simon, now have I?" - -I didn't answer that, but said I did wish we might turn over and go to -sleep, when Christina rapped on the wall with a hairbrush and begged us -to be quiet. - -"Yes. All right! We will!" I yelled, and I certainly wouldn't have said -another word, but Ariadne began again, five minutes later. - -"Tempe, why do these wretched married women--I'd be ashamed to be -one--always want everybody at once? She has got Mr. Pawky, and----" - -"Mr. Pawky is only for money," I said. I was not going to tell her -about her dear Simon paying Lady Scilly's bills as well as poor Pawky. - -"And Simon's for love, then--oh dear! And George for literature. I am -prettier than her, Tempe? Say I am--oh say I am, I want to hear you say -it." - -"I won't say it. You are far too conceited already." - -"That is the same as saying it," answered Ariadne, and got calmer. "And -at all events I am real, and that's more than she can say. I don't have -to peel off my charms and put them away in a drawer like she has to." -(Ariadne is able to put her poems quite in grammar, but I suppose she -thinks it unnecessary to be always at a stretch.) - -"I don't believe realness counts at all with young men," I said. "I -believe they really and truly enjoy kissing paint, and groping about the -floor for pin curls when they've done, and powder on their shoulders -when they go out into the street from calling." - -"Goodness!" cried Ariadne, almost shrieking, "you don't suppose Simon -ever went as far as kissing her? If I thought that, I'd----" - -"What?" - -"Never let him kiss me again. He hasn't of course, yet! Oh, Tempe, I -wish he had!" - -"There you go!" I cried out, sick of her changeableness. "First you want -him not to, then you wish he had. And the poor thing must kiss -somebody--he's got no mother, and kissing Almeria would be like kissing -a cactus or cuddling a porcupine. Do please keep to your own part of the -bed, you don't respect the strap a bit! I shall be on the floor in a -minute. I'm lying right in the hem of the sheet now." - -Ariadne kindly made a little more room for me as I was patiently -listening to her, and went on. - -"Tempe, I have learned in three short seasons some of the bitter truths -of so-called society----" - -Just then, as any one could have foretold from the noise we were making, -Christina walked right into the room. - -"Will you two children be quiet! Why are you crying, Ariadne?" - -Ariadne said she wasn't crying, and at the same time asked Christina to -be good enough, as she was up, to get her a clean pocket-handkerchief -out of the drawer, one of those tied up with blue ribbon, not pink, for -they are larger and plainer. Christina got it and then came and sat on -my foot, which she could scarcely help doing, as I was only just but -tumbling out of the bed altogether. She was exceedingly nice and -sympathetic and agreed that Lady Scilly ought to put Simon back, for he -was too little a fish for her to hook, being only twenty-four and she -thirty-eight. She assured Ariadne, much as Mother used to assure me, -that there were no ghosts--then if there aren't, what are the white -things one sees hanging about the doors of rooms?--that Simon didn't -really care for an old thing like that, and that if he did, her -attraction must naturally wear out in the course of ages, and that -Simon wouldn't be so very old by the time that happened, and would know -a nice girl when he saw one, with his unjaundiced eyes. - -She also thought Ariadne should not put upon me so, and should give me a -bigger piece of bed. - -I was thinking all the time she was talking of George, and how Mother -too as well as Ariadne was unhappy because of this evil fairy. I wished -the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, -and that Simon mightn't be in it when that happened. - -When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made -Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever -married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let -all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems -unattached, you may be pretty sure there's a girl worrying about him -somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! That's my motto, and -indeed a woman now-a-days is lucky if she gets a whole man to herself as -Christina has Peter, and well she knows when she is well off, and only -laughs when her Peter says, as he did at breakfast, when she offered him -Quaker Oats, "Woman, haven't you learnt that my constitution clashes -with cereals?" - -Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his -friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went -out into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched -it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we -could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne's best silk ties, -and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don't know if it did Lady Scilly -any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the -columns of the _Morning Post_ every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, -or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to -Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of -best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, -and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of -her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, _i. e._ Lady -Scilly's having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks -that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same -room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular -dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when -it comes to preserving Peter. - -The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the -seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One -can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson. - -She is a substantial farmer's daughter, in spite of her thinking she can -write. But she can wring a fowl's neck, and make butter, two things that -Ariadne never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other -from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire's -position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a -gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor -spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on -beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the -figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had -consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. -I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! -Devil! Devil!" repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that -was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the -best. - -Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if -possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a -novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandière. I suppose it is -Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores -Ouida, and Doré is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's -wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it -looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully -afraid of beetles! - -Christina came on to us for a few days after staying with her -mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and -taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears -so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was -learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was -an advent. - -Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with -holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her -undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, -do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not -young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above -all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in -our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George's -request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does -not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, -Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about -making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death -about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I -used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up -in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which -Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would -disapprove of it. - -Ariadne managed to "sneak" a waist, and George never noticed. That is -the odd part of it; we all think that that inch more or less makes such -a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, -and to the outward eye look as thick as ever! - -Ariadne's figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find -out one's best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of -friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but -doesn't want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn't come out in -self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut -fibre, _I_ think, but Papa's friends admire it, and she gets the -reputation of being a beauty on it in our set. - -But in Lady Scilly's set, that is Simon's set more or less, they think -her a pretty girl, badly turned out! - -"Ah, you are your father's daughter, I see!" Christina said at once to -her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, -because she couldn't find a white one. I did not mention that I myself -had begun to sew one of Ariadne's iron pills on to my shoe, and only -stopped because it didn't seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we -have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes -down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes -out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing -and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor -points out to her that she hasn't got on any waistband, and another in -the hall sticks a pin in somewhere, that shines in the sun, when she -gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and -looks at it fixedly. - -"_Dégagée_, as usual!" he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was -two years at a crammer's to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in -Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something -better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least -shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon -says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one -be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not -Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can't stand chaff as a general thing. -Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her. - -Simon has curly hair--not at all neat--which he can neither help nor -disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict's so as -to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and -Ariadne's estimation. "Can't help it. Couldn't bear to look like one of -those chaps." - -He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here -sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his -visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic -now. She can't bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, -and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who -come to describe it and photograph it for the Art papers, and wonders -if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different -from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he -seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at -all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won't -let Highsam be done for _Rural Life_, or lend Mary Queen of Scots' -cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria's -portrait in _The Bittern_ with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria -wrote him such a letter, _almost_ rude, giving him her mind about -interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon -has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I -grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know -of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy -the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the "festive gee" now, he -says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and -frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam -Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they -aren't the same as Ariadne's. - -"Great Scott!" he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one -afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that -George had specially designed for her. "If Almeria saw you in that -frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won't -wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg's on the -twenty-fourth! If you do, I swear I won't dance with you in it!" - -Of course he didn't mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in -her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it -seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to -please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington's dance had been sent -out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time -to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a -ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her -marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in -a county family, not a Bohemian one. - -Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost -ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting -either of us. Christina said _Quem Deus vult_--and that though you might -look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look -smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne's body was all over the place, -with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn't. When it was -basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were -working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are -three Empire mirrors in that room, you can't see yourself in any one of -them, so we had to tell her it didn't do, and never would do. - -"Take the beastly thing off then!" said Ariadne, almost crying, and -pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia's head. -(Amelia is the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) "I won't -wear anything at all!" - -"And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!" I said to tease -and console her, but she wouldn't be, and she left the body clinging to -Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good -thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in. - -"Dear me!" Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of -lying in bed late. "You look like Burne-Jones' _Laus Veneris_--'all the -maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.' I persuaded your father to bring me -up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make -all your own dresses." - -So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses -grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers' bills. - -"The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her," said -George. - -"Ninepence-halfpenny isn't going to express me!" Ariadne said, under her -breath. "It covers me, and that's all!" - -"I always think," George maundered, "that the symbolic note struck in -the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, -of the prevailing wind of a woman's mood. Her moods should be variable. -She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, -some mad scarlet incoherent thing another----" - -"I don't see how you are going to do all that on ninepence-halfpenny," -Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to -listen to her impertinence. "Why you can't even get the colour!" - -"It is every woman's duty to set an example of beautiful dressing -without extravagance!" and he looked at Lady Scilly's pretty pink -fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go. - -"Oh, this," she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it -was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. "This! This cost nothing at all! -I have a clever maid, you know?" - -"If all the women had clever maids that say they have," Christina -whispered to me. "What would become of Camille, I wonder?" - -George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, "You must never quit -an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable." - -"My dresses quit me," said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so -that the hole in it didn't show. "I'm jealous of the sofa! It's better -covered than me." - -I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she -is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear "this -creation." - -"At Lady Islington's," Ariadne answered rather sulkily. - -"Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, -my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to -dance in--it is too _débutantish_ for me, and I do wish some one would -wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will -do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?" - -"The day after to-morrow!" I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with -gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly's little dresses were like. -Camille's "little" would beat Ariadne's biggest. - -"Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall -be so much obliged." - -Ariadne said "thank you," a little ashamed to think that Simon was -coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to -dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, -and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady -Scilly's little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when -she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick -and no mistake, and I really thought so. - -But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress -into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress -didn't come. "Put not thy trust in smart women!" she said, and as it -happened, she was right, for the dress never did! - -At five o'clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn't a sign of it, -and Ariadne hadn't let herself worry over it, by my and Christina's -advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to -carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn't -worry, but she was very angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes -so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would -be all right. The dress wasn't so very bad either; we had given up all -attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell -that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. -Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her "girl" when she was dressed, she -nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet. - -"That'll get him, that'll get him, Miss Ariadne, you'll see!" she kept -saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love -that she couldn't help liking it. She had taken particular care of her -hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten -curlers in to make sure of it's looking nice. And it did, like Moses in -the burning bush. - -At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, -and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o'clock. I was just jumping in -(I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting -stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. -Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. -And she is learning to drop her h's in the south. - -"'Ere!" she said. "'Ere!" and shoved a great card-board box under my -nose. "_With Lady Scilly's love and compliments._" - -I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the -string, and there was a ball-dress--_the_ ball-dress! - -I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne--so near -and yet so far--dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre's -affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked -home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless -on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I -indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. -It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe -it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed -to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. -It said-- - - "DEAR CHILD, - - "My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must - be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and - I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with - my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste. - - "Ever yours, - - "PAQUERETTE SCILLY." - -"That's all she cares about--that George should think her generous! But -if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed -to get it here in time. I don't care for misplaced generosity." - -"Suppose, Miss," said Elizabeth, "that you was to take a cab and go to -where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I -say." - -"My sister isn't a music-hall artist," I regret to say was what I -answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn't -altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get -Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the -dress out on Ariadne's bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with -my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed. - -I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it -was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was -Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her -off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would -tease her a little first. - -"Well, did you have a good time?" I asked her. - -"Fairly," answered Ariadne. - -"Did you have any offers--in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure -you would." - -"I believe I am all torn to bits?" said Ariadne, walking round and round -her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take -any notice of my question. - -"Now don't expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!" - -Ariadne said, "I shall not touch it. I don't mean to wear it again, but -hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful -dress!" - -"Don't drivel!" I said, "unless there is really something particular -about the dress that I don't know." - -She didn't even rise to that, so I said, "I wonder you don't light up, -and have a good look at it." - -"There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?" Ariadne said, -sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn't mean to go -to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly's dress on her bed, and -was keeping calm just to tease me. - -"Did any one see you home?" I asked. - -"Yes, some one did," she answered, still in a sort of dream. - -"Did he kiss you in the cab?" I at last asked her, thinking that if -anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could -tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she -wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was -riled to extinction. - -"Oh, for Goodness' sake, get to bed!" I cried. "And if you are going to -undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get -into your bed very _very_ carefully!" - -That did it. - -"You naughty girl," she said quite quickly. "Have you been putting Lady -Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It's too bad of you!" - -She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She -saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it. - -"So you have come?" she said, talking to it as if it were a person. "You -are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you." - -"Well," said I, "you _are_ condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one -might ask?" - -"Mr. Hermyre." - -"Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! -I believe she's shy? How often did you dance with _Mister_ Hermyre?" - -"Oh, don't tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid." - -"Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, -there!" - -"He is going to," said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn't -know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night! - -I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it. - -"Did you--did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, -as we have always agreed you would?" - -"I may have--I don't know--I hope not!" - -"You hope you didn't, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not -run into him, or put his eye out or something?" - -"Beast, what do you mean?" - -"Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, -and I presume it has been there all the evening!" - -Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and -told me all about it quite nicely. - -As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight -difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a -Count--fancy, at Lady Islington's?--and he had been rude to Ariadne -about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn't so -near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other -man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite -him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new "mash" he was. I -believe he's the German chauffeur I saw in her car. - -But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought -it on--that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he -had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of -course never mentioned it to Simon. - -Lady Islington is Simon's Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. -After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange -and frightened--he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they -are riled--and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery -sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she -could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. -She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold -hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her -spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn't say anything, he -seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or -other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything -else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would -get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby--that he would take -hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, -imagining his taking hold of it, "willing" him to do it. She wanted him -to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; -but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own -free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not -begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow -that he was thinking of this too, or something like it--something to do -with her, at any rate. - -She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always -solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer -took place. - -Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of -them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon -take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, "Have you got a -fan?" - -Ariadne didn't know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all -part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite -truly-- - -"I haven't got one. You broke it." - -"And didn't I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! -Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn't see me?" - -And he kissed her. - -This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, -quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he -then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly -all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter -that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, -except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And -of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine. - -Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be -married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, -subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was -able to assure Simon that George won't, he doesn't care about keeping -Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre's _fiancée_ -she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course -Simon won't let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And -she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all -engaged girls. She bores me. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -Dear Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne -in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane -Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am -told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her -bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood -next her, couldn't prevent it, for she hadn't a single pin on her she -could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that -stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her -what she thought of Ariadne's "waist" this time, and didn't she wish she -could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found -time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne's dress was -made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, -the coal-agent's daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. -Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who -adores her, and doesn't see that she is a bit common. Men in love never -do. Still, she is our only childhood's friend, so Simon and even Almeria -didn't make the least objection to have her included in the procession. -They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to -afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out -wonderfully, and I really don't mind her at all. As the bridesmaids' hat -wouldn't set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it -to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and -stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much -softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at -Highsam later on and learn to ride. - -George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so--a set of his own -works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always -had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave -her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter -Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her -his mother's best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or -beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had -practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon -said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she -meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a -joke, and that _Punch_ wouldn't put in; but Ariadne never noticed and -was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, -I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the -Latin word _Donec_ engraved on it. I did not know what that meant, and -Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog's collar -afterwards. - -Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took -note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so -shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn't care for her -own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in -Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to -make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, -_after_ marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair. - -They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father's six places. He has -given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and -is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas. - -George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all -to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a -plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and -plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all -the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right -time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any -ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she -can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over -the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and gets -us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one -dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all -of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don't know if George -would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd -circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody's -fault but the plumber's, who came to put them right last time and -carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule -has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don't burst at all. - -When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, -and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect -Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were -undoing a few, and damned "this whirling season of string and brown -paper!" - -"I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post -early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all -mention of the egregious subject!" - -And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our -bedrooms in future. - -The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn't mind obeying him, we were -so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed -having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took -to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and -poor Ben's chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite -desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother to make some arrangement by -which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside -for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he -might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn't get much better -there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, -she couldn't save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any -rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She -would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some -books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly -to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, -since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can't do without him, -and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George -swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching -trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he -doesn't get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the -money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him -that she meant to pay the cost of Ben's education, for it is money, she -is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind -which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a -necessary evil for the sons of men. - -I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with--"he is the -devil for country houses!" Mr. Aix says, "he has got them in the -blood,"--I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to -breakfast--he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at -home--they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and -three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful -guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses -where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, -and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at -the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him -madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer. - -George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. -His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a -sad deer's. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to -wearing stays. I don't believe this. I am the only one in the house who -sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on -hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of -him, so I don't know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is -always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written -about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a -"singularly colourless personage," whom Mother likes very much. She -isn't half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more -suitable. - -After Christmas was over, George left us and went to "The Hutch," Lady -Scilly's place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says -she has piped all hands on deck--I mean all the people who are helping -her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor -among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will -drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I -am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be -fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It's such a good -old title. - -I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never -stayed so long at "The Hutch" before. He has his own suite there, and -all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or -characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment? - -Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there--Never no more!--but she has a lady -friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get -"restive." - -Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; -she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky -episode. - -"And I didn't make much of him, after all!" she told Mother and Aunt -Gerty. "Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn't trust women -any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty -purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy -any one--even a millionaire's--confidence in human nature. She borrows -of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it's quite -awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your -sweet innocent daughter rescued him from the wiles of Scilly, and -perhaps Charybdis--who knows? He looked weak!" - -"And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his -hands!" said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn't "quite -eighteen carat," Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a -woman's own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and -journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to -get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its -inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press -in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. -Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty -of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house -except the study. Mother won't let them go in there at all while George -is away. I hear them talking between the puffs-- - -"You can engage to work so and so, eh?" or "Have you got thingumbob?" - -Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes -them, and gets Mother to speak the woman's part for him, so that he sees -how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her -continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on -him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to -understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he -takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix -always speaks the brutal truth--he can't wrap anything up--he is as -"crude as the day," so George often says--I don't see Mother's -cleverness. - -They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. "Mustn't christen it before -it is brought into the world," and "One thing you can confidently -predict about it, it can't be born prematurely!" and so on. They use the -study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George's swivel-chair, and -Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman's part out -aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often -calls out, "Oh, you darling!" when she has said a particular piece. -"What a divine accent you give it!" "That will knock them!" "Wicked to -hide such a talent!" and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to -read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises -Mother all the time. - -"Pooh, pooh!" says Mr. Aix, "leave her to her intuitions! You battered -professionals don't know the value of a new note." - -So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George -married her. And a good thing too! - -Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be -finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his -study of course, but we hadn't the remotest idea of his arriving when he -did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time. - -We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah -blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was -in George's swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George -was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a -slap. - -"Our child comes on bravely!" he was just saying to Mother, as George -appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth. - -Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, "I'll bet you Lord Scilly has had him -kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!" and bolted into the hall, -forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk. - -"Welcome back, old fellow!" said Mr. Aix, turning round in the -swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty's blouseries. -They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George -turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught -it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a -great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as -servants always do when it is a question of not paying one's just debts. - -She began "If you please, sir, the cabman----" but her voice was quite -drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and -George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time. - -"Won't you pay your cab, George?" said Mother gently, "and then you can -abuse me at your leisure!" - -Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the -room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother -like a little school-girl before him. I don't know what they said to -each other, but George wouldn't come out to dinner, but had a plate sent -in. - -Mother didn't alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix. - -George's plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own -father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been -kicked out of "The Hutch" as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady -Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel -she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion. - -He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was -on his hands among Aunt Gerty's blouse trimmings. - -"Shall I take these away?" I asked. "Don't they make you angry?" - -"I haven't noticed." - -I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty's horrid pink shape all -over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn't even -scold me. - -"Where is Lucy--my wife?" he asked me presently. - -"My Mother?" said I. "She's gone to the theatre." - -"Is that usual?" - -"Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty -has gone with them." - -"Chaperons them, eh?" - -I didn't like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix _them_ in that -insulting bracketting way, so I said-- - -"Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change." - -"Aix?" said he, "for a change! God!" - -"She's collaborating with Mr. Aix." - -"Damn him and his play too." - -"Oh, not his play, George. Mother would be _so_ grieved." - -Then George suddenly pulled a paper out of his pocket and said, "Read -that aloud, child." - -"Is it a bit of your new novel?" - -"Yes, it is a bit of my new novel. Read." - -I did. - -"_We talk and talk, and never act. Oh, this curse of civilization! You -make excuses for S----, for your bitter enemy. Magnanimous, but effete! -He is behaving well, but so unpicturesquely. He offers a woman no excuse -for staying with him. Oh, Italy! Italy! You, magician, have made me long -for the life of Italy, the silver incandescent sands, the passionate -brown of the olives--but why should I try to outdo you in your own -imitable manner?_" - -"_In_imitable, you mean, don't you, child? But no, we will not trust -this white devil of Italy. Go and fetch me a plateful of cold meat. And -here are the keys; go down to the cellar and get a bottle of Burgundy. -Corton eighty-eight. You'll see the label. We will carouse." - -I was delighted. George and I finished the bottle between us, and he -ate a good supper, and said no more of Mr. Aix, or Mother either. - -I almost liked George just then. I saw why Lady Scilly liked him. He is -funny and gentle. I asked him to choose a school for Ben, and he said he -would think about it. It is the oddest feeling to suddenly become "pals" -with one's own father. I had never known it before. There is some good -in George, and his eyes are very bright. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -My mother is changed--not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly -every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than -ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that -simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George -and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more -than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has -taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her -because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to -speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she -gads about so much, she doesn't neglect her household duties. She sees -after George's comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the -house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He -shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for -him--it took her two hours--and then he said half-laughing, "A bad sign, -Tempe! Read your Balzac." - -I don't read Balzac, and I don't know what George means. I don't try, -and I find that is the best sort of sympathy one can give. At any rate, -he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to -type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under -his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not -so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at. - -We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was -married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come -to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She -simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch, -had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see -George, and she could have seen him more easily at "The Hutch" or her -town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel, -but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down -her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few -women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you -soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written -copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the -literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to -their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and -written her a polite letter about it, though that won't prevent him -slating it in _The Bittern_ if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says. - -I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to -hit George back with when he came and found us doing dressmaking in his -sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his -house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more -use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and -perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on -George's side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never -approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto. - -Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn't "look -that pleased to see her," as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards. -Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on -with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at -the Islingtons', at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a -Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly's chauffeur. He was waiting -outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took -him to her aunt's ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to -pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished. - -Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, "A female to see -you, sir." - -"Paquerette!" said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and -when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on -one knee and looked up into George's face, saying, as I have heard the -French do to their professors of painting or music,--"_Cher maître!_" - -George had taught her to do this in the days when he was really her -professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the -Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I -could tell that she had no further use for him. - -I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I -were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they -didn't think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at -first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the _entente -cordiale_ we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like -doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want -myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw -me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet -we had not quarrelled. George put on his "pretty woman" manner, and -raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited -her. - -"How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell -you, she is leaving me." - -I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn't -come to see Mother, and hadn't thought of asking whether she was out or -not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity-- - -"You put it crudely." - -"I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall -not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know -the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow -that I am--_coeur de célibat_, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John's -Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens----" - -"No woman's such a fool as to leave a place like this----" - -"What does Shelley say? _Love first leaves the well-built nest----_" - -"You certainly are a most extraordinary man!" she mumbled. George -puzzled her by changing about so. - -"Yes," he answered her, smiling. "Come, take off your furs and make -yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the -rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am -weak, I shall not." - -"Are you quite sure you won't be stronger by the end of this interview?" - -"Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the -steed after the horse--I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge -success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of _The Bittern_ writes -me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to -beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive -woman. What more do you want?" - -"D. the novel! I want _you!_" she said, stamping her foot. - -"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed -forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a -chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the -heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's -holiday." - -"You _are_ unkind." - -"Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new -novel you propose we should work out together." - -"I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----" - -"Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking -it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never -do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours. -It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of -popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about -it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, -and you know how much that is!" - -"Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she -said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----" - -"It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of -Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best -as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast -is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open -the windows. When the novel is done----" - -"I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face. - -"Women hate realism." - -"Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay -our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it -will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The -Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb -down----" - -George shook his head. - -"No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure -if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go -now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for." - -"Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously -irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and -timely assistance, your----" - -"Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was -kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was -going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who -kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy -foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix -would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has -helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so -much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, -and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty -to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the -public-house that first day. - -"Good-bye--then--George!" she said, with something between a sneer and a -sob. "We meet again--in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross." - -What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George -bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in -the car as large as life--and as a German. Though indeed he is very -good-looking. - -"I can see that he is cross in every line of his back," Lady Scilly -whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them, -and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and -it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant. - -George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing, -and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded. - -"She will probably bolt with him before the year is out," he said, as we -went back to the study shivering. He played cat's-cradle with me till -dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game -appeared to amuse him, I didn't mind making a fool of myself for once. - -About Mother's going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it -really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don't see -who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is -George's greatest friend, as well as Mother's, and people don't run away -with perfect strangers, as a rule. - -Mother was certainly up to something, for her eyes were as bright as -glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say -while these were going on, slapping Mother's palms and vinaigretting -her--"It is natural, you know--the excitement." The excitement of -running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and -"nurse her energy," for she "would want it all!" Mother was by far the -most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of -George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was -always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her -life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the -Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a -club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog. - -George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he -knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements -questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and -grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced -a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his -foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack, -who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he -seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively -stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and -translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father -Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very -good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine -Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so -hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. -People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her -family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty -shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. -It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being -praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the -shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the -poor woman meant well. - -Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to -be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. -She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, -as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I -believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice -man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his -influence. - -One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant -or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. -George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things -Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest -before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for -the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would -not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find -out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine -eternity; one has nothing to go on. - -We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I -felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great -difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I -slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had -trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into -her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out -of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare -arms. - -"Oh, my pretty little Mother," I said. "I do love you." - -"You are just like every one else," she answered me pettishly. - -"I'm not," I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does -love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown. - -"Did George ever see you like this?" I asked. - -"Often. Is he gone to bed?" - -"Yes, with a headache." - -She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking -off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a -noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other -was still by the side of his bed. - -"Hold the candle, Tempe!" Mother said quickly. It was that she might go -down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt -and cried. - -"Oh, George, I am doing it for the best--I am, I am! For my poor -neglected boy--my poor Ben." - -She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation -with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on -the sheet near George's arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, -that I at once shut the stable-door--I mean blew out the candle and made -a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I -was--Father Mack hasn't cured George quite of swearing!--and we made a -clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began -to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a -honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to -catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her. - -"Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to -run away." - -"Run away! Who says I am going to run away?" - -"George." - -"He told you?" - -"He told Lady Scilly." - -"Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true." She laughed, a -laugh I did not like at all. It wasn't her laugh, but I have said she -was quite changed. - -"Oh, Mother, don't laugh like that!" - -"You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a -wicked mother's heart! Well, my dear, I'll promise you one thing. I will -never run away without you. Will that be all right?" - -"That will be all right," I answered, much relieved. For although I am -so much more "pally" with George and sorry for him, I don't want to be -left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the -_Marguerite_ from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and -mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing -for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather -tell me all in her own time. - -I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is -social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away -is chiefly the want of society. - -That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried -away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won't affect -her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a -mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have -suited Simon's stiff relations. It might have prevented him from -proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited. - -One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I -hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when -you only throw two or three things into a bag? A couple of bottles of -eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in _To Leeward?_ I, at -any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without -it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient. -Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets -so dreadfully condemned in novels. - -George's new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is -not so _farouche_ as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George -keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn't go to see -Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was "off" dear Father Mack, and -he says last time he went to see him it was the Father's supper-time, -and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting -his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish -off a plateful of bullock's eyes. Just like George to be put off his -salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if -Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner -like George. - -Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix's play. -George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain -old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can't act, -as "lead." - -"Who's your Parthenia?" he asked him. - -Mr. Aix answered, "Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the -suburban drama--the usual way." - -"Any good?" asked George casually. - -"I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me -as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one," said Mr. Aix, glancing -across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed. - -"I will take Tempe to your first night," said George suddenly. - -"A play of Jim Aix's for the child's first play!" cried Mother in a -fright. "I shouldn't think of it." - -"Children never see impropriety, or ought not to," George said. "But if -you don't wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead. -It will do the play good." - -"It's a fond delusion," said Aix, "that the aristocracy can even damn a -play." - -Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be -free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night, -after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o'clock mail that we -should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered -why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after -all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the -curtain if called, and that wouldn't possibly be till about ten o'clock, -too late for the train? - -Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love -that. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -"Shall I type your Good-bye to George?" I asked Mother. She said, "What -do you mean?" I said, "The one you will leave pinned to your pincushion -in the usual place?" - -She laughed, and I again thought her most fearfully casual. There was no -packing done, although one would have thought she would have liked her -clothes nice and fresh and lots of them, so that she shouldn't feel -shabby at Boulogne, and let Mr. Aix and herself down. As for my -clothes--I really only had one--one dress I mean--and it was hanging -loose where it shouldn't, and with a large ink-spot in front nobody had -troubled to take out with salts of lemon or anything. - -But I began to think some things had been sent on beforehand, as advance -luggage or so forth, for Mr. Aix came in one evening, and when Aunt -Gerty raised her eyebrows at him, he said "A 1!" That I fancied was the -ticket number for the luggage, so I felt more at ease. - -One eventful evening, after Mother had been lying down all day, I was -told to put on my sun-ray pleated, and to mend it if it wanted it. I did -mend it and I put a toothbrush in the pocket of it, and I kissed all -the cats until they hated me. Cats don't like kissing, but then I didn't -know when I should see them again? I supposed some time, for running -away never is a permanent thing. People always come back and take up -housekeeping again, in the long run. - -The funny thing was, they had chosen the day of Mr. Aix's first night to -run away on. I suppose it was in case he was boo-ed. Then the manager -could come on and say, "The author is not in the house, having gone to -Boulogne with a lady and little girl, by the nine o'clock mail!" That, -of course, was the train we were to catch. I looked it out, I am good at -trains. - -George took Lady Scilly to dine at the Paxton that night, and on to the -theatre where some others were to meet them. I have never been to a -theatre myself, only music halls. At six o'clock George went off, all -grin and gardenia. The grin was as forced as the gardenia. I observed -that. - -Aunt Gerty badly wanted to go with Mr. Aix and hold his hand, as he was -as nervous as a cat. But he wouldn't have her with him, and I don't -wonder. It would have been impossible to shake her off by nine o'clock, -and he would have missed the boat-train, and Mother and me. - -After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and -told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn't intrude on her -privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye to her old home, as I -was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes' list of -horses--for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only -love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of -her room smiling, and her pockets didn't stick out a bit. She is calm in -the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a -fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight -from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started -unconsciously. - -"Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!" - -I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I -held on to the toothbrush. - -"Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!" Mother said, as -we got into a hansom. - -"I won't; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?" - -"Mr. Aix? I am sure I don't know. He will be about, I suppose, unless -they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don't talk." - -She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to -keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn't help -thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what -Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne -tried seven cures, and none of them saved her. - -It was ridiculously early, only seven o'clock. As we drove on and on I -began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it -was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn't the door of a -station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his -hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, -up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be -building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and -that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on -wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a -landscape of an orchard on it. - -"What is it?" I asked one of the people standing about--a man in a white -jacket. - -"That, Missie--that's the back cloth to the first scene," and then he -mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to -show I didn't understand. - -"Oh, yes, quite so," I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once -been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening -dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort -of inappropriate man. - -"Where's my mother?" - -"Oh, your mother! Yes, she's gone to her room. I'll take you to her." - -"But are you going to make us live _here?_" I asked; but bless the man! -he was too nervous to take any more notice of me and my remarks. We -muddled along; I tumbled over a lump in the middle of the floor with -grass sown on it, and caught my foot in a carpet, made of the same. Mr. -Aix quite forgot me and I lost him. - -"Mind! Mind!" everybody kept saying, and shouldering past me with bits -of the very walls in their arms. They left the brick perfectly bare, as -bare as our old coal-cellar at Isleworth. (The one in Cinque Cento House -is panelled.) I saw an ordinary tree, as I thought, but I was quite -upset to find it was flat, like a free-hand drawing. My eyes were -dazzled with electric lights, mounted on strings, like a necklace, only -stiff, that they pushed about everywhere they liked. There were things -like our nursery fire-guard all round the gas, that was there as well as -electric. I noticed a girl go and look through a hole in a bit of canvas -or tapestry that took up all one side of the wall, and went near her. - -"Pretty fair house!" she said. She was a funny-looking little thing, -with hardly enough on, and what there was was dirty, or dyed a dirty -colour. In fact no two persons there were dressed alike; it was like a -fancy-dress party, such as the Hitchings have at their Christmas-tree. -The noise was deafening, they were shoving heavy weights about here and -there, without knowing particularly or caring where they were going. My -new friend had an American accent, and was as gentle as a cat. She went -a little way back from the curtain with me and stood by a man she seemed -rather to like, though he didn't seem to like her. He was very tall and -big, and when she had been talking to him a little while, she said -suddenly-- - -"Excuse me! I must not let myself get stiff!" and took hold of a great -leather belt he wore, and propped herself up by it and began to dip up -and down, opening her knees wide. The man didn't seem to like it much, -but he was kind and chaffed her, till I got tired of her see-sawing up -and down, and talking of her Greekness, and asked one or the other of -them to be kind enough to take me to my mother. - -"Certainly, little 'un," said the man; "kindly point the young lady out -to me. There's so many in the Greek chorus!" - -"It is Miss Lucy Jennings' daughter," said somebody near. - -"I'll take you to her after my dance," said the girl. "Wait. Watch me! I -go on!" - -It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering -about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not -more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and -watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no -stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work -boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no -wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an -ordinary game of blindman's-buff, and said to me, "Now, pussy, I will -escort you to your mommer." - -She took me to the edge of the wall where a little stairs came down, -and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other -green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his -cheeks and a baby's rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were -streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, -natural mother. - -But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and -answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in -front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and -she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a -waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow! - -That finished me, and I screamed, "Oh, Mother, where have you put your -black hair?" - -Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to -shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said-- - -"It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will -kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!" - -So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, -nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the -effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid. - -The others didn't think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, "Really, Lucy, I -wouldn't have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor -women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the cheek, Kate. The -lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know." - -So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit -of an animal's foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, -she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said -something at the door--"Garden scene on!" and went away. The nurse -called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down -the stairs. - -Then for the first time I twigged what it was--a _Theatre!_ The people -were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but -what I didn't know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard -Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, -and terribly disillusioned as well. - -The play was all the running away there was to be! Mother was going to -be no more to Mr. Aix than taking a leading part in his play amounted -to. My toothbrush literally burned in my pocket. I had been made a fool -of. - -But when I came to think it over quietly, I did not know but what I was -not rather glad. It would have been a horrid upset, this running-away -idea, and I believe George secretly felt it very much, though he did -swagger so and pretend he didn't care. The only thing was, perhaps he -would mind Mother going on the stage even worse than running away? I -longed to see him and hear what he had to say about it. - -Mr. Aix was standing quite near us, between a flat green tree and the -wall of a temple. He looked almost handsome; I suppose it was the aroma -of success, for certainly this _was_ a success. The audience seemed -delighted with Mr. Bell, a great fat actor in boots, with frilled tops -like an ancient Roman, who stood in the very middle of the stage raging -away at Mother about something or other she had done. - -"Bell's in capital form to-night," said Mr. Aix, quite loud. "I'm -pleased with him." - -"I hope I shall content you too," said Mother, who was shivering all -over, and I don't wonder, for the draughts in this place were terrific. -Kate handed her a bottle of smelling-salts. - -"Better by far have a B. and S.," said Mr. Aix. - -"No Dutch courage for me, thank you!" said Mother. "Tell me at once, is -George and the cat in the box?" - -"They are, and Mr. Sidney Robinson and the Countess of Fylingdales. You -must buck up, little woman, and show them what you can do!" - -"And what you can do!" she answered politely. "I shan't forget you have -entrusted me with your play." - -"And, by Jove! you'll bring it out as no other woman could. You can----" - -"I'm on!" said Mother, suddenly, and shunted the shawl, and pushed -forward and began to act. - -They clapped her at first and nearly drowned her voice, but she went -right on and abused Mr. Bell in blank verse. I was glad Mr. Aix hadn't -made her a laundress or a serio, but something nice and Greek and -respectable. - -I stood there with Kate and Mother's shawl and Aunt Gerty, and never -knew what it was to be so excited before! The Greek girl came up to me -and said-- - -"Say, your mommer'll knock them!" - -Then they seemed to come to a sort of proper place to stop, and the -curtain began to rattle down, and Mother and Mr. Bell were holding each -other tight, like lovers, only I heard her say in a whisper, "Mind my -hair!" - -They stayed there a long time looking stupid, even while the curtain was -down and people were clapping all round. Then I saw why they did it, for -it went up again, and again, and then they parted and took hands the -last time, and looked straight in front of them and panted, while people -shouted their names. Then the curtain came down again and Mr. Bell -limped off, for, as he said, politely, Mother had been standing all the -while on his best corn. She was so sorry, and he said it didn't matter, -and he hoped he hadn't disarranged her hair. - -Oddly enough the clapping began again. Aunt Gerty jogged Mother, who -stood near me looking quite giddy, and said "Take your call, silly!" - -Mr. Bell took her by the hand and made her walk along in front of the -curtain that a man held back for her by main force, and then we heard -the people roaring again, till it seemed more as if they thirsted for -their blood than wanted to praise them. This happened twice. When they -didn't seem inclined to clap any more she went off to her room with -Kate, while Mr. Aix thanked her for making his play. - -"Come and look at them!" said Aunt Gerty to me, and we went and looked -through the rent in the curtain, for that was the hole in the wall the -girl looked through. There was George and Lady Scilly talking away as if -Mother and her triumph hadn't existed. I think George was cross, but I -really couldn't tell. - -Mother wouldn't have me in her room at all this time, and I lounged -about with Aunt Gerty till it all began again. Mother didn't do this -next act so well, at least Aunt Gerty said not, and scolded her. - -"I can't help it, Gertrude," Mother said. "I thought George would -have----" - -"Never fear! He'll hold out till the end of the play. Then he'll be -round here bothering as sure as my name is Gertrude Jenynge!" - -And her name is Gertrude Jennings, which is pretty near, and in the -third piece of acting, when Mother was not on much, I heard George's -voice asking to be taken to her. - -"Miss Jennings left word she was not to be disturbed this wait." - -"I'm her husband." - -"Very likely, sir!" The man sneered. - -He didn't get in, and he stood there neglected by the staircase till the -beginning of the next and last act, as they said it was. I dared not go -and speak to him, for he looked so cross, and I was also afraid he -would carry me away to the box with Lady Scilly, so I just slipped -behind a bit of scenery and observed. - -Presently Mother came softly out of her room and passed George leaning -on the rail of the staircase leading to her dressing-room. - -She nodded and laughed. - -"Wait for me, George, please. Kate, take this gentleman to my room----" - -And she went gaily on to the stage. - -I followed George and Kate to Mother's room, and discovered myself to -him. He made no fuss, simply looked right through me, and began walking -up and down while Kate sewed a button on to something. - -We heard the clapping from the front quite distinctly. George ground his -teeth. Then Kate slipped out and Mother came in alone, panting, and took -hold of the dressing-table as if she was drowning. - -"I've saved the piece!" said she almost to herself, and then to George, -"I'm an artist. Oh, George, why weren't you in front to see me in the -best moment of my life?" - -"When I married you, Lucy----" George stuttered. - -"Yes, but that wasn't nearly such an occasion! Oh, George, forgive me, -and don't spoil all my pleasure." - -"Pleasure!" said George, as if he was disgusted. - -"Here comes Jim Aix to congratulate me. Poor Aix, he is so pleased...." - -She burst into tears as Mr. Aix came in. He took absolutely no notice of -George, but just caught hold of Mother's hands and said several times -over-- - -"Thank you! Thank you! Bless you! Bless you! Good God! You are -crying----" - -"It is my husband there, who grudges me my success! He does, he does! -Oh, George, for shame! I did it for Ben--for our son--to be able to send -him to college. I have made a hit--quite by accident--and you grudge it -me!" - -"He doesn't, he doesn't grudge you your artistic expansion!" said Mr. -Aix, and went to George and put his hand on his shoulder. "Old George is -the best sort in the world at the bottom. Pull yourself together, dear -old man, and be thankful you have a clever wife, as well as a good one. -She's a genius--she's better, she's a brick. I can tell you she's a -heaven-born actress, and you know what sort of a wife she has been to -you. Speak to her, man, don't let her cry her heart out now, in the hour -of her triumph. What's a triumph? At the best but short-lived! Don't -grudge it her! Congratulate her----" - -George came out of his corner and took Mother's hand and kissed it -nicely, as I have seen him kiss Lady Scilly's hand, but Mother's never. - -"One can only beg your pardon, Lucy, for this, and everything else. Can -you forgive me?" - -I re-open my MS. to add a few facts of interest. - -1. Ariadne got a baby in June; his name is Almeric Peter Frederick. - -2. Aunt Gerty got her brewer, and Mrs. Bowser has left the stage. - -3. Ben was sent to school, and they say he is clever, though I never -could see it. - -4. Lady Scilly has run away with the chauffeur and, so far, hasn't come -back. - -5. I am going to stay with Ernie Fynes' mother, Lady Fynes, at Barsom. -Ernie will be away at Eton, but he loves me. - -THE END - -_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ - - -THE BEST BOOKS - -TO ASK FOR - -AT ALL LIBRARIES - -AND - -BOOKSELLERS - - -NEW NOVELS BY POPULAR WRITERS - -Price 6/-each - -VIOLET HUNT -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME -By VIOLET HUNT, Author of "The Maiden's Progress," -"A Hard Woman," etc. (Fourth Edition.) - -MARY STUART BOYD -THE MAN IN THE WOOD -By MARY STUART BOYD, Author of "Our Stolen -Summer," "With Clipped Wings," etc. - -ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW -THE SHULAMITE -By ALICE and CLAUDE ASKEW - -KEBLE HOWARD -THE GOD IN THE GARDEN -By KEBLE HOWARD, Author of "Love and a Cottage." -With Illustrations by FRANK REYNOLDS. - -H. C. BAILEY -RIMINGTONS -By H. C. 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The sketch -of Dickens's life and the running commentary on the pictures themselves -are excellently done, and are obviously the work of authors genuinely in -love with their subject and free from the extravagance of undue hero -worship." - -=The Sunday Special.=--"To our authors we owe the happy thought of -preserving, with the aid of their cameras, the real Dickens land as it -exists to-day, and by faithfully following the footsteps of the novelist -from boyhood up, they have succeeded in giving us an invaluable picture -gallery.... The handsome volume forms a distinct addition to Dickens -literature." - -=The Athenæum.=--"The authors have made excellent use of the many -investigations by Mr. Kitton and other indefatigable Dickensians; they -have themselves made research and taken photographs; and since they -write well, their volume is a model of its kind. The illustrations are -numerous and excellent; the index is first-rate, and the events of -Dickens's life are skilfully woven into the narrative." - -=The Norwich Mercury.=--"In short, this volume is without a peer in the -matter that really illustrates Charles Dickens's life and works.... Mr. -and Mrs. Ward have hit the happy mean, so that the book is not a bald -statement of 'hard facts,' but is lightened by glimpses of art and -nature in her brightest moods wherever occasion served.... It cannot -fail to be a favourite half-guinea Christmas or New Year's gift-book." - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -MR. H. G. WELLS'S TWO GREAT WORKS - -MANKIND IN THE MAKING - -_Third Large Edition now ready. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d._ - -_A FEW PRESS OPINIONS._ - -"Mr. Wells's 'Mankind in the Making' ... is a book to read and to think -about, and one which obviously proceeds from a great deal of honest and -stubborn thinking on the writer's part. It both challenges the -stupidities of clever people and brings into sharp question the lazy -conventions and accepted servilities of modern English -life."--_Westminster Gazette._ - -"No more provocative and fascinating volume has been issued of recent -years than this 'Mankind in the Making.' Mr. Wells is a master of the -suggestive phrase which suddenly opens long vistas and great -issues."--_Speaker._ - -"'Mankind in the Making' is a courageous and earnest and suggestive -attempt to deal with the all-important problem of the future of the -race, and as such we hope it will be widely read."--_Onlooker._ - -"Mr. Wells is one of the few, very few, original thinkers of the present -day, and the result is that we have a book ... which stimulates thought -more than any work which one has come across in recent years."--_Graphic._ - -ANTICIPATIONS - -AN EXPERIMENT IN PROPHECY - -BY H. G. WELLS - -AUTHOR OF "THE TIME MACHINE," "WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES," ETC. - -_Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d._ - -_Popular and Eighth Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper covers, 6d._ - -"'Anticipations' is one of the most remarkable pieces of social prophecy -which we have lately read.... In Mr. Wells we have not merely an -imaginative writer of truly original power, but a thinker of very -considerable calibre.... We cannot hesitate to recommend this book to -our readers as one of the most suggestive attempts that have yet been -made seriously to grapple with those great problems of the near future -which present themselves to every man.... Such vividness of perception -and picturesque wealth of detail as render it hard for the most -unwilling reader to evade its spell ... a most bracing, strenuous, and -interesting attempt to foreshadow the trend of our present activities, -which no open-minded person can read without being the better for -it."--_Spectator._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -THE WOMAN'S LIBRARY - -Edited by ETHEL M. M. McKENNA - -With Numerous Illustrations. - -_In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo, 5s. net per Volume._ - -VOL. I. EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN - -Containing Articles by - - Miss JANET HOGARTH on "HIGHER EDUCATION." - Mrs. KENDAL on "THE STAGE." - Mrs. JOPLING on "ART." - Miss BEATRICE ORANGE on "TEACHING." - Miss BILLINGTON on "JOURNALISM." - Dr. ETHEL LAMPORT on "MEDICINE." - Miss MARGARET IRWIN on "PUBLIC WORK." - Miss MABYN ARMOUR ON "SANITARY INSPECTING." - -VOL. II. NEEDLEWORK - -Profusely Illustrated. Including Articles on - - "EMBROIDERY" by Miss RUTH M. DAY. - "DRESSMAKING," by Miss J. E. DAVIS, of the Women's Work Department of the - Manchester Municipal School of Technology. - "MILLINERY," by Miss CLARA HILL, Registered Teacher to the City and Guilds - of London Institute. - "KNITTING AND CROCHET," by Mrs. and Miss TURNBULL. - -VOL. III. NURSERY AND SICK-ROOM - -Containing - - "ETHICAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN," by Lady ISABEL MARGESSON. - "PRACTICAL CARE OF CHILDREN," by ETHEL LAMPORT. - "NURSING," by Miss H. F. GETHEN. - -VOL. IV. SOME ARTS AND CRAFTS - -With Numerous Illustrations. Containing Articles on - - "FURNISHING AND DECORATION," by Miss MAY CROMMELIN and Mrs. - CAROLINE SHAW. - "WOODCARVING," by Miss M. X. REEKS, Assistant Teacher at the School of Art - Woodcarving, South Kensington. - "ENAMELLING," by Miss HALLE. - "DECORATIVE WEAVING," by Miss CLIVE BAYLEY, Foundress of the Bushey - School of Weaving. - "BOOKBINDING." by ETHEL M. M. M'KENNA. - "ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY," by ALICE HUGHES. - -VOL. V. COOKERY AND HOUSEKEEPING - -By Mrs. PRAGA. - -VOL. VI. THE LIGHTER BRANCHES OF AGRICULTURE - -By EDITH BRADLEY and BERTHA LA MOTHE, N.D.D. - -With an Introduction by Lady WARWICK. - -Numerous Illustrations. - -Containing "MARKET GARDENING AND FRUIT-GROWING," "POULTRY FARMING," -"MARKETING," "WOMEN'S SETTLEMENTS," "DAIRYING," "BEE-KEEPING." - -Mrs. F. A. STEEL in the _Saturday Review_ says--"They are admirable -pieces of work. Carefully compiled, excellently edited, and beautifully -issued. No fault in matter or manner." - -_T. P.'s Weekly_ says--"An interesting series, and one filling a -definite corner in the modern maze of book-making." - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -W. H. MALLOCK'S WORKS - -THE INDIVIDUALIST. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -THE HEART OF LIFE. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -A HUMAN DOCUMENT. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo. 3_s_. 6_d_. - -"Among those novelists who have always avoided the merely artificial -plots and characters of commonplace fiction, and have endeavoured to -draw their subjects and personages on the lines of actuality, Mr. W. H. -Mallock must certainly be numbered.... A novel which only a clever and -observant man could have written, and which only a very dull man could -read without finding much to divert his mind."--_The Morning Post_. - -ELLA FULLER MAITLAND'S WORKS - -THE SONG-BOOK OF BETHIA HARDACRE. Large Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -PAGES FROM THE DAY-BOOK OF BETHIA HARDACRE. Fifth Edition. Large Crown -8vo. 5_s_. - -THE SALTONSTALL GAZETTE. Conducted by PETER SALTONSTALL, Esq., and -written by Various Hands. Large Crown 8vo. 7_s_. 6_d_. - -BY FIONA MACLEOD - -THE DIVINE ADVENTURE; IONA; BY SUNDOWN SHORES. Studies in Spiritual -History. By FIONA MACLEOD, Author of "The Washer of the Ford," "The -Dominion of Dreams," etc. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -CHARLES DICKENS'S WORKS - -THE GADSHILL EDITION - -=Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by ANDREW LANG= - -_In Thirty-four Volumes. Square Crown 8vo. Price 6s. per volume._ - -THE AUTHENTIC EDITION - -_In Twenty-one Volumes. Square Crown 8vo. Price 5s. each._ - -THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION - -_In Nineteen Volumes. Large Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. each._ - -THE OXFORD INDIA PAPER EDITION - -_In Seventeen Volumes. Foolscap 8vo. Price 2s. 6d. net per volume, -cloth, and 3s. 6d. net per volume in leather._ - -THE FIRESIDE EDITION - -_In Twenty-two Volumes. Crown 8vo. With all Original Illustrations. -Price 1s. 6d. net and 2s. net per volume._ - -THE CROWN EDITION - -_In Seventeen Volumes. Large Crown 8vo, maroon cloth. Containing all the -Original Illustrations. Price 5s. per volume._ - -THE HALF-CROWN EDITION - -_In Twenty-one Volumes. 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In special red cloth binding, with gilt tops, £1 5s. -net._ - -CHEAP ISSUE - -_In Eleven Volumes. Crown 8vo, bound in blue cloth, £1 4s._ - -=The French Revolution.= With Portrait of Thomas Carlyle. 2_s._ - -=Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Past and Present=, and -=Chartism=. With Portrait of Thomas Carlyle. 2_s._ - -=Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.= With Portrait of Oliver -Cromwell. 2_s._ 6_d._ - -=Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.= Two volumes, 2_s._ each. - -=Wilhelm Meister.= 2_s._ - -=The Lives of Schiller and Sterling.= With Portraits of Schiller and -Sterling. 2_s._ - -=Latter-Day Pamphlets= and =Translations from Musæus, Tieck, and Richter=. -2_s._ - -=History of Frederick the Great.= Three volumes. 2_s._ 6_d._ each. - -_This Edition is also bound in limp leather with gilt edges. Price 3s. -and 3s. 6d. net per volume._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Anything in it?" mother said.=> "Anything in it?" Mother said. {pg 26} - -look of dsappointment=> look of disappointment {pg 62} - -one of the man who did=> one of the men who did {pg 101} - -when your times comes=> when your times comes {pg 105} - -The fortune-seller doesn't=> The fortune-teller doesn't {pg 115} - -though the first room=> through the first room {pg 137} - -I dare said he had got=> I dare say he had got {pg 165} - -it is the only times in his life=> it is the only time in his life {pg -199} - -"The Survival of the fittest"=> "The Survival of the Fittest" {pg 284} - -Gerty and mother think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556-8.txt or 41556-8.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: UTF-8 - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - -</pre> - -<hr class="full" /> - -<p class="cb">The Celebrity at Home</p> - -<p class="figcenter"> -<a href="images/cover_lg.jpg"> -<img src="images/cover.jpg" width="396" height="550" alt="image of the book's cover" -title="image of the book's cover" /></a> -</p> - -<h1> -The Celebrity at Home</h1> - -<p class="cb">B<small>Y</small> VIOLET HUNT<br /> -<small>AUTHOR OF ‘A HARD WOMAN’</small><br /> -<br /><br /><br /> -<i>FOURTH EDITION</i><br /> -<br /><br /><br /> -LONDON<br /> -CHAPMAN AND HALL, <span class="smcap">Ld.</span><br /> -1904</p> - -<p class="cb"> -<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER: I, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_II">II, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_III">III, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">IV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_V">V, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">VI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">VII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">VIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">IX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_X">X, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">XI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">XII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">XIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">XIV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">XV, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">XVI, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">XVII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">XVIII, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">XIX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">XX, </a> -<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">XXI.</a> -</p> - -<p><a name="page_001" id="page_001"></a></p> - -<p class="temm">Tempe, a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north, and -Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the -Ægean.—<i>Lemprière.</i></p> - -<p><a name="page_002" id="page_002"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_003" id="page_003"></a></p> - -<h1>THE CELEBRITY AT HOME</h1> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I</h2> - -<p>T<small>HEY</small> say that a child’s childhood is the happiest time of its life!</p> - -<p>Mine isn’t.</p> - -<p>For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn’t good for you. It is -nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It -is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a -cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too -soon. Children hate feeling “stuffy‗no grown-up person understands -that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. -It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be -despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the -quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest -thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get -that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too -cross to admit that you do!</p> - -<p>I suspect that the word “rice-pudding†will be<a name="page_004" id="page_004"></a> written on my heart, as -Calais was on Bloody Mary’s, when I am dead.</p> - -<p>I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying -children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down -everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I -mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in -prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me -insensibly into the habit of composition. George—my father—we always -call him by his Christian name by request—offered to look it over for -me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want -to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up -people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the -worst—I mean the truth—about everybody, including myself. That is what -makes a book saleable. People don’t like to be put off with short -commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have -seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be -discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, -however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw -me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a -specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality -and <i>verve</i>. I do adore <i>verve</i>!</p> - -<p>George’s own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and -vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for -it cuts<a name="page_005" id="page_005"></a> both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two -following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never -knows? Mozart’s father was a musical man. George says that to be -daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the -education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he -has time. He won’t touch Ariadne, for she isn’t worth it. He says I am -apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a -scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a -long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, -dried-up tone teachers put on,—“Did she see?†And when he asked me, I -didn’t see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness.</p> - -<p>I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook -says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook -beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place -somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after -that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil—plain devil when he -is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, -for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she -get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, -but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She -never says a sharp word—can’t! George says she is bound to get left, -like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and<a name="page_006" id="page_006"></a> thin, and white -like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my -favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without -any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings.</p> - -<p>I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of -us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would -never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been -exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the -tantamount of Mount Täygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly -babies. We aren’t allowed to read Lemprière. I do. What brutes those -Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George -says!</p> - -<p>I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that -the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children -“go in and out so,†and even Aunt Gerty says that “fancy children never -last,†and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count -on keeping up to their own standard.</p> - -<p>I cannot tell you if our looks come from our father, or our mother? -George is small, with a very brown skin. He says he descends “from the -little dark, persistent races†that come down from the mountains and -take the other savages’ sheep and cows. He has good eyes. They dance and -flash. His hair is black, brushed back from his forehead like a -Frenchman, and very nice white teeth. He has a mouth like a Jesuit, I -have heard Aunt Gerty say.<a name="page_007" id="page_007"></a> He never sits very still. He is about -thirty-seven, but he does not like us chattering about his age.</p> - -<p>Mother looks awfully young for hers—thirty-six; and she would look -prettier if she didn’t burn her eyes out over the fire making dishes for -George, and prick her fingers darning his socks till he doesn’t find out -they are darned, or else he wouldn’t wear them again, and spoil her -figure stooping, sewing and ironing. George won’t have a sewing machine -in the house. Her head is a very good shape, and she does her hair plain -over the top to show it. George made her. Sometimes when he isn’t there, -she does it as she used before she was married, all waved and floating, -more like Aunt Gerty, who is an actress, and dresses her head sunning -over with curls like Maud. George has never caught Mother like that, or -he would be very angry. He considers that she has the bump of -domesticity highly developed (though even when her hair is done plain I -never can see it?), and that is why she enjoys being wife, mother, and -upper housemaid all in one.</p> - -<p>We only keep two out here at Isleworth, though my brother Ben is very -useful as handy boy about the place, blacking our boots and browning -George’s, and cleaning the windows and stopping them from rattling at -nights—a thing that George can’t stand when he is here. When he isn’t -we just let them rave, and it is a perfect concert, for this is a very -old Georgian house. Mother makes everything, sheets, window-curtains, -and our frocks and her own. She makes them all by the same pattern,<a name="page_008" id="page_008"></a> -quite straight like sacks. George likes to see us dressed simply, and of -course it saves dressmakers’ bills, or board of women working in the -house, who simply eat you out of it in no time. We did have one once to -try, and when she wasn’t lapping up cocoa to keep the cold out, she was -sucking her thimble to fill up the vacuum. We are dressed strictly -utilitarian, and wear our hair short like Ben, and when it gets long -mother puts a pudding basin on our heads and snips away all that shows. -At last Ariadne cried herself into leave to let hers grow.</p> - -<p>The new cook says that if we weren’t dressed so queer, Ariadne and me, -we should make some nice friends, but that is just what George doesn’t -want. He likes us to be self-contained, and says that there is no one -about here that he would care to have us associate with. Our doorstep -will never wear down with people coming in, for except Aunt Gerty, and -Mr. Aix, the oldest friend of the family, not a soul ever crosses the -threshold!</p> - -<p>I am forgetting the house-agent’s little girl, round the corner into -Corinth Road. She comes here to tea with us sometimes. She is exactly -between Ariadne and me in age, so we share her as a friend equally. We -got to know her through our cat Robert the Devil choosing to go and stay -in Corinth Road once. At the end of a week her people had the bright -thought of looking at the name and address on his collar, and sent him -back by Jessie, who then made friends with us. George said, when<a name="page_009" id="page_009"></a> he was -told of it, that the Hitchings are so much lower in the social scale -than we are, that it perhaps does not matter our seeing a little of each -other. She is better dressed than us, in spite of her low social scale. -She has got a real osprey in her hat, and a mink stole to wear to -church, that is so long it keeps getting its ends in the mud. She -doesn’t like our George, though we like hers. George came out of his -study once and passed through the dining-room, where Jessie was having -tea with us.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t he a <i>cure</i>?†said she, with her mouth full of his -bread-and-butter.</p> - -<p>We told her that our George was no more of a cure than hers, which shut -her up; and was quite safe, as neither Ariadne nor I know what a “cure†-is. She isn’t really a bad sort of girl. We teach her poetry, and -mythology, and she teaches us dancing and religion. She has a governess -all to herself every morning, and goes to church regularly. She once -said that her mamma called us poor, neglected children, and pitied us. -We hit her for her mother, and there was an end of that. We love each -other dearly now, and have promised to be bridesmaids to each other, and -godmothers to each other’s children. I am going to have ten.</p> - -<p>Ariadne went to her birthday party at Christmas, and did a very silly -thing, that Mother advised her not to tell George about. Every one at -home agreed that poor Ariadne had been dreadfully rude, but I can’t see -it? I adore sincerity. When Mr. Hitchings asked her what she would like -out of the<a name="page_010" id="page_010"></a> bran-pie when it was opened, same as they asked all the -other children, Ariadne only said quite modestly, “A new papa, please!â€</p> - -<p>Their faces frightened her so, that she tried to improve it away, and -explain she meant that she should like an every-day papa, like Mr. -Hitchings, not only a Sunday one, like George. I know of course what she -meant, a papa that one sees only from Saturdays to Mondays, and not -always then, is only half a papa.</p> - -<p>Ariadne’s real name is Ariadne Florentina, after one of George’s -friends’ books. She has nice hair. It is reddish and yet soft, but it -won’t curl by itself, which is a great grief and sorrow to her. But at -any rate, her eyelashes are awfully long and dark, and she likes to put -the bed-clothes right over her head and listen to her eyelashes -scrabbling about on the sheet quite loud. She has big eyes like nursery -saucers. The new cook calls them loving eyes. On the whole, Ariadne is -pretty, she would think she was even if she wasn’t, so it is a good -thing she is. She considers herself wasted, for she is over eighteen -now, and she has never been to a party or worn a low neck in her life. -We have neither of us ever seen a low neck, but we know what it is from -books, and from them also we learn that eighteen is the age when it -takes less stuff to cover you. The new cook says that all her young -ladies at her last place came out when they were only seventeen. What is -outness? I asked George once, and he said it was a device of the -Philistines.<a name="page_011" id="page_011"></a> I then told him that the new cook said that Ariadne would -never be married and off his hands unless he gave her her chance like -other young ladies, and he said something about a girl called Beatrice -who was out and married and dead before she was nine. Her surname was -Porter, if I recollect. The new cook said “Hout!†and that Beatrice -Porter was all her eye and just an excuse for selfishness!</p> - -<p>Anyhow it is Ariadne’s affair, and she doesn’t seem to care much, except -when the new cook fills her head with ideas of revolt. She walks about -the green garden reading novels, and waiting for the Prince, for she has -a nice nature. I myself should just turn down the collar of my dress, -put on a wreath and go out and find a Prince, or know the reason why!</p> - -<p>We keep no gardener, only Ben. Ben is short for Benvenuto Cellini, -another of George’s friends. He is thirteen, old enough to go to school, -only George hasn’t yet been able to make up his mind where to send him. -It is a good thing Ben has plenty of work to do, for he is very cross, -and talks sometimes of running away to sea, only that he has the North -border to dig, or Cat Corner to clear.</p> - -<p>That is the corner George calls The Pleasaunce—it is we who call it Cat -Corner. Not only dead cats come there, but brickbats and tin kettles -with just one little hole in them, and brown-paper parcels that we open -with a poker. I hope there will be a dead baby in one some day, to -reward us. The trees are so dirty that we don’t like to touch them, and -the birds that scurry about in the bushes would be<a name="page_012" id="page_012"></a> yellow, like -canaries, Sarah says, only for the dirt of London. I hardly believe it, -I should like to catch one and wash it. In the opposite corner George -has built a grotto, and we have to keep it dusted, and he sits there and -writes and smokes. The next garden is the garden of a mad-house. The -doctor keeps a donkey and a pony. Once a table-knife came flying over -the wall to us. George’s nerves were so thoroughly upset that he could -not bear anything but Ouida and Miss Braddon read aloud to him all the -rest of the day. Mother happens to like those authors and another -Italian lady’s books that we are forbidden to mention in this house. She -never reads George’s own works; she says she has promised to be a good -wife to him, but that that wasn’t in the bond. She knows them too well, -having heard them all in the rough. Behind the scenes in a novel is as -dull as behind the scenes in a theatre, you never know what the play is -about. Aunt Gerty says that all George’s things are rank, and quite -undramatic, and George says he is glad to hear it, for he doesn’t like -Aunt Gerty.</p> - -<p>The other persons in the house are George’s cats. There are three. The -grey cat, the only one who has kittens, I call Lady Castlewood, out of -<i>Esmond</i> by Thackeray. George sometimes says “that little cat of a Lady -Castlewood‗it occurred to me that “that little Lady Castlewood of a -cat†just suits ours, for she is a jealous beast, a cantankerous beast, -and goes Nap with her claws all over your face in no time! She hates her -children<a name="page_013" id="page_013"></a> once they are grown up, and is merely on bowing terms with -them, or you might call it licking terms—for she doesn’t mind giving -them a wash and a brush-up whenever they come her way. Robert the Devil -was the one that stayed away a week. He is very big and mild; he can lie -down and wrap himself in his fur till he looks all over alike, and you -couldn’t find any particular part of him, no more than if he were a kind -of soft hedgehog. George talks to them and tells them things about -himself.</p> - -<p>“I am sure they are welcome to his confidence!†that is what the new -cook said. She likes them better than she likes him. She is quite kind -to cats, though she gives them a hoist with her foot sometimes, when -they get in her way. They are valuable, you see. I wish I was, for then -people care what you eat and give you medecines, which I love. It isn’t -often you are disappointed in a new bottle of medecine, except when -there’s gentian in it.<a name="page_014" id="page_014"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II</h2> - -<p>Y<small>OU</small> don’t get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother -says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who -knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good -servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and -without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, -which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a -servant best through its stomach, and don’t give them beer, or -beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I -suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I -know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) -is worth, and I value my right of free entry.</p> - -<p>Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, -and sees germs in everything. It doesn’t make her any happier. But as -for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan -for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our -mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the -wrong place, chivied here and there, with<a name="page_015" id="page_015"></a> no resting-place for the sole -of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she -makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to -see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don’t believe any servant was -ever ashamed in her life. ’Tisn’t in their natures. They just grin and -bear with it—with the dust, and the scolding too.</p> - -<p>“It’s ’er little way,†I heard Sarah say once, not a bit unkindly or -disagreeably, though, after Mother had come down on her about something. -But once I caught the very same girl shaking her fist at George’s back -and calling him “an old beast!â€</p> - -<p>“Sarah,†I said, “whom are you addressing?â€</p> - -<p>“The doctor’s donkey, miss,†she said, as quick as lightning, pointing -to it grazing in the doctor’s garden next door. People were always -overloading that donkey, and shaking their fists at it.</p> - -<p>I must get to the new cook. The last one gave Mother notice, and I never -could find out why, because she was fond of Mother and could stand the -cats.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I like <i>you</i>, ma’am,†I heard her say, just as if she disliked some -one else. Mother took no notice, but left the kitchen, and Cook took a -currant off her elbow and pulled down her sleeves, and mumbled to Sarah, -“It isn’t right, and I for one ain’t going to help countenance it. -A-visiting his family now and then between jobs, just like a burglar—or -some-think worse!â€</p> - -<p>What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the<a name="page_016" id="page_016"></a> scullery window, and -Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of -them both, so that it made a mist and she didn’t see me. I knew, though, -she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she “shouldn’t -reely,†she muttered something more about a “neglected angel!†I did -think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor’s donkey as usual, -but then the words didn’t fit either of us? I asked her straight if she -did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was -minding his own business and I had better do the same.</p> - -<p>She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for -really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at -the back door, and she kept saying, “A poor girl’s only got her -character, mum, and she is bound to think of it—†and Mother said, -“Yes, yes, you did quite right!†and seemed just to want her out of the -house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment -Sarah’s back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the -middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into -every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the -towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the -corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its -back like a horse kicking.</p> - -<p>Of course George wasn’t allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him -where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester’s for the shooting -(George<a name="page_017" id="page_017"></a> shooting! My eye!—and the keeper’s legs!) and said he had -better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to -be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built -my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and -that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and -didn’t bother to tuck them in. It isn’t necessary to do so when we turn -head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three -times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice -lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson’s, Monkey Soap, -and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn’t a speck of dirt, or pattern -either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat -one’s meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of -one’s soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the -joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn’t scold -us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them -in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we -black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the -walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that -shows it was shabby and ready for death.</p> - -<p>Mother said afterwards that she couldn’t see any improvement anywhere, -but anyhow we enjoyed ourselves and that is everything. We spent money -on it, for we bought <i>décalcomanie</i> pictures, and did<a name="page_018" id="page_018"></a> bouquets all over -the mantelpieces, but Mother insisted we should peel all these off again -before George came back. He couldn’t come back till we got that cook, -for George is most absurdly particular about our servants. Sarah has got -used to him, and there seems to be no idea of her going. She has to -valet him, for he is always beautifully dressed. She has to take the -greatest care of her own appearance, and get her nails manicured and her -hair waved when he is at home. That is about all for her. But the cook -he calls the keeper of his conscience, that is to say, his digestion. -His digestion is as jumpy as he is. Sometimes it wants everything quite -plain, and he will eat nothing but our rice-puddings and cold shapes of -tapioca, etc.; at another time he calls it “apparition,†and says the -very name of it makes him shiver. I am used to cold shapes, alas! He -sometimes brings things down from town himself—caviare and “patty de -foy.†Children are not supposed to like that sort of thing, but we do, -and George gives them us; he is not mean in trifles. Sometimes it is -pheasants and partridges, that he has shot himself on ducal acres. They -are shot very badly, not tidily, with the shot all in one place as it -ought to be: Mr. Aix explained this to me. They are not to be cooked -till they are ready, and when they are they are a little too ready for -Mother and us, so Papa and Mr. Aix have to eat it all. George belongs to -the sect of the Epicureans; I heard him tell the cook so, also that he -is the reincarnation of a gentleman called Villon.<a name="page_019" id="page_019"></a></p> - -<p>For a month Mother “sat in†for cooks, and all sorts of fat and lean -women came and went. Our establishment didn’t seem attractive. George -bespoke a fat one, by letter, but Mother inclined to lean. These women -sat on the best chairs and prodded the pattern of the carpets with their -dusty umbrellas, and asked tons of questions,—far more than she asked -them, it seemed to me, and this one that we have at last got was the -coolest of all, but in rather a nice way. She was tall and thin, with a -long nose with a dip in it just before the tip, which was particularly -broad. Ariadne said afterwards that a nose like that seemed to need a -bustle. She said she was a north-country woman, and that is about all -she did tell us about herself, except her name, Elizabeth Cawthorne.</p> - -<p>She sat and asked questions. When she came to the usual “And if you -please, ma’am, how many is there in family?†Mother answered, “Myself -and my son and my two daughters,—and my sister—she is -professional—and is here for long visits—that is all.â€</p> - -<p>“Then I take it you are a widow, ma’am?â€</p> - -<p>Mother, getting very red, explained that George is very little at home, -so that in one way he didn’t count, but in another way he did, for he is -very particular and has to be cooked for specially. Being an author, he -has got a very delicate appetite.</p> - -<p>“A proud stomach, I understand ye. Well, I shall hope to give him -satisfaction.†She said that as if she would have liked to add, “or I’ll -know the reason why.<a name="page_020" id="page_020"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She seemed quite to have settled in her own mind that she was going to -take our place. She “blessed Mother’s bonny face†before that interview -was over, and passed me over entirely.</p> - -<p>She came in in a week, and the first time she saw George she was “doing -her hall.†Ariadne and I were there as George’s hansom drove up and he -got out and began a shindy with the cabman.</p> - -<p>“Honeys, this will be your father, I’m thinking!†she said.</p> - -<p>Perhaps she expected us to rush into his arms, but we didn’t; we knew -better. We just said “Hallo!†and waited till he was disengaged with the -cabman, who wanted too much, as we are beyond the radius. George didn’t -give it to him, but a good talking to instead. The new cook stopped -sweeping—servants always stop their work when there is something going -on that doesn’t concern them, and looked quite pleased with George.</p> - -<p>“He can explain himself, and no mistake!†she said to Sarah afterwards, -and she cooked a splendid dinner that night, for, says she to Sarah, -“seemed to her he was the kind of master who’d let a woman know if she -didn’t suit him.â€</p> - -<p>She doesn’t “make much account of childer,†in fact I think she hates -them, for when Ariadne showed her the young shoots in a pot of snowdrops -she was bringing up, and said, “See, cook, they have had babies in the -night!†Elizabeth, meaning to be civil, said, “Dis<i>gust</i>ing things, -miss!â€</p> - -<p>Still, she isn’t really unkind to children, and<a name="page_021" id="page_021"></a> admits that they have a -right to exist. She will boil me my glue-pot and make me paste, and lets -Ariadne heat her curling-tongs between the bars of the kitchen fire. She -doesn’t “matter†cats, but she gives them their meals regular and -doesn’t hold with them loafing in the kitchen, and getting tit-bits -stolen or bestowed. And they know she is just, though not generous, and -never forgets their supper. They were all hid, as it happened, when she -came about the place, but she said she knew she had got into a cat house -as soon as she found herself eating fluff with her tea, and she thinks -she ought to have been told. George laughs at her and calls her “stern -daughter of the north,†but he wasn’t a bit cross when she told him that -Ben ought to be sent to school. He even agreed, but Ben isn’t sent. Ben -is still eating his heart out, and he keeps telling Elizabeth Cawthorne -so. He is much in the kitchen. She is very sensible. She just stuffs a -jam tart into his mouth, and says, “Tak’ that atween whiles then, my -bonny bairn, to distract ye.†Ben takes it like a lamb, and it does -distract him, or at any rate it distends him; he has got fat since she -came.</p> - -<p>She orders Mother about as if she were a child. Mother <i>does</i> look very -young, as I have said. She ought, and so ought Aunt Gerty, considering -the trouble they both take to keep the cloven hoof of age off their -faces. They go to bed with poultices of oatmeal on them, and Aunt Gerty -once tried the raw-beef plaster. But what she does in the night<a name="page_022" id="page_022"></a> she -undoes in the day, with the grease paint and sticky messes that are part -of her profession.</p> - -<p>She lives with us except when she is on tour, and is only here when she -is “resting†in the <i>Era</i>, and all that time she is dreadfully cross, -because she would rather be doing than resting, for “resting†is only a -polite way of saying no one has wanted to engage her, and that she is -“out of a shop,†which all actresses hate.<a name="page_023" id="page_023"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III</h2> - -<p>I <small>HAVE</small> forced George’s hand, so I am told, and neither he nor mother -take any notice of me.</p> - -<p>But Aunt Gerty hugged me all over when she heard what I had done, and -scolded Mother for not being nice to me.</p> - -<p>“I don’t see why you need put that poor child in Coventry?†she said. -“You had more need to be grateful to her than not. How much longer was -it going to go on, I want to know? Hiding away his lawful wife like an -old Bluebeard, and me Sister Anne boiling over and wanting to call it -all from the house-tops!â€</p> - -<p>“Well, Gerty, you seem to have got it a bit mixed!†said Mother. “But, -talking of Bluebeard, I always envied the first Mrs. B. the lots of -cupboard room she must have had! I wonder if she was a hoarder, like me, -who never have the heart to throw anything away? If I do happen to see -the plans for the new house, I will speak up for lots of cupboards, and -that is all I care about.â€</p> - -<p>“See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn’t it your right? You must -make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your -own<a name="page_024" id="page_024"></a> comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in -the cold, and ‘specially with a husband like you’ve got!â€</p> - -<p>“Bother moving!†said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has -been overdoing it, as she has lately. “It is an odious wrench; just like -having all one’s teeth out at once.â€</p> - -<p>“Hadn’t need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and -don’t you forget it.â€</p> - -<p>“The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose.â€</p> - -<p>“You can get used to something bad, can’t you, but that’s no reason you -are not to welcome a change? Oh, you’ll like the new life that’s to be -spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind -of ‘behind the scenes’ you have been doing for eighteen years. And a -pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new -scenery, new dresses, new backcloth——â€</p> - -<p>“You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates -one sometimes, especially now, when——â€</p> - -<p>“I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend -on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call -it—it’s the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!—into your -fine new house. Pity but <i>He</i> can’t get a little whiff of it into his -comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, -perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don’t cotton to each other, nor -never shall. He isn’t my sort.<a name="page_025" id="page_025"></a> I like a man that is a man, not a -society baa-lamb! Baa! I’ve no patience with such——â€</p> - -<p>“Sh’, Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her -paints in a corner so quietly there!â€</p> - -<p>That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the -same.</p> - -<p>“We have never minded the child yet†(which was true), “and I don’t see -why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold -her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father -well enough. What you’ve to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands -white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! -Cream’s good, too. You have been George Taylor’s upper servant too -long—Gracious, who’s that at the front-door?â€</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all -three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George’s, when he is at -home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot -day—a dog-day, only we haven’t any dogs, but the kittens were -tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for -coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little -clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of -dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. -But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door -such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never -had<a name="page_026" id="page_026"></a> I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped -Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw.</p> - -<p>There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was -Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn’t. I haven’t got to her yet -in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing -at the door holding on to her cap that she’d forgotten to put a pin in. -Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn’t like her to leave her caps -off to go to the door, even when George isn’t here, out of principle, -and for once it told.</p> - -<p>“For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit -too strong to-day,†cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, -and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came -in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the -carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and -a jump.</p> - -<p>“Please m’m!†she cried almost before she got into the room, “there’s a -carriage-and-pair just called——â€</p> - -<p>“Anything in it?†Mother said.</p> - -<p>“Two ladies, m’m, and here’s their cards.â€</p> - -<p>I took one and Aunt Gerty the other.</p> - -<p>“Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!†Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady -Macbeth saying, “Out, dammed spot!â€</p> - -<p>The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, -but it had got under the drawers.<a name="page_027" id="page_027"></a></p> - -<p>“I said you wasn’t dressed, ma’am,†Sarah said, looking at Mother’s -apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves.</p> - -<p>“No more I am,†said Mother, laughing. “Don’t look so disappointed, -Gerty. I couldn’t have seen them.â€</p> - -<p>“But you shouldn’t have said your mistress wasn’t dressed, Sarah,†said -Aunt Gerty. “It isn’t done like that in good houses. You should have -said, ‘My mistress is gone out in <i>the</i> carriage.’â€</p> - -<p>“But that would have been a lie!†argued Sarah, “and I’m sure I don’t -want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, where have you been before, Sarah,†Aunt Gerty sighed, “not to know -that a society lie can’t let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too -late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for -aristocratic swells like that, after all.â€</p> - -<p>“They didn’t really want to see me,†said Mother. “They only called on -me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of -Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She -is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I -have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your -hair. Off you go!â€</p> - -<p>“And get a sunstroke,†thought I. “Just because she wants to talk to -Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!â€</p> - -<p>So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of<a name="page_028" id="page_028"></a> not minding me that -they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun.</p> - -<p>Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting -visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies -coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the -bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she -with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was -continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only -had a nice slight figure, like she has.</p> - -<p>“Bead chains and pince-nezs won’t do it as you seem to think,†Mother -said. “And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!â€</p> - -<p>“Happy!†screamed my Aunt Gertrude. “Who talked of being happy? You -don’t go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought, -to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your -husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It -would me, that’s all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher -than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to -take your call and go on—not before you’ve had a trip to Paris for your -clothes, though—and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor’s -despised wife is. There’s an object to live for! That’s your ticket, and -you’ve got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn’t he?â€</p> - -<p>“Nothing else,†said Mother sadly.</p> - -<p>“Nonsense! Weren’t you—aren’t you as good<a name="page_029" id="page_029"></a> as he? You are the daughter -of a respectable Irish clergyman. Whose daughter—I mean son—is he? A -French tailor’s, I expect. You married him eighteen years ago in Putney -Parish Church by special licence, when he was nothing and nobody cared -whom or what he married. Little flighty, undersized foreign-looking -creature! You have been a good wife to him, borne his children, nursed -him when he was ill, and kept a house going for him to come back to when -he was tired of the others, and if it’s been done on the sly, it hasn’t -been through any will of yours! And now that the matter has been taken -out of his hands, and a good thing too, and he’s obliged to leave off -his dirty little tricks and own you, and send his grand friends to call -on you, and build a nice house to put you in, you want to back out and -hide yourself—lose your chance once for all and for ever! You are -good-looking, your children are sweet—you’ll soon catch them all up, -and then you can be as haughty and stuck-up as the rest of them. If it -is <i>me</i> you are thinking of, I shan’t trouble you—I have my work and I -mean to stick to it!â€</p> - -<p>“I shall never disown you, Gerty.â€</p> - -<p>“No, I dare say not, but I shan’t put myself in the way of a snub. I’ve -got one thing that’s been very useful to me in this life—that’s tact. I -shan’t make a nasty row or a talk, but you’ll not see more of me than -you want to. I’m a lady—I’ll never let anybody deny that—but I’ve -knocked about the world a bit, and it’s a rough place, and that soft<a name="page_030" id="page_030"></a> -dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one’s own -battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, -largely. Where you’re wearing chiffon, I’ll be wearing linen, that’s the -diff. Now I’m off—‘on’ first act and share a dresser with three other -cats, where there isn’t room to swing one. Ta-ta! I’m not as vulgar as -you think!â€</p> - -<p>She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went -away. Mother asked me why I hadn’t been drying my hair in the garden all -this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I -answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found -a cool place and meditated on my sins.</p> - -<p>I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan -never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands -are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself.</p> - -<p>On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this -incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making -devils with George’s name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt -it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality.</p> - -<p>There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or -rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my -room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, -or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said -immediately,<a name="page_031" id="page_031"></a> “Now whatever have you been up to?†I told her that the -word “ever†was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected -to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less -expressive face.</p> - -<p>I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the -age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till -one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of -kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks’ legs, and the -cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I -just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next -street but one, standing in front of the “Milliner’s Arms,†with nobody -in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I -got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly -thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the -very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply -hadn’t the heart to miss the chance.</p> - -<p>A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her -dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter’s -sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the -public-house floor. Yet I can’t say she looked at all tipsy.</p> - -<p>“I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it.†She -said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how -I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that<a name="page_032" id="page_032"></a> for me, by -saying with a little sweet smile, “Well, you pretty child, how do you -like my motor-car?â€</p> - -<p>“It is the first time I——â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?â€</p> - -<p>I confessed I should, and she jumped in beside me, saying, “Sit still, -then, child!†and moved the crissy-cross starfish thing in front, and we -were off.</p> - -<p>Mercy, what a rate! Policemen seemed to hold up their hands in amazement -at us, and she looked pleased and flattered. We drove on and on, past -the Hounslow turning, through miles of nursery gardens and then miles of -slums, till at last the houses got smarter and bigger, and I guessed -this was the part of London where George lives, only I did not ask -questions. I hardly ever do. I did see a clock once, and I saw it was -nearly our lunch time. I realized that I had missed rice-pudding for -once, and was glad. She talked all the way along, and I listened. I find -that is what people like, for she kept telling me that I was a nice -child, and that she thought she should run away with me.</p> - -<p>“You <i>are</i> running away with me,†I said.</p> - -<p>“And you don’t care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall -take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me.â€</p> - -<p>She amused <i>me</i>. She was a darling—so gay, so light, as if she didn’t -care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. -If George’s high-up friends are like this, I don’t wonder he prefers -them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as<a name="page_033" id="page_033"></a> amusing as anybody,—I am not -going to try to take Mother down—but even she can’t pretend she is -happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,—the very dry -kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a -whole glassful between us.</p> - -<p>We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like -my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. -She told me about the houses as we went along.</p> - -<p>“That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives,†she said, and -pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny -street. I knew that name—the name of the man George stays and shoots -with—but of course I didn’t say anything. Then we passed a funny little -house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a -fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings.</p> - -<p>“You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside,†she told me. “A -great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all -the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them -has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all -gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in -the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives -heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, -but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always -do you so well. I declare, if I<a name="page_034" id="page_034"></a> wasn’t going to see him this very -afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have -got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open -eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little -table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should -put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And -remind me to lend you one of his books,—that is, if your mother allows -you to read novels.â€</p> - -<p>I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us -on them.</p> - -<p>“Oh, does he? How interesting! I love authors! You must introduce him to -me some day. Bring him to one of my literary teas. I always make a point -of raising an author or so for the afternoon. It pleases my crowd so, -far better than music and recitations, and played-out amusements of that -kind; and then one doesn’t have to pay them. They are only too glad to -come and get paid in kind looks that cost nothing. The queerer they are, -the more people believe in them. I used to have Socialists, but really -they were <i>too</i> dirty! Some authors now are quite smart, and wear their -hair no longer than Lord Scilly, or so very little longer. Now, there is -Morrell Aix, the man who wrote <i>The Laundress</i>. I took him up, but he -had been obliged, he said, to live in the slums for two years to get up -his facts, and you could have grown mustard and cress on the creases of -his collar. And I do think, considering the advertisement he gave them, -the laundresses<a name="page_035" id="page_035"></a> might have taken more trouble with the poor man’s -shirts!â€</p> - -<p>I knew Mr. Aix, of course, and I have often seen Mother take the -clothes-brush to him, but I said nothing, for I like to show I can hold -my tongue. Knowledge is power, if it’s ever so unimportant. We didn’t go -far from the house with walls like stopped teeth, before she pulled up -at another rather smart little door in a street called Curzon.</p> - -<p>“Here we are at my place, and there’s Simmy Hermyre on the doorstep -waiting to be asked to lunch.â€</p> - -<p>It was a nice clean house with green shutters and lovely lace curtains -at the windows, that Ariadne would have been glad of for a dress, all -gathered and tucked and made to fit the sash as if it had been a person. -The young man standing at the front door had a coat with a waist, and a -nice clean face, and a collar that wouldn’t let him turn his head -quickly. He helped us out, and she laughed at him as if he was hers.</p> - -<p>“Are you under the impression that I have asked you to lunch? Why, I -don’t suppose there is any!â€</p> - -<p>Imagine her saying that when she had brought me all the way from -Isleworth to have it! I didn’t, of course, say anything, and she made me -go in, and the young man followed us, quite calm, although she had said -there wasn’t anything for him to eat.</p> - -<p>“I would introduce you to this person†(I thought it so nice of her not -to stick on the offensive words little or young!) “only it strikes me I -don’t know<a name="page_036" id="page_036"></a> her name.†She didn’t ask it, but went on, “It’s a most -original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in -a year, my dear boy!â€</p> - -<p>Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadn’t tried, and I do -think you should leave off calling children “it†after the first six -months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didn’t think her quite polite, -I told her my name—Tempe Vero-Taylor—in a low voice so that she could -introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same -table. I thought there wouldn’t be a children’s table, as she didn’t -speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have -no conversation.</p> - -<p>Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up -her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didn’t -introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didn’t suppose I should ever meet -him again, so it didn’t matter.</p> - -<p>We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as -much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered -rice-pudding! I wouldn’t have believed it, in a house like this. I -refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally -take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldn’t taste champagne -when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, -and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often -says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild -beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not<a name="page_037" id="page_037"></a> meet some this afternoon -at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (that’s her name) said -she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldn’t very well -say no.</p> - -<p>“You may come too, Simmy,†she said to the young man; “it will be -exciting, I can promise you!â€</p> - -<p>“Not if I know it,†he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, “What is -the lecture about?â€</p> - -<p>“The Uses of Fiction.â€</p> - -<p>“None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an -income.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s a man’s view.â€</p> - -<p>“It is,†he said, “a man, and not a monkey’s. You don’t call your -literary crowd men, do you?â€</p> - -<p>I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him -up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on—</p> - -<p>“You’re quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy -your receptions.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because -you’re a fifth cousin. That’s the worst of being well connected, so many -people think they have the right to lecture one!â€</p> - -<p>“All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were -not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow -you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine -and Ve——â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldn’t -come to the lecture he must<a name="page_038" id="page_038"></a> go, and pushed me out of the room in front -of her and on up-stairs.</p> - -<p>“Good-bye!†she called to him over the bannisters. “Let yourself out, -and don’t steal the spoons.â€</p> - -<p>That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We -went up into her bedroom, and her old nurse—I suppose it was her nurse, -for she wore no cap and bullied her like anything—came forward.</p> - -<p>“Put me into another gown, Miller!†she said, flopping into a chair. -Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, -and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying -me.</p> - -<p>“Don’t bother. The child’s all right. She’s so pretty she can wear -anything.â€</p> - -<p>I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I -said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went -down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand -in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her -cheek that I hadn’t noticed there before. It was real.<a name="page_039" id="page_039"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV</h2> - -<p>W<small>E</small> went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of -coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water -and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person -present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately -began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly -is a member of the committee.</p> - -<p>“Where will you sit, Lady Scilly?†said this person, and she asked a -good many other questions, using Lady Scilly’s name very often.</p> - -<p>“I shall sit quite at the back this time,†Lady Scilly answered. “Too -many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out!†As she -said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why.</p> - -<p>We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place -had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a -great friend of Lady Scilly’s. He spoke to me while she was discussing -some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her.</p> - -<p>“How do you like going about with a fairy?†he asked me.<a name="page_040" id="page_040"></a></p> - -<p>“I’m not,†I said. “She’s a grown-up woman, old enough to know——â€</p> - -<p>“Worse!†he interrupted me. “She is what I call a fairy!â€</p> - -<p>“What is a fairy?†I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only -trying to make conversation.</p> - -<p>“A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likes—and as other -people sometimes don’t like.â€</p> - -<p>“I see,†I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, “just as -grown-up people do.â€</p> - -<p>“But she isn’t pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a -fairy? No, I think not, you don’t look as if you <i>could</i> tell a lie.â€</p> - -<p>“I beg your pardon,†I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent -him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we -went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn’t like -that, and said “<i>Jeunesse oblige</i>,†and “<i>Place aux dames</i>,†and -“<i>Juniores ad priores</i>‗every language under the sun, winding up with -that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to -hang back and keep the king waiting.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, I know that story,†I said, just to prevent him going on -bothering. “It’s in Ollendorff.â€</p> - -<p>The lecture-room was quite full, and we—Lady Scilly and I—squeezed -ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were -almost in the dark.</p> - -<p>“Sit tight, child, whatever happens!†she kept<a name="page_041" id="page_041"></a> saying, and held my hand -as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in -I saw why, for it was George!</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, “Don’t call out, child!â€</p> - -<p>As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the -lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him -before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and -had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old -gentleman had called her a fairy—that meant a tease, and I wasn’t going -to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still -as she told me, and George began.</p> - -<p>I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to -remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get -used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite -different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a -little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of -them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing—</p> - -<p>“<i>A novel</i>,†said my father, “<i>is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, -uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, -like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, -and bounded by the four walls of the author’s experience. His duty is to -enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement -as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes<a name="page_042" id="page_042"></a> under the -reader’s own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly -disproportionate, to the whole great arcana</i>.†(I do hope I got this -down right!) “<i>The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent.</i>†(Once -I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child’s play.) “<i>A -great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama -of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of -the supply.</i>†(Loud applause.) “<i>The right man, or peradventure, the -right woman</i>†(he bowed at Lady Scilly), “<i>knows, or ought to know, so -many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of -that one!</i>â€</p> - -<p>Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and -George went on—</p> - -<p>“<i>I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways.</i>†(What -works both ways? I must have left something out.) “<i>A Duchess of my -acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words—as indeed all her words -are pregnant and poignant</i>†(he bowed to an old corpulent lady in -another part of the room)—“<i>to me the other day. She said that her -novel of predilection was not a society novel. ‘I know it all, don’t I, -like the palm of my hand?’ she objected. ‘I know how to behave in a -drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!’ So she complained. The -substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;—what she wants -is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her -drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, -the burglar at his work</i>——<a name="page_043" id="page_043"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he -was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on—</p> - -<p>“<i>I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out -of our own lives, and put into somebody else’s—to temporarily change -our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going -on below stairs. Bill Sykes and ‘Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time -for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant -sprites.</i>†(Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) “<i>The Highest or the -Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist’s counsel of perfection. -There is no second class in the literary railway.</i></p> - -<p>“<i>Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for -instance—only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here -will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my -illustration—if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual -dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting—even Clapham Rise or -Upper Tooting—we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the -better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the -halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of -the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world -that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes -her waking dreams ‘all a wonder and a wild desire.’ Que voulez vous? She -is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste -thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated<a name="page_044" id="page_044"></a> -by the novelist’s art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum -marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely -Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that -are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the -Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her -chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and -humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their -entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, -like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from -thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang -over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses——</i>â€</p> - -<p>I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady -Scilly pinched me in several places at once.</p> - -<p>“Don’t nip me, please,†I said. “I think somebody ought to get up and -tell George he’s drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will.â€</p> - -<p>“Bless the child!†she said. “You may answer him when he’s done, if you -like, and can. It will be quite amusing.â€</p> - -<p>I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think -somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother’s side. So I waited, -though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George -sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer -Mr. Vero-Taylor’s speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that -George and<a name="page_045" id="page_045"></a> all of them could see me, and I didn’t feel a bit shy—no, -for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who -wasn’t there to speak up for herself.</p> - -<p>“Ladies and Gentlemen,†I said—I noticed that George began like -that—“I don’t agree at all with what the gentleman—who is my -father—has been saying about Tooting—Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought -to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly -the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn’t do it -unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell -everybody that Mother doesn’t read novels about Duchesses or anybody. -She hasn’t time, she’s much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and -cooking specially for George, and so on. That’s all!â€</p> - -<p>I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I -hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted -him, perhaps! I don’t know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I -didn’t feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home.</p> - -<p>He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn’t talk, but I -am sure he wasn’t cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed -to know I was going to have a bad time.</p> - -<p>I did. Even Mother scolded me.</p> - -<p>Papa didn’t come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I -might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me -truthful.<a name="page_046" id="page_046"></a> Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn’t so bad. She read to me about -Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the -other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that -always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn’t -mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“We left behind the painted buoy<br /></span> -<span class="i2">That tosses at the harbour-mouth,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">And madly danced our hearts with joy<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and -the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she -could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as -if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had -lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world -will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don’t -suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could -alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get <a name="page_047" id="page_047"></a>the bit -between their teeth——!</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V</h2> - -<p>I<small>T</small> is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. -Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and -all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George -Vero-Taylor’s little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there -and given him away—such fun, don’t you know! It wasn’t fun for me, for -I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in -Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn’t have mattered -so much if George hadn’t been at home a good deal about that time. I -think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, -though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with -his family, though wearing to the servants.</p> - -<p>George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and -thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new -line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into -the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a -volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He -settled to build a house—a house that<a name="page_048" id="page_048"></a> should express him and shelter -his family as well. Mother didn’t want to build. If we <i>had</i> to move, -she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at -Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see -if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a -soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches -spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed -with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with -their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down -to the water’s edge. George didn’t stop our doing this and taking so -much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But -all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John’s -Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, -and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, -made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the -blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the -world that he can do other things than write books. In <i>Who’s Who</i>, he -doesn’t mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of -his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, -Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that’s what his friend Mr. -Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very -newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed.</p> - -<p>All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it<a name="page_049" id="page_049"></a> copying things. George -talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only -interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main -staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you -see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They -thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once.</p> - -<p>As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his -prices. He expects to get ten pounds per “thou.†He told Middleman, his -literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per “thou.†-for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for -the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge -establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint -sense of humour, and that’s the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says -Middleman can run up an author’s sales twenty per cent. in no time, if -he fancies you personally, or thinks there’s money in you.</p> - -<p>George’s new book is going to be not mediæval this time; people have -imitated him and <i>The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful</i> was -brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. -He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few -English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad -soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and -pay his expenses.</p> - -<p>Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be<a name="page_050" id="page_050"></a> called, rose like a thief -in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother’s face grew longer -and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped -George to arrange the furniture.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some -interest in her own mansion.</p> - -<p>“I do,†Mother said, “but at a distance. I couldn’t be of any use -advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. -That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always -about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say -things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as -they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George’s own money. He -earned it.â€</p> - -<p>“Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!†sneered my aunt.</p> - -<p>“I came to him without a penny, and I haven’t the right to dictate so -much as the position of a wardrobe.â€</p> - -<p>“You’re the man’s lawful wife,†said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One -got tired of the expression.</p> - -<p>“Yes, unfortunately,†said Mother. “Or I’d have a better chance! But I -am <i>not</i> going to fight over George with that minx!â€</p> - -<p>How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never -seen! I once told her she needn’t be cross with Lady Scilly, and how -harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of -Papa—snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt;<a name="page_051" id="page_051"></a> and then she was -cross with <i>me</i>, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be -proud.</p> - -<p>Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for -blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we -took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and -George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room -and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, -and all George’s furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept -saying—</p> - -<p>“Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel -Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!†or else—“That -sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and -I‗something or other?</p> - -<p>She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, -and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her -laugh consumedly, so she said. It’s extraordinary how he can make people -laugh—people out of his own family!</p> - -<p>She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present -Ariadne at the next Court. It’s to please George, if she does remember -to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had -been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George -ought to insist on it, but he always says “Let them rave!†and that -means, Do as you like, but don’t bother me. What he won’t like will be -forking out forty pounds for<a name="page_052" id="page_052"></a> Ariadne’s dress, and it will end by her -staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising -curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not -condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so -poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she -can get, and make what she can out of George’s “mash,†when well -disposed.</p> - -<p>About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month’s -yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody’s yacht that they were -willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included -them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. -She asked George to go with them—“We shan’t see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. -the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write -a yachting novel, like William Black’s, and put old Pawky in. He is -quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say—dyspeptic -and all that. I can’t stand him, but you might bear with him a little in -the interests of Art!†George had no objection to visiting the scene of -his new book at Mr. Pawky’s expense, in the company of his own pals, and -accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. -Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of -the voyage? It would be just like them.</p> - -<p>George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He -said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come<a name="page_053" id="page_053"></a> -home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and -everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, -inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work -abominably, and spoil the whole brewing!</p> - -<p>“Dear,†said Mother, “I fear we shall do badly without you—you are a -man, at least—but I’ll be good, and spare you cheerfully!â€</p> - -<p>So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was -to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go -with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but -there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass -bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself -on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen -and kitchen utensils from “The Magnolias‗one could hardly suppose Lady -Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer -“moved†us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the -things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate—Sarah had gone, and -I never got any better reason than that she “had to‗received them at -Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near -the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to -her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, -wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes -first fell on it.<a name="page_054" id="page_054"></a></p> - -<p>We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where -they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had -got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own -house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. -She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door -knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away.</p> - -<p>She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, -“Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn’t it! Right -alongside the front-door!â€</p> - -<p>I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to -prevent unpleasantness.</p> - -<p>Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged -with marble like a church. “It strikes very cold to the feet!†she said -to Aunt Gerty. “Mine are like so much ice.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, come along, and we’ll brew you a glass of hot toddy!†Aunt Gerty -said cheerfully. “It’s a bit chilly, I think, myself, but ’ansom, like -the big ’all where ’Amlet ’as the players!â€</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h -or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne -and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study.</p> - -<p>“What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take -off my shoes and stockings to go up them!<a name="page_055" id="page_055"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“So you will, Aunt Gerty,†said Ariadne. “It is one of George’s rules. -He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them.â€</p> - -<p>“Took ’em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?†snorted -my aunt. “Well, I don’t expect you will find me treading those golden -stairs very often. I ain’t one of George’s elect.â€</p> - -<p>“Such wretched things to keep clean,†Mother complained. “The servants -are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am -sure one can’t blame them, and such good ones as we’ve got, too, in -these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle -in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to -me?â€</p> - -<p>Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way -about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a -servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had -escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and -tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and -put her muff before her face—</p> - -<p>“Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady’s eye coming into a -gentleman’s house! Who’s that mouldy old statue of?â€</p> - -<p>I told her that was Autolycus.</p> - -<p>“Cover yourself, Tollie, I would,†Aunt Gerty said, going past him -affectedly. “Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing -splits<a name="page_056" id="page_056"></a> on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!â€</p> - -<p>“I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself,†said Mother. -“I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it.â€</p> - -<p>“And no proper grate, only the bare bricks left showing!†Aunt Gerty -wailed. “How could one get up any proper fireside feeling over a -contraption like that! The Lyceum scenery is nothing to it. It makes me -think of Shakespeare all the time—so <i>painfully</i> meretricious——â€</p> - -<p>Lady Castlewood in a basket under Mother’s arm, suddenly began to mew -very sadly. Aunt Gerty had put Robert the Devil down on the floor, in -his hamper, and I suppose a draught got to him, for he spat loudly. -Ariadne and I let out the poor things and they bounced straight out on -to the parquet floor, and their feet slid from under them. I never saw -two cats look so silly!</p> - -<p>“Well, if a cat can’t keep his feet on those wooden tiles,†said Mother, -“I don’t suppose I can,†and she jumped, just to try, right into the -middle of a little square of blue carpet, which, true enough, slid along -with her.</p> - -<p>“You can give a nice hop here, at any rate,†cried Aunt Gerty, catching -her round the waist, and waltzing all over the room, till both their -picture hats fell off, and hung down their backs by the pins. “Ask me -and all the boys, and give a nice sit-down supper, and do us as well as -the old villain will allow you.â€</p> - -<p>She was quite happy. That is just like an actress!<a name="page_057" id="page_057"></a> Ariadne and I danced -too, and the cats mewed loudly for strangeness. Cats hate newness of any -kind, and they weren’t easy till I got some newspaper, crackled it, and -let them sit on it, and then they were all right. Then Mother and Aunt -Gerty rang the queer-shaped bell, as if it would sting them, and got up -some coals which Mother had had the forethought to order in, and lit a -modest little fire in a great cave with brass images in front of it -under the kind of copper hood. It wouldn’t draw at first, being used to -logs, and when it smoked we threw water on it, lest we dirtied the -beautiful silk hangings. At last we fetched Elizabeth Cawthorne.</p> - -<p>“Hout!†she said. “I’d like to see the fire that’s going to get the -better of me!â€</p> - -<p>She made it burn, sulkily, and Ariadne and I went to a shop we knew of -round the corner, and bought tea and sugar and condensed milk, to make -ourselves tea with the spirit-lamp Aunt Gerty had brought. We had no -butter or bread, only biscuits luckily, so we couldn’t stain the Cinque -Cento chairs, whose gold trimmings were simply peeling off them. Sit on -them we dared not, they would have let us down on the floor for a -certainty. Mother and Aunt Gerty had a high old time blaming Lady Scilly -for all her foolish arrangements, and then we all went down to the -so-called kitchen to see how Elizabeth Cawthorne was getting on there. -She was in a rage, but trying to pass it off, like a good soul as she -is.</p> - -<p>“Well, I never! Here’s a gold handle to my coal-cellar door! I shall -have to wipe my lily hands<a name="page_058" id="page_058"></a> before I dare use it. And a fine lady of a -dresser that I shall be shy to set a plain dish on. Beetles here, do you -ask, woman?†(To Kate.) “They’d be ashamed to show their faces in such a -smart place as this, I’m thinking. And what’s this couple of drucken -little candlesticks for the kitchen? Our Kate’ll soon rive the fond bit -handles from off them, or she’s not the girl I take her for!â€</p> - -<p>She banged it hard against the dresser as servants do, to make it break, -but it didn’t, and she looked disappointed. Mother then suggested she -should unpack a favourite frying-pan she never goes anywhere without, -and sent Kate out for a pound and a half of loin-chops, and cook was to -fry them for our dinners.</p> - -<p>The kitchen fire, after all, was the only one that would burn, so we ate -our chops there, and sat there till bed-time. Ariadne looked like a -picture, sitting at a trestle-table, and a thing like a torch burning at -the back of her head. She was thoroughly disgusted, and got quite cross, -and so did Elizabeth, as the evening went on. She hated trestles, and -flambeaus, and dark Rembrandtish corners, and couldn’t lay her hand on -her things nohow, so that when we all went up to bed, Mother said to -her—</p> - -<p>“Good-night, Elizabeth. You have been a bit upset, haven’t you? I wonder -we have managed to get through the day without a row!â€</p> - -<p>“So do I, ma’am,†said the cook. “Heaps of times I’d have given you -warning for twopence, but you never gave me ought to lay hold on.<a name="page_059" id="page_059"></a>â€</p> - -<p>A horrid wind sprang up and moaned us off to sleep. I thought once or -twice of George out on the Mediterranean on a tippity yacht, and didn’t -quite want him to get drowned, though he had made us live in such an -uncomfortable house. I had tried to colonize a little, and put up a -photograph of Mother done at Ramsgate in a blue frame, to make me feel -more at home. Ariadne had hung up all her necklaces on a row of nails. -She has forty. There is one made of dried marrowfat peas, that she -nibbles when she is nervous, and another of horse’s jesses, or whatever -you call them, sewn on red velvet. We have a bed each, costing -fourteen-and-six. They are apt to shut up with you in them. There is no -carpet in our room, and there are not to be any. We are to be hardy. -Nothing rouses one like a touch of cold floor in the mornings, and cools -one on hot nights better than the same. Our water-jug too is an odd -shape. I tilted all the water out of it on to the floor the first time I -tried to use it. It must be French, it is so small. I shall not wash my -hands very often in the days to come, I fancy.</p> - -<p>Ariadne began to get reconciled to our room when she had made up her -mind it was like the bower of a mediæval chatelaine, or like Princess -Ursula’s bedroom in Carpaccio, but I prefer Early Victorian, and cried -myself to sleep.</p> - -<p>Next morning Ben come along; he had stayed all night at the Hitchings’, -in Corinth Road. Jessie Hitchings likes Ben best of the family. She may -marry him, when he is grown up, if she likes. He<a name="page_060" id="page_060"></a> has birth, but no -education, so that will make them even. The only glimmering of hope I -see for Ben is that in this house there seems to be no bedroom for him, -unless it is a room at the top with all the water tanks in it, which -makes me think perhaps George is going to send him to school? For the -present we have arranged him a bed in the butler’s pantry. Ben says -perhaps George means him to be butler, as he has laid it down as a rule -that only women servants are to be used in Cinque Cento House. They look -so much nicer than men, George says; he likes a houseful of waving -cap-ribbons. Mother thinks she can work a house best on one servant, and -better still on none. George doesn’t mind her having any amount of boys -from the Home near here, but that doesn’t suit Mother. She says one boy -isn’t much good, that two boys is only one and a half, and that three -boys is no boy at all. I suppose they get playing together? Ariadne and -I would, in their place, I know, and human nature is the same, even in a -Home, though I can’t call ours quite that.<a name="page_061" id="page_061"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI</h2> - -<p>G<small>EORGE</small> makes a point of refusing to be interviewed. He hates it, unless -it is for one of the best papers. Then he says that it is a sheer -kindness, and that a successful man has no right to refuse some poor -devil or other the chance of making an honest pound or two. So he -suffers him gladly. He even is good enough to work on the thing a little -in the proof: just to give the poor fellow a lift, and prevent him -making a fool of himself and getting his facts all wrong. In the end -George writes the whole thing entirely from beginning to end, and makes -the man a present of a complete magazine article, and a very fine one -too!</p> - -<p>“I have been generous,†he tells us. “I have offered myself up as a -burnt sacrifice. I have given myself all, without reservation. I have -nothing extenuated, everything set down in malice. I have owned to -strange sins that I never committed, to idiosyncrasies that took me all -my time to invent, and all to bump out an article by some one else. I -have been butchered to make a journalistic holiday!â€</p> - -<p>This is all very nice and self-sacrificing of George, but this -particular interview read very well when it<a name="page_062" id="page_062"></a> came out, and made George -seem a very interesting sort of man with some quaint habits, not half so -funny as his real ones, though, and I think the interviewer might just -as well have given those.</p> - -<p>So, when I got a chance of telling the truth, I did, meaning to act for -the best, and give Papa a good show and save him the trouble of telling -it all himself, but nobody gave me credit for my good intentions, and -kind heart.</p> - -<p>In the first place, how dared I put myself forward and offer to see -George’s visitors! But the young man asked for me—at least, when he was -told that George was out, he said might he see one of the young ladies? -Of course I don’t suppose that would have occurred to him, only I was -leaning over the new aluminium bannisters, and caught his eye. Then an -idea seemed to come into his head. The look of disappointment that had -come over him when he was told that George was out changed to a little -happy perky look, as if he had just thought of something amusing. He -crooked his little finger at me as I slid down the bannister, and said -would I do? and would he come in? Kate is a cheeky girl, but even the -cook admits that Kate is not a patch upon me. Kate evidently didn’t -think it quite right, but she slunk away into the back premises, and -left me to deal with the young man.</p> - -<p>He handed me a card. I thought that very polite of him, and “<i>Mr. -Frederick Cook</i>,†and Representative of <i>The Bittern</i> down in the -corner, explained it all to me. We take in about a hundred rags, and<a name="page_063" id="page_063"></a> -that’s the name of one of them. It’s called <i>The Bittern</i> because it -booms people, so George says.</p> - -<p>“I suppose you have come to interview my Father,†I said. “I’m sorry, -but he is out. Did you have an appointment?â€</p> - -<p>“No, I didn’t,†said the young man right out.</p> - -<p>I liked his nice bold way of speaking; he was the least shy young man I -ever met.</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe in appointments. The subject is conscious, primed, -braced up, ready with a series of cards, so to speak, which he wishes to -force on the patient public—a collection of least characteristic facts -which he would like dragged into prominence. It is as if a man should go -to the dentist with his mind made up as to the number of teeth that he -is to have pulled out, a decision which should always rest with any -dentist who respects himself.â€</p> - -<p>He went running on like that, not a bit shy, or anything, and amused me -very much.</p> - -<p>“But then the worst of that is, you’ve got no appointment with George, -and he is not here to have his teeth pulled out.â€</p> - -<p>I really so far wasn’t quite sure if he was an interviewer or a dentist, -but I kept calm.</p> - -<p>“All the better, my dear young lady, that is if you are willing to aid -and abet me a little. Then we shall have a thundering good interview, I -can promise you. You see, in my theory of interviewing, the actual -collaboration of the patient—shall we call him?—is unnecessary. -Indeed, it is more in the nature of an impediment. My method, which of<a name="page_064" id="page_064"></a> -course I have very few opportunities of practising, is to seek out his -nearest and dearest, those who have the privilege—or annoyance—of -seeing him at all hours, at all seasons, unawares. If a painter, ’tis -the wife of his brush that I would question; if an author, the partner -of his pen—do you take me?â€</p> - -<p>Yes, I “took†him, and as George had called me a cockatrice—a very -favourite term of abuse with him—only that morning, and remembering how -she swaggers about being George’s Egeria, I said, “You’ll have to go to -Lady Scilly for that!â€</p> - -<p>“Quite so!†he said very naturally. “Your distinguished parent dedicated -his last book to her, did he not? Did you approve, may I ask?â€</p> - -<p>“No,†I said. “People should always dedicate all their works to their -wife, whether they love her or not, that’s what I think!â€</p> - -<p>“Quite so,†he said again. “I see we agree famously, and between us we -shall concoct a splendid interview. But now, if you would be so very -good, and happen to have a small portion of leisure at your -disposal——â€</p> - -<p>“I’ll do what I can for you,†I said, delighted at his nice polite way -of putting things. “I’ll take you round the house, shall I? Have you a -Kodak with you? Would you like to take a snapshot at George’s -typewriter?â€</p> - -<p>“Certainly, if she is pretty,†said the silly man, and I explained that -Miss Mander was out, and that it was the machine I meant. He said one -machine was very like another, but that if he might see the<a name="page_065" id="page_065"></a> study, -where so many beautiful thoughts had taken shape? He said it quite -gravely, but I felt he was laughing in his jacket all the time.</p> - -<p>“We’ll take it all <i>seriam</i>!†I said, not wishing him to have all the -fine words. “And we will begin at the beginning—I mean the atrium.â€</p> - -<p>He had a little pocket-book in his hand, and he said, as I led the way -through the hall, “You won’t mind my writing things down as they occur -to me?â€</p> - -<p>“Not at all!†I said. “If you will let me look at what you have written. -I see you have put a lot already.â€</p> - -<p>He laughed and handed me his book, and I read—</p> - -<p>“<i>Through dusky suites, lit by stained glass windows, whose dim -cloistral light, falling on lurid hangings and gorgeous masses of -Titianesque drapery, and antique ebon panelling, irresistibly suggest -the languorous mysteries of a mediæval palace....</i> Do you think your -father will like this style?â€</p> - -<p>“You have made it rather stuffy—piled it on a good deal, the drapery -and hangings, I mean!†I said. “Now that I know the sort of thing you -write, I shan’t want to read any more.â€</p> - -<p>“I thought you wouldn’t,†he said, taking it back. “I’ll read it to you. -‘<i>Behind this arras might lurk Benvenuto and his dagger——</i>’â€</p> - -<p>“Not Ben’s dagger, but Papa’s bicycle.â€</p> - -<p>“We’ll leave it there and keep it out of the interview,†he said. “It -would spoil the unity of the effect. ‘<i>On, on, through softly-carpeted -ante-rooms<a name="page_066" id="page_066"></a> where the footstep softer falls, than petals of blown roses -on the grass....</i>’â€</p> - -<p>“I hate poetry!†I said. “And we mayn’t walk on that part of the carpet -for fear of blurring the Magellanic clouds in the pattern. Do you know -anything about Magellanic clouds in carpets?â€</p> - -<p>“No, I confess I have never trod them before,†he said, becoming all at -once respectful to me. I expect he lives in a garret, and has no carpet -at all, and I thought I would be good to him, and help him to bump out -his article, and not cram him, but tell him where things really came -from. So I drew his attention particularly to the aluminium eagle, and -the pinchbeck serpent George picked up in Wardour Street. I left out -George’s famous yarn about the sack of our ancestral Palace in Turin in -the fifteenth century, when the Veros were finally disseminated or -dissipated, whichever it is. I don’t believe it myself, but George -always accounts for his swarthy complexion by his Italian grandmother. -Aunt Gerty says it is all his grandmother, or in other words, all liver!</p> - -<p>We went down-stairs into the study, which is the largest room in the -house.</p> - -<p>“Your father has realized the wish of the Psalmist,†said <i>The Bittern</i> -man. “<i>Set my feet in a large room!</i>â€</p> - -<p>“He likes to have room to spread himself,†I said, “and to swing -cats—books in, I mean.â€</p> - -<p>“So your father uses missiles in the fury of composition?<a name="page_067" id="page_067"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Sometimes; but oftenest he swears, and that saves the books. He mostly -swears. Look here!â€</p> - -<p>I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander’s handwriting, and on -it was written, “Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. -Vero-Taylor during the last hour.â€</p> - -<p><i>The Bittern</i> man looked at them, and, “By Jove! these are corkers!†he -said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There -was Drayton, the ironmonger’s bill lying about too, and I saw him raise -his eyebrows at the last item, “<i>To one chased brass handle for -coal-cellar door</i>.â€</p> - -<p>“That’s what I call being thorough!†said <i>The Bittern</i> man. “I’m -thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!â€</p> - -<p>He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see -the pen George uses. “Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?†he asked.</p> - -<p>“Mercy, no!†I screamed out. “He would have an indigestion! This is his -pen—at least, it is this week’s pen. George is wasteful of pens; he -eats one a week.â€</p> - -<p>“Very interesting!†said he. “Most authors have a fetish, but I never -heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat -paragraph. Come on!â€</p> - -<p>You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I -showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey -carpet spread on it, instead of a white one—that was how<a name="page_068" id="page_068"></a> they had it -in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable -Mediæval was, and if it wasn’t for the honour and glory of it, how much -we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors -reflect—there’s not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne -can see herself in when she’s dressing to go out to a party—or chairs -that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are -forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death!</p> - -<p>“Very hard lines!†said <i>The Bittern</i> man. “I confess that this point of -view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my -article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its -votaries——â€</p> - -<p>“Yes,†I said. “Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne’s -photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! ‘To think -that any wife of his—’ ‘Cæsar’s wife must be above suspicion!’ And as -for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue -plush.â€</p> - -<p>“Capital!†said <i>The Bittern</i> man. “All good grist for the interview! -And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard -so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?â€</p> - -<p>“Except that we are not allowed to go up them—Ariadne and me—without -taking our boots off first, for fear of scratching the polish. We have -to strip our feet in the housemaid’s pantry, and carry them<a name="page_069" id="page_069"></a> up in our -hands. That’s rather a bore, you will admit!â€</p> - -<p>“And your father? Does he bow to his own decrees?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, no!†I said. “Papa is the exception that proves the rule.â€</p> - -<p>“Capital!†again remarked <i>The Bittern</i> man. “I am getting to know all -about the great Mr. Vero-Taylor in the fierce light that beats upon the -domestic hearth! But, by the way,†he said, with a little crooked look -at me, “it is usual—shall I say something about Mrs. Vero-Taylor? -People generally like an allusion—just a hint of feminine presence—say -the mistress of the house flitting about, tending her ferns, or what -not?â€</p> - -<p>“You must put her in the kitchen, then,†I said, “tending her servants. -Would you like to see her?â€</p> - -<p>“I should not like to disturb her,†he said politely. “Will you describe -her for me?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, mother’s nice and thin—a good figure—I should hate to have one of -those feather-beddy mothers, don’t you know? But I don’t really think -you need describe her. I don’t think she cares about being in the -interview, thank you, but you may say that my sister Ariadne is -ravishingly beautiful, if you like?â€</p> - -<p>“And what about you, Miss——?†he asked, looking at me.</p> - -<p>“Tempe Vero-Taylor,†I said. “But whatever you do, don’t put me in! -George would have a fit!<a name="page_070" id="page_070"></a> He won’t much like your mentioning Ariadne, -but I don’t see why she shouldn’t have a show, if I can give her one.â€</p> - -<p>“Very well,†he said. “Your ladyship shall be obeyed. Now I really think -I have got enough, unless——†I saw his eyes straying up-stairs.</p> - -<p>“There’s nothing much to see up those stairs, except George’s bedroom, -and I daren’t take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like -the rest of the house, but very, <i>very</i> comfortable.â€</p> - -<p>“Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn’t -trouble to black more than his face and arms,†said <i>The Bittern</i> man. -“And <i>your</i> rooms?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we -have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediæval castle -would have. Now that’s all, and——â€</p> - -<p>The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought -it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. -George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This -reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. -<i>The Bittern</i> man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked -me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how -he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had -told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on -that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, -and would<a name="page_071" id="page_071"></a> gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the -circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at -least have a <i>succès de scandale</i>, at least I think that is what he -said, for I don’t understand French very well. While he was making all -those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little -grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, -and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn’t. George opened the -door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw <i>The -Bittern</i> man and came forward, and <i>The Bittern</i> man came forward too, -with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the -Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little.</p> - -<p>“I came from <i>The Bittern</i>,†he said, and George nodded, to show he knew -what for. “To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview——â€</p> - -<p>“I am sorry I happened to be out!†began George, and then I knew, by the -sound of his voice, that <i>The Bittern</i> was a <i>good</i> paper. “But if it is -not too late, I shall be happy——â€</p> - -<p>“No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir,†the interviewer -said, waving his hand a little. “I came, and I go not empty away, but -with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my -pocket. You left an admirable <i>locum tenens</i> in the person of your -daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of -the necessity of troubling <i>you</i>. You will doubtless be relieved also. I -shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!<a name="page_072" id="page_072"></a>â€</p> - -<p>And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened -the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George -said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, -and <i>The Bittern</i> man never sent a proof after all, so when the article -came out—“<i>Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe -Vero-Taylor</i>,‗I got some more. That is the first and last time I was -ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I -see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. -Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve -his ambition like that. George didn’t punish him, of course, he is a -power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery.<a name="page_073" id="page_073"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII</h2> - -<p>I <small>WONDER</small> if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering -and interfering in their affairs? I don’t mind our having a -house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please -Lady Scilly.</p> - -<p>“A party! A party!†she said to George, clasping her hands in her silly -way. “My party on the table!†like the woman in the play of <i>Ibsen</i>. -“Ask all the dear, amusing literary people that I adore. And I’ll bring -a large contingent of smart people, if I may, to meet them. Please, -<i>please</i>!â€</p> - -<p>I don’t know what a contingent is, but I fancy it’s something -disagreeable. Lady Scilly is George’s friend, not Mother’s. She has only -called on Mother once, and that was in the old house, and then Mother -was not receiving as they call it, so she has never even seen the -mistress of the house where she is going to give the party. Christina -Mander, George’s secretary, says that is quite the new way of doing -things, and she has been about a great deal, and ought to know.</p> - -<p>Miss Mander is a lady. She is very thin, one of those lath-and-plaster -women, you know, that seem to live to support a small waist that is -their greatest<a name="page_074" id="page_074"></a> beauty, but when we first knew her, she was plump and -jolly-looking. We practically got her for George. Years ago, when we -were quite little and had had measles, we were sent down to a sort of -boarding-house at Ramsgate to an old lady, an ex-dresser in some theatre -Aunt Gerty knew, and who could neither see to mend or to keep us in -order, though she got thirty shillings a week for doing it. They never -got us up till nine; I suppose the slavey thought sufficient for the day -was the evil thereof, and tried to make the evil’s day as short as -possible. One morning when it was quite nine, and the sun was shining -in, Ariadne and I were feeling frightfully bored, so we got up in our -night-gowns, moved a wardrobe, and found a door behind it into another -house. It was quite a smart house, with soft plush carpets and -nicely-varnished yellow doors. We went all over it. Only the cat was -awake, licking herself in the window-seat. The bedroom doors were all -shut except one, and we went in and found a nice girl in bed with her -gold hair all spread over the pillow. She didn’t seem shocked at us, but -laughed, and when we had explained, she wished us to get into the bed -beside her. It had sheets trimmed with lace, and her initials, C. M., on -the pillow. We did this every morning till we went away. She kept us up, -afterwards sending us Christmas cards and so on, and when George -advertised for a secretary to help him to sub-edit <i>Wild Oats</i>, she -answered it, among the thousand others, and we remembered her name and -made George engage her.<a name="page_075" id="page_075"></a></p> - -<p>She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D’Auban’s -dancing academy, and to Klondike—where all her hair got cut off, so -that she hasn’t enough to spread over the pillow now—and behind the -scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper -once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new -arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed -for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her -mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when -George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, -tortoise-shell <i>pince-nez</i> and all, but she took to Mother at first -sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this “new move of dear -Christina’s.â€</p> - -<p>She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had -developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on -saying the name of George’s new magazine, as if it shocked her very -much.</p> - -<p>“<i>Wild Oats!</i> Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them -somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You’ll look -after her, won’t you? Is there any danger‗she looked towards the -study-door‗of her falling in love with her employer?†She laughed -carelessly.</p> - -<p>“Not the slightest!†said Mother, laughing too. “She will have her eyes -opened, that’s all, to the seamy side of artistic life.â€</p> - -<p>“My daughter is so absurdly curious about that<a name="page_076" id="page_076"></a> wretched seamy side. -After all, it’s only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they -must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But -we don’t need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!â€</p> - -<p>“I quite agree with you,†said Mother. “Only if one happens to be the -scullery-maid——â€</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I -was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual.</p> - -<p>“And,†said Mrs. Mander, “she buys everything that comes out, especially -badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and -look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she -came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his -magazine—<i>Wild Oats</i>. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it -sounds so <i>very</i> advanced!â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, very,†said Aunt Gerty. “But it won’t live!â€</p> - -<p>“You don’t say so?†Mrs. Mander put up her <i>pince-nez</i> and looked at -Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn’t like.</p> - -<p>“None of my brother-in-law’s things do!†Aunt Gerty went on calmly. “He -is a prize wrecker—of women and magazines!â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the -conversation.</p> - -<p>“Oh, he’s a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is,†went on Aunt Gerty. -“But I don’t think he’ll convert Miss Mander to his views.<a name="page_077" id="page_077"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“I hope not,†said Mrs. Mander, “for I notice that if you make a law -unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! -At least as far as women are concerned.â€</p> - -<p>“People will always let you go your own way,†said Mother; “but the -point is, will they come with you—join with you in a pleasant walk?â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†said Mrs. Mander, “my daughter is the most headstrong of young -women. I can’t control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed -her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor.â€</p> - -<p>“I gathered as much,†said Mother, not offended a bit. “But I will look -after her well!†She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make -her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week.</p> - -<p>Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecænas! Ben says she a minx. Ben -hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a -cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but -then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother -won’t go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that -George doesn’t try to persuade her much. You see, he isn’t used to -having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all -those years!</p> - -<p>George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina -is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should -he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide<a name="page_078" id="page_078"></a> it under -a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she -says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She -says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the -hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old -house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; -anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, -for his Sundays were only for a select few—very selected. He only gave -tea and bread-and-butter—very little butter—and no table-cloth—plain -living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he -pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to -the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, -and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own -house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him -to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his -solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a -Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of -the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But -that would not do for George, for he isn’t at all hermit-like, and he -can make epigrams! They say that is his <i>forte</i>. I hate them myself, I -think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people’s feelings -so that they can’t complain, but then, of course, the family gets them -in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home.<a name="page_079" id="page_079"></a></p> - -<p>George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He -said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out -of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he -would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging -from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, -and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and -peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat -on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the -smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other’s -faces! That didn’t suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much -as she could.</p> - -<p>Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still -Mediæval, at six o’clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, -because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it -can’t go all round. That’s the reason we have finger-bowls now, and -little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to -eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can -see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own -trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that -loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen -Mother’s face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said -she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers’ -and the butchers’ shops back a century?<a name="page_080" id="page_080"></a></p> - -<p>The first course, George explained, was quite easy—it was little bits -of toast with honey and hypocras.</p> - -<p>“Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?†Mother said, -meaning to be funny. “There’s a very civil young man there might help -me?â€</p> - -<p>“Next course, smoked eels,†went on George. “Any soup you like, only it -must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have -venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, -oranges, capers in vinegar——â€</p> - -<p>“It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and -ever, that’s one good thing!†Mother said, “for nobody will care to try -that <i>menu</i> twice!â€</p> - -<p>“It would look well in the papers, though,†George said. “What do you -say to barbecued pig?â€</p> - -<p>But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and -Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not -obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at -twelve o’clock, and all the guests to unmask then.</p> - -<p>The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but -at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had -designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing -red splotch in one corner, which signified George’s passionate Italian -nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with<a name="page_081" id="page_081"></a> -Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to -open everything!</p> - -<p>“My Goodness!†she said.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t it right?†I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at -it I was no wiser, for I couldn’t see what was wrong. There it was, -written out very nicely, “<i>Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the -twenty-first</i>,†and the address in the corner, and all those rules about -the dominos, and that was all.</p> - -<p>“Oh, dear darling Christina,†I begged, deadly curious, “do tell me what -is wrong with that? I cannot guess.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s just as well, perhaps,†she said. “Preserve your sublime -ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can.â€</p> - -<p>And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that -being loyal to her employer.</p> - -<p>I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one -better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was -<i>Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home</i>! I think that was absurd, for -though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn’t quite live -here yet! and Mother does, and what’s more, Mother never goes out at all -except to take a servant’s character, or scold the butcher, or something -of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from -him, and looked at it, and I’ll swear I saw her smile before she tore it -up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn’t tell me what was wrong -with the first card.</p> - -<p>We began to write in the names of the people. It<a name="page_082" id="page_082"></a> took us a whole -morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, -though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I -don’t believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now -and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted -asked—six, no less, if you please—and she’s only been out six months! -And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a -card trick! But he didn’t take any notice, and kept walking up and down -the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody -wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; -there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have -than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of -course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more -of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there -had been about it. I kept saying, “Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You -give me all the plain people to do.â€</p> - -<p>Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all -away after fifty had been written.</p> - -<p>Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to -do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he -was going to announce it in the pages of <i>The Bittern</i>, and that all his -friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how -should she know how many<a name="page_083" id="page_083"></a> to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that -depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know -that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that -you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and -find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real -friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the -acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and -lemonade. There should be a password, <i>Hot with</i>, and <i>cold without</i>, -and they roared when I told them this, but I didn’t see why. Then the -party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where -they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn’t call -themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn’t be able to -come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems -to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They -have to be paid for coming, surely, and I’d rather see them than any of -the others. “If they don’t come the party will be spoilt for me,†I said -to Christina.</p> - -<p>“It will be all right,†she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of -course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like.</p> - -<p>Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that -brother of Cæsar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of -Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny -thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, -while I look like a big boy.<a name="page_084" id="page_084"></a> My legs are very long. George has a monk’s -costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of -looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very -nice.</p> - -<p>I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it -somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that -anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, -bell-like—I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but -he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others.</p> - -<p>The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs -of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved -away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently -lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in -moderation; it was rather fun—I felt as if I were planting bulbs. -George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be -put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to -put it on the fire.<a name="page_085" id="page_085"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII</h2> - -<p>A<small>BOUT</small> nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o’clock the house was -overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger’s -costume he had borrowed, with George’s consent, and I do believe he -enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was -to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the -evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, -for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. -I’m sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people -didn’t come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were -detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at -their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a -detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with -a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of -course, but the devil needs no domino. And <i>I</i> knew all the time that it -was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for <i>The -Bittern</i>, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, -and I had no butter to my bread for a<a name="page_086" id="page_086"></a> week because of him. How I was -supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I -can’t see, only <i>The Bittern</i> man knew well enough, I expect! Never, -<i>never</i> again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer!</p> - -<p>There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them -discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get -jammed in behind, “powerless to move,†as they say in the novels, even -if I had wanted to. People <i>are</i> careless. I heard heaps of -conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, -without stopping to think whether or no I wasn’t one of the family. I -suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn’t -matter what they said, and it needn’t count afterwards.</p> - -<p>The man I listened to was <i>The Bittern</i> man, dressed as the devil. The -woman’s domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any -colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. <i>The -Bittern</i> man seemed to know her.</p> - -<p>“I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in -London?â€</p> - -<p>The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask.</p> - -<p>“Not quite, but very nearly,†she said. “I am a gas. Give me a name!â€</p> - -<p>“I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?â€</p> - -<p>“Is it a noxious gas?†she said, “for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I -only speak of things as I<a name="page_087" id="page_087"></a> find them, and one must send up bright copy, -or one wouldn’t be taken on. I tell the truth——â€</p> - -<p>“Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!†said he. “The devil -and <i>The Bittern</i> are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that -makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than -one. Now tell me, can’t we exchange celebrities? I’ll give you my names, -and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?â€</p> - -<p>“All the world—and somebody else’s wife!†she said quickly, and the -devil rubbed his hands. “But that is the rub—we can’t know who they all -are till twelve o’clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will -decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest -mended.â€</p> - -<p>“Then we shall have to invent them!†he said. “The very form of -invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me -which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here.â€</p> - -<p>“Naturally! Wasn’t it she who discovered George Vero-Taylor and made him -the fashion, you know?â€</p> - -<p>“Do you suppose he was particularly obliged to her for digging his -family out as well?â€</p> - -<p>“You naughty man! But it was a most extraordinary thing, wasn’t it? -Delightful, and not too scandalous to use. For the man is really quite -harmless, only a frantic <i>poseur</i> and——â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, yes, and posed in London Society for ten years as an unmarried man! -Suppose some nice girl had gone and fallen in love with him?<a name="page_088" id="page_088"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, but he was careful, as careful as a good <i>parti</i> has to be in the -London season. He lent them his books, and guanoed their minds -thoroughly, but he always sheered off when they showed signs of taking -him seriously.â€</p> - -<p>“Chose married women to flirt with, for preference? What does the wife -say?â€</p> - -<p>“The wife? So there is a wife! But no one has ever seen her. Perpetual -hay-fever, or something of the sort.â€</p> - -<p>“That is what Vero-Taylor gives out.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, I don’t really think there is anything in—with Lady Scilly, I -mean. He is too selfish—they are both too selfish. Those sort of women -are like the Leaning Tower, they lean but never fall. It is an alliance -of interest, so to speak. He introduces the literary element into her -parties, and writes her novel for her, and in return she flatters him -and takes his daughter out. Poor girl, she would be quite pretty, if she -were properly dressed, but the mediæval superstition, you know—she has -to dress like a Monna Somebody or other, so as to advertise his books. I -believe she did refuse to have her hair shaved off her forehead <i>à la -Rimini</i>, but she mostly has to comply——â€</p> - -<p>“Well, I never heard of a man using his daughter as a sandwich-man -before. Which is she?â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen pointed out Ariadne, whose bath-towel was -tumbling all over her eyes.</p> - -<p>“She looks half-starved!†said <i>The Bittern</i> man.</p> - -<p>“My dear man,†said Sulphuretta Hydrogen,<a name="page_089" id="page_089"></a> “don’t you know that they -have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told -that they have a kind of buttery-hatch—a cold pie always cut in the -cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so -disposed.â€</p> - -<p>“Well, they are free, at any rate—free from the trammels of custom——â€</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!â€</p> - -<p>I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told -about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the -buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman -that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said—</p> - -<p>“Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a -position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she -chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she -eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn’t far behind-hand, -though he is yellow!â€</p> - -<p>And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! -But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball?</p> - -<p>I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to -make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there’s a will -there’s a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to -like it. Though I don’t believe young men marry the girls who make eyes -at them best, and as Ariadne’s one object is to marry<a name="page_090" id="page_090"></a> and get out of -this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong -way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was.</p> - -<p>“I am sure I don’t know,†she said crossly.</p> - -<p>“I’ll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is,†I said. “She is in the -party—in the room!â€</p> - -<p>“Well, I can’t help that!†said Ariadne, tossing her head. “Mother ought -to look after her better.â€</p> - -<p>I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in -her own house, and even her own daughter didn’t seem to care whether she -was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady -Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn’t, for I -thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino—I seemed to -remember having helped to hem it. They needn’t say that eyes can’t look -bright in a mask, for this woman’s did. She went up to George, and she -didn’t speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of -French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat.</p> - -<p>“<i>Eh, bien, beau masque!</i>†was what she said. “I know you, but you do -not know me!â€</p> - -<p>“I know you by your eyes,†he said. “Eyes like the sea——â€</p> - -<p>Now, Lady Scilly’s eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them -that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that -George was talking without thinking.</p> - -<p>“Eyes without their context mean nothing!†she said, and then I knew the -woman was Christina, for<a name="page_091" id="page_091"></a> that was the very thing she had once said to -Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice.</p> - -<p>“Come!†she said to George. “Speak to me, say anything to me that the -hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!â€</p> - -<p>“Madame!†said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but -after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had -no idea that Christina could have done it so well!</p> - -<p>“Come,†she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown -impatient. “Come, a madrigal—a <i>ballade</i>, in any kind of china!â€</p> - -<p>I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn’t Lady -Scilly. She couldn’t have managed that about ballads and lyrics.</p> - -<p>He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little—just a -little.</p> - -<p>“No, no, I dare not!†she cried out. “There is a hobgoblin called Ben in -the room—a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why -on earth don’t you send that boy to school?â€</p> - -<p>I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, -and he took the first chance of leaving the mask’s side. There wasn’t a -buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so -hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn’t -say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying -themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only -time people are really gay,<a name="page_092" id="page_092"></a> I observe, is at a funeral, or at <i>Every -man</i>, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn’t be jolly.</p> - -<p>I was thinking sadly about my dear Mother, and wondering where she was, -when I ran against a Frenchman, a real Frenchman, and he asked me where -was the mistress of the house, and that showed me that other people -thought about her too; I didn’t answer for a moment, and he went on in a -kind of dreamy voice—</p> - -<p>“I was brought here to see an English interior——â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†I said. “It’s inside four walls, isn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>“<i>Mon Dieu, mademoiselle</i>,†said he, “I had made to myself another idea -of <i>le home Anglais</i>—the fireside—the <i>maîtresse de la maison</i> with -her keys depending from her girdle—the children—the sacred children, -standing round her—<i>bébé</i> crowing——â€</p> - -<p>“There isn’t any baby!†I said, “and a good thing too! But this is a -party, don’t you see, and we are all playing the fool, and we shall be -sensible to-morrow, and if you will excuse me, I am one of the sacred -children, and I am just looking for my mother’s knee to go and stand -against.â€</p> - -<p>He made way for me with a “<i>Permettez, mademoiselle!</i>†and I went, -thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. -Ben didn’t know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the -door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling -people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in -the street, with a man, who was George.<a name="page_093" id="page_093"></a> There are tall bushes near our -door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door -gardens. Ben didn’t know till I told him; he is the stupid child that -doesn’t know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She -had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There’s -a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn’t, being a -poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it -couldn’t be seen under her mask, and whined,</p> - -<p>“Oh, I’m so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!â€</p> - -<p>“For beautiful women—I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes -of dialogue,†George said; “there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck -your red pleasure from the teeth of pain.†...</p> - -<p>“Yes, I am very wicked,†she said. “My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do -you know, I am almost afraid of myself.â€</p> - -<p>“As I am—as we all are,†said George.</p> - -<p>“Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are -you so guarded, so unenterprising?â€</p> - -<p>She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that -Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn’t, so she couldn’t think -why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was -bi-chaperoned—if that is the way to put it—for there was me too. Ben -and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don’t think George did, because he could -not quite make a fool of himself<a name="page_094" id="page_094"></a> before Ben. Besides, it was draughty -out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to -come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn’t. She said she had -never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and -she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some -rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity -again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and -there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, -since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it.</p> - -<p>George looked at his watch, and said, “In ten minutes they will give the -signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better——?â€</p> - -<p>“I shall leave the party,†she said. “I shall walk straight home! It -will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet -again in the glare of——â€</p> - -<p>“The lights are shaded,†George put in.</p> - -<p>“I alluded to the glare of publicity!†she said. “I shall ask this -commissionaire,†she said, “to call my carriage——â€</p> - -<p>“Better not,†said George hastily, “for you would have to give him your -name,—your name which I know. For my sake—won’t you slip back into the -ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like -the rest? Believe me it is best.â€</p> - -<p>“It is my host commands, is it not?†she said slyly, to show him that -she had known it was he all<a name="page_095" id="page_095"></a> the time, and ran past him, in a skittish -way. As if he hadn’t known all the time that she knew that he knew that -she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in -pretending.</p> - -<p>Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up -a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which -seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted -so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the -devil was going with her. He was <i>The Bittern</i> man, of course, only I -didn’t know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly.</p> - -<p>“You know the way?†she was asking him.</p> - -<p>“I know the house, like the inside of a glove,†he said, and indeed he -did, for hadn’t I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me -instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, -rather like Puck was, in <i>Midsummer Night’s Dream</i>, so I thought I would -stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off -her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved -so badly in both. <i>The Bittern</i> man offered to show her the way to -George’s sanctum.</p> - -<p>“You see, you can go where you like in a show-house—or ought to be able -to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate.â€</p> - -<p>“The press is too much with us, soon and late,†said she, laughing.</p> - -<p>“Ah, but confess, my lady, you can’t do without<a name="page_096" id="page_096"></a> us!†said this awful -young man—though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose -in everywhere in the interest of his paper. “You suffer us gladly.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t suffer at all—I shouldn’t allow you to make me suffer,†said -she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out -of the Bible.</p> - -<p>I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn’t steal -the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs.</p> - -<p>“I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe,†said -<i>The Bittern</i> man.</p> - -<p>“Haven’t you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less -eccentric as one goes up,†said Lady Scilly.</p> - -<p>“Art is only skin-deep,†said <i>The Bittern</i> man. “Just look at that bed, -which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive -or artistic than Staple’s.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and -let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear -our host give the word for unmasking.â€</p> - -<p>So they marched out of George’s bedroom, for that was where they had got -to—and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and -modern—and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. -Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I -wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her -work, for though the supper was<a name="page_097" id="page_097"></a> all sent in from a shop, there would be -sure to be something for her to do.</p> - -<p>These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in -a blaze of light and an empty kitchen—for the moment only, for one -heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, -and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady -Scilly and <i>The Bittern</i> man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a -checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and -looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen -fire, which had caught her face on one side.</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly and <i>The Bittern</i> man took no notice of her, but walked -about looking at things.</p> - -<p>“And so this is the Poet’s kitchen!†Lady Scilly said, rather -scornfully. “How his pots shine!â€</p> - -<p>“Very comfortable indeed!†said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise -George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask—“It’s no end of a -privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet’s use. -This is his soup-ladle, and——â€</p> - -<p>Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook’s sentence for -him.</p> - -<p>“And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat—and -I’m his wife!â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of -polite. He isn’t a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and -he began to come here.<a name="page_098" id="page_098"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX</h2> - -<p>S<small>MART</small> women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in -the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn’t got either of her own, so she is -always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom -asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age—too near. -That’s what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene -about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the -thing, I don’t care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly’s motor is -always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We -run into something live—or else the kerb—most times we are out, and -it’s extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though -once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get -into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is -just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. -I read an interview with her in <i>The Bittern</i> the other day (she had to -start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it -said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was -the daughter of a hundred Earls.<a name="page_099" id="page_099"></a> Now I call that nonsense, for how -could she be? There isn’t room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, -unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely.</p> - -<p>Lord Scilly is very well born too, he’s the eldest son of the Earl of -Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with -expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes -he would, but Lord Scilly doesn’t, because he’s not quite a beast. He is -very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding -her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have -heard that he doesn’t think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering -herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn’t understand -why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write -novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. -George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every -morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn’t mind in the least her -collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; -but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to -collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different.</p> - -<p>I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who -tells me everything, doesn’t think so much collaborating is quite what -is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, “blessed if she’d -let herself be put upon by a countess.â€</p> - -<p>Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy—that’s what<a name="page_100" id="page_100"></a> her name means, -Paquerette. That’s what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a -grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it -makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. -Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she -is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all -times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won’t. If she -gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may -say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and -listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am -always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish.</p> - -<p>The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve—Lady Scilly had -sent a messenger for me—she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue -tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was -writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a -few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly -all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers -with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and <i>La Femme -Polype</i> was the name of one, and <i>Madame Belle-et-m’aime</i> another. Lady -Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French -if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also -on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that -made me feel sleepy. There are daisies<a name="page_101" id="page_101"></a> worked all over the curtains and -the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors -hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush -things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw -so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with “To darling, -from Kitty London,†and as many more with “Best love, yours cordially, -Gladys Margate,†and I have given up trying to count the ones of -actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy -forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote <i>The Sorrows of the Amethyst</i>, -and one of the K.C. who wrote <i>Duchesses in the Divorce Court</i>—the -Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play -called <i>The Up-and-Down Girl</i>, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces -once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his -volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I -think he’s put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, -which isn’t often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. -There’s a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes—I don’t -suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so -big it would burst the post-bag—and there are two sorts of racks on it, -one to hold her bills that she hasn’t paid, and that’s got printed on it -in gold “<i>Oh Horrors!</i>†and another with those she has paid with “<i>Thank -Heaven!</i>†on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays -bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form,<a name="page_102" id="page_102"></a> but sends -something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however -broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker -would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances -are you’ll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, -being dead, you can’t be expected to pay!</p> - -<p>I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and -also, if they are writing, I can’t help seeing what it is, and then if -it is “<i>Dearests</i>†and “<i>Darlings</i>†I do feel awkward. But to-day when -she had said “How do you do?†she handed me the writing-board.</p> - -<p>“Write for me, dear,†she said, “to the most odious woman in London. And -the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she -dared to play Lady Ildegonde in <i>The Devey Devastator</i> at a <i>matinée</i> at -Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses—stood by the -management of course—and nails like a coal-heaver’s. Now don’t you -think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round -my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene -Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not -forgive her. Now you write. ‘<i>Dear thing!</i>’ Don’t be surprised, I can’t -afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! ‘<i>You were wonderful -yesterday! I know what’s what, and believe me that’s it!</i>’ I mean the -dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call -diplomacy. Don’t say any<a name="page_103" id="page_103"></a> more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will -see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything -for me, and <i>The Bittern</i> will do anything for her. We will go and see -her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, -dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!â€</p> - -<p>She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it -didn’t matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and -then she seemed to feel better.</p> - -<p>“I wish I could do without Miller!†she said. “Old Miller hates me, and -I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good ‘perks’ for that. -She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her -one day. So they will! I can’t afford to quarrel with a woman who can do -my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear -to-day, Miller?â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†said Mrs. Miller (she’s Scotch, and she is rather stingy of -“ladyshipsâ€), “there’s your blue that come home last week. It seems a -pity to leave it aside just yet.â€</p> - -<p>“You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can’t -put that on, it’s too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it.â€</p> - -<p>“Then there is the grey <i>panne</i>.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own -maid. No offence to you, Miller.â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t intend to take any, my lady,†said<a name="page_104" id="page_104"></a> Miller, pursing up her -lips. “What about your black with sequins?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, let’s have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child’s hair. -You see, I dress to you, my dear.â€</p> - -<p>But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just -as she chooses her horses to be a pair.</p> - -<p>Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only -thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her -nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once -had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I -shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it—the -best paints—and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year.</p> - -<p>Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in -Paris—rather purplish—it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is -just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and -looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked -away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, -and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if -her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little -tendrils of hair down on her forehead.</p> - -<p>“Child, child,†she said to me. “Do you know what makes me sigh?â€</p> - -<p>“Indigestion?†I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn’t, -that she never had had it,<a name="page_105" id="page_105"></a> it was only because she felt so terribly, so -diabolically, so preternaturally ugly.</p> - -<p>“Oh no, you look sweet!†I said. I really thought so, but Miller -grinned.</p> - -<p>“You are delightful!†Lady Scilly said. “And you can have that boa you -are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me -meretricious; and, child, when your time comes, don’t ever—ever—have -anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can’t leave it off, -and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to -subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the -time. Oh, <i>la, la</i>!â€</p> - -<p>I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we -read of in a book. I’ve seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her -black and blue, and she kept saying, “Go on! Harder! Harder!†but as it -didn’t seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn’t do it again. But I -took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself.</p> - -<p>When Lady Scilly was ready she said—“We won’t lunch in, we will go to -Prince’s and have a <i>filet</i>. Scilly’s in a bad temper because of bills. -Well, bills must come,—and I may go, I suppose. There’s no reason one -shouldn’t keep out of their way.â€</p> - -<p>She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she -told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us -at three o’clock.</p> - -<p>The butler said, “Very well, my lady. Your<a name="page_106" id="page_106"></a> ladyship has a lunch-party -of ten!†all in the same voice.</p> - -<p>“So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!†and she flopped into a hall -seat.</p> - -<p>“Yes, my lady,†Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door -again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude.</p> - -<p>So we took off our hats, at least I did—she wears a hat every time she -can, except in bed—and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and -her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I -know.</p> - -<p>Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, “You have got too much -on!â€</p> - -<p>She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so -as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office -laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like -blackberries on every bush—one of the penalties of greatness.</p> - -<p>“I’ve never really seen your face, Paquerette,†he said, “and I do -believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are -right not to make it too cheap. Who’s coming? Smart people, or one of -your Bohemian crowds?â€</p> - -<p>“You’ll see,†she said. “Mrs. Ptomaine, for one.â€</p> - -<p>“Dear Tommy!†said he. “I love her.... Desist, O wasp!†he said to one -that had come in by the window and was bothering him. “This is a -precursor of Tommy.â€</p> - -<p>“Tommy’s all right, so long as she hasn’t got her<a name="page_107" id="page_107"></a> knife into you. She -favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see -that she doesn’t make eyes at my tame millionaire.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, Mr. Pawky!†said Simon. “Is he coming? You should put me opposite, -so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn’t Tommy have a bit -of him? She’s terribly thin!â€</p> - -<p>“Because he isn’t a very big millionaire—only half a one—and there’s -only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may -flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else -is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and -mortally afraid of Lauderdale—and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I -nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should -like to have seen all your faces!â€</p> - -<p>Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the -millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and -indigestible, and as if millionairing didn’t agree with him. He could -only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little -“How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear†conversation with me, but he attended most -to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss -Lauderdale, and <i>Lady Ildegonde</i> and the dresses, and discussing -Society, as it is now.</p> - -<p>“Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No, -the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can’t -forgive is for people to bore us!<a name="page_108" id="page_108"></a>â€</p> - -<p>I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can’t culture, -while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn’t waste -her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society -takes count of that she didn’t mention?</p> - -<p>“I’ll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused,†she went on. “I’d go to -Gatti’s Music Hall under the Arches—only music halls are a bit stale -now! I’d go to a prize-fight in a sewer—anything to get some colour -into my life!â€</p> - -<p>“Paint the town red, wouldn’t you!†muttered Lord Scilly.</p> - -<p>“That is the way we all are,†Lady Scilly went on. “Look at Kitty -London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can -play billiards on his own back!â€</p> - -<p>“Cheap culture that!†said Lord Scilly, and I don’t know what he meant, -but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his -hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and -stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They -say he runs it?</p> - -<p>He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. -Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to -have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn’t manage to -distract both. I didn’t like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and -flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared -her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat<a name="page_109" id="page_109"></a> up too late and drank too much -tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats -were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly “Darling!†across -the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly -never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her -other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice -painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for -him, he was just up—he said so—and I dare say he was too tired to wash -the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting -Juliet to Miss Lauderdale’s Romeo—that is the way they do it now. I -wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men’s parts and women did -women, but I was born too late for that.</p> - -<p>When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a -leg of her chair, and she wouldn’t let the actor disengage it, but -waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at -it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the -flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, -and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the -drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent -somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes.</p> - -<p>At four o’clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady -Scilly never pays calls—only the bourgeois do—but we went to see Mrs. -Ptomaine.</p> - -<p>“I hadn’t a word with Tommy to-day,†Lady<a name="page_110" id="page_110"></a> Scilly said, “and I had -several little things to arrange with her. I can’t sleep till I have put -a spoke in Lauderdale’s wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked -to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!â€</p> - -<p>“What does she do?†I asked.</p> - -<p>“Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers. -Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to -make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free. -I don’t care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if -their names are given, and then they don’t worry so with their bills. -And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a -lesson—things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite -say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one’s quarrels through -the press, isn’t it? Here we are at Tommy’s flat! Up at the very, very -top! The vulture in its eyrie—is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I -know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift! -One oughtn’t to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!â€</p> - -<p>I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door.</p> - -<p>“So soon, darling! Delightful!†she said. She didn’t look very pleased -to see us, I thought, but she was “in to tea,†I could see, for there -were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with -egg-powder.</p> - -<p>“I wanted to prime you about your critique of <i>Lady Ildegonde</i>, you -know. Now, Tommy, it is<a name="page_111" id="page_111"></a> understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and -punished for her impertinence in daring to act <i>me</i>, in Camille’s -dresses.â€</p> - -<p>“Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you -don’t trust your Tommy.â€</p> - -<p>“Not so much darling dear, now, if you don’t mind,†said Lady Scilly. -“We are alone, and this child doesn’t need impressing. It fidgets me.â€</p> - -<p>“All right, sweetheart—I beg your pardon,†said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite -obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state. -“Is it too early for tea?â€</p> - -<p>“Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a -headache?â€</p> - -<p>“Three distinct headaches,†said poor Tommy. “Did three first nights -last night, and got a separate headache for each.â€</p> - -<p>“How interesting!†said Lady Scilly. “I mean I am very sorry. Is there -nothing I can do?â€</p> - -<p>“No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest -will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think -of nothing for an hour.â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were -just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire!</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very -pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her -in an undertone, “No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea. -<i>Must</i> you go?<a name="page_112" id="page_112"></a>â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly hadn’t even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as -my brother Ben says. What was more, she said “Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine,†-in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy’s nose. No more -“dears†and “darlingsâ€! To the millionaire she said, “So we meet again?†-and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have -serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink -toast-and-water in her house any more.</p> - -<p>“There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it,†-she said to me, going down-stairs. “Poor old Pawky! One woman after -another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, <i>pour le bon -motif!</i> He did say to me in a first introduction, ‘Hev’ you any bills?’ -But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking -the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she’ll -get him to give her a new carpet!â€</p> - -<p>I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it -was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and -then. Thus she gives a <i>quid pro quo</i>, which poor Tommy can’t do, having -nothing marketable about her, not even a title.</p> - -<p>If he values Lady Scilly’s kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so -obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they -seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. -Tommy is so ugly—she never looked<a name="page_113" id="page_113"></a> nice in her life except when she was -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted -with Mr. Frederick Cook—that he must be demented, or jealous of -Frederick Cook, perhaps?</p> - -<p>She has an organ, I mean a paper she’s on, and I suppose she can write -Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. -Ptomaine won’t last. They change the staffs of those papers in the -night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office -and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. -Ptomaine,—where there’s a way (of making a little) there’s a minx to -take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can’t lose her title except to -change it for another and a nicer.<a name="page_114" id="page_114"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X</h2> - -<p>I<small>T</small> is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten -thousand copies of a book, you can’t get any sort of useful advice on -the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner -consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice -from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can’t in fairness -advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that -Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl, -she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a -room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to -ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too -shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see -if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl -like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious. -She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly’s aunt, the Countess of -Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she -holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a<a name="page_115" id="page_115"></a> -feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs -them to invent a fate for her.</p> - -<p>“Haven’t I got a future like other people?†she whines, and then the -poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in -her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to -have three husbands, although she is already seventy.</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at -least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see -people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they -would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to -bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in -shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking -silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been -having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn’t tell women the very -serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, -though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne -what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only -two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right -sometimes. The last time the woman said, “Fair—verging on red!†and as -Ariadne doesn’t know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. -Aix, whom she doesn’t care for, she frowned and said, “Are you quite -sure?†The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a<a name="page_116" id="page_116"></a> great hurry, -and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece -of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as -she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in -the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than -usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very -smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the -Islingtons’ lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never!</p> - -<p>Now, in Lady Scilly’s set, they call her “The girl that swallowed -Never,†and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a -nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least -that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we -were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to -help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything -countable, and Ariadne doesn’t seem to see that it is plain to them all -that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds -unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to -go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can -ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good -wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn’t let every one know that -George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It -is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and -so she does. We don’t have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of -one<a name="page_117" id="page_117"></a> even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never -going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. -I don’t know how much that is. She will never tell.</p> - -<p>Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn’t got. It is odd, how -taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, -dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And -fashion after all is only a matter of “bulge.†You bulge in a different -place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave -off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you -may consider you are a well-dressed woman!</p> - -<p>Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence -a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every -week, from <i>The Bittern</i>, and for <i>Wild Oats</i>. George is “Pease Blossom†-on <i>The Bittern</i>. We don’t need to subscribe to a library, we live in a -book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers’ Row -afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the -smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready -George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in -together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of -<i>Darnel</i>, and people thought him clever but malicious.</p> - -<p>Papa doesn’t know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the -novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has -no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully<a name="page_118" id="page_118"></a> as I have time -for—it depends on how many Ariadne gives me—and then when she is doing -her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper -ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so -it’s all right.</p> - -<p>Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn’t invent, but -found ready made. “Up to the level of this author’s reputation†is one; -“marks a distinct advance,†“breezy,†“strong, or convincing,†and the -opposites, “unconvincing,†“weak,†“morbid,†“effete,†are useful ones. -She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions “a fine -sense of atmosphere†if she honestly can.</p> - -<p>She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She -flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their -books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and -what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not -one of the whole d—d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, -especially The <i>Bittern</i>, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that -ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and -gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote -her own words to her!</p> - -<p>Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the -reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of -course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a -pity Mr. —— I forget the author’s name—did not relieve our anxiety as -to the perpetrator of the hellish<a name="page_119" id="page_119"></a> crime, which to the very end he -allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, -there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but -one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She -was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for -heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up -her own end. The editor of <i>The Bittern</i> had to acknowledge the error -and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel -action. Ariadne doesn’t care about meeting that man in society!</p> - -<p>It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, -because she doesn’t write them. People who write books shouldn’t have -the right to say what they think of other people’s; it is like a mother -listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner -to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up -and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about.</p> - -<p>“D—m the fellow! He’s stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of -mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!â€</p> - -<p>It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, “Well, then, George, -you can use it again.†He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a -regular corker of a review.</p> - -<p>“I’ll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. ‘<i>The signal -ineptitude of this author’s</i>——’â€</p> - -<p>I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though -I never saw it in print.<a name="page_120" id="page_120"></a></p> - -<p>Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn’t care for realistic novels at all, -which is a pity, as George’s greatest friend, and the person who comes -oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called <i>The -Laundress</i>. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole -year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,—he went -to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote -about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself -wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but -the flannel shirts weren’t because he was poor, but so as not to -frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, -and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, -and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the -cookery-book.</p> - -<p>That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, -who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all -about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and -Countesses are interested in mediæval knights and maidens, cooks—nor -yet laundresses—aren’t.</p> - -<p>“The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!†he says -sometimes. “If I was proper, they wouldn’t even look at me!â€</p> - -<p>“Ay! the suburbs?†George says dreamily; “the kind, the mild, the -tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught -Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in<a name="page_121" id="page_121"></a> Pall Mall and -Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy——â€</p> - -<p>“You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!†says Mr. Aix.</p> - -<p>“I have shocked them—they love being shocked! I have startled -them—that does them good. I have puzzled them—not altogether -unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with -Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a -common, romantic denominator——â€</p> - -<p>“You are like those useful earthworms of <i>le père</i> Darwin, bringing up -soil and interweaving strata,†said Mr. Aix wearily.</p> - -<p>George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. “Yes, I dominate the -lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at -the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you -ever envisage Peckham?â€</p> - -<p>“I lived there and sold matches once,†said she, “and, moreover, I’ve -kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs.â€</p> - -<p>“Is there anything you haven’t done?†said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a -woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living -among his raw material. When he was writing <i>The Serio-Comic</i>, in order -to get the serious atmosphere—which I should have thought gin would -have done for well enough—he went every night of his life to some music -hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their -frocks at the back for<a name="page_122" id="page_122"></a> them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out -just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn’t preach -for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn’t have told him -anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend -that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina -calls this novel “The Sweetmeat in the Gutter,†and loves it, though -George says it is as broad as it’s long, and that ladies shouldn’t read -it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it -doesn’t matter. <i>I</i> have read <i>The Serio-Comic</i>, and I can’t see -anything wrong. There’s more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie -Dulcimer’s real name is Frances Raggles, and she’s the mother of five in -the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there’s a -brandy-and-soda in every chapter.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like -Lady Scilly’s pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears -spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says “Quite so,†as -if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. -He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like. -Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would -knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks -anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an -exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a -telegram—so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different -ways, and<a name="page_123" id="page_123"></a> Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for -the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both -at the same time.</p> - -<p>He is about the only person who doesn’t think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne -naturally dislikes him. She can’t help it. If we didn’t let her think -she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that -sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won’t consider himself snubbed. -It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him. -Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him -if it is to be called <i>The Dustman</i> or <i>The General</i>, and what the -<i>locale</i> is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside -London?</p> - -<p>I have an idea that it will be called <i>The Seamstress</i>, for he has -lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where -we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to -sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle -into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour.</p> - -<p>Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep -her eyes open, as she always is after a dance.</p> - -<p>“I have often wondered,†he began, “what must be the sensations of a -young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled, -is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her -senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous<a name="page_124" id="page_124"></a> beat of the time, -relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying -frivolity? Is she——?â€</p> - -<p>He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted—</p> - -<p>“I can tell you. She’s thinking all the time, ‘Is there a hair-pin -sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in -front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. —— it -depends which Mister is there that evening—think of it all?â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t, Tempe!†said Ariadne.</p> - -<p>“No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell -me some more things about women.â€</p> - -<p>“Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a -hansom?â€</p> - -<p>“No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like,†I said. “It is only because -there happens to be a looking-glass there.â€</p> - -<p>George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary -agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in -Surrey and tempted them—to sell him the rights of every novel they did -for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their -heads and said, “You must go to Middleman!†Then he took them to a -London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads -and sent him to Middleman,<a name="page_125" id="page_125"></a> who makes all their bargains for them, but -he can’t control all the reviews.</p> - -<p>One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in -his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go. -George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an -effort to be a hero to one’s typewriter, or one’s daughter.</p> - -<p>“I am in a rage!†Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he -looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. “Just let me get hold of -this fellow they have got on <i>The Bittern</i>, and see if I don’t wring his -neck for him!â€</p> - -<p>George didn’t say anything, and so I asked—somebody had to—“What has -<i>The Bittern</i> man done, please?â€</p> - -<p>“Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that’s all! I’d have the -fellow know that I’m read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England! -Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!â€</p> - -<p>George read it—at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn’t seem to want -to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying—</p> - -<p>“Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth—one can -always learn something from criticism, or so I find!â€</p> - -<p>“What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent -paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding, -that’s what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it -him!<a name="page_126" id="page_126"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Well, it wasn’t me wrote it, Mr. Aix,†I said, “nor Ariadne!†He isn’t -supposed to know that George farms out his reviews.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it -had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in -for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn’t he trouble -to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were -growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have -said to <i>The Bittern</i> editor, “Avaunt! Don’t tempt an author to review -his friend’s book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many -reasons!†That is my idea of literary morality.<a name="page_127" id="page_127"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI</h2> - -<p>G<small>EORGE</small> came back from his yachting tour with the Scillys very brown and -cheerful, having collected enough sunshine for a new book, and Christina -is typing it at his dictation.</p> - -<p>George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in -touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can’t -for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that -she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs -to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of -her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the -end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, -as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes -among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, -he says, and she doesn’t mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows -he is being managed, which shows that he doesn’t really think he is. I -asked her once why she didn’t marry, but she said the profession of -typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off -your high stool if you wanted.</p> - -<p>Christina always says rude things about epigrams<a name="page_128" id="page_128"></a> and marriage. She is -not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of -course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and -ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes -ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, -and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china -memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks -on Marriage.</p> - -<p>1. Man cannot live by epigram alone.</p> - -<p>2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at -a <i>bal masqué</i> at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards.</p> - -<p>3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in -the shape of conversation that grows near it.</p> - -<p>4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude.</p> - -<p>5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all -wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it.</p> - -<p>George’s new novel is to be called <i>The Senior Epigrammatist</i>, and the -scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands.</p> - -<p>“Our well-known blend,†said Mr. Aix, “of opaline sea and crystal -epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this -sunlight soap won’t wash clothes. It isn’t for home consumption. It -gladdens publishers’ offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The -fires of passion——<a name="page_129" id="page_129"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t talk to me of passion,†said Christina. “I just detest the word. -Passion is piggish! It’s a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, -and I wouldn’t be seen dead with a temperament, in these days.â€</p> - -<p>She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She -typed something like this—</p> - -<p>Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (——) C. Ball B B——</p> - -<p>“Who is Ball?†said Mr. Aix anxiously.</p> - -<p>Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off.</p> - -<p>“A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in -his shoes.â€</p> - -<p>“The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!â€</p> - -<p>I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She -hasn’t said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him.</p> - -<p>It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen’s Gate, that -she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, -that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever -you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, -though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, -I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she -would not marry, and that was a beard.</p> - -<p>He wished out loud that he hadn’t got let in for the sitting-down seats, -so that he could not make a<a name="page_130" id="page_130"></a> clean bolt of it when he had had enough of -Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so -though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us -quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that “she knew a bank!†-as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. -After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced -him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and -gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of -him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round -indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through -the programme though people shoo’d him, and then he stopped for a little -and apologized, and went on again.</p> - -<p>“I don’t often turn up at this sort of function, do you?†he asked -Christina.</p> - -<p>“No, I do not,†she replied, “I have too much to do as a general thing.â€</p> - -<p>“And stay at home and do it,†said he; “you’re wise.â€</p> - -<p>“I have to!†said Christina. “Oh,†she sighed, “I am so dreadfully hot.â€</p> - -<p>It was June.</p> - -<p>“Why do you wear that bag?†he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which -was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every -one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a -different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like -every one else.<a name="page_131" id="page_131"></a></p> - -<p>“Get out of it, can’t you, and let me take care of it for you, and that -boa thing you have got round your neck.â€</p> - -<p>She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him.</p> - -<p>“I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the -seat,†she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. -So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers -with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking -at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn’t -seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn’t -seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he -would make George straighten his back!</p> - -<p>“I say,†he said presently, “do you like gramophones?â€</p> - -<p>“I love them,†said Christina, and I knew it was a lie.</p> - -<p>“My people have a perfectly splendid one!†said he, and his whole face -lighted up. “I wish you could hear it.â€</p> - -<p>Christina wished she could, and he said—</p> - -<p>“Oh, then, we will manage it somehow.â€</p> - -<p>When the concert was over he didn’t bolt as he had said he wanted to, -but gave us ices, Christina one, me two, and then Christina put the bag -on again.</p> - -<p>“If you were in my motor in that thing in a shower you’d get drowned,†-said he. “Why, it would <i>hold</i> the water. I should like to drive you<a name="page_132" id="page_132"></a> in -my motor all the same. I say, can’t I call on you?â€</p> - -<p>Christina told him very nicely that she was private secretary to the -author, Mr. George Vero-Taylor, and hadn’t much time for herself. She -seemed to say that this made a call impossible.</p> - -<p>“Ah, I see! Live in, do you? Well, I’ll call there, drop my pasteboard, -all straight and formal, you know, and then there can be no objection to -my giving you a spin in the motor. Right you are! Sinky Cento House. -What a rum name! Suggests drains! Never mind, I’ll be there, and then -when I’ve made the acquaintance of your chaperon, she’ll allow you to -come to tea with my mater, and make the acquaintance of the gramophone. -My mater’s too old to go out. It’s a ripper, the gramophone, I mean, -like some other people I am thinking of!â€</p> - -<p>“What a breezy man!†said Christina, on the way home. “He reminds me of -The Northman I used to draw at South Kensington. I broke him, and had to -pay seven-and-six for him.†Then she began to think—I believe it was -about Peter Ball. He <i>was</i> handsome, for he had blue eyes and a little -short, straight nose like the Sovereigns in Madame Tussaud’s.</p> - -<p>“Isn’t he exactly like Harold of England?†I said to Christina. “I hope -George won’t snub him when he comes to see you?â€</p> - -<p>“He won’t come,†said she; “but if he did he wouldn’t know he was being -snubbed.â€</p> - -<p>“No, he would say to George, ‘Keep your snubs<a name="page_133" id="page_133"></a> for a man of your own -size.’ But, Christina dear, I always <i>thought</i> you hated both marriage -and gramophones.â€</p> - -<p>“I am not so sure about gramophones,†said she. “Perhaps a very big -one——?â€</p> - -<p>“A six-footer, like Mr. Peter Ball, eh?â€</p> - -<p>She was quite moody and absent in the ’bus going home, and wouldn’t go -on top to please me. Then I accidentally stuck my umbrella in over the -top of her shoe as I walked beside her, and then she was too cross to -speak at all. I respected her mood. That is why I am beloved in the home -circle. But I have my own ideas, and they keep me amused.</p> - -<p>I was unfortunately out of the way when Mr. Peter Ball did call, three -days later. Mother and Christina were in, and Ariadne, who gave me a -true account of it all. She says the first thing he said to Christina -was, “I hope you don’t think I have been too precipitate?†I suppose he -meant in calling? He stared about him a good deal at first, and she -thought that George’s queer furniture made him feel shy, and that he -thought the ivory figure of Buddha quite indecent. She was sure he -didn’t admire her (Ariadne), but only Christina, because Christina is a -“tailor-made†girl, that men like. Mother made the tea very strong that -afternoon, so as to make him feel at home, and then after all he didn’t -touch tea. She kindly offered him a brandy-and-soda and he declined -that, but I expect it was only because it would have seemed -disrespectful to Christina. All men are alike, and<a name="page_134" id="page_134"></a> prone to a b. and s. -if they can get it without disgrace. Mother was sure that he had fallen -head-over-ears in love with Christina, and she with him at the very -first sight. She told me so, and said she meant to help it on.</p> - -<p>“It is because Christina is so used to seeing George every day,†said I. -“Peter Ball is very different, isn’t he?â€</p> - -<p>Mother said that there was no accounting for tastes, and that for her -part she considered George’s type was the nicest. But whatever we did, -she said, we were not to chaff Christina about it, and put her off a -very good match. A girl of Christina’s sort never took kindly to chaff, -and though she should be sorry to lose Christina as a secretary to -George, it being impossible to tell what sort of minx he might engage in -her place, she for one wouldn’t like any personal consideration whatever -to interfere with Christina’s establishment in life. Peter Ball is a -landed gentry. He is M.F.H. in the county of Northumberland to the -Rattenraw Hunt, and a capital shot and first-rate angler. When his old -mother dies he will be richer, but he is a good son, and often stays -with her in Leinster Gardens where he has asked me and Christina to go -to tea next week.</p> - -<p>I promised not to chaff, but if she had only known, it would have taken -a steam-crane to put Christina off that particular thing. She talked -lots about Peter. He was the “finest specimen of humanity she had ever -come across!†“Such a contrast to<a name="page_135" id="page_135"></a> the little anæmic, effete, -ambisextrous (I hope I have got it right?) creatures that haunt Cinque -Cento House, who are all trying to get more out of their heads than is -in them!†“Greek in his simplicity, a sort of mixture of John Bull and -Antinöus!†I say, just wait till you see his mother; nice men’s mothers -are sometimes sad eye-openers, and Peter Ball is always talking about -his. Also it is quite on the cards that she may not like Christina, and -then I am sure he will never propose to her. He is an admirable son. I -believe he keeps a gramophone just to attract the girls he admires into -his mother’s cave, and give her the opportunity of looking over them, -and making up her mind if they are fit to be her Peter’s wife or no.</p> - -<p>When the eventful day came, Christina was on thorns. She didn’t know how -to dress. She finally left off the chiffon bag and wore a fringe-net, -and her best-cut “tailor-made,†and took out her ear-rings lest they -should damn her in his mother’s eyes. Then at exactly five minutes to -four we rang the bell in 1000 Leinster Square.</p> - -<p>A proud butler opened the door. George will only let us have maids, -although he could afford ten butlers.</p> - -<p>The house was beautiful, and not a bit like ours. “Early Victorian,†-Christina whispered me. She was dreadfully nervous, and made me too. I -dropped my umbrella in the rack with such a clatter that she blushed and -scolded me. Then a palm-leaf tickled my head as I went by, and I begged -its pardon,<a name="page_136" id="page_136"></a> thinking some one behind was trying to attract my -attention. We were taken into a big room with pedestal things in gold -and stucco set down at intervals, and a clock with a bare pendulum which -looks simply undressed to me, and a bronze Father Time with his sickle -lying lazily across the top. On another clock there was a gilt man in a -gilt cart whipping up two gilt horses. The carpet had large bouquets of -roses on it, and I thought what a good game it would be to pretend they -were islands and hop across from one to the other. I began, but she -stopped me. In a corner was the gramophone, like a great brass ear put -out to hear what you were saying. It was playing when we went in, like -an old man with a wheeze, and in came Peter Ball looking as if he had -just got out of a bath, and said, “How-do-you-do! it is playing -‘Coppelia.’†Then it played “Valse Bleue†and “Casey at the Wake,†and -“Casey as Doctor,†and “When other Lips,†and then Peter Ball said his -mother was ready.</p> - -<p>Into another room we went, full of Berlin wool-work chairs, and screens -of Potiphar and his wife, and the curtains were of green rep with ropes -of silk to tie them back and gilt festoons to hide their beginnings, and -an old old lady in a big arm-chair and a lace cap with nodding bugles -was in a corner, just like another and older bit of furniture.</p> - -<p>We were introduced; she was very deaf and very blind, and I am not sure -she didn’t think I was the girl Peter wanted to marry. However that -might<a name="page_137" id="page_137"></a> be, she seemed pleased with us, and we talked of her son and the -house. Christina, who used to say she preferred a Chéret poster to a -Titian, and plain deal to mahogany, admired everything freely. The -rosewood wheelbarrow with silver fittings given to Peter Ball’s father -when he laid a first stone somewhere, she said was superb and so -graceful; the picture of old Mrs. Ball by Ingres in a poke bonnet and -short waist she said was far superior to anything by Burne Jones.</p> - -<p>“Who is Burne Jones?†said the old lady, and Christina denied Burne -Jones cheerfully. I thought of my favourite piece of poetry—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“See, ye Ladies that are coy,<br /></span> -<span class="i1">What the mighty Love can do!â€<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>Then we had tea (the cake in a silver basket on a fringed mat, if you -please!), and after we had talked a little more, we said good-bye, and -Peter took us out. He had rushed out of the room just five minutes -before, when the first symptoms of leave-taking manifested themselves, -and we saw why, when we passed out through the first room where the -gramophone was. It played us out with “The Wedding March,†surely a -graceful thought of Peter Ball’s!</p> - -<p>“He’s very nice, but what a pity he hasn’t got taste!†I said as we came -away. You see, I am used to Cinque Cento House, and I have always been -told that there is only one taste, and that ours is it.<a name="page_138" id="page_138"></a></p> - -<p>“Taste!†Christina mooned, as we got into a ’bus. “There’s so much of it -about, isn’t there? On my word, it will soon be quite <i>chic</i> to be -vulgar.â€</p> - -<p>It was not difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing after that. -It was about this time that Mr. Aix found Christina typing her own name -and Peter’s on a sheet of III Imperial. He hadn’t even set eyes on Peter -Ball then, but he did a few days later, when Peter Ball came to tea, -holding his grey kid gloves in his hand. George, luckily, was out again, -really out, not pretending to be in his study, and Mr. Aix it was who -opened the front-door for Peter when he went away at seven.</p> - -<p>“A man!†he said, when he came back to us all in the winter garden, and -Christina was just going out—escaping to her own room to think over -Peter Ball, I dare say—and she said as she passed him—</p> - -<p>“I could hug you for saying that, Mr. Aix.â€</p> - -<p>“No, you couldn’t,†said he. “I am popularly supposed to be repellent. A -lady said I was like a white stick of celery grown in a dark cellar. -Another, of music-hall celebrity, compared me to a blasted pipe-stem. I -do not look for success with your sex. It was kind of you to think of -it, though.â€</p> - -<p>Peter Ball meant business, or else we could not have all spoken of it so -openly. George was awfully cross at the idea of having to find a new -secretary. Lady Scilly said she thought he could do better than<a name="page_139" id="page_139"></a> -Christina, who was too forward (and too pretty). She tried very hard to -flirt with Peter herself, but perhaps Peter thought <i>he</i> could do -better, and wouldn’t. She looked into his face and said, “You great big -beauty!†She told him “high†stories, as Christina and I call them, and -he wouldn’t laugh. She asked him right out why he wouldn’t, and he -answered equally right out, “Because I disapprove of all jesting with -regard to the relations of the sexes!â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly looked disgusted, and left him severely alone, as he meant -her to.</p> - -<p>For weeks after this he was like a full pail of water one is afraid to -carry without spilling. At last he slopped over, and asked Christina to -be his wife. I wasn’t in the room, of course, but Christina was nice and -told us afterwards. He went on his knees, she says, and I believe her, -because I found a cushion on the floor immediately after, before the -housemaid had tidied the room, and I think he had managed to put it -under his knees without her seeing. Our floor is bony.</p> - -<p>“The very moment,†she said, “he had got me to say yes, he jumped up and -rushed out without his hat, to send a telegram to his mother with the -good news!â€</p> - -<p>She thought this so nice of him and so flattering, as showing that he -hadn’t made quite sure of her. For though we all knew she meant to take -him, he was not supposed to be aware of it. Considering that Christina -is grown up, she ought to be able to<a name="page_140" id="page_140"></a> make a man think exactly what she -wishes him to think about her. Such power comes, or should come, with -advancing years, and is one of its compensations. Ariadne, of course, -isn’t old enough to have left off being quite transparent, and regrets -it deeply in some of her poetry.</p> - -<p>Christina was married to Peter Ball almost directly, and Ariadne and I -were her bridesmaids. Mrs. Mander gave us our dresses and hats. They -were quite fashionable; she would have no nonsense or necklaces. Ariadne -looked smart and like other people, for once. She didn’t look so pretty, -but it is a mistake to want to go about the streets looking like a -picture. Prettiness isn’t everything, and the really smartest people -would disdain to look simply ready for an artist to paint them.</p> - -<p>Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly’s best friend, was Peter Ball’s best man. He -had met Ariadne at the Scillys’, but at Christina’s wedding he said that -he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. -She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never -did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and -George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own -asking.</p> - -<p>That can’t be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the -iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did <i>rather</i> like her, but he wasn’t -quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that -means—and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry -about it, as of course she<a name="page_141" id="page_141"></a> would be. At all events he didn’t come—his -chief kept him in till six o’clock every day, or some excuse of that -sort. As if a man couldn’t always manage a call if he wanted to, even if -he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars!<a name="page_142" id="page_142"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII</h2> - -<p>W<small>E</small> never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton -or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of -course St. John’s Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole -month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in -Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty—something about a company -that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn’t care where -we went, as he isn’t to be with us. He just forks out the money as -Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do -things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all -we <i>are</i> his family, and everybody knows that now.</p> - -<p>I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn’t so -much about.</p> - -<p>Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven’t got an ounce of country fibre in them. -They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase -them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the -quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is -sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there’s a wasp<a name="page_143" id="page_143"></a> inside -it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They -haven’t country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down -grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, -and offend everybody all round.</p> - -<p>So they weren’t particularly happy in the first rooms we took, at a farm -just out of Whitby. There was one stuffy little best parlour, sealed up -like a bottle of medecine, and one mouldy geranium looking as if it -couldn’t help it on the window-sill, and the “Seven Deadly Sins†in -chromo on the walls, and Rebecca at a well of Berlin wools over the -mantelpiece. They covered the family Bible with an antimacassar, and -Aunt Gerty’s theatrical photos without which she never travels, and -suppressed the frosty ornament in a glass case of one of Mrs. Wilson’s -wedding-cakes. Mrs. Wilson married early, she says, and I say she -married often, for there are three of them! It <i>was</i> uncomfortable. -Mother didn’t complain, Aunt Gerty did. She had nowhere to hang up her -dresses; they were all getting spoilt; she couldn’t see to do her hair -in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass, and the room was so small -that she twice set fire to her bed-curtains, curling her hair, which she -did twenty times a day, for there was always wind or rain or something. -The walls were so thin that she could hear every word Mr. and Mrs. -Wilson said to each other in the next room, quarrelling and arranging -the bill and so on. She couldn’t sleep with the window shut, and all -sorts of horrid buggy things came in if you left it open.<a name="page_144" id="page_144"></a> It was so -dreadfully lonely here, and she had never “seen so much land†in her -life.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty has been on tour often enough to get used to uncomfortable -lodgings, lodgings not chosen by herself, very likely, and her luggage -all fetched away the day before she leaves by the baggage man! But it is -in a town, and that makes all the difference. Give her a strip of mirror -in the door of her wardrobe, and a gas-jet ready to set fire to her -window-curtains, and a row of shops outside to cheer her up, and she -won’t think of grumbling.</p> - -<p>The landlady didn’t consider us a particularly good “let.†I used to -hear her in bed in the mornings explaining to Mr. Wilson, who is a -railway porter, how glad she would be to be “shot†of us if it wasn’t -for the money. “Ay, lass!†he would answer, and then I used to hear him -turning over in bed and going to sleep again.</p> - -<p>“They’re better to keep a week than a fortnight!†she used to say. “What -with their late dinners and breakfasts in bed, and their black coffee, -and all sitting down for an hour o’ mornings polishing up them ondacent -brown boots—they darsen’t trust the help, no, not since she went and -rubbed them with lard—poor girl, she meant well,—and she fit to rive -her legs off answering the parlour bell every minute! Well, the sooner I -see their backs, the better pleased I shall be!â€</p> - -<p>We took the hint and gave up the rooms, and got some nicer ones in town -on the quay. Aunt Gerty left off bothering Mother to have late dinner -and<a name="page_145" id="page_145"></a> strong coffee, and we lived on herrings and cream cheeses, the -cheapest things in Whitby. I mean the herrings. When they have a good -catch, they sell them at a halfpenny each on the quay-side, or slap -their children with them, or shy them at strangers. Anything to keep the -market up!</p> - -<p>Mrs. Bennison, our new landlady, isn’t a Whitby woman, but her husband -is, and owns a boat, and takes Ben out sailing, and tries to make a man -of him. We hardly ever see him, so we know he is happy. Mother and Aunt -Gerty sit one on each side of the bow window the greater part of the -day, and make blouses, and read at the same time. George would throw -their books into the harbour if he caught them in their hands; they are -the sort he disapproves of. I won’t say who the authors of these are, as -being a literary man’s daughter it might give offence, but they are by -women mostly. George vetoes women’s books too, for they are generally -bad, and if they are good, they have no business to be.</p> - -<p>Just now, George isn’t here to object, he is at Homburg, doing a cure. -He always gets brain fag towards the end of the season like his other -friends. It seems to me the smartest illness to have, except -appendicitis. The moment Goodwood is over, they all troop off to Germany -or Switzerland and pay pounds to some doctor who only makes them leave -off eating and drinking too much, and go to bed a little before -daylight. It is kill and then cure with the smart set, every year. -George does what is<a name="page_146" id="page_146"></a> right and usual—bathes in champagne at Wiesbaden, -and drinks the water rotten eggs have been boiled in at Homburg. He does -it in good company, to take the taste away. Mr. Aix drew us a picture of -George and a Duchess walking up and down a parade, with a glass tube -connected with a tumbler, in their mouths, talking about emulating “The -Life of the Busy Bee†as they went along.</p> - -<p>About the middle of August we heard he had come back to England and was -paying his usual round of visits to Barefront, and Baddeley and -Fylingdales Tower. Nearly all these places have real battlements and -ghosts. Fylingdales Tower is near here. Mother and I and Aunt Gerty -joined a cheap trip to it, the other day, and were taken all over the -house for a shilling. I don’t even believe The Family was away, but -stowed away <i>pro tem.</i> and staring at us through some chink and loathing -us. I did manage to persuade Aunt Gerty not to throw away her sandwich -paper in the grate of the fire-place of the room where Edward the Third -had slept on his way to Alnwick, but kindly keep it till we were got -into the Park. But she was very irreverent all the same, and insisted on -setting her hat straight in the glass of Queen Elizabeth’s portrait, and -that was the only picture she looked at at all. I don’t care for -pictures much. I like the house, which is old and grey and bleached, as -if it never got a good night’s sleep. Too many spirits to break its -rest. I don’t believe in ghosts really, but I often wonder what are the -white things one sees? I don’t see<a name="page_147" id="page_147"></a> so many as I did when I was quite a -child. Aunt Gerty shivered and went Brr! She hated it all, she is so -very modern. She admitted that she only went with us because she had -hoped George might be actually staying there, and would see his own -sister-in-law among the trippers and get a nasty jar. Mother is a lady, -and knew quite well that he wasn’t there, or else she would not have let -Aunt Gerty go, or gone herself, even <i>incog.</i> George <i>had</i> been there -recently, though, for the black-satin housekeeper said so, and that she -read his books herself when she had time, or a headache. “He’s quite a -pet of her ladyship’s,†she told Aunt Gerty, who had spotted one of -George’s books on a table and asked questions. She was dying to tell the -old thing that we were relations of the great Mr. Vero-Taylor, but -dursn’t, for Mother’s eye was on her. Mother looked as pleased as Punch -though, and gazed at the chairs (behind plush railings) that her husband -had sat on, and at the portrait in Greek dress, by Sir Alma Tadema, of -the lady who “made a pet of him.â€</p> - -<p>George had written from Homburg once or twice to me, and I used to read -his letters out to Mother, who naturally wanted to hear his news. She -was a little annoyed because he didn’t mention if he was wearing the -thicker vests as the weather was getting chilly, and begged me to ask -him to be explicit in my next, but I did not, because it might have -shamed him in the eyes of his countesses if he left the letter about, as -of course he would. George respects the<a name="page_148" id="page_148"></a> sanctity of private -communication so much, that he never tore up a letter in his life; the -housemaid collects them when she is doing his room, and brings them to -Mother, who hasn’t time to read them, any more than the housemaid has.</p> - -<p>The third week in August George wrote to me, and told me to engage him -rooms in Fylingdales Crescent on the East Cliff. You might have knocked -me down with a feather!</p> - -<p>Mother was hurt at George’s having written to me, not her, on such a -pure matter of business, until I explained that he merely did it to -please the child! One doesn’t mind making oneself out a baby to avoid -hurting a mother’s feelings. I don’t know if Mother quite accepted this -explanation, but she said no more about it, and told Mr. Aix the good -news. He is in lodgings here, to be near us—Aunt Gerty thinks it is to -be near her, and he lets her think anything she likes. He looks forward -to George’s coming with great interest, and says he will look like some -rare exotic on the beach, such as a humming-bird or a gazelle. Aunt -Gerty at once got hold of the visitors’ list.</p> - -<p>“Let’s see which of his little lot is coming to Whitby?†she said, and -hunted carefully through three columns till she found that Adelaide -Countess of Fylingdales, Mr. Sidney Robinson, nurse baby and suite, were -at the Fylingdales Hotel, on the East Cliff. Lord Fylingdales, her -eldest son, is the widower of a Gaiety girl who actually died after she -had been a Countess a year, poor dear! Aunt Gerty<a name="page_149" id="page_149"></a> knew her. He is Lord -of the Manor here, and his portrait is all over the place.</p> - -<p>“Old Adelaide’s a shocking frump, Lucy; you needn’t distress yourself -about her!†said Aunt Gerty consolingly to Mother.</p> - -<p>“I am not distressing myself about her, Gertrude,†replied my Mother, -and she didn’t look at all distressed in her neat short blue serge -seaside dress, and shady hat. She looked ten.</p> - -<p>“I know her son,†Aunt Gerty went on. “A fish without a backbone. I very -nearly had the privilege of leading him astray myself. It is Irene -Lauderdale now, I hear.â€</p> - -<p>“I wish you’d stow your theatrical recollections, Gerty,†said Mother. -“Come, Tempe, get your things on, we will go and take rooms for your -father and my husband.â€</p> - -<p>“Brava!†said Mr. Aix. “Capital accent there.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, you go along!†said Mother, and we went off at once and engaged -George’s rooms. We got very nice large ones, with dark green outside -shutters to the windows, and took a great deal of trouble to explain -George’s little ways to them, for their sake as well as his. Ben will -valet him. Mother told the people that he is bringing his man, who will, -however, sleep out. George never gets up till twelve, French fashion.</p> - -<p>Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn’t -ornamental just now. He can’t speak, he can only croak, and though he -isn’t very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing<a name="page_150" id="page_150"></a> inside himself -and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly -man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his -face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them -and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he -doesn’t care at all what he does, he doesn’t even mind playing servant -for a bit, if George would like it. Mother tells him he is a good boy -and the comfort of her life, and that if she can manage it, she will get -him sent to college after this, only he had better please the mammon of -unrighteousness all he can. So he means to be a good valet to the -Mammon.</p> - -<p>The Fylingdales Hotel is in the best part of the town, on the East -Cliff, and they dine late there every evening, and don’t pull the blinds -down, and the townspeople walk backwards and forwards, and watch the -people dining at seven-thirty, dressed in their nudity. I think evening -dress looks quite wrong at the seaside. Aunt Gerty and Mother put on a -different blouse every evening, and look nice and cosy and comfortable, -though George does say sarcastic things about the tyranny of the blouse, -and the way Aunt Gerty will call it Blowse. I wash my face, that is all -the dressing <i>I</i> do. Ben puts on an old smoker of George’s, and flattens -out his hair to support the character of being the only gentleman of the -party, unless Mr. Aix is there to supper, and the less said about Mr. -Aix’s clothes the better.</p> - -<p>Ben makes boats all day, when he isn’t in one, and Ariadne makes poetry. -Her one idea, having come<a name="page_151" id="page_151"></a> to the sea for her health, is to avoid it, -and seek the rather scrubby sort of woods which is all you can expect at -the seaside. So every afternoon nearly we take a donkey to Ruswarp or to -Cock Mill, and “ride and tie.†We used to pick out a very smart donkey, -but a very naughty one. He was called Bishop Beck, perhaps for that -reason, and he went slow,—that was to be expected, but when he stopped -quite still and wouldn’t move for an hour or more in the middle of Cock -Mill Wood, long, long after one had stopped beating him (for he looked -at us and made us feel ridiculous), Ariadne said she would rather do -without adventitious aid of this kind, for it interfered with her -afflatus.</p> - -<p>She walks up and down in the wood paths, finding rhymes, which seems the -hardest part of poetry.</p> - -<p>“Dreams—streams—gleams—†she goes on.</p> - -<p>“Breams?†I suggest.</p> - -<p>“Not a poetical image!â€</p> - -<p>“It isn’t an image, it is a fish.â€</p> - -<p>“It won’t do. Am I writing this poem or are you?â€</p> - -<p>I don’t argue. It doesn’t really matter much how Ariadne’s poems turn -out. Being Papa’s daughter she is sure to find a hearty reception for -her initial volume of verse.</p> - -<p>We used to stay out till what Ariadne called Dryad time. She thought she -saw white figures hiding behind the trees in the dusk. Little pellets -made of nuts and acorns and dead leaves, and so on, used to fall on us -out of the thickets, and Ariadne<a name="page_152" id="page_152"></a> said it was the Dryads pelting us. She -thinks trees are alive, and that one of the reasons you hear ghosts in -all old houses, is the wood creaking because in the night it remembers -it was once a tree. I prefer to believe in ordinary solid ghosts instead -of rational explanations like that. But still Ariadne’s funny ideas make -a walk quite interesting. Of course we never talk of such things at -home, among materialists and realists like Aunt Gerty and Mother and -George. George makes plenty of use of birds in his books, but he once -came home from a visit to St. John’s College at Cambridge, and told us -that he had been kept awake all night by a beastly nightingale under his -window. Now I have never heard this much-vaunted bird, but I am sure, -from Matthew Arnold’s poem where he calls it Eugenia, it must be a -heavenly sound, quite worth while being kept awake by.</p> - -<p>Ariadne and I stay out very late till it is getting dark, hoping to hear -it, in Cock Mill Wood, and then we go home and race through supper, and -then go out again, on the quays and piers this time. We don’t know or -care what George and his friends are doing, up above us, in the smart -hotel on the cliff. What I should just love would be for some of them -and George to come down for a walk in the dark and perhaps meet us, and -for George to say, “Who are those little wandering vagabonds flitting -about like bats? Why doesn’t their father or mother keep them at home in -the evenings?†It would be so nice, and Arabian Nightish!<a name="page_153" id="page_153"></a></p> - -<p>At very high tides, we stay out very late, and take a shawl, and sit on -a capstan and tuck it round us, and listen for a certain noise we love. -It is when the water gets into a little corner in the heap of stones by -the Scotch Head, and gets sucked in among them somehow, and then we hear -a sort of sob that is better than any ghost. Ariadne and I put our heads -under the shawl when we hear it, but not quite, so as to prevent us -hearing properly.</p> - -<p>The harbour smells at low water, and the town children yell and scream, -and it isn’t poetical then. So Ariadne and I like to go away on the -Scaur and put our fingers in anemones’ mouths, and pop seaweed purses, -and pretend we are lovers cut off by the tide, as they are in novels. In -the afternoons when the harbour is full we sit on the mound above the -Khyber Pass, and watch the water filling up the hole between the -opposite cliff and the cliff ladder. It is all quite quiet then. We -don’t hear any town cries, for the children that make the noise are -turned out of their playground, and their mothers out of their good -drying-ground, and the boats begin to go out of the harbour in a long, -soft, slow procession—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0"><i>And the stately ships go on</i><br /></span> -<span class="i2"><i>To their haven under the hill.</i><br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>I am sure Tennyson meant Whitby when he wrote that.</p> - -<p>One night we could not sleep because the woman next door had had her -“man†drowned, and cried and moaned for hours. He was a fisherman, and<a name="page_154" id="page_154"></a> -we had seen his boat go out third in the row the day before. He is -supposed to have fallen overboard in the night? Next day, Mother went in -and gave her five shillings and she stopped crying.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix had a try to paint the view in front of our windows. At least he -said there was no such thing in nature as a “view,†and left out the -Church and the Abbey, because they “conventionalized†things so. He -belongs, he said, to the Impressionist School, if any. He got quite -excited about his drawing, and at last went and borrowed a station truck -to sit on; it raised him a little. One day a chance lady sat down on one -of the handles, and over he went. It served him right for leaving out -the two best things in Whitby.</p> - -<p>When George came, Ariadne and I used to take turns to go and lunch with -him at his breakfast, where we had French cookery. There were leathery -omelets that bounced up like the stick in the boys’ game when you -touched the end of them with a spoon, and fillets that you wouldn’t have -condescended to have for a pillow, but still, it was French.</p> - -<p>We were dressed nicely and took our clean gloves in our hands, and -George wasn’t ashamed of us, and introduced us to his friends. Lady -Fylingdales’ Mr. Sidney Robinson said I was like George—that I had his -nose. I went to bed that night with a clothes-peg out of the yard on it, -to improve its shape. But the old lady was half blind, and all made of -manner. I also saw the Lord Aunt Gerty<a name="page_155" id="page_155"></a> might have led astray, and he -hadn’t a manner of any sort, and his nose wanted to run away with his -chin.</p> - -<p>George had no fault whatever to find with the arrangements Mother had -made for his comfort, and he told her so, the first time he saw her, in -Baxter Gate, coming out of the Post Office. The first place George flies -to in a town is the Post Office, to send telegrams. He corresponds -entirely by telegram with some people; he says it is paying five-pence -more for the privilege of saying less. We had been shopping. George -spotted us, and Mother thought he had rather not be recognized, but he -was good that day and he actually left Mr. Sidney Robinson—a commoner, -married to a countess, and that exactly describes him, Aunt Gerty -says—to say a word to his own wife. It was market day, and we had -bought several things in the Hall across the water. A pound of -blackberries and a cream cheese, and a chicken and a cabbage, each from -a different old woman with a covered basket. Mother had a net and I a -basket to put them in. I was glad that George did not offer to “relieve†-us of them, like the young men Aunt Gerty picks up here; but he stopped -and talked to us quite nicely for a long time. He and Mother seemed to -have a great deal to say to each other, and the basket-handle began to -cut my arm in half. Also it was a very hot day. George had on a white -linen suit, and a straw hat from Panama. He looked quite cool, and like -Lohengrin or the Baker’s man. Mother didn’t. She<a name="page_156" id="page_156"></a> looked hot. I touched -her elbow, not so much because of my arm that ached, but because she -looked like that, nor did I think it looks well to stand talking in the -street to gentlemen, even if it is your own husband.</p> - -<p>“Well, George,†she said, taking my hint at once, “we must be going on. -The butter is melting and the chicken grilling and the cabbage wilting -while I stand here talking to you.â€</p> - -<p>“Charming!†said George, but he wasn’t thinking of us, but of Mr. -Robinson, who was champing a few yards away. We said “Good-bye†without -shaking hands. George, I think, might have lifted his hat. I have read -of fine gentlemen who lifted their hat to an apple-woman, let alone -their wife and child.</p> - -<p>George and his friend walked off together. I suppose the Robinson man -was too well-bred to ask George who his lady-friend was, as any of Aunt -Gerty’s men would do, but he certainly stared a good deal. Of course he -knows who we are, everybody in Whitby does, I should think, and they -most likely conclude that it is less unkindness than the eccentricity of -genius. If you haven’t got that blasted thing called genius, I suppose -you can bear to live in the same house with your wife!</p> - -<p>We walked slowly home with our purchases. Mother had a headache all -dinner, and lay down in the afternoon.</p> - -<p>“I met your father, Ben,†she said at supper. “His boots want a little -attention.<a name="page_157" id="page_157"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe,†said Ben crossly, “that any one ever had a more -tiresome man to valet. He will wear his clothes all wrong, and then is -always ragging and jawing at a fellow because they don’t look nice.â€</p> - -<p>“Hush, Ben, he is your father.â€</p> - -<p>“Hah, I was forgetting!†said Ben, and gave one of his great laughs, as -if you were breaking up coal, or something. Ben is now so changeable and -nervous that you never know where to have him. He is growing up all -wrong, but what can you expect of a boy brought up by women? He never -sees a boy of his own position, though I know that in London he has some -low companions he daren’t bring to the house. The Hitchings are his only -respectable friends, but they live such a long way off now. Jessie -Hitchings is devoted to Ben, but she is only a girl like Ariadne and me. -Mr. Hitchings told mother, years ago, that the boy was being ruined, and -Mother cried and said she knew it, but could do nothing, for his father -was by way of educating him at home till something could be settled. -Snaps of Latin, and snacks of Greek, that is all George gives the poor -boy when he has a moment, and that is never.</p> - -<p>This is the only grievance Mother has, although Aunt Gerty is always -trying to persuade her she has several, and putting her back up. Mother -ends by getting cross with her.</p> - -<p>“For goodness’ sake, you Job’s comforter, you, leave off your eternal -girding at George. Can’t you<a name="page_158" id="page_158"></a> see, that as long as a man has his career -to establish—his way to make——â€</p> - -<p>“His blessed thoroughfare is made long ago, or ought to be. That is what -I can’t get over——â€</p> - -<p>“You aren’t asked to get over it. It is not your funeral, it is mine, so -shut up. A man like George, who is dependant on the public favour, needs -to be most absurdly particular, and careful what he does lest he injure -his prestige. Look at yourself! You know very well in your own -profession how very damaging it is for an actor to be married; that if -an actress marries her manager, he has to pay dear for it in the -receipts. She had better not figure as his wife in the bills, if she -wants him to get on. You can’t eat your cake—I mean your title—and -have it. No, it’s bound to be Miss Gertrude Jennynge on the bills, even -if it is Mrs. What-do-you-call-it in the lodgings, with a ring on her -finger, and every right to call herself a married woman. The public -don’t care for spliced idols. An artist has to stand clear, and preserve -his individuality, such as it is!â€</p> - -<p>“And run straight all the time. I’ll give George credit for that. But -there, whatever’s the good of it to you? A man can make a woman pretty -fairly miserable, even if he is stone-faithful to her. It’s then it -seems all wrong somehow, and doesn’t give her a chance of paying him in -his own coin!â€</p> - -<p>I think Aunt Gerty is the reason why George fights so shy of his family. -He hates her style,<a name="page_159" id="page_159"></a> and yet he can hardly forbid Mother seeing as much -as she likes of her own sister. The trail of the stage is over us all. -Not that I see anything a bit wicked about the stage myself! I have -never noticed anything at all wrong, and actors and actresses are the -kindest people in the world! But there is a queer, worn, threadbare, -rough, second-rate feeling about them. Off the stage—and I have never -seen them on—they are tired and slouchy and easy-going. Aunt Gerty is -most good-tempered and will do anything to help a pal, and takes things -as they come; those are her good points. But she talks such a lot about -herself, and never opens a book that isn’t a novel, and wears cheap -muslins and beaded slippers in the street, and lots of chains that seem -to be always getting caught on men’s buttons. She calls men “fellows.†-She is always going to play Juliet at one of the London houses. Meantime -she puts up with provincial companies. She makes the best of it, and she -tells us she is going to play Nerissa in the Bacon Company, as if she -had got engaged for a parlourmaid in a good house, and discusses Ariel -as if Ariel were a tweeny or up-and-down girl between the sky and the -earth, and Puck a smart clever Buttons. She speaks of her nice legs as a -workman might of his bag of tools. She can sing and dance, when she -isn’t asked to act. She has cut all her hair short to make it easier for -wigs. Her great extravagance is in wigs. She calls them “sliding roofs†-for convenience in talking about them in trains and omnibuses. When she<a name="page_160" id="page_160"></a> -did wear her own hair she dyed it, so I like the wigs better, as there’s -no deception.</p> - -<p>If Mother was ever an actress, which I don’t somehow believe, though -Jessie Hitchings said once that she had heard people say so, it has all -been knocked out of her. She dresses very well, always in simpler things -than Aunt Gerty. She left off her waist years ago, to please George, and -now that it is the fashion not to have one, she is in the right box—I -mean stays. Her hair is brown, and she mayn’t frizzle it, so it is soft -and pretty like a baby’s. She generally wears black, over lovely white -frilled petticoats that she gets up herself to keep the bills down. She -has such little hands that she can pick her gloves out of the -five-and-a-half boxes at sales, which are always much reduced. So few -people have small hands. She may not wear high heels, and that is a -grief to her, as she isn’t very tall, but hers are very pretty feet, and -she can dance.</p> - -<p>George doesn’t know that she can dance. I do. Once Mr. Aix asked her to -dance for him when I was in the room. Aunt Gerty played on the -tin-kettle piano. Mother danced a cake-walk, which I thought very ugly, -and then a queer step that a friend had taught her when she was a child. -In one part of it she was dancing on her hands and her feet at the same -time. It was the queerest thing, and she left her dress down for that -and it lay in swirls about the carpet. Mr. Aix said it was the dance -that Salome must have danced before Herod, and he quite understood John -the Baptist, and<a name="page_161" id="page_161"></a> where did she get it? But Mother wouldn’t tell him. -She said it was a memory of her stormy youth in the East End.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix said that she could make her fortune doing it as a turn at a -Society music hall, as it would be something quite new and decadent. -That is just what Society wants—the slight, morbid flavour! Then Mother -put on her short skirt and did the ordinary vulgar kind of dance they -teach now, and I liked it best. She was everywhere at once, smart and -spreading out in all directions, like spun glass on a Christmas card. -Her eyes danced too. Ben said he couldn’t have believed she was his -mother!</p> - -<p>Then Aunt Gerty performed, and she is professional. But it was not the -same thing. Aunt Gerty’s legs are thick, and compared with Mother’s like -forced asparagus to the little pretty, thin, field-grown kind. Mother’s -dancing was emphatically dramatic, Mr. Aix said.</p> - -<p>I asked him if Mother could act, and he answered, “My dear child, your -mother can do anything she has a mind to.â€</p> - -<p>“Then why doesn’t she have a mind?†I at once said, forgetting how it -would upset our household and George if she were to go on the stage. -Mother naturally remembers this, and stays domestic out of virtue.</p> - -<p>“I wish you would write a play for me, Mr. Aix,†said Aunt Gerty, “and I -would get a millionaire to run it. I wonder, now, what one could do with -Mr. Bowser?<a name="page_162" id="page_162"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She went off in a brown study, and Mr. Aix said rudely, “I will write a -play for Lucy sooner,†looking at Mother, who was sitting fanning -herself with her pocket-handkerchief. “She has got the stuff in her, I -do believe. Gad! What a chance! What a lever! What a facer—!â€</p> - -<p>And he dropped off into a brown study too! Mother went and mended Ben’s -blazer.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix isn’t staying with us, we have no room in our house; he has a -room over the coast-guard’s wife, but he comes in to us for his meals. I -don’t believe George realizes this, or he would tell him he is throwing -himself away, and losing a good chance of advertising his books. Mr. -Aix’s books seem to go without advertising, more than George’s do—I -suppose it is because they are so improper.</p> - -<p>At any rate, he prefers to throw in his lot with us. One day we were all -having a picnic-tea at Cock Mill. The party consisted of Mother, me and -Ariadne, Aunt Gerty and Mr. Aix, and an actor friend of hers and his -wife, who was acting for a week at the Saloon Theatre. Mr. Bowser, whom -Aunt Gerty wants either to marry or get a theatre out of, was with us -too. They call him the King of Whitby, because he owns so many plots in -it, and is going to stand for it in the brewing interest next election. -We had secured the nicest table, the one nearest the stream, and had -just tucked our legs neatly under it, when a carriage drove up. Aunt -Gerty and the King of Whitby were at that moment<a name="page_163" id="page_163"></a> in the old woman’s -cottage who gives us the hot water, toasting tea-cakes.</p> - -<p>The Fylingdales’ party got out of that carriage, and George got slowly -down off the box. They trooped into the enclosure, and Mr. Sidney -Robinson, trying to be funny, asked the old woman if she could see her -way to giving them some tea.</p> - -<p>“Here o’ puppose, Sir!†said she, as of course she is. She pointed out -the table that was left and that led them past us.</p> - -<p>If Aunt Gerty had been there with Mr. Bowser she would certainly have -claimed George as a relation and said something awkward, but she was -luckily toasting tea-cakes, and had perhaps not even seen them. I saw -George just look at Mother, and I saw her smile a very little, and make -him a sign that he was to go right past us, and not speak or seem to -know us before. Of course Mr. Aix never spoils any one’s game, not even -George’s. So he went on talking hard to the actor’s wife, though I saw -his lip curl. I, of course, never need be given a cue twice, so I kicked -Mother hard under the table for sympathy, but preserved a calm superior.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty and Mr. Bowser came out with plates full of tea-cakes they -had cooked, and I didn’t know if it was the fire or Mr. Bowser had made -Aunt Gerty’s cheeks so red—I hoped the latter for her sake. They had no -idea of what had happened while they had been toasting and flirting, it -appeared from their manners, which were bad. Aunt Gerty always puts an -extra polish on hers when<a name="page_164" id="page_164"></a> George is present, and even Mr. Bowser would -have added a frill or so to suit the aristocracy.</p> - -<p>Our party was very gay. Actors all can make you laugh if they can do -nothing else, and our shrieks of laughter must have made the other party -quite envious, for they were as quiet as a mouse and as dull as the -stream all overshadowed with nut-bushes and alders that grew over it -just there.</p> - -<p>Suddenly George got up, and left them, and came over to us, and Aunt -Gerty swallowed her tea the wrong way round, and had to have her -shoulder thumped.</p> - -<p>George took no notice of her, but put his hand on Mr. Aix’s shoulder and -said something to him in a low voice.</p> - -<p>“Not if I know it!†Mr. Aix answered, quite violently, adding, “Many -thanks, old fellow, I am happier where I am.â€</p> - -<p>George looked awfully put out. Of course I knew what he wanted. Those -smart people up at the other table had expressed a wish to see Mr. Aix. -He is a successful though painfully realistic novelist, and George had -told them he was actually sitting at the next table, and had promised to -bring him over to them to be introduced. In his disappointment, he -glared at us all, especially the actor, who didn’t care a brass farthing -for George’s displeasure, and went on eating tea-cake <i>ad nauseam</i>.</p> - -<p>“Oh, all right!†said George, to cover his vexation, “if you prefer to -bury yourself in a——â€</p> - -<p>“Easy all!†Mr. Aix said. “Leave everybody<a name="page_165" id="page_165"></a> to enjoy themselves in their -own way. And we are depriving your delightful friends of——â€</p> - -<p>George had turned and gone back to his delightful friends long before -Mr. Aix had finished his sentence, and Aunt Gerty patted the poor man on -the back till he wriggled.</p> - -<p>“Loyal fellow!†she said several times. She had got well on to it now, -and she started a fit of giggles that lasted all the rest of the time we -were there. It didn’t matter much, for we were all quite drunk on weak -tea and laughter.</p> - -<p>But we turned as silent as mice as the Fylingdales’ party, having had -enough of their dull tea, streamed past us, and got into their carriage, -and rolled away. George was not with them. I dare say he had got over -the hedge and gone round to meet the break by the road, not wanting to -walk past our party again, and to avoid unpleasantness. I supposed he -had paid for the tea; but no, this grand party forgot to do that, so -that in the end Mr. Aix paid for their refreshment for the old woman’s -sake that she should not suffer.</p> - -<p>When they had gone, we felt relieved; but it sobered us somehow. Aunt -Gerty and the gentlemen smoked quietly, and we were so still that we -could hear the little beck bubbling over the loose stones beside us. -Then Aunt Gerty was persuaded to recite something, and she did “Loraine, -Loraine, Loree!†in a shy, modest voice. You see these were all her real -bosses, and she valued their approval, and the actor’s wife is -considered very<a name="page_166" id="page_166"></a> stiff in the profession. She herself sang “The banks of -Allan Water†very sadly and solidly, and Aunt Gerty cried. To cheer us -all up again the actor—rather a famous one, Mr. D—L——, did one of -his humorous recitations out of his London repertory for us, so that we -nearly died with laughing, and Aunt Gerty dried her tears, and whispered -to me that trying to laugh like a lady was so painful that she longed to -take a short cut out of her stays.<a name="page_167" id="page_167"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII</h2> - -<p>L<small>ADY</small> S<small>CILLY</small> came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda’s Terrace.</p> - -<p>“They can’t be parted long, poor things!†Aunt Gerty said, and Mother -hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her, -for a good blow, before she went to America.</p> - -<p>Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in “smalls†as Dick -Turpin, and Irene as “The Pumpeydore,†and Irene as Greek Slave, and -Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the -principal stationers’ windows. I should have thought she would have been -ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row -of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid—what Aunt -Gerty calls “la-di-dah†sort of people—can stand anything, so long as -it’s public.</p> - -<p>When she wasn’t dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just -a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out -a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two -gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with -her, and its lead kept<a name="page_168" id="page_168"></a> getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and -round my father’s legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He -wouldn’t have stood that from any one but a popular favourite.</p> - -<p>I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt -Gerty. They stopped at Truelove’s and looked at the picture-postcards. -She became very serious all at once.</p> - -<p>“I must go in and procure Myself!†she said to George, sniggling. In -they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove’s -shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as -good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained -from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to -ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for -one never knows how a daughter’s presence may interfere with a father’s -plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don’t want to injure his sales!</p> - -<p>Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not -approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her -face altogether.</p> - -<p>“The blighted idiot!†she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, “has -completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly -meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!â€</p> - -<p>She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket, -and she sang out loud, while<a name="page_169" id="page_169"></a> Aunt Gerty’s open mouth betrayed her shock -at her audacity—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“Oh, I’m Contrition Eliza,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">And she’s Salvation Jane.<br /></span> -<span class="i1">We once were wrong, we now are right,<br /></span> -<span class="i2">We’ll never go wrong again.â€<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>“I can’t quite promise that, alas! My friends won’t let me. I will send -Salvation Jane to Lord R——y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen -dozen, please; isn’t that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you -pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?â€</p> - -<p>“Good business!†said my Aunt. “Let me see? How much has she rooked -him?â€</p> - -<p>“Please don’t ask me to do sums,†said I. “Besides, George has a perfect -right to do as he pleases with his own money!â€</p> - -<p>George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them.</p> - -<p>“Whatever do you want them for?†asked Irene. (He never lets me say -whatever.)</p> - -<p>“To send to my children.â€</p> - -<p>“Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?†she asked.</p> - -<p>“In the nursery,†was George’s answer, as if he cared whether we were in -the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, -however.</p> - -<p>“And now,†she said, “do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great -book.â€</p> - -<p>“There ought to be some of my work here,†George replied gravely, and -made a move in our direction,<a name="page_170" id="page_170"></a> where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove -sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would -bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. -George asked her for <i>Dewlaps</i> (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), -and <i>The Pretty Lady</i>, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and <i>The -Light that was on Land and Sea</i>, and <i>Simple Simon</i>, of which the hero -really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked -blank.</p> - -<p>“I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order——â€</p> - -<p>George interrupted her. “Such is Fame! I have no doubt, <i>Belle Irene</i>, -that if you were to ask for any one of Aix’s books—<i>The Dustman</i>, or -<i>The Laundress</i>, or <i>Slackbaked!</i> you would be offered a plethora of -them.â€</p> - -<p>Irene took her cue. “But,†she drawled, “it is extraordinary! -Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty -soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God’s great gift of -sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, -dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of -imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with -light——â€</p> - -<p>It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty -didn’t like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand -suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water.</p> - -<p>“Brute!†she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept -saying, “Not at all!†not thinking<a name="page_171" id="page_171"></a> Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who -had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own -stupidity in upsetting the water.</p> - -<p>“Who was that lady?†I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew -well enough.</p> - -<p>“Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her—well, perhaps I hadn’t better say -what I remember her! She and I—she had got on a bit ahead of me even -then—played together at the ’Lane’ in ‘Devil Darling!’ ten years ago. -She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the -sort—dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind.â€</p> - -<p>“Hadn’t you the interest, Aunt Gerty?†I knew she had the other thing.</p> - -<p>“Don’t be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won’t she be -electrified!â€</p> - -<p>But Mother wasn’t a bit electrified.</p> - -<p>“All in the way of business, my dear girl!†she said to Aunt Gerty, who -chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. “Do subside about my -wrongs, if you don’t mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead -in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so -civil to her.â€</p> - -<p>“Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?†snorted Aunt -Gerty.</p> - -<p>“Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly’s best friend.â€</p> - -<p>“Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural -friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always<a name="page_172" id="page_172"></a> in -each other’s pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there -she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I -don’t believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may -well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take -it all out of one poor woman’s life!â€</p> - -<p>“I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure.â€</p> - -<p>“You sham it.â€</p> - -<p>“That is the next best thing to being it.â€</p> - -<p>“A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and -have got a husband that doesn’t come within a hundred miles of -appreciating you.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do; -I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted -on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of -them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn’t -condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!†-said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so -mild.</p> - -<p>I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty -thought so too, for she screamed out, “Bravo, Luce!†Mother burst into -tears. I don’t think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother’s tears, -so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at -something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever<a name="page_173" id="page_173"></a> to go into -the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that -was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the -head, not hard—Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the -shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away.</p> - -<p>A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see -George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these -Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of -George, don’t understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn’t -like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is -death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for -half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches -cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing -with him—George <i>believes</i> himself into his colds. He says that the -sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic -temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn’t that, what he has is -the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this -may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and -that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to -talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother -came to him.</p> - -<p>“My dear boy, no!†Mother said, and George groaned as he always does -when she calls him boy, but invalids can’t be choosers of phrases. “You -aren’t going to die just yet.†She went on, kindly<a name="page_174" id="page_174"></a> banging his pillows -about—“I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to -look after you. I shouldn’t wonder if they didn’t make objections in the -house. There will be a bit of a fuss.â€</p> - -<p>“Who will make a fuss, Mother?†I asked, “and why should they?â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t ask questions about what you don’t understand,†Mother said -sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? “Run home -and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or -two, and that she is to send my things, just what I’ll want for a couple -of nights.â€</p> - -<p>“Night-gown and toothbrush,†said I. As I left George put out his hand -to Mother and said quite nicely—</p> - -<p>“You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the -sick man’s pillow?â€</p> - -<p>Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his -cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She -kept saying, “I <i>know</i> they’ll think I am not respectable.â€</p> - -<p>The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left -them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty -chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said—</p> - -<p>“This will clear up George’s ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly -illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely, -don’t he? Is its blessed poet’s nose a good deal swollen?â€</p> - -<p>I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture<a name="page_175" id="page_175"></a> of the Pope and -Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things. -George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over -his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too -active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he -begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat -Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George’s chest to soothe him. -It did, and he played with my hair.</p> - -<p>“I am an angel when I am ill,†he said; “don’t you find me so? Strong -natures like mine——â€</p> - -<p>Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,—seaside roses always -look coarse, I think—and a lot of cards.</p> - -<p>“Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and -Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has -left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it, -for I don’t mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room, -exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them, -though I don’t suppose you can smell anything just now.â€</p> - -<p>She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene’s card was on the top. It -had a monogram in one corner—a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard -of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one -lives and learns.</p> - -<p>“I don’t, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman,†-George said. “But what,<a name="page_176" id="page_176"></a> as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as -an actress?â€</p> - -<p>“I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half -her chances,†Mother said eagerly.</p> - -<p>“No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances! -Irene has a genius for advertisement.â€</p> - -<p>“Look after the ’ads,’†said my Mother, “and the acts will take care of -themselves.â€</p> - -<p>“Good!†said George, “I should like to have said that myself.â€</p> - -<p>“I dare say you will, George,†said Mother quite nicely, “when once I -get you well again.â€</p> - -<p>I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less -than a week, but she didn’t let him out once during that time, and had -him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering -about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the -house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they -were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who -we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them. -I was too proud, but Ariadne’s decision was complicated by a hopeless -attachment she had started. “Love is enough!†she used to say, “and I -<i>must</i> go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!<a name="page_177" id="page_177"></a>â€</p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV</h2> - -<p>T<small>HE</small> young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly, -and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first -time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came -here, though they had both taken part in Christina’s wedding. He had -just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength -of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn’t; he would call now -if she asked him, but we don’t want him coming to the house on the quay, -for we couldn’t insulate Aunt Gerty.</p> - -<p>He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda’s -Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never -to be in her company more than he can help! That’s one to us.</p> - -<p>His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there -once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little -recitation on what he observed in his friend’s house. Whatever isn’t -ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the -house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and<a name="page_178" id="page_178"></a> -squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler, -excessively <i>collet monté</i>, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the -family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices <i>décolleté à -outrance</i>. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of -Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn’t. Prayers, bed -at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don’t think -George will ever be asked again, but I don’t wonder Lady Scilly was able -to get hold of Simon. <i>She</i> doesn’t frown over her <i>décolleté</i> bodices, -and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those -young fox-hound puppies “at walk†that one sees in the villages, and -Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. -I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that -Lady Scilly doesn’t, or else she would not let him out so freely. She -would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil’s finishing his -term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to -preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from -Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don’t -make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don’t -count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used -for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they -have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and -Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes -meet Simon on the quay,<a name="page_179" id="page_179"></a> when we are carrying a whole hodful, and -Ariadne won’t let him carry them for her, she doesn’t like him to know -that she is reading all about Love.</p> - -<p>Simon doesn’t really want to find out. He never wants very much -anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and -hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always -scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the -country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I -wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell -me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if -he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to -hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon’s eyes were bigger, he -really would be very handsome. Ariadne’s, however, are big enough for -two.</p> - -<p>This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it -hurts—women. It doesn’t hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up -his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want -when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only -sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who -is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most -marriages are made—hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true -benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the -bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In -refusing, you must remember to hope<a name="page_180" id="page_180"></a> after you have said that it can -never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to -accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your -burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you -come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing -neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves.</p> - -<p>Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to -resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an -affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a -man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A -harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew—from novels—that -that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must -unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to -sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and -went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the -back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the -crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was -her consolation.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards—she met him turning out of the -reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt -Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it -was Mr. Bowser.</p> - -<p>Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all -with any man—and<a name="page_181" id="page_181"></a> she does get on with Simon, that is certain—is to -collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities -of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine -instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched -feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the -idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it, -and manage it himself, and then—squash it!</p> - -<p>Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn’t in it with -them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite -casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves, -though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they -can get it into their heads that they won’t be conspicuous by their -absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When -one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit -stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at -those doors in despair you would find it no go!</p> - -<p>So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don’t see it. I sit -tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned. -And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to -is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not -talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes -comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn’t -said a word<a name="page_182" id="page_182"></a> more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her.</p> - -<p>“Excelsior!†I said. “I do really believe he is thinking of it.â€</p> - -<p>Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars -in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that -goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you -come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare? -He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on -hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn’t ride -as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow. -He would see better to ride if he wasn’t short-sighted, anyway. I don’t -believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge’s Tour and Mr. Jorrocks’ -something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a -little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn’t be -surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of -his, and that Cædmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales’ -estate.</p> - -<p>I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately, -and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but -because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he -never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne -is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if -it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her.<a name="page_183" id="page_183"></a> I am -not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do -that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love -latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne.</p> - -<p>She hates herrings now, and doesn’t care for cream. She lives -principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go -about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and -cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and -shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade -through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and -the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a -pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the -world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long. -She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won’t go -to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to -the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never -moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn’t show in her face that -she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short -fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds -altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for -her. She doesn’t let Simon know that she publishes, for it would -discredit her in his eyes. He says there’s no harm in girls scribbling -if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn’t.<a name="page_184" id="page_184"></a></p> - -<p>Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a “splendid girl.†-She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland, -and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected. -Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless -barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don’t mean we actually -want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where -one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put -the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once -kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always -betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are.</p> - -<p>The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the -poor boats can’t always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier -when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene -Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It -can’t blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with -Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt -Gerty refused to do.</p> - -<p>I don’t know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters -chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends -with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord -Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady -Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and -she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form,<a name="page_185" id="page_185"></a> not because she -is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton -abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre -as “one of us.†The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his -cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears -plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has -the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw—a <i>front candide</i> with a -vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like -that.</p> - -<p>Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some -one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are -generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near -relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these -questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he -takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the -pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says “what is the -good of being a gentleman if you can’t wear a shabby coat?†and does -wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don’t show it. -They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of -housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a -break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met -Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry -he has there, I believe.<a name="page_186" id="page_186"></a></p> - -<p>“Did you wish to see me?†he asked the front tourist politely.</p> - -<p>“Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?†said the tourist. It was of course -all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard -that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of -beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. -Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see -the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he -stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though -he isn’t exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear -what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in -disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, -and when he didn’t understand her, he just shook his head and grinned -and turned away.</p> - -<p>Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully -afraid of his father, who isn’t proud of him, but of Almeria, who he -says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the -boy.</p> - -<p>Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne’s fringe proved -an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria’s naked forehead made -her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as -that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make -friends with Simon’s sister, for he had obviously a great respect for -the girl’s opinion. She might have plenty of<a name="page_187" id="page_187"></a> sense in spite of her bald -forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at -each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a -mutual bond between them.</p> - -<p>“My sister writes a little,†he said.</p> - -<p>“Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine,†said Almeria, witheringly.</p> - -<p>—“And goes about,†he went on, “with a hammer collecting——â€</p> - -<p>“Bedlamites and Amorites,†said I, to make them laugh.</p> - -<p>They didn’t laugh, and Simon continued—</p> - -<p>“And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins.â€</p> - -<p>Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the -conversation.</p> - -<p>“And isn’t it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their -mouth—well, they are all mouth, aren’t they?â€</p> - -<p>“And stomach!†said Almeria, turning away politely.</p> - -<p>Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But -any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as -she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose, -just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as -fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that -Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly -civil—but civility is the<a name="page_188" id="page_188"></a> greatest preserver of distances there is if -people only knew.</p> - -<p>Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne, -but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so -compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn’t any, but she is -gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow -masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for -her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not -because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn’t conceited enough -to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for -her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty -all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic, -unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that -go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let -the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She -has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow -here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair. -“Always at work!†he says suddenly, and Ariadne’s guilty hands go down -like clockwork. It isn’t rude, the way he says it. He looks at her -kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like, -and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne.</p> - -<p>She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to -detest. Sometimes he looks<a name="page_189" id="page_189"></a> quite glum when she is ordering him about, -but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves -as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don’t want to? -And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants -to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month’s wages to be allowed -to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going -down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are -strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady -Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon’s cooling off, and just now -prefers to give him his orders from a distance.</p> - -<p>She calls Lord Scilly “Silly-Billy,†and “my harmless, necessary -husband.†He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she -really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one -made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord -Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, -and yet I don’t think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life -that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and -Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks -his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should -much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader -than George’s, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn’t married -to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the -junket—it turns it!<a name="page_190" id="page_190"></a></p> - -<p>He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn’t at all -anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her—even to me. That -is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these -smart people don’t realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had -one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn’t choose -to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won’t go out with him, -though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as -it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we -are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don’t, or he -would soon chuck us.</p> - -<p>Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties -they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I -think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and -attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don’t believe -much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of -view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either -side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it -seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said—</p> - -<p>“I back the little ’un!â€</p> - -<p>He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and -it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a -notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she -alluded to Ariadne’s frock as worn by “a very young girl.†Lord Scilly -thinks a girl<a name="page_191" id="page_191"></a> ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing -her.</p> - -<p>Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day -fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood’s Bay. Simon sent her a present by the -first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to -London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented—I suppose -he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without -some excuse like that?—and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave -her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she -expected, and not even that.</p> - -<p>However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her -that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only -teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood’s -Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment.</p> - -<p>The moment he got to Robin Hood’s Bay, he was off by himself, and away -quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he -gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was -looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with -“A Present for a Good Girl†on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, -only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they -will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating.</p> - -<p>I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if -she would stay a lady in<a name="page_192" id="page_192"></a> her great disappointment? She did. She thanked -him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw -her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so -was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As -for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence -of Ariadne’s discretion.</p> - -<p>It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and -talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and -beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they -did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was -looking, and the women used <i>papier poudrée</i> slyly in their -handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer -force of will. I was all right, being only a child.</p> - -<p>Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem -to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got—</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">“The patient world about their feet<br /></span> -<span class="i1">Lay still, and weltered in the heat.â€<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>“What else could it do but lie still?†I said, and suddenly just then -Simon got up—</p> - -<p>“I say! I’m going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, -Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn’t fall -and break her nose on the cliff steps.â€</p> - -<p>After the mug incident I don’t see how anybody could have objected, or -tried to prevent Ariadne<a name="page_193" id="page_193"></a> from taking the advantages of being treated as -a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got -up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known -fact that Lady Scilly can’t stand the sea in small quantities like what -you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None -of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take -any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as -she passed him.</p> - -<p>We had a lovely sail of a whole hour’s duration. We had an old boatman -wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a -smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged -couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on -to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to -borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon’s and tie a knot in it at all -four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she -had on a crown, not a hat.</p> - -<p>When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, “Oh, my -poor Ariadne!†and helped her to hide herself more or less in the -waggonette going home. I didn’t know before how becoming the cap was!<a name="page_194" id="page_194"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV</h2> - -<p>W<small>HEN</small> George came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls -at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty -may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing -as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother’s -guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at -George’s bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement -in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up -with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne’s umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came -off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the -cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much -mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of -lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre’s people won’t have -anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon -and Bowser had previously married Ariadne’s legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty -does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in -cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser -would be<a name="page_195" id="page_195"></a> the ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says -sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty -trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and -very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to -make her anxious to please <i>him</i>. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the -Bowser business, on condition she doesn’t try to squeeze herself into -the Saloon dancing set where George’s friends go.</p> - -<p>The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for -going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch -it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of -water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to -tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. -The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long -evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the -great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in -the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung -over the sea.</p> - -<p>There is a nice boy I like—he is twelve, quite young, and doesn’t need -conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people -meeting me and saying, the way they do, “What, child, all <i>alo-one</i> by -yourself?†which is so irritating.</p> - -<p>He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir -Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat -horses and<a name="page_196" id="page_196"></a> drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to -like him, so he brought me a list of his father’s yearlings, with their -names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his -own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must -have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran -away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing?</p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="2" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="font-size:.8em;"> -<tr><td align="left">Witch, ch. f. (II.B.),</td><td align="right">2 yrs.,</td><td align="left">Mr. Brooks,</td><td align="left">21 guins.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Milkmaid (h.h.),</td><td align="right">3 yrs.,</td><td align="left"> " Wingate,</td><td align="left">30 guins.</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.),</td><td align="right">Foal, 6 yrs.,</td><td align="left">Lord Manham,</td><td align="left">35 guins.</td></tr> -</table> - -<p class="nind">And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but -I saw he meant it, and didn’t tease him.</p> - -<p>Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not -etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is -why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don’t dance. I don’t -care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I -suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs -and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me.</p> - -<p>Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it -is <i>de rigueur</i>. And when they are not dancing they are talking of -money. I have heard them. I don’t mind listening, for, of course, money -isn’t private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight -nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas,<a name="page_197" id="page_197"></a> which -puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals -or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is -at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about -stocks to please her.</p> - -<p>Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does -not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying -themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly?</p> - -<p>One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but -before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, -Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn’t been -raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own -forehead.</p> - -<p>“Phew! I’m hot,†he said. “It’s a weary old world! Hope I die soon!â€</p> - -<p>Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon’s -partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy—that’s what the -grown-up women always call their special men!—just as Simon had taken -out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that -I envy him so.</p> - -<p>“Blow these wretched figures! They won’t come!†I heard him say.</p> - -<p>“On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions,†Lady -Scilly had answered pettishly; “what I complain of is that they won’t -go! See if you can’t pull me through, dear boy.<a name="page_198" id="page_198"></a>â€</p> - -<p>I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on -a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can -see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of -dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into -it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey’s iron -building.</p> - -<p>And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said -nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing -to say, and as he evidently didn’t want her to say it, it didn’t matter. -She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white -in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine’s, so she is repaid -for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked -at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall -when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple -or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn’t, -but sighed instead and said—</p> - -<p>“I wish I had a mother!†That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I -nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say.</p> - -<p>“Do you?†she said. “I have.â€</p> - -<p>Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed -to like it, for the next thing he said was—</p> - -<p>“Why don’t I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like -you.<a name="page_199" id="page_199"></a>â€</p> - -<p>I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, -not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very -moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They -came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put -her hand on Simon’s shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on -Ariadne’s.</p> - -<p>Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. -Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as -if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was “giving this -woman away†quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows -it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly.</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. “I love this thing, you know,†she said -to George. Then, going a little way back—“Just look at them! Isn’t it -idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of -over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to -listen to. And I—poor I—am Romeo’s deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline -take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?â€</p> - -<p>She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way -and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all -this if she hadn’t felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn’t been -silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne.<a name="page_200" id="page_200"></a></p> - -<p>“I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the -piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare—I mean flirt well!â€</p> - -<p>They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth.</p> - -<p>“I consider all that in <i>beastly</i> taste!†he said, whacking the rail -with Ariadne’s fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a -baby when you have smashed its favourite toy.</p> - -<p>Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. -Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such -is man—and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne.</p> - -<p>“I’ll give you a new one. I’ll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in -and dance—dance like the devil!â€</p> - -<p>Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. -He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the -Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present -moment she hasn’t got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and -betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow -money off George—just once—for that would choke him off her soonest of -anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother?</p> - -<p>Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, -eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the -time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She was<a name="page_201" id="page_201"></a> vexed -because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being -jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when -he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary -considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And -Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular -walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it.</p> - -<p>Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied -he would be. Then an untoward event happened.</p> - -<p>There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror -came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying -one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but -there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. -The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other -side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir -Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in -attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had -to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It -couldn’t have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and -joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would -have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, -with his little <i>retroussé</i> nose next to his father’s beak, and -Almeria’s large knuckle-duster<a name="page_202" id="page_202"></a> of a proboscis framing them. I don’t -suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way -behind, and he doesn’t love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. -Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty’s mash, as she calls him. I believe -she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at -being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate -party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white -muslin she had made herself—window-curtain stuff from Equality’s sale. -It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the -seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made -her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. -I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we -were in.</p> - -<p>I wasn’t attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. -Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a -sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into -the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would -tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the -platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the -gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a -victim—and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne!</p> - -<p>He didn’t ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this -liberty, but just seized Ariadne<a name="page_203" id="page_203"></a> by her thin muslin shoulder, and -pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had -time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was -acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt -Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came -plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely -excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear.</p> - -<p>He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and -shook her, saying, “This is the victim!â€</p> - -<p>It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she -might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own -class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the -rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the -stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course -turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and -Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,—just once—and I saw his -scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him -look like that before. It was awful!</p> - -<p>The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been -thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, “I can’t stand any more of this. -I believe I shall faint!â€</p> - -<p>That wasn’t true, I knew, she can’t faint if she<a name="page_204" id="page_204"></a> tries, but still any -one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable.</p> - -<p>I said to my aunt, “We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if -you like.â€</p> - -<p>And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic—that was the -worst of it—faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and -scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a -victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then -she burst out crying.</p> - -<p>“He will never speak to me again. I know he won’t. He is very proud, and -I have disgraced him—disgraced him before his order!â€</p> - -<p>“You can’t disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and -now you never will be.â€</p> - -<p>“No,†Ariadne said, meekly, “I am unworthy of him.â€</p> - -<p>“You are very weak!†said I, “but on the whole I consider it was Aunt -Gerty’s fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I -tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call -next day to show that <i>noblesse oblige</i>, and that he didn’t think -anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn’t suppose -he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser -and then by Dapping, again.</p> - -<p>All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the -eye of Whitby. It rained<a name="page_205" id="page_205"></a> luckily. Next day she still wouldn’t, and as -it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was -going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her.</p> - -<p>“No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else,†I said; -“and they can’t see that your shoulder is black and blue under your -gown.â€</p> - -<p>“I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin -too,†she moaned, though I don’t know what she meant, that it had made a -more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what.</p> - -<p>“I know one thing,†she gulped. “Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall -cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him—cut him dead.â€</p> - -<p>“Why not? He murdered you.â€</p> - -<p>I think this was Ariadne’s first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She -would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother -encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she -said several times, “Never again!†which is the most awful thing to say -to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn’t to be trusted with girls, -and especially George’s girls. Mother gave it her well.</p> - -<p>“You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! -I shall never hear the end of it from George.â€</p> - -<p>“George indeed! Why wasn’t George looking after his own precious kids -then? I don’t think he’s got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be<a name="page_206" id="page_206"></a> -having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much -surprised!â€</p> - -<p>“You hold your wicked, lying tongue!†was all Mother said to her. -Mother, somehow, hasn’t the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty.</p> - -<p>I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He -can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. “Paquerette -knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is -a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a -bit! She and I understand each other!â€</p> - -<p>He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly -doesn’t agree with him, or says she doesn’t. “Scilly and I,†she once -said to Ariadne, “are an astigmatic couple.†She meant, she explained, -that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the -long-sighted eye.</p> - -<p>Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were -concerned. George’s scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and -she couldn’t possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne -could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn’t stir out of -the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. -Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing -them into each other’s arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If -Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon’s being near her made her look -quite old and<a name="page_207" id="page_207"></a> anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored.</p> - -<p>One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the -quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it’s fashionable, and if -you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen -by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats -were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed -sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on -the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure -and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as -they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and -took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much -that he didn’t ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of -Simon Hermyre’s is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses -to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be -rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no -criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still -think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy.</p> - -<p>“Do let me have the pleasure,†he kept saying, and “Do let me!†and -goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I -suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be -trying to do what they want in spite of themselves.<a name="page_208" id="page_208"></a></p> - -<p>“Then that is settled, thank the Lord!†I heard him say at last. (My -sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and -rather drowned their conversation.) “Just look at that sheet of silver -on the floor of the boat—all one night’s haul! Suppose it was shillings -and half-crowns?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as -you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is -very like a full court-train, isn’t it, the one you are going to have -the privilege of paying for?â€</p> - -<p>Simon said yes it was, but he didn’t seem to like her quite so much as -he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have -grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched -look come over his face.</p> - -<p>Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come -there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my -sailor and came round behind her and said, “How do you do?â€</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to -speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their -bathe.</p> - -<p>“How is your sister?†Simon asked me.</p> - -<p>“Very well, thank you—at least I mean not very well——â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night.<a name="page_209" id="page_209"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did.â€</p> - -<p>“Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute -Bowser some injury I’ll—— And the people she was with——? I beg your -pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both—wasn’t it her -business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor’s good-nature being imposed upon?â€</p> - -<p>He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was -best to do for the best of all.</p> - -<p>“Oh, <i>that</i> person,†said I. “She wasn’t anything to do with us. Miss -Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?â€</p> - -<p>“I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like -that alone.â€</p> - -<p>“Why, I was with her!â€</p> - -<p>“What earthly good are you, you small elf?†asked Simon seriously and -kindly, smiling down at me. “I wish to goodness <i>my</i> sister——â€</p> - -<p>I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take -to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn’t say it. He is so prim and -reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, -and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called -Henderland in Northumberland.</p> - -<p>“Henderland,†said I, “that’s near where Christina lives.â€</p> - -<p>“Who is Christina?<a name="page_210" id="page_210"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Why, George’s old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best -man.â€</p> - -<p>“Peter Ball’s! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. <i>‘Have you forgotten, -love, so soon—That</i> church <i>in June?’</i> Yes, of course I used to call -her the Woman who Would—marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over -there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation.â€</p> - -<p>He wouldn’t say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little -way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now -Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina -for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this -talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down -to a time, but I was wiser. I said “Good-bye†quite shortly, as if I -wasn’t at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little -ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her -before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty -Aunt Gertys can’t hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin -her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did -it at lunch.</p> - -<p>“Please, Aunt Gerty,†I said, “if you meet me on the quays or anywhere -when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be -familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I -gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, did he ask?†said Aunt Gerty, jumping<a name="page_211" id="page_211"></a> about. “He must have seen me -somewhere. In <i>Trixy’s Trust</i> perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, -you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course.â€</p> - -<p>“All right,†said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now -don’t you call that eating your cake and having it!<a name="page_212" id="page_212"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI</h2> - -<p>W<small>E</small> all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough -to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly -that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the -air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it -more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she -completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which -she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the -brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very -patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was -feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented -it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken -heart.</p> - -<p>George left for Scotland. He <i>says</i> he is going to shoot with the -Scillys. I don’t know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben -Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn’t matter. It was settled -that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland.</p> - -<p>Ariadne didn’t like going straight on from Whitby,<a name="page_213" id="page_213"></a> because she would -have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the -difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious -things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we -should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a -penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The -all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three -hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written -up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few -months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George’s black velvet -fencing costume and his neat legs.</p> - -<p>George has <i>so</i> much taste. He simply lives at Christie’s. He cannot -help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says -they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them.</p> - -<p>The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina’s. -I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after -a proper <i>bonâ fide</i> shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George -gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and -another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing -mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the -out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She -has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All -types can be acquired. In the face of<a name="page_214" id="page_214"></a> this, she went out and bought a -<i>Miriam’s Home Journal</i>, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the -Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye -Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a -heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling -about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn’t scold them -lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and -the little tailor kept saying, “A pleat here would be beneficial to it, -Madam,†or to his assistant, “Remove that fulness there!†till there -wasn’t a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge.</p> - -<p>Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came -home. “Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne,†I said to her, -imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him -and made him take ten shillings off the bill.</p> - -<p>I couldn’t help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, -when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the -privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with “real cow†-as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her -shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, -that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and -considered herself little better than a murderer!</p> - -<p>Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and -told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his -opinion. So<a name="page_215" id="page_215"></a> long as he didn’t tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not -matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody -mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in -connection with Ariadne’s new dress. I was sure we should see him -somewhere in Northumberland. It isn’t as big as America, and where there -is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of -him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock’s -wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for -I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given -her a moorcock’s feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of -fools to shoot them.</p> - -<p>I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, -and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How -it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love -for a long while to come. I don’t care if it never comes my way at all. -But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for -it yet, anyway. I don’t believe that Love is a woman’s whole existence -any more than it is a man’s. We are like ships, made in water-tight -compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the -whole concern isn’t done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole -compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others -wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out -yet watching it through<a name="page_216" id="page_216"></a> the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices -now and then.</p> - -<p>I don’t study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento -House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady -Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise -for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for -himself.</p> - -<p>Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt -Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off -could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving -by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for -Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far -off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them -<i>Funny Bits</i> and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children -often profit by their elders’ foolish fancies.</p> - -<p>Mother wouldn’t even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear -the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on -suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular -affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it -called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where -the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as -the Scotch Express rattled by.</p> - -<p>To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about -something, and kept sticking<a name="page_217" id="page_217"></a> her hip out in an engaging way she has, -and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her -an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not -quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, -if they only could all get the man they want <i>at the time</i> they want -him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All -grown-up people’s tempers come because they can’t get what they want. -And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn’t got what she wanted, for a -whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. -She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream -and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my -Aunt Gerty’s, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy -it.</p> - -<p>Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly -started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put -on—Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as -other women do—and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, -and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched -her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor -had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she -said—</p> - -<p>“No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!â€</p> - -<p>A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I -wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was<a name="page_218" id="page_218"></a> -anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at -Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I -think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn’t know she was -pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to -keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon’s set, -they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she -has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so -as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids.</p> - -<p>“It doesn’t matter how you look,†I said, “there is nobody but porters -to see you, and you don’t want to mash them and distract them from their -work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you -preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George’s -dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look -as repulsive as we can.â€</p> - -<p>George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to -do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a -prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be -by ourselves all the way.</p> - -<p>Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and -brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked -in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from -scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and -looked ugly for two.<a name="page_219" id="page_219"></a> I was interested in the country. It is quite -hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an -industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and -keeping warm (coal) didn’t mean so many people having to live black, and -whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don’t think I approve of -civilization, if this is what it comes out of?</p> - -<p>When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to -Ariadne, “I told you so!†for there was Christina Ball in a muslin -dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was -sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn’t be hers; -we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild -to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one -of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And -besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and -so she did).</p> - -<p>We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony -and couldn’t get down—and it was arranged that our luggage was to come -on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart -new dog-cart.</p> - -<p>Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like -the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and -countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and -said to Christina, “Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the -pond!<a name="page_220" id="page_220"></a>â€</p> - -<p>The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said -nothing, but looked it.</p> - -<p>“Oh, the duck-weed!†said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be -amused by anything she says. “Miss Emerson Tree here—allow me to -introduce Peter’s American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree—calls it the -‘stagnance.’â€</p> - -<p>The ugly child still didn’t say anything, though “stagnance†was just as -absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite -afraid of one who, though so young, didn’t seem to want to fly out. She -turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of -Ariadne’s shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina -went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of -things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do -believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before -Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves.</p> - -<p>It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly -child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant -upon the last syllable of the word <i>despise</i> was the nastiest thing I -ever heard.</p> - -<p>“Oh, I do just <i>despise</i> your waist!†she said to Ariadne; “I’ve been -looking at it all the way we’ve come.â€</p> - -<p>Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its -socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary -child<a name="page_221" id="page_221"></a> couldn’t have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying -a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. -Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the -country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first.</p> - -<p>“But in the end, the country rubs off on one,†she sighed, “and a good -thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I -have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, Christina, you <i>have</i> changed!†said I.</p> - -<p>“I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the -offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was -saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post -haste, to hatch some chickens——â€</p> - -<p>“I thought a hen did that?†ventured Ariadne.</p> - -<p>“Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to -kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of -the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every -hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!—one came out——â€</p> - -<p>“You mean chipped the shell,†said Ariadne primly.</p> - -<p>“Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants -shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five -more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then -some one pinched my baby—he<a name="page_222" id="page_222"></a> screamed, and went on screaming like an -electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him—cook made a -blazing fire, do you see?—I have only saved five out of that brood.â€</p> - -<p>“How very funny!†said Ariadne, who wasn’t a bit amused.</p> - -<p>I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been -used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to -the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery -and unfamiliar death.</p> - -<p>“Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?†she asked Ariadne, -and Ariadne was on the <i>qui vive</i> at once. “They all think one an -unnatural parent here, if one doesn’t take one’s brood to be perpetuated -at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am -fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them -to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so -why not for me? Say! I am on the pony’s neck! I am going to put the seat -back, take the reins a minute!â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne didn’t of course like her giving them to me, but everybody -always sees at once that I am the practical one.</p> - -<p>When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on.</p> - -<p>“Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the -school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven’t had tea with myself -for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don<a name="page_223" id="page_223"></a>’t know! Peter says I -lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the -Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron’s, your -father’s, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so -shocked when I recommended him <i>The Road to Rome</i>! It’s a book of -travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he -told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder -whether you’ll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are -possible.â€</p> - -<p>“I am not a flirt—now,†said Ariadne.</p> - -<p>She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at -least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. “My God, pony!†she -said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose.</p> - -<p>“And there’s Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more -than ten miles off.â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne at once sat tight—too tight. It was almost painful, and showed -in her face too.</p> - -<p>Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree -spoke again, and actually about Ariadne’s body.</p> - -<p>“Any way, it’s on all crooked,†she said, as if she was continuing the -previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. -They couldn’t, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the -coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her -hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were<a name="page_224" id="page_224"></a> having tea. She -had hers “laced‗I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and -thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She -certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her -mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, -people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I -would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person’s things to her -face as I would of—kissing Emerson Tree’s very ugly mug, though I -wouldn’t tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. -Peter calls her “the little witch.â€</p> - -<p>“The little witch,†he says, “was being neglected, or thought she was, -at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, ‘I -say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!’ You -should have seen the old boy’s face!â€</p> - -<p>I did see the old boy’s face. He was waiting at tea.</p> - -<p>Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly -as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, “Dash it -all! why it’s bald!†How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her -with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the -pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to -catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd -things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat—as if a cat -ever stayed to be aspinalled!—and gunpowder into<a name="page_225" id="page_225"></a> ovens, and frogs into -boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the -clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once -when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked -before her, she had given away the furniture.</p> - -<p>“She went solemnly down the village,†said Christina, “making presents -of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn’t want and I -did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray -door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock—all disappeared. When it -came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I -had to scold her. Oh, she’ll be a great actress some day.â€</p> - -<p>We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I -disapproved of it all,—unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a -child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, -after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because -we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off -discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; “shoots†and who to -have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used -to put us head first down rabbit-holes.</p> - -<p>“Has he a wife?†she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man.</p> - -<p>“My dear, I haven’t the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital -shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!<a name="page_226" id="page_226"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“These good shots bring down such bad wives—I mean from the house-party -point of view,†she says. “To look at their choice, they would always -seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I -am boxed up with your friends’ bad shots all day. I can’t possibly make -my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane -brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for -idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in -with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of -straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to ‘muck herself up.’â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t like that phrase, Christina!â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t be so aggressively pure, Peter!â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne and I have called him “Pure Peter†ever since, but he is not -bad, really. It is a mercy when one’s friends show a little -consideration in their marriage, and one mustn’t be too particular, for -the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil -to. Peter Ball talks about “Vickings†and keeps a chart of the weather, -but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman.<a name="page_227" id="page_227"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII</h2> - -<p>A<small>RIADNE</small> got fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl -in her position. I can’t say that she kept that up at all well, beyond -looking sad, sometimes when she wasn’t thinking, or at meals. She has to -pretend to be <i>distraite</i>, for really she is very all there, and likes -her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up -in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won’t answer his -question whether she wants some more?—“Thinking of the old ’un, what?†-He doesn’t know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows -nothing of Ariadne’s affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word -for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex.</p> - -<p>Jane Emerson Tree doesn’t take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; -she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is -a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather -patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has -lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the -billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn’t a hat, it is a tile, and so -can’t either become or unbecome.<a name="page_228" id="page_228"></a></p> - -<p>Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham’s, or at -Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes’ place; neither places are more than ten miles -or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina -wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only -other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the -Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, -and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is -what becomes of all our old families. He isn’t old, but very wrinkled. -That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy -velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as -Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, -here, till Christina’s “shoots†come off, and Ariadne egged him on—the -amount of egging on a shy man takes!—to ask her, and then accepted to -go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in -a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew -the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked -her if she felt chilly (“Chilly!†she thought) about sixteen times, and -said By Gosh when he didn’t catch anything, which was frequent, and -“What in thunder’s got ’em?†alluding to the trout, when at last in -despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to -the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without -being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squires<a name="page_229" id="page_229"></a> ought to be -like Mr. Heathcliff in <i>Wuthering Heights</i> and hide a burning lava of -passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester -is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up -in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a -real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank -bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding -disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not -catching fish!</p> - -<p>He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages “for the -ladies†at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all -Christina’s rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as -much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says -Ariadne must take care and not to be like “Miss Baxter (whoever she was) -who refused a gent before he asked her.â€</p> - -<p>Christina thinks he <i>is</i> a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing -for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and -that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be -able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin -than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and -get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by -way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him -sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes<a name="page_230" id="page_230"></a> the side -of the woman—<i>esprit de corpse</i>, I think they call it. I myself think -there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great -mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love -with Simon. I even threatened her with this <i>exposé</i>, and she turned -round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she <i>wasn’t</i> in love with -Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half -of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first -go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because -she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for -one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual -pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she -cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could -get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very -afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that!</p> - -<p>Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. -We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the -places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening -up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise -done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we -called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons.</p> - -<p>At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and -Ariadne answered demurely that<a name="page_231" id="page_231"></a> it was getting a nice pea-green, or a -good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that -they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse -than ever.</p> - -<p>Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of -them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we -had to make a rule that we wouldn’t allow gentlemen in the church during -decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers -instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men’s button-holes -instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss -Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really -keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn’t care for so -many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady -work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she -<i>reely</i> could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from -him! We were only decorating for three days.</p> - -<p>During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on -very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in -the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had -taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we -did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day’s -ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double -dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church<a name="page_232" id="page_232"></a> just -as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their -own, in either case.</p> - -<p>Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no -wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not -look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she -had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then.</p> - -<p>At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the -village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a -want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is -all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to -make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne’s untidiness is -trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as -book-markers, and butter—well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! -Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the -door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne’s cakes, when made, will -form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of -breaking the nastiest fall.</p> - -<p>Christina’s cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave -her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the -Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get -fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing -good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for<a name="page_233" id="page_233"></a> -giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status -was preserved.</p> - -<p>On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter -Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of -the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside -while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them -to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of -them said, “Ay, Sir, but aren’t we men the buttresses a-leaning up -against it and propping it up like?†Peter was only shocked.</p> - -<p>We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more -than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our -eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our -flowers wouldn’t topple suddenly because we hadn’t tied them securely -enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, -standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and -a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he -said, “Why, that wor t’ Kern babby!†I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who -dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a -pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll -on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his -answer; he was pleased.<a name="page_234" id="page_234"></a></p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“<span class="smcap">My dear Miss Vero-Taylor</span>,</p> - -<p>“Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in -one so young. The little mannikin—or rather womankin—is, as you -aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the -very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the -custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to -dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the -streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, -and the people dance round it singing:</p> - -<div class="poem"><div class="stanza"> -<span class="i0">‘Blest be the day that Christ was born!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">We’ve getten Mell of <i>Ball’s</i> corn!<br /></span> -<span class="i1">It’s well bun’ and better shorn!<br /></span> -<span class="i4">Hip! Hip! Hurray!’<br /></span> -</div></div> - -<p>“This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly -scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the -Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps -during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this -grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the -goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called -Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm’s Teutonic Mythology, passim—â€</p></div> - -<p>“Oh yes, pass him, pass him!†said Peter impatiently, who won’t however -let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for -saying,</p> - -<p>“Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn’t it?â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†she remarked to Ariadne later on, “you had better be getting up -your mythology†(meaning<a name="page_235" id="page_235"></a> the Bible, only Peter didn’t twig anything so -wrapped up as this), “because you will be sure to be subpÅ“na’d to -take a class in the Sunday school after you have fished for it. <i>Nemo -Dodd impune lacessit!</i>â€</p> - -<p>“Can’t Dodd lace his boots with impunity?†I asked Peter. I knew it -wasn’t that, any more than <i>Res angusta domi</i> means “Please to keep -Augusta at home,†and some others like that I have made.</p> - -<p>Sure enough, Mr. Dodd made Ariadne take a class in his Sunday school, -and Christina chuckled. It is the price of Mr. Dodd’s admiration, and he -admired Ariadne very much. She is not really any happier for it, rather -bored by it in fact. She spent three whole days getting up Sacred -History for fear the school children, who have of course been properly -brought up and grounded, should floor her, a poor feckless literary -man’s daughter. Peter Ball gave her a little arithmetic. She got as far -as Proportion with him. There was one sum about how many men it would -take to build a wall of so many feet in so many hours. If it was Inverse -Proportion, which it might be, and then again it mightn’t, you put the -men under the wall and divide by the hours; as many of them as are left -after such treatment is the answer. It came, stupidly enough, -two-and-a-half, so I suggested to Ariadne, as I was helping her, to put -<i>Two men and a boy</i>. Peter said she didn’t repay teaching, and saw -nothing to laugh at, though his wife seemed to.</p> - -<p>Then Ariadne started an essay club with prizes.<a name="page_236" id="page_236"></a> The Squire bought those -for her in Morpeth when he went in to sell pelts and hides. Fancy -touching his hand after that! They were bits of his poor beasts that he -had killed! Billy Scott’s short essay on the elephant, “<i>an animal with -a leg at each corner and a tail at both ends,</i>†was funny; and Sally -Moscrop’s description of “<i>any animal she liked to choose.</i>†She -invented “<i>The Proc,</i>†a beast with four legs, “<i>two of whom are bigger -and longer than the others, for the Proc lives all around a hill.</i>†-Grace Paterson’s essay was quite long. “<i>The Pin is an exceedingly -useful article. It has saved the lives of many men, many women and many -children by not swallering of them.</i>â€</p> - -<p>Grace is fourteen and the beauty of the village. She has begun a tale in -ten chapters. She has to write it up in the apple-tree, for fear her -father should “warm†her.</p> - -<p>She and Ariadne were the two belles of the Ball in the Parish Room on -Monday evening. They both danced with the Squire, who said he was in -luck to get two literary ladies to dance with him on the same night. But -Ariadne walked home with him, and I went with Christina. Mr. Rochester -had one of his own roses Ariadne had given him back, in his button-hole. -She is so unhappy about Simon that she doesn’t care who proposes to her. -That is the way girls take it—a very selfish way, but they are selfish -all through when they are in love. Ariadne actually thinks the Squire -thinks he proposed to her going home that night. I don’t. It was pitch -dark<a name="page_237" id="page_237"></a> as we went home, the village is not lighted, and it is a very -wicked village. She says, long arms like tentacles came groping out from -the wall in the dark, and the Squire dragged her past them. As the -village young men couldn’t see, they thought her one of their own -sweethearts, for by then the party had broken up and was all over the -place. The chucker-out had been very much occupied and had found the -brook near the school-house door very handy.</p> - -<p>But I don’t myself think the Squire did propose. He offered to take care -of her, past the tentacles, but not for life. I think if a girl is -always dreading proposals and thinking of how men will feel it when -refused, proposals never come to them. That is what Christina said, and -that Peter Ball took her entirely by surprise, when he asked her. I knew -better, for I had chaperoned that affair. She says Peter wears very -well, and that there’s some gilt left on the gingerbread still. The -gramophone is still in all its glory, and when she was ill up-stairs, -when Jim was born, Peter used to send up a message by the nurse for her -to leave the door of her room open for half-an-hour before dinner, and -then she would hear it. The nurse always forbade it, but Christina -always insisted on it, to please Peter, and lay with her ears stopped up -with sheet till the half hour was over. It is a new gramophone, not the -one he had in Leinster Gardens. That shouted itself out, I suppose? -Christina found an entry in his old pocket-book—<a name="page_238" id="page_238"></a></p> - -<p><i>“July 19—a memorable year in my life. I bought a new gramophone and I -got married. I won’t say anything about my wife here, but the gramophone -was a beauty when she was new——“</i></p> - -<p>Ariadne was disgusted. She doesn’t believe Simon would say such a coarse -thing. Well, I wish she had some experience on the subject, what Simon -would say, that’s all!</p> - -<p>When Simon did come over to shoot, Ariadne hardly spoke to him during -the three days he was here. No one did, much. He is so fearfully -eligible that all the nice girls feel they must snub him, and he hardly -gets a cup of tea. If Christina hadn’t known nice girls only, Ariadne -would have had a better chance. What is the good of being a nice modest -girl among other nice modest girls? And though Ariadne would not believe -it, she did badly without her foil Lady Scilly, who showed up her -niceness and made Simon draw comparisons. Then there was another adverse -circumstance. The Squire came and followed Ariadne about with his eyes, -till it really wasn’t safe to sit in a line with them both. That put -Simon off. He is too nice to prefer a girl because another man is making -himself unhappy about her.</p> - -<p>Indeed Simon looked most uncomfortably serious and even sad. He has got -his first wrinkle fixed between his eyebrows. He looks at Ariadne often, -but in a puzzled sort of way, and takes himself up with a jerk, shaking -his head, that the curls are cut off from too short to waggle.<a name="page_239" id="page_239"></a></p> - -<p>“He cares for me—yes, he cares desperately,†said Ariadne one night, -just as she was arranging her watch and her handkerchief on the chair -beside our bed, and his photograph under her pillow. I have to take that -away every morning lest the housemaid should see it and make fun of her. -Ariadne forgets. We also arrange the strap of our box down the middle of -the bed so that neither of us should encroach in the other’s part, and -all these arrangements take time. Ariadne, though she is so gentle and -so in love, always looks sharply to her rights, and more than her -rights, and I generally find myself lying on the very rim of the bed. -She is the eldest, unfortunately, and once she took the strap out of the -bed to me when I objected.</p> - -<p>“He loves me—oh, he does!†she moaned, “only he is not free.â€</p> - -<p>“He is in the power of a wicked witch, like the one who enchanted -Jorinde and Joringel in Grimm!†I said, and tried to go to sleep and -thought a little. Lady Scilly isn’t old, like the German witch, but I -remember what the Ollendorff man said to me about her being a “fairy,†-and I know there is some connection between them. Fairies are those who -would do harm if they had the power; witches have the power, but only -because they are old and don’t care for the things they cared for when -they were young. Ariadne will never be a fairy when she grows up, she -will always be too silly, and get put upon in society, though in private -life she is quite up to her rights, and talks as loud as any one and -doesn<a name="page_240" id="page_240"></a>’t trouble to be die-away. Men never see that side of girls, -mercifully they are able to keep it out of sight till they are at least -married, and on the pig’s back, as Peter says. It is the unromantic -things they are ashamed of. Ariadne wouldn’t mind Simon knowing she had -appendicitis, but not for worlds that she had a corn on her foot and had -to have it cut, or a chilblain, and it burst.</p> - -<p>Presently she woke up and said, “Will any one tell me why a woman like -that should be allowed to ruin his young life?â€</p> - -<p>“All young men have nine lives like a cat, there will be eight left for -you to ruin, when you get him—but you never will.†I always add this -not to raise false hopes. “And, goodness me, you can’t expect to get a -young man all to yourself, as fresh and shining as a new pin!â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, I do!†said Ariadne crossly. “I want a safety-pin even. I am a new -pin myself—I have never loved anybody but Simon, now have I?â€</p> - -<p>I didn’t answer that, but said I did wish we might turn over and go to -sleep, when Christina rapped on the wall with a hairbrush and begged us -to be quiet.</p> - -<p>“Yes. All right! We will!†I yelled, and I certainly wouldn’t have said -another word, but Ariadne began again, five minutes later.</p> - -<p>“Tempe, why do these wretched married women—I’d be ashamed to be -one—always want everybody at once? She has got Mr. Pawky, and——â€</p> - -<p>“Mr. Pawky is only for money,†I said. I was<a name="page_241" id="page_241"></a> not going to tell her -about her dear Simon paying Lady Scilly’s bills as well as poor Pawky.</p> - -<p>“And Simon’s for love, then—oh dear! And George for literature. I am -prettier than her, Tempe? Say I am—oh say I am, I want to hear you say -it.â€</p> - -<p>“I won’t say it. You are far too conceited already.â€</p> - -<p>“That is the same as saying it,†answered Ariadne, and got calmer. “And -at all events I am real, and that’s more than she can say. I don’t have -to peel off my charms and put them away in a drawer like she has to.†-(Ariadne is able to put her poems quite in grammar, but I suppose she -thinks it unnecessary to be always at a stretch.)</p> - -<p>“I don’t believe realness counts at all with young men,†I said. “I -believe they really and truly enjoy kissing paint, and groping about the -floor for pin curls when they’ve done, and powder on their shoulders -when they go out into the street from calling.â€</p> - -<p>“Goodness!†cried Ariadne, almost shrieking, “you don’t suppose Simon -ever went as far as kissing her? If I thought that, I’d——â€</p> - -<p>“What?â€</p> - -<p>“Never let him kiss me again. He hasn’t of course, yet! Oh, Tempe, I -wish he had!â€</p> - -<p>“There you go!†I cried out, sick of her changeableness. “First you want -him not to, then you wish he had. And the poor thing must kiss -somebody—he’s got no mother, and kissing Almeria<a name="page_242" id="page_242"></a> would be like kissing -a cactus or cuddling a porcupine. Do please keep to your own part of the -bed, you don’t respect the strap a bit! I shall be on the floor in a -minute. I’m lying right in the hem of the sheet now.â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne kindly made a little more room for me as I was patiently -listening to her, and went on.</p> - -<p>“Tempe, I have learned in three short seasons some of the bitter truths -of so-called society——â€</p> - -<p>Just then, as any one could have foretold from the noise we were making, -Christina walked right into the room.</p> - -<p>“Will you two children be quiet! Why are you crying, Ariadne?â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne said she wasn’t crying, and at the same time asked Christina to -be good enough, as she was up, to get her a clean pocket-handkerchief -out of the drawer, one of those tied up with blue ribbon, not pink, for -they are larger and plainer. Christina got it and then came and sat on -my foot, which she could scarcely help doing, as I was only just but -tumbling out of the bed altogether. She was exceedingly nice and -sympathetic and agreed that Lady Scilly ought to put Simon back, for he -was too little a fish for her to hook, being only twenty-four and she -thirty-eight. She assured Ariadne, much as Mother used to assure me, -that there were no ghosts—then if there aren’t, what are the white -things one sees hanging about the doors of rooms?—that Simon didn’t -really care for an old thing like that, and that if he did, her -attraction must naturally<a name="page_243" id="page_243"></a> wear out in the course of ages, and that -Simon wouldn’t be so very old by the time that happened, and would know -a nice girl when he saw one, with his unjaundiced eyes.</p> - -<p>She also thought Ariadne should not put upon me so, and should give me a -bigger piece of bed.</p> - -<p>I was thinking all the time she was talking of George, and how Mother -too as well as Ariadne was unhappy because of this evil fairy. I wished -the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, -and that Simon mightn’t be in it when that happened.</p> - -<p>When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made -Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever -married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let -all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems -unattached, you may be pretty sure there’s a girl worrying about him -somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! That’s my motto, and -indeed a woman now-a-days is lucky if she gets a whole man to herself as -Christina has Peter, and well she knows when she is well off, and only -laughs when her Peter says, as he did at breakfast, when she offered him -Quaker Oats, “Woman, haven’t you learnt that my constitution clashes -with cereals?â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his -friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went -out<a name="page_244" id="page_244"></a> into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched -it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we -could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne’s best silk ties, -and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don’t know if it did Lady Scilly -any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the -columns of the <i>Morning Post</i> every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, -or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to -Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of -best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, -and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of -her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, <i>i. e.</i> Lady -Scilly’s having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks -that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same -room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular -dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when -it comes to preserving Peter.</p> - -<p>The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the -seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One -can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson.</p> - -<p>She is a substantial farmer’s daughter, in spite of her thinking she can -write. But she can wring a fowl’s neck, and make butter, two things that -Ariadne<a name="page_245" id="page_245"></a> never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other -from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire’s -position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a -gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right.<a name="page_246" id="page_246"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII</h2> - -<p>L<small>ADY</small> S<small>CILLY</small> has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor -spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on -beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the -figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had -consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. -I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that “Devil! -Devil! Devil!†repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that -was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the -best.</p> - -<p>Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if -possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a -novel of Ouida’s. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandière. I suppose it is -Mother’s neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores -Ouida, and Doré is his favourite artist. He has “that beautiful Pilate’s -wife’s Dream†hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it -looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully -afraid of beetles!</p> - -<p>Christina came on to us for a few days after staying<a name="page_247" id="page_247"></a> with her -mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and -taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears -so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was -learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was -an advent.</p> - -<p>Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with -holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her -undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, -do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not -young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above -all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in -our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George’s -request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does -not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, -Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about -making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death -about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I -used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up -in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which -Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would -disapprove of it.</p> - -<p>Ariadne managed to “sneak†a waist, and George never noticed. That is -the odd part of it; we all<a name="page_248" id="page_248"></a> think that that inch more or less makes such -a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, -and to the outward eye look as thick as ever!</p> - -<p>Ariadne’s figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find -out one’s best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of -friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but -doesn’t want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn’t come out in -self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut -fibre, <i>I</i> think, but Papa’s friends admire it, and she gets the -reputation of being a beauty on it in our set.</p> - -<p>But in Lady Scilly’s set, that is Simon’s set more or less, they think -her a pretty girl, badly turned out!</p> - -<p>“Ah, you are your father’s daughter, I see!†Christina said at once to -her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, -because she couldn’t find a white one. I did not mention that I myself -had begun to sew one of Ariadne’s iron pills on to my shoe, and only -stopped because it didn’t seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we -have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes -down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes -out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing -and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor -points out to her that she hasn’t got on any waistband, and another in -the hall sticks a pin in somewhere,<a name="page_249" id="page_249"></a> that shines in the sun, when she -gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and -looks at it fixedly.</p> - -<p>“<i>Dégagée</i>, as usual!†he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was -two years at a crammer’s to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in -Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something -better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least -shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon -says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one -be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not -Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can’t stand chaff as a general thing. -Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her.</p> - -<p>Simon has curly hair—not at all neat—which he can neither help nor -disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict’s so as -to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and -Ariadne’s estimation. “Can’t help it. Couldn’t bear to look like one of -those chaps.â€</p> - -<p>He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here -sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his -visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic -now. She can’t bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, -and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who -come to describe it and photograph it for the Art<a name="page_250" id="page_250"></a> papers, and wonders -if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different -from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he -seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at -all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won’t -let Highsam be done for <i>Rural Life</i>, or lend Mary Queen of Scots’ -cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria’s -portrait in <i>The Bittern</i> with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria -wrote him such a letter, <i>almost</i> rude, giving him her mind about -interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon -has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I -grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know -of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy -the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the “festive gee†now, he -says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and -frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam -Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they -aren’t the same as Ariadne’s.</p> - -<p>“Great Scott!†he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one -afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that -George had specially designed for her. “If Almeria saw you in that -frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won’t -wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg’s on the -twenty-fourth!<a name="page_251" id="page_251"></a> If you do, I swear I won’t dance with you in it!â€</p> - -<p>Of course he didn’t mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in -her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it -seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to -please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington’s dance had been sent -out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time -to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a -ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her -marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in -a county family, not a Bohemian one.</p> - -<p>Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost -ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting -either of us. Christina said <i>Quem Deus vult</i>—and that though you might -look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look -smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne’s body was all over the place, -with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn’t. When it was -basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were -working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are -three Empire mirrors in that room, you can’t see yourself in any one of -them, so we had to tell her it didn’t do, and never would do.</p> - -<p>“Take the beastly thing off then!†said Ariadne, almost crying, and -pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia’s head. -(Amelia is<a name="page_252" id="page_252"></a> the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) “I won’t -wear anything at all!â€</p> - -<p>“And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!†I said to tease -and console her, but she wouldn’t be, and she left the body clinging to -Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good -thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in.</p> - -<p>“Dear me!†Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of -lying in bed late. “You look like Burne-Jones’ <i>Laus Veneris</i>—‘all the -maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.’ I persuaded your father to bring me -up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make -all your own dresses.â€</p> - -<p>So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses -grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers’ bills.</p> - -<p>“The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her,†said -George.</p> - -<p>“Ninepence-halfpenny isn’t going to express me!†Ariadne said, under her -breath. “It covers me, and that’s all!â€</p> - -<p>“I always think,†George maundered, “that the symbolic note struck in -the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, -of the prevailing wind of a woman’s mood. Her moods should be variable. -She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, -some mad scarlet incoherent thing another——â€</p> - -<p>“I don’t see how you are going to do all that<a name="page_253" id="page_253"></a> on ninepence-halfpenny,†-Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to -listen to her impertinence. “Why you can’t even get the colour!â€</p> - -<p>“It is every woman’s duty to set an example of beautiful dressing -without extravagance!†and he looked at Lady Scilly’s pretty pink -fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go.</p> - -<p>“Oh, this,†she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it -was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. “This! This cost nothing at all! -I have a clever maid, you know?â€</p> - -<p>“If all the women had clever maids that say they have,†Christina -whispered to me. “What would become of Camille, I wonder?â€</p> - -<p>George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, “You must never quit -an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable.â€</p> - -<p>“My dresses quit me,†said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so -that the hole in it didn’t show. “I’m jealous of the sofa! It’s better -covered than me.â€</p> - -<p>I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she -is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear “this -creation.â€</p> - -<p>“At Lady Islington’s,†Ariadne answered rather sulkily.</p> - -<p>“Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, -my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to -dance in—it is too <i>débutantish</i> for me, and I do wish some<a name="page_254" id="page_254"></a> one would -wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will -do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?â€</p> - -<p>“The day after to-morrow!†I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with -gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly’s little dresses were like. -Camille’s “little†would beat Ariadne’s biggest.</p> - -<p>“Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall -be so much obliged.â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne said “thank you,†a little ashamed to think that Simon was -coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to -dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, -and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady -Scilly’s little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when -she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick -and no mistake, and I really thought so.</p> - -<p>But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress -into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress -didn’t come. “Put not thy trust in smart women!†she said, and as it -happened, she was right, for the dress never did!</p> - -<p>At five o’clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn’t a sign of it, -and Ariadne hadn’t let herself worry over it, by my and Christina’s -advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to -carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn’t -worry, but she was very<a name="page_255" id="page_255"></a> angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes -so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would -be all right. The dress wasn’t so very bad either; we had given up all -attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell -that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. -Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her “girl†when she was dressed, she -nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet.</p> - -<p>“That’ll get him, that’ll get him, Miss Ariadne, you’ll see!†she kept -saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love -that she couldn’t help liking it. She had taken particular care of her -hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten -curlers in to make sure of it’s looking nice. And it did, like Moses in -the burning bush.</p> - -<p>At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, -and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o’clock. I was just jumping in -(I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting -stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. -Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. -And she is learning to drop her h’s in the south.</p> - -<p>“’Ere!†she said. “’Ere!†and shoved a great card-board box under my -nose. “<i>With Lady Scilly’s love and compliments.</i>â€</p> - -<p>I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the -string, and there was a ball-dress—<i>the</i> ball-dress!<a name="page_256" id="page_256"></a></p> - -<p>I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne—so near -and yet so far—dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre’s -affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked -home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless -on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I -indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. -It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe -it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed -to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. -It said—</p> - -<div class="blockquot"><p>“D<small>EAR</small> C<small>HILD</small>,</p> - -<p> “My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must -be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and -I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with -my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste.</p> - -<p class="r">“Ever yours, <br /> -“P<small>AQUERETTE</small> S<small>CILLY</small>.â€</p></div> - -<p>“That’s all she cares about—that George should think her generous! But -if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed -to get it here in time. I don’t care for misplaced generosity.â€</p> - -<p>“Suppose, Miss,†said Elizabeth, “that you was to take a cab and go to -where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I -say.<a name="page_257" id="page_257"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“My sister isn’t a music-hall artist,†I regret to say was what I -answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn’t -altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get -Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the -dress out on Ariadne’s bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with -my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed.</p> - -<p>I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it -was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was -Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her -off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would -tease her a little first.</p> - -<p>“Well, did you have a good time?†I asked her.</p> - -<p>“Fairly,†answered Ariadne.</p> - -<p>“Did you have any offers—in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure -you would.â€</p> - -<p>“I believe I am all torn to bits?†said Ariadne, walking round and round -her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take -any notice of my question.</p> - -<p>“Now don’t expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne said, “I shall not touch it. I don’t mean to wear it again, but -hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful -dress!â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t drivel!†I said, “unless there is really something particular -about the dress that I don’t know.<a name="page_258" id="page_258"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She didn’t even rise to that, so I said, “I wonder you don’t light up, -and have a good look at it.â€</p> - -<p>“There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?†Ariadne said, -sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn’t mean to go -to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly’s dress on her bed, and -was keeping calm just to tease me.</p> - -<p>“Did any one see you home?†I asked.</p> - -<p>“Yes, some one did,†she answered, still in a sort of dream.</p> - -<p>“Did he kiss you in the cab?†I at last asked her, thinking that if -anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could -tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she -wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was -riled to extinction.</p> - -<p>“Oh, for Goodness’ sake, get to bed!†I cried. “And if you are going to -undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get -into your bed very <i>very</i> carefully!â€</p> - -<p>That did it.</p> - -<p>“You naughty girl,†she said quite quickly. “Have you been putting Lady -Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It’s too bad of you!â€</p> - -<p>She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She -saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it.</p> - -<p>“So you have come?†she said, talking to it as if it were a person. “You -are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you.<a name="page_259" id="page_259"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Well,†said I, “you <i>are</i> condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one -might ask?â€</p> - -<p>“Mr. Hermyre.â€</p> - -<p>“Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! -I believe she’s shy? How often did you dance with <i>Mister</i> Hermyre?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, don’t tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid.â€</p> - -<p>“Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, -there!â€</p> - -<p>“He is going to,†said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn’t -know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night!</p> - -<p>I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it.</p> - -<p>“Did you—did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, -as we have always agreed you would?â€</p> - -<p>“I may have—I don’t know—I hope not!â€</p> - -<p>“You hope you didn’t, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not -run into him, or put his eye out or something?â€</p> - -<p>“Beast, what do you mean?â€</p> - -<p>“Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, -and I presume it has been there all the evening!â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and -told me all about it quite nicely.</p> - -<p>As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight -difficulty with another man<a name="page_260" id="page_260"></a> who was not a gentleman although he was a -Count—fancy, at Lady Islington’s?—and he had been rude to Ariadne -about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn’t so -near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other -man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite -him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new “mash†he was. I -believe he’s the German chauffeur I saw in her car.</p> - -<p>But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought -it on—that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he -had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of -course never mentioned it to Simon.</p> - -<p>Lady Islington is Simon’s Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. -After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange -and frightened—he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they -are riled—and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery -sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she -could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. -She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold -hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her -spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn’t say anything, he -seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or -other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything -else she had ever<a name="page_261" id="page_261"></a> wished in the world, more than she had wished I would -get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby—that he would take -hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, -imagining his taking hold of it, “willing†him to do it. She wanted him -to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; -but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own -free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not -begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow -that he was thinking of this too, or something like it—something to do -with her, at any rate.</p> - -<p>She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always -solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer -took place.</p> - -<p>Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of -them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon -take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, “Have you got a -fan?â€</p> - -<p>Ariadne didn’t know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all -part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite -truly—</p> - -<p>“I haven’t got one. You broke it.â€</p> - -<p>“And didn’t I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! -Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn’t see me?â€</p> - -<p>And he kissed her.<a name="page_262" id="page_262"></a></p> - -<p>This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, -quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he -then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly -all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter -that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, -except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And -of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine.</p> - -<p>Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be -married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, -subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was -able to assure Simon that George won’t, he doesn’t care about keeping -Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre’s <i>fiancée</i> -she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course -Simon won’t let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And -she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all -engaged girls. She bores me.<a name="page_263" id="page_263"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX</h2> - -<p>D<small>EAR</small> Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne -in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane -Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am -told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her -bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood -next her, couldn’t prevent it, for she hadn’t a single pin on her she -could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that -stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her -what she thought of Ariadne’s “waist†this time, and didn’t she wish she -could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found -time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne’s dress was -made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, -the coal-agent’s daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. -Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who -adores her, and doesn’t see that she is a bit common. Men in love never -do. Still, she is our only childhood’s friend, so Simon and even Almeria -didn’t make the<a name="page_264" id="page_264"></a> least objection to have her included in the procession. -They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to -afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out -wonderfully, and I really don’t mind her at all. As the bridesmaids’ hat -wouldn’t set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it -to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and -stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much -softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at -Highsam later on and learn to ride.</p> - -<p>George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so—a set of his own -works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always -had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave -her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter -Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her -his mother’s best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or -beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had -practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon -said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she -meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a -joke, and that <i>Punch</i> wouldn’t put in; but Ariadne never noticed and -was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, -I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the -Latin word <i>Donec</i> engraved<a name="page_265" id="page_265"></a> on it. I did not know what that meant, and -Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog’s collar -afterwards.</p> - -<p>Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took -note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so -shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn’t care for her -own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in -Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to -make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, -<i>after</i> marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair.</p> - -<p>They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father’s six places. He has -given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and -is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas.</p> - -<p>George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all -to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a -plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and -plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all -the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right -time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any -ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she -can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over -the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and<a name="page_266" id="page_266"></a> gets -us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one -dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all -of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don’t know if George -would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd -circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody’s -fault but the plumber’s, who came to put them right last time and -carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule -has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don’t burst at all.</p> - -<p>When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, -and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect -Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were -undoing a few, and damned “this whirling season of string and brown -paper!â€</p> - -<p>“I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post -early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all -mention of the egregious subject!â€</p> - -<p>And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our -bedrooms in future.</p> - -<p>The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn’t mind obeying him, we were -so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed -having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took -to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and -poor Ben’s chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite -desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother<a name="page_267" id="page_267"></a> to make some arrangement by -which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside -for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he -might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn’t get much better -there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, -she couldn’t save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any -rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She -would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some -books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly -to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, -since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can’t do without him, -and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George -swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching -trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he -doesn’t get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the -money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him -that she meant to pay the cost of Ben’s education, for it is money, she -is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind -which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a -necessary evil for the sons of men.</p> - -<p>I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with—“he is the -devil for country houses!†Mr. Aix says, “he has got them in the -blood,‗I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to<a name="page_268" id="page_268"></a> -breakfast—he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at -home—they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and -three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful -guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses -where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, -and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at -the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him -madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer.</p> - -<p>George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. -His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a -sad deer’s. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to -wearing stays. I don’t believe this. I am the only one in the house who -sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on -hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of -him, so I don’t know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is -always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written -about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a -“singularly colourless personage,†whom Mother likes very much. She -isn’t half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more -suitable.</p> - -<p>After Christmas was over, George left us and went to “The Hutch,†Lady -Scilly’s place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says -she has piped all hands on deck—I mean all the people who<a name="page_269" id="page_269"></a> are helping -her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor -among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will -drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I -am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be -fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It’s such a good -old title.</p> - -<p>I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never -stayed so long at “The Hutch†before. He has his own suite there, and -all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or -characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment?</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there—Never no more!—but she has a lady -friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get -“restive.â€</p> - -<p>Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; -she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky -episode.</p> - -<p>“And I didn’t make much of him, after all!†she told Mother and Aunt -Gerty. “Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn’t trust women -any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty -purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy -any one—even a millionaire’s—confidence in human nature. She borrows -of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it’s quite -awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your -sweet innocent daughter rescued<a name="page_270" id="page_270"></a> him from the wiles of Scilly, and -perhaps Charybdis—who knows? He looked weak!â€</p> - -<p>“And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his -hands!†said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn’t “quite -eighteen carat,†Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a -woman’s own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and -journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to -get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its -inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press -in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. -Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty -of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house -except the study. Mother won’t let them go in there at all while George -is away. I hear them talking between the puffs—</p> - -<p>“You can engage to work so and so, eh?†or “Have you got thingumbob?â€</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes -them, and gets Mother to speak the woman’s part for him, so that he sees -how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her -continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on -him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to -understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he -takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix -always speaks<a name="page_271" id="page_271"></a> the brutal truth—he can’t wrap anything up—he is as -“crude as the day,†so George often says—I don’t see Mother’s -cleverness.</p> - -<p>They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. “Mustn’t christen it before -it is brought into the world,†and “One thing you can confidently -predict about it, it can’t be born prematurely!†and so on. They use the -study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George’s swivel-chair, and -Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman’s part out -aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often -calls out, “Oh, you darling!†when she has said a particular piece. -“What a divine accent you give it!†“That will knock them!†“Wicked to -hide such a talent!†and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to -read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises -Mother all the time.</p> - -<p>“Pooh, pooh!†says Mr. Aix, “leave her to her intuitions! You battered -professionals don’t know the value of a new note.â€</p> - -<p>So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George -married her. And a good thing too!</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be -finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his -study of course, but we hadn’t the remotest idea of his arriving when he -did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time.</p> - -<p>We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah -blouse all over the study<a name="page_272" id="page_272"></a> table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was -in George’s swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George -was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a -slap.</p> - -<p>“Our child comes on bravely!†he was just saying to Mother, as George -appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, “I’ll bet you Lord Scilly has had him -kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!†and bolted into the hall, -forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk.</p> - -<p>“Welcome back, old fellow!†said Mr. Aix, turning round in the -swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty’s blouseries. -They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George -turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught -it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a -great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as -servants always do when it is a question of not paying one’s just debts.</p> - -<p>She began “If you please, sir, the cabman——†but her voice was quite -drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and -George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time.</p> - -<p>“Won’t you pay your cab, George?†said Mother gently, “and then you can -abuse me at your leisure!â€</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the -room with him. George<a name="page_273" id="page_273"></a> was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother -like a little school-girl before him. I don’t know what they said to -each other, but George wouldn’t come out to dinner, but had a plate sent -in.</p> - -<p>Mother didn’t alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix.</p> - -<p>George’s plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own -father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been -kicked out of “The Hutch†as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady -Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel -she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion.</p> - -<p>He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was -on his hands among Aunt Gerty’s blouse trimmings.</p> - -<p>“Shall I take these away?†I asked. “Don’t they make you angry?â€</p> - -<p>“I haven’t noticed.â€</p> - -<p>I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty’s horrid pink shape all -over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn’t even -scold me.</p> - -<p>“Where is Lucy—my wife?†he asked me presently.</p> - -<p>“My Mother?†said I. “She’s gone to the theatre.â€</p> - -<p>“Is that usual?â€</p> - -<p>“Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty -has gone with them.â€</p> - -<p>“Chaperons them, eh?<a name="page_274" id="page_274"></a>â€</p> - -<p>I didn’t like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix <i>them</i> in that -insulting bracketting way, so I said—</p> - -<p>“Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change.â€</p> - -<p>“Aix?†said he, “for a change! God!â€</p> - -<p>“She’s collaborating with Mr. Aix.â€</p> - -<p>“Damn him and his play too.â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, not his play, George. Mother would be <i>so</i> grieved.â€</p> - -<p>Then George suddenly pulled a paper out of his pocket and said, “Read -that aloud, child.â€</p> - -<p>“Is it a bit of your new novel?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, it is a bit of my new novel. Read.â€</p> - -<p>I did.</p> - -<p>“<i>We talk and talk, and never act. Oh, this curse of civilization! You -make excuses for S——, for your bitter enemy. Magnanimous, but effete! -He is behaving well, but so unpicturesquely. He offers a woman no excuse -for staying with him. Oh, Italy! Italy! You, magician, have made me long -for the life of Italy, the silver incandescent sands, the passionate -brown of the olives—but why should I try to outdo you in your own -imitable manner?</i>â€</p> - -<p>“<i>In</i>imitable, you mean, don’t you, child? But no, we will not trust -this white devil of Italy. Go and fetch me a plateful of cold meat. And -here are the keys; go down to the cellar and get a bottle of Burgundy. -Corton eighty-eight. You’ll see the label. We will carouse.â€</p> - -<p>I was delighted. George and I finished the bottle<a name="page_275" id="page_275"></a> between us, and he -ate a good supper, and said no more of Mr. Aix, or Mother either.</p> - -<p>I almost liked George just then. I saw why Lady Scilly liked him. He is -funny and gentle. I asked him to choose a school for Ben, and he said he -would think about it. It is the oddest feeling to suddenly become “pals†-with one’s own father. I had never known it before. There is some good -in George, and his eyes are very bright.<a name="page_276" id="page_276"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX</h2> - -<p>M<small>Y</small> mother is changed—not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly -every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than -ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that -simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George -and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more -than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has -taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her -because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to -speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she -gads about so much, she doesn’t neglect her household duties. She sees -after George’s comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the -house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He -shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for -him—it took her two hours—and then he said half-laughing, “A bad sign, -Tempe! Read your Balzac.â€</p> - -<p>I don’t read Balzac, and I don’t know what George means. I don’t try, -and I find that is the best sort<a name="page_277" id="page_277"></a> of sympathy one can give. At any rate, -he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to -type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under -his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not -so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at.</p> - -<p>We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was -married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come -to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She -simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch, -had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see -George, and she could have seen him more easily at “The Hutch†or her -town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel, -but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down -her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few -women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you -soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written -copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the -literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to -their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and -written her a polite letter about it, though that won’t prevent him -slating it in <i>The Bittern</i> if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says.</p> - -<p>I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to -hit George back with when<a name="page_278" id="page_278"></a> he came and found us doing dressmaking in his -sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his -house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more -use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and -perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on -George’s side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never -approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto.</p> - -<p>Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn’t “look -that pleased to see her,†as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards. -Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on -with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at -the Islingtons’, at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a -Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly’s chauffeur. He was waiting -outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took -him to her aunt’s ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to -pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished.</p> - -<p>Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, “A female to see -you, sir.â€</p> - -<p>“Paquerette!†said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and -when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on -one knee and looked up into George’s face, saying, as I have heard the -French do to their professors of painting or music,—“<i>Cher maître!</i>â€</p> - -<p>George had taught her to do this in the days<a name="page_279" id="page_279"></a> when he was really her -professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the -Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I -could tell that she had no further use for him.</p> - -<p>I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I -were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they -didn’t think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at -first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the <i>entente -cordiale</i> we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like -doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want -myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw -me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet -we had not quarrelled. George put on his “pretty woman†manner, and -raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited -her.</p> - -<p>“How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell -you, she is leaving me.â€</p> - -<p>I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn’t -come to see Mother, and hadn’t thought of asking whether she was out or -not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity—</p> - -<p>“You put it crudely.â€</p> - -<p>“I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall -not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know<a name="page_280" id="page_280"></a> -the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow -that I am—<i>cÅ“ur de célibat</i>, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John’s -Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens——â€</p> - -<p>“No woman’s such a fool as to leave a place like this——â€</p> - -<p>“What does Shelley say? <i>Love first leaves the well-built nest——</i>â€</p> - -<p>“You certainly are a most extraordinary man!†she mumbled. George -puzzled her by changing about so.</p> - -<p>“Yes,†he answered her, smiling. “Come, take off your furs and make -yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the -rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am -weak, I shall not.â€</p> - -<p>“Are you quite sure you won’t be stronger by the end of this interview?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the -steed after the horse—I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge -success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of <i>The Bittern</i> writes -me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to -beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive -woman. What more do you want?â€</p> - -<p>“D. the novel! I want <i>you!</i>†she said, stamping her foot.</p> - -<p>“Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn—the creed -forgotten—the deed forborne—how does it go? Give a poor author a -chance, now<a name="page_281" id="page_281"></a> that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the -heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent’s -holiday.â€</p> - -<p>“You <i>are</i> unkind.â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new -novel you propose we should work out together.â€</p> - -<p>“I am prepared to go all lengths to assert——â€</p> - -<p>“Your powers of imagination. I don’t doubt it. But I have been thinking -it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never -do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won’t go on all fours. -It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of -popularity. To begin and end with, there’s not an atom of passion about -it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, -and you know how much that is!â€</p> - -<p>“Don’t imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!†she -said quite angrily. “It shall never be said——â€</p> - -<p>“It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of -Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best -as they are—going to be. There’s true evolution in it. When the feast -is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open -the windows. When the novel is done——â€</p> - -<p>“I hate you to talk like this!†said she, making a cross face.</p> - -<p>“Women hate realism.<a name="page_282" id="page_282"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay -our heads together to make Scilly—look silly. He’s mad just now, but it -will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at ‘The -Hutch’ as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb -down——â€</p> - -<p>George shook his head.</p> - -<p>“No, no, <i>non bis in idem</i>. Not twice in the same place.†(I wasn’t sure -if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) “Go -now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for.â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously -irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and -timely assistance, your——â€</p> - -<p>“Has the play been worth the scandal?†George asked her, while he was -kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was -going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who -kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy -foot, and that he would never be asked to “The Hutch†again. Mr. Aix -would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has -helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so -much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, -and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty -to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the -public-house that first day.<a name="page_283" id="page_283"></a></p> - -<p>“Good-bye—then—George!†she said, with something between a sneer and a -sob. “We meet again—in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross.â€</p> - -<p>What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George -bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in -the car as large as life—and as a German. Though indeed he is very -good-looking.</p> - -<p>“I can see that he is cross in every line of his back,†Lady Scilly -whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them, -and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and -it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant.</p> - -<p>George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing, -and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded.</p> - -<p>“She will probably bolt with him before the year is out,†he said, as we -went back to the study shivering. He played cat’s-cradle with me till -dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game -appeared to amuse him, I didn’t mind making a fool of myself for once.</p> - -<p>About Mother’s going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it -really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don’t see -who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is -George’s greatest friend, as well as Mother’s, and people don’t run away -with perfect strangers, as a rule.</p> - -<p>Mother was certainly up to something, for her<a name="page_284" id="page_284"></a> eyes were as bright as -glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say -while these were going on, slapping Mother’s palms and vinaigretting -her—“It is natural, you know—the excitement.†The excitement of -running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and -“nurse her energy,†for she “would want it all!†Mother was by far the -most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of -George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was -always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her -life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the -Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a -club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog.</p> - -<p>George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he -knows that she is too. She wouldn’t stand having her movements -questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and -grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced -a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his -foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George’s other distraction is Father Mack, -who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he -seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively -stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and -translate “The Survival of the Fittest†into French, a problem Father -Mack had asked him. Father Mack<a name="page_285" id="page_285"></a> also gave Mother the address of a very -good little dressmaker. He lent George the <i>Life of Saint Catherine -Emmerich</i>, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so -hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. -People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her -family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty -shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. -It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being -praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the -shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the -poor woman meant well.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a ’vert, and that I shall have to -be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. -She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, -as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I -believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice -man, and George doesn’t swear half so badly since he came under his -influence.</p> - -<p>One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant -or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. -George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things -Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest -before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn’t, for -the only fact I knew, viz.<a name="page_286" id="page_286"></a> her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would -not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find -out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine -eternity; one has nothing to go on.</p> - -<p>We went to bed early, but I couldn’t sleep; after what Ben had said I -felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great -difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I -slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had -trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into -her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out -of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare -arms.</p> - -<p>“Oh, my pretty little Mother,†I said. “I do love you.â€</p> - -<p>“You are just like every one else,†she answered me pettishly.</p> - -<p>“I’m not,†I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does -love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown.</p> - -<p>“Did George ever see you like this?†I asked.</p> - -<p>“Often. Is he gone to bed?â€</p> - -<p>“Yes, with a headache.â€</p> - -<p>She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking -off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a -noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other -was still by the side of his bed.<a name="page_287" id="page_287"></a></p> - -<p>“Hold the candle, Tempe!†Mother said quickly. It was that she might go -down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt -and cried.</p> - -<p>“Oh, George, I am doing it for the best—I am, I am! For my poor -neglected boy—my poor Ben.â€</p> - -<p>She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation -with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on -the sheet near George’s arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, -that I at once shut the stable-door—I mean blew out the candle and made -a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I -was—Father Mack hasn’t cured George quite of swearing!—and we made a -clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began -to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a -honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to -catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her.</p> - -<p>“Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to -run away.â€</p> - -<p>“Run away! Who says I am going to run away?â€</p> - -<p>“George.â€</p> - -<p>“He told you?â€</p> - -<p>“He told Lady Scilly.â€</p> - -<p>“Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true.†She laughed, a -laugh I did not like at all. It wasn’t her laugh, but I have said she -was quite changed.<a name="page_288" id="page_288"></a></p> - -<p>“Oh, Mother, don’t laugh like that!â€</p> - -<p>“You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a -wicked mother’s heart! Well, my dear, I’ll promise you one thing. I will -never run away without you. Will that be all right?â€</p> - -<p>“That will be all right,†I answered, much relieved. For although I am -so much more “pally†with George and sorry for him, I don’t want to be -left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the -<i>Marguerite</i> from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and -mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing -for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather -tell me all in her own time.</p> - -<p>I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is -social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away -is chiefly the want of society.</p> - -<p>That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried -away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won’t affect -her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a -mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have -suited Simon’s stiff relations. It might have prevented him from -proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited.</p> - -<p>One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I -hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when -you only throw two or three things into a bag? A<a name="page_289" id="page_289"></a> couple of bottles of -eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in <i>To Leeward?</i> I, at -any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without -it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient. -Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets -so dreadfully condemned in novels.</p> - -<p>George’s new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is -not so <i>farouche</i> as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George -keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn’t go to see -Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was “off†dear Father Mack, and -he says last time he went to see him it was the Father’s supper-time, -and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting -his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish -off a plateful of bullock’s eyes. Just like George to be put off his -salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if -Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner -like George.</p> - -<p>Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix’s play. -George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain -old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can’t act, -as “lead.â€</p> - -<p>“Who’s your Parthenia?†he asked him.</p> - -<p>Mr. Aix answered, “Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the -suburban drama—the usual way.<a name="page_290" id="page_290"></a>â€</p> - -<p>“Any good?†asked George casually.</p> - -<p>“I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me -as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one,†said Mr. Aix, glancing -across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed.</p> - -<p>“I will take Tempe to your first night,†said George suddenly.</p> - -<p>“A play of Jim Aix’s for the child’s first play!†cried Mother in a -fright. “I shouldn’t think of it.â€</p> - -<p>“Children never see impropriety, or ought not to,†George said. “But if -you don’t wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead. -It will do the play good.â€</p> - -<p>“It’s a fond delusion,†said Aix, “that the aristocracy can even damn a -play.â€</p> - -<p>Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be -free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night, -after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o’clock mail that we -should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered -why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after -all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the -curtain if called, and that wouldn’t possibly be till about ten o’clock, -too late for the train?</p> - -<p>Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love -that.<a name="page_291" id="page_291"></a></p> - -<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI</h2> - -<p>“S<small>HALL</small> I type your Good-bye to George?†I asked Mother. She said, “What -do you mean?†I said, “The one you will leave pinned to your pincushion -in the usual place?â€</p> - -<p>She laughed, and I again thought her most fearfully casual. There was no -packing done, although one would have thought she would have liked her -clothes nice and fresh and lots of them, so that she shouldn’t feel -shabby at Boulogne, and let Mr. Aix and herself down. As for my -clothes—I really only had one—one dress I mean—and it was hanging -loose where it shouldn’t, and with a large ink-spot in front nobody had -troubled to take out with salts of lemon or anything.</p> - -<p>But I began to think some things had been sent on beforehand, as advance -luggage or so forth, for Mr. Aix came in one evening, and when Aunt -Gerty raised her eyebrows at him, he said “A 1!†That I fancied was the -ticket number for the luggage, so I felt more at ease.</p> - -<p>One eventful evening, after Mother had been lying down all day, I was -told to put on my sun-ray pleated, and to mend it if it wanted it. I did -mend<a name="page_292" id="page_292"></a> it and I put a toothbrush in the pocket of it, and I kissed all -the cats until they hated me. Cats don’t like kissing, but then I didn’t -know when I should see them again? I supposed some time, for running -away never is a permanent thing. People always come back and take up -housekeeping again, in the long run.</p> - -<p>The funny thing was, they had chosen the day of Mr. Aix’s first night to -run away on. I suppose it was in case he was boo-ed. Then the manager -could come on and say, “The author is not in the house, having gone to -Boulogne with a lady and little girl, by the nine o’clock mail!†That, -of course, was the train we were to catch. I looked it out, I am good at -trains.</p> - -<p>George took Lady Scilly to dine at the Paxton that night, and on to the -theatre where some others were to meet them. I have never been to a -theatre myself, only music halls. At six o’clock George went off, all -grin and gardenia. The grin was as forced as the gardenia. I observed -that.</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty badly wanted to go with Mr. Aix and hold his hand, as he was -as nervous as a cat. But he wouldn’t have her with him, and I don’t -wonder. It would have been impossible to shake her off by nine o’clock, -and he would have missed the boat-train, and Mother and me.</p> - -<p>After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and -told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn’t intrude on her -privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye<a name="page_293" id="page_293"></a> to her old home, as I -was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes’ list of -horses—for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only -love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of -her room smiling, and her pockets didn’t stick out a bit. She is calm in -the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a -fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight -from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started -unconsciously.</p> - -<p>“Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!â€</p> - -<p>I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I -held on to the toothbrush.</p> - -<p>“Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!†Mother said, as -we got into a hansom.</p> - -<p>“I won’t; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?â€</p> - -<p>“Mr. Aix? I am sure I don’t know. He will be about, I suppose, unless -they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don’t talk.â€</p> - -<p>She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to -keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn’t help -thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what -Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne -tried seven cures, and none of them saved her.</p> - -<p>It was ridiculously early, only seven o’clock. As<a name="page_294" id="page_294"></a> we drove on and on I -began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it -was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn’t the door of a -station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his -hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, -up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be -building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and -that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on -wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a -landscape of an orchard on it.</p> - -<p>“What is it?†I asked one of the people standing about—a man in a white -jacket.</p> - -<p>“That, Missie—that’s the back cloth to the first scene,†and then he -mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to -show I didn’t understand.</p> - -<p>“Oh, yes, quite so,†I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once -been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening -dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort -of inappropriate man.</p> - -<p>“Where’s my mother?â€</p> - -<p>“Oh, your mother! Yes, she’s gone to her room. I’ll take you to her.â€</p> - -<p>“But are you going to make us live <i>here?</i>†I asked; but bless the man! -he was too nervous to take any more notice of me and my remarks. We -muddled along; I tumbled over a lump in the middle<a name="page_295" id="page_295"></a> of the floor with -grass sown on it, and caught my foot in a carpet, made of the same. Mr. -Aix quite forgot me and I lost him.</p> - -<p>“Mind! Mind!†everybody kept saying, and shouldering past me with bits -of the very walls in their arms. They left the brick perfectly bare, as -bare as our old coal-cellar at Isleworth. (The one in Cinque Cento House -is panelled.) I saw an ordinary tree, as I thought, but I was quite -upset to find it was flat, like a free-hand drawing. My eyes were -dazzled with electric lights, mounted on strings, like a necklace, only -stiff, that they pushed about everywhere they liked. There were things -like our nursery fire-guard all round the gas, that was there as well as -electric. I noticed a girl go and look through a hole in a bit of canvas -or tapestry that took up all one side of the wall, and went near her.</p> - -<p>“Pretty fair house!†she said. She was a funny-looking little thing, -with hardly enough on, and what there was was dirty, or dyed a dirty -colour. In fact no two persons there were dressed alike; it was like a -fancy-dress party, such as the Hitchings have at their Christmas-tree. -The noise was deafening, they were shoving heavy weights about here and -there, without knowing particularly or caring where they were going. My -new friend had an American accent, and was as gentle as a cat. She went -a little way back from the curtain with me and stood by a man she seemed -rather to like, though he didn’t seem to like her. He was very<a name="page_296" id="page_296"></a> tall and -big, and when she had been talking to him a little while, she said -suddenly—</p> - -<p>“Excuse me! I must not let myself get stiff!†and took hold of a great -leather belt he wore, and propped herself up by it and began to dip up -and down, opening her knees wide. The man didn’t seem to like it much, -but he was kind and chaffed her, till I got tired of her see-sawing up -and down, and talking of her Greekness, and asked one or the other of -them to be kind enough to take me to my mother.</p> - -<p>“Certainly, little ’un,†said the man; “kindly point the young lady out -to me. There’s so many in the Greek chorus!â€</p> - -<p>“It is Miss Lucy Jennings’ daughter,†said somebody near.</p> - -<p>“I’ll take you to her after my dance,†said the girl. “Wait. Watch me! I -go on!â€</p> - -<p>It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering -about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not -more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and -watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no -stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work -boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no -wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an -ordinary game of blindman’s-buff, and said to me, “Now, pussy, I will -escort you to your mommer.â€</p> - -<p>She took me to the edge of the wall where a little<a name="page_297" id="page_297"></a> stairs came down, -and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other -green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his -cheeks and a baby’s rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were -streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, -natural mother.</p> - -<p>But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and -answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in -front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and -she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a -waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow!</p> - -<p>That finished me, and I screamed, “Oh, Mother, where have you put your -black hair?â€</p> - -<p>Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to -shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said—</p> - -<p>“It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will -kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!â€</p> - -<p>So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, -nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the -effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid.</p> - -<p>The others didn’t think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, “Really, Lucy, I -wouldn’t have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor -women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the<a name="page_298" id="page_298"></a> cheek, Kate. The -lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know.â€</p> - -<p>So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit -of an animal’s foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, -she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said -something at the door—“Garden scene on!†and went away. The nurse -called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down -the stairs.</p> - -<p>Then for the first time I twigged what it was—a <i>Theatre!</i> The people -were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but -what I didn’t know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard -Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, -and terribly disillusioned as well.</p> - -<p>The play was all the running away there was to be! Mother was going to -be no more to Mr. Aix than taking a leading part in his play amounted -to. My toothbrush literally burned in my pocket. I had been made a fool -of.</p> - -<p>But when I came to think it over quietly, I did not know but what I was -not rather glad. It would have been a horrid upset, this running-away -idea, and I believe George secretly felt it very much, though he did -swagger so and pretend he didn’t care. The only thing was, perhaps he -would mind Mother going on the stage even worse than running away? I -longed to see him and hear what he had to say about it.<a name="page_299" id="page_299"></a></p> - -<p>Mr. Aix was standing quite near us, between a flat green tree and the -wall of a temple. He looked almost handsome; I suppose it was the aroma -of success, for certainly this <i>was</i> a success. The audience seemed -delighted with Mr. Bell, a great fat actor in boots, with frilled tops -like an ancient Roman, who stood in the very middle of the stage raging -away at Mother about something or other she had done.</p> - -<p>“Bell’s in capital form to-night,†said Mr. Aix, quite loud. “I’m -pleased with him.â€</p> - -<p>“I hope I shall content you too,†said Mother, who was shivering all -over, and I don’t wonder, for the draughts in this place were terrific. -Kate handed her a bottle of smelling-salts.</p> - -<p>“Better by far have a B. and S.,†said Mr. Aix.</p> - -<p>“No Dutch courage for me, thank you!†said Mother. “Tell me at once, is -George and the cat in the box?â€</p> - -<p>“They are, and Mr. Sidney Robinson and the Countess of Fylingdales. You -must buck up, little woman, and show them what you can do!â€</p> - -<p>“And what you can do!†she answered politely. “I shan’t forget you have -entrusted me with your play.â€</p> - -<p>“And, by Jove! you’ll bring it out as no other woman could. You can——â€</p> - -<p>“I’m on!†said Mother, suddenly, and shunted the shawl, and pushed -forward and began to act.</p> - -<p>They clapped her at first and nearly drowned her voice, but she went -right on and abused Mr. Bell<a name="page_300" id="page_300"></a> in blank verse. I was glad Mr. Aix hadn’t -made her a laundress or a serio, but something nice and Greek and -respectable.</p> - -<p>I stood there with Kate and Mother’s shawl and Aunt Gerty, and never -knew what it was to be so excited before! The Greek girl came up to me -and said—</p> - -<p>“Say, your mommer’ll knock them!â€</p> - -<p>Then they seemed to come to a sort of proper place to stop, and the -curtain began to rattle down, and Mother and Mr. Bell were holding each -other tight, like lovers, only I heard her say in a whisper, “Mind my -hair!â€</p> - -<p>They stayed there a long time looking stupid, even while the curtain was -down and people were clapping all round. Then I saw why they did it, for -it went up again, and again, and then they parted and took hands the -last time, and looked straight in front of them and panted, while people -shouted their names. Then the curtain came down again and Mr. Bell -limped off, for, as he said, politely, Mother had been standing all the -while on his best corn. She was so sorry, and he said it didn’t matter, -and he hoped he hadn’t disarranged her hair.</p> - -<p>Oddly enough the clapping began again. Aunt Gerty jogged Mother, who -stood near me looking quite giddy, and said “Take your call, silly!â€</p> - -<p>Mr. Bell took her by the hand and made her walk along in front of the -curtain that a man held back for her by main force, and then we heard -the people roaring again, till it seemed more as if they thirsted<a name="page_301" id="page_301"></a> for -their blood than wanted to praise them. This happened twice. When they -didn’t seem inclined to clap any more she went off to her room with -Kate, while Mr. Aix thanked her for making his play.</p> - -<p>“Come and look at them!†said Aunt Gerty to me, and we went and looked -through the rent in the curtain, for that was the hole in the wall the -girl looked through. There was George and Lady Scilly talking away as if -Mother and her triumph hadn’t existed. I think George was cross, but I -really couldn’t tell.</p> - -<p>Mother wouldn’t have me in her room at all this time, and I lounged -about with Aunt Gerty till it all began again. Mother didn’t do this -next act so well, at least Aunt Gerty said not, and scolded her.</p> - -<p>“I can’t help it, Gertrude,†Mother said. “I thought George would -have——â€</p> - -<p>“Never fear! He’ll hold out till the end of the play. Then he’ll be -round here bothering as sure as my name is Gertrude Jenynge!â€</p> - -<p>And her name is Gertrude Jennings, which is pretty near, and in the -third piece of acting, when Mother was not on much, I heard George’s -voice asking to be taken to her.</p> - -<p>“Miss Jennings left word she was not to be disturbed this wait.â€</p> - -<p>“I’m her husband.â€</p> - -<p>“Very likely, sir!†The man sneered.</p> - -<p>He didn’t get in, and he stood there neglected by the staircase till the -beginning of the next and last act, as they said it was. I dared not go -and speak<a name="page_302" id="page_302"></a> to him, for he looked so cross, and I was also afraid he -would carry me away to the box with Lady Scilly, so I just slipped -behind a bit of scenery and observed.</p> - -<p>Presently Mother came softly out of her room and passed George leaning -on the rail of the staircase leading to her dressing-room.</p> - -<p>She nodded and laughed.</p> - -<p>“Wait for me, George, please. Kate, take this gentleman to my room——â€</p> - -<p>And she went gaily on to the stage.</p> - -<p>I followed George and Kate to Mother’s room, and discovered myself to -him. He made no fuss, simply looked right through me, and began walking -up and down while Kate sewed a button on to something.</p> - -<p>We heard the clapping from the front quite distinctly. George ground his -teeth. Then Kate slipped out and Mother came in alone, panting, and took -hold of the dressing-table as if she was drowning.</p> - -<p>“I’ve saved the piece!†said she almost to herself, and then to George, -“I’m an artist. Oh, George, why weren’t you in front to see me in the -best moment of my life?â€</p> - -<p>“When I married you, Lucy——†George stuttered.</p> - -<p>“Yes, but that wasn’t nearly such an occasion! Oh, George, forgive me, -and don’t spoil all my pleasure.â€</p> - -<p>“Pleasure!†said George, as if he was disgusted.</p> - -<p>“Here comes Jim Aix to congratulate me. Poor Aix, he is so pleased....<a name="page_303" id="page_303"></a>â€</p> - -<p>She burst into tears as Mr. Aix came in. He took absolutely no notice of -George, but just caught hold of Mother’s hands and said several times -over—</p> - -<p>“Thank you! Thank you! Bless you! Bless you! Good God! You are -crying——â€</p> - -<p>“It is my husband there, who grudges me my success! He does, he does! -Oh, George, for shame! I did it for Ben—for our son—to be able to send -him to college. I have made a hit—quite by accident—and you grudge it -me!â€</p> - -<p>“He doesn’t, he doesn’t grudge you your artistic expansion!†said Mr. -Aix, and went to George and put his hand on his shoulder. “Old George is -the best sort in the world at the bottom. Pull yourself together, dear -old man, and be thankful you have a clever wife, as well as a good one. -She’s a genius—she’s better, she’s a brick. I can tell you she’s a -heaven-born actress, and you know what sort of a wife she has been to -you. Speak to her, man, don’t let her cry her heart out now, in the hour -of her triumph. What’s a triumph? At the best but short-lived! Don’t -grudge it her! Congratulate her——â€</p> - -<p>George came out of his corner and took Mother’s hand and kissed it -nicely, as I have seen him kiss Lady Scilly’s hand, but Mother’s never.</p> - -<p>“One can only beg your pardon, Lucy, for this, and everything else. Can -you forgive me?â€</p> - -<p>I re-open my MS. to add a few facts of interest.<a name="page_304" id="page_304"></a></p> - -<p>1. Ariadne got a baby in June; his name is Almeric Peter Frederick.</p> - -<p>2. Aunt Gerty got her brewer, and Mrs. Bowser has left the stage.</p> - -<p>3. Ben was sent to school, and they say he is clever, though I never -could see it.</p> - -<p>4. Lady Scilly has run away with the chauffeur and, so far, hasn’t come -back.</p> - -<p>5. I am going to stay with Ernie Fynes’ mother, Lady Fynes, at Barsom. -Ernie will be away at Eton, but he loves me.</p> - -<p> </p> -<p> </p> - -<p class="c">THE END</p> - -<p class="c"><i>Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay.</i><a name="page_305" id="page_305"></a></p> - -<hr /> - -<p class="cb">THE BEST BOOKS</p> - -<p class="cb">TO ASK FOR</p> - -<p class="cb">AT ALL LIBRARIES</p> - -<p class="cb">AND</p> - -<p class="cb">BOOKSELLERS</p> - -<p><a name="page_306" id="page_306"></a></p> - -<p><a name="page_307" id="page_307"></a></p> - -<p class="cb">NEW NOVELS BY POPULAR WRITERS</p> - -<p class="cb">Price 6/-each</p> - -<p class="nind"> -VIOLET HUNT<br /> -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME<br /> -By <span class="smcap">Violet Hunt</span>, Author of “The Maiden’s Progress,â€<br /> -“A Hard Woman,†etc. (Fourth Edition.)<br /> -<br /> -MARY STUART BOYD<br /> -THE MAN IN THE WOOD<br /> -By <span class="smcap">Mary Stuart Boyd</span>, Author of “Our Stolen<br /> -Summer,†“With Clipped Wings,†etc.<br /> -<br /> -ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW<br /> -THE SHULAMITE<br /> -By <span class="smcap">Alice</span> and <span class="smcap">Claude Askew</span><br /> -<br /> -KEBLE HOWARD<br /> -THE GOD IN THE GARDEN<br /> -By <span class="smcap">Keble Howard</span>, Author of “Love and a Cottage.â€<br /> -With Illustrations by <span class="smcap">Frank Reynolds</span>.<br /> -<br /> -H. 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Price 3s. -and 3s. 6d. net per volume.</i></p> - -<p class="cb"><span class="smcap">London</span>: CHAPMAN AND HALL, <span class="smcap">Ltd.</span></p> - -<table border="0" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" summary="" -style="padding:2%;border:3px dotted gray;"> -<tr><th align="center">Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:</th></tr> -<tr><td align="left">“Anything in it?†<span class="errata">mother</span> said.=> “Anything in it?†Mother said. {pg 26}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">look of <span class="errata">dsappointment</span>=> look of disappointment {pg 62}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">one of the <span class="errata">man</span> who did=> one of the men who did {pg 101}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">when your <span class="errata">times</span> comes=> when your time comes {pg 105}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">The fortune-<span class="errata">seller</span> doesn’t=> The fortune-teller doesn’t {pg 115}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left"><span class="errata">though</span> the first room=> through the first room {pg 137}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">I dare <span class="errata">said</span> he had got=> I dare say he had got {pg 165}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">it is the only <span class="errata">times</span> in his life=> it is the only time in his life {pg 199}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">“The Survival of the <span class="errata">fittestâ€</span>=> “The Survival of the Fittest†{pg 284}</td></tr> -<tr><td align="left">Gerty and <span class="errata">mother</span> think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270}</td></tr> -</table> - -<hr class="full" /> - - - - - - - -<pre> - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556-h.htm or 41556-h.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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You may copy it, give it away or -re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included -with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org/license - - -Title: The Celebrity at Home - -Author: Violet Hunt - -Release Date: December 4, 2012 [EBook #41556] - -Language: English - -Character set encoding: ASCII - -*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - - - - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - - - - - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - - - - -The Celebrity at Home - -BY VIOLET HUNT - -AUTHOR OF 'A HARD WOMAN' - -_FOURTH EDITION_ - -LONDON - -CHAPMAN AND HALL, LD. - -1904 - - - - -Tempe, a valley in Thessaly, between Mount Olympus at the north, and -Ossa at the south, through which the river Peneus flows into the -AEgean.--_Lempriere._ - - - - -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME - - - - -CHAPTER I - - -They say that a child's childhood is the happiest time of its life! - -Mine isn't. - -For it is nice to do as you like even if it isn't good for you. It is -nice to overeat yourself even though it does make you ill afterwards. It -is a positive pleasure to go out and do something that catches you a -cold, if you want to, and to leave off your winter clothes a month too -soon. Children hate feeling "stuffy"--no grown-up person understands -that feeling that makes you wriggle and twist till you get sent to bed. -It is nice to go to bed when you are sleepy, and no sooner, not to be -despatched any time that grown-up people are tired of you and take the -quickest way to get rid of a nuisance. Taken all round, the very nicest -thing in the world is your own way and plenty of it, and you never get -that properly, it seems to me, until you are too old to enjoy it, or too -cross to admit that you do! - -I suspect that the word "rice-pudding" will be written on my heart, as -Calais was on Bloody Mary's, when I am dead. - -I have got that blue shade about the eyes that they say early-dying -children have, and I may die young. So I am going to write down -everything, just as it happens, in my life, because when I grow up, I -mean to be an author, like my father before me, and teach in song, or in -prose, what I have learned in suffering. Doing this will get me -insensibly into the habit of composition. George--my father--we always -call him by his Christian name by request--offered to look it over for -me, but I do not think that I shall avail myself of his kindness. I want -to be quite honest, and set down everything, in malice, as grown-up -people do, and then your book is sure to be amusing. I shall say the -worst--I mean the truth--about everybody, including myself. That is what -makes a book saleable. People don't like to be put off with short -commons in scandal, and chuck the book into the fire at once as I have -seen George do, when the writer is too discreet. My book will not be -discreet, but crisp, and gossippy. Even Ariadne must not read it, -however much of my hair and its leaves she pulls out, for she will claw -me in her rage, of course. Grammar and spelling will not be made a -specialty of, because what you gain in propriety you lose in originality -and _verve_. I do adore _verve_! - -George's own style is said to be the perfection of nervousness and -vervousness. He is a genius, he admits it. I am proud, but not glad, for -it cuts both ways, and it is hardly likely that there will be two -following after each other so soon in the same family. Though one never -knows? Mozart's father was a musical man. George says that to be -daughter to such a person is a liberal education; it seems about all the -education I am likely to get! George teaches me Greek and Latin, when he -has time. He won't touch Ariadne, for she isn't worth it. He says I am -apt. Dear me, one may as well make lessons a pleasure, instead of a -scene! Ariadne cried the first time at Perspective, when George, after a -long explanation that puzzled her, asked her in that particular, sniffy, -dried-up tone teachers put on,--"Did she see?" And when he asked me, I -didn't see either, but I said I did, to prevent unpleasantness. - -I do not know why I am called Tempe. Short for temper, the new cook -says, but when I asked George, he laughed, and bid me and the cook -beware of obvious derivations. It appears that there is a pretty place -somewhere in Greece called the Vale of Tempe, and that I am named after -that, surely a mistake. My father calls me a devil--plain devil when he -is cross, little devil when he is pleased. I take it as a compliment, -for look at my sister Ariadne, she is as good as gold, and what does she -get by it? She does not contradict or ask questions or bother anybody, -but reads poetry and does her hair different ways all day long. She -never says a sharp word--can't! George says she is bound to get left, -like the first Ariadne was. She is long and pale and thin, and white -like a snowdrop, except for her reddish hair. The pert hepatica is my -favourite flower. It comes straight out of the ground, like me, without -any fuss or preparation in the way of leaves and trimmings. - -I know that I am not ugly. I know it by the art of deduction. We none of -us are, or we should not have been allowed to survive. George would -never have condescended to own ugly children. We should have been -exposed when we were babies on Primrose Hill, which is, I suppose, the -tantamount of Mount Taeygetus, as the ancient Greeks did their ugly -babies. We aren't allowed to read Lempriere. I do. What brutes those -Greeks were, and did not even know one colour from the other, so George -says! - -I am right in saying we are all tolerable. The annoying thing is that -the new cook, who knows what she is talking about, says that children -"go in and out so," and even Aunt Gerty says that "fancy children never -last," and after all this, I feel that the pretty ones can never count -on keeping up to their own standard. - -I cannot tell you if our looks come from our father, or our mother? -George is small, with a very brown skin. He says he descends "from the -little dark, persistent races" that come down from the mountains and -take the other savages' sheep and cows. He has good eyes. They dance and -flash. His hair is black, brushed back from his forehead like a -Frenchman, and very nice white teeth. He has a mouth like a Jesuit, I -have heard Aunt Gerty say. He never sits very still. He is about -thirty-seven, but he does not like us chattering about his age. - -Mother looks awfully young for hers--thirty-six; and she would look -prettier if she didn't burn her eyes out over the fire making dishes for -George, and prick her fingers darning his socks till he doesn't find out -they are darned, or else he wouldn't wear them again, and spoil her -figure stooping, sewing and ironing. George won't have a sewing machine -in the house. Her head is a very good shape, and she does her hair plain -over the top to show it. George made her. Sometimes when he isn't there, -she does it as she used before she was married, all waved and floating, -more like Aunt Gerty, who is an actress, and dresses her head sunning -over with curls like Maud. George has never caught Mother like that, or -he would be very angry. He considers that she has the bump of -domesticity highly developed (though even when her hair is done plain I -never can see it?), and that is why she enjoys being wife, mother, and -upper housemaid all in one. - -We only keep two out here at Isleworth, though my brother Ben is very -useful as handy boy about the place, blacking our boots and browning -George's, and cleaning the windows and stopping them from rattling at -nights--a thing that George can't stand when he is here. When he isn't -we just let them rave, and it is a perfect concert, for this is a very -old Georgian house. Mother makes everything, sheets, window-curtains, -and our frocks and her own. She makes them all by the same pattern, -quite straight like sacks. George likes to see us dressed simply, and of -course it saves dressmakers' bills, or board of women working in the -house, who simply eat you out of it in no time. We did have one once to -try, and when she wasn't lapping up cocoa to keep the cold out, she was -sucking her thimble to fill up the vacuum. We are dressed strictly -utilitarian, and wear our hair short like Ben, and when it gets long -mother puts a pudding basin on our heads and snips away all that shows. -At last Ariadne cried herself into leave to let hers grow. - -The new cook says that if we weren't dressed so queer, Ariadne and me, -we should make some nice friends, but that is just what George doesn't -want. He likes us to be self-contained, and says that there is no one -about here that he would care to have us associate with. Our doorstep -will never wear down with people coming in, for except Aunt Gerty, and -Mr. Aix, the oldest friend of the family, not a soul ever crosses the -threshold! - -I am forgetting the house-agent's little girl, round the corner into -Corinth Road. She comes here to tea with us sometimes. She is exactly -between Ariadne and me in age, so we share her as a friend equally. We -got to know her through our cat Robert the Devil choosing to go and stay -in Corinth Road once. At the end of a week her people had the bright -thought of looking at the name and address on his collar, and sent him -back by Jessie, who then made friends with us. George said, when he was -told of it, that the Hitchings are so much lower in the social scale -than we are, that it perhaps does not matter our seeing a little of each -other. She is better dressed than us, in spite of her low social scale. -She has got a real osprey in her hat, and a mink stole to wear to -church, that is so long it keeps getting its ends in the mud. She -doesn't like our George, though we like hers. George came out of his -study once and passed through the dining-room, where Jessie was having -tea with us. - -"Isn't he a _cure_?" said she, with her mouth full of his -bread-and-butter. - -We told her that our George was no more of a cure than hers, which shut -her up; and was quite safe, as neither Ariadne nor I know what a "cure" -is. She isn't really a bad sort of girl. We teach her poetry, and -mythology, and she teaches us dancing and religion. She has a governess -all to herself every morning, and goes to church regularly. She once -said that her mamma called us poor, neglected children, and pitied us. -We hit her for her mother, and there was an end of that. We love each -other dearly now, and have promised to be bridesmaids to each other, and -godmothers to each other's children. I am going to have ten. - -Ariadne went to her birthday party at Christmas, and did a very silly -thing, that Mother advised her not to tell George about. Every one at -home agreed that poor Ariadne had been dreadfully rude, but I can't see -it? I adore sincerity. When Mr. Hitchings asked her what she would like -out of the bran-pie when it was opened, same as they asked all the -other children, Ariadne only said quite modestly, "A new papa, please!" - -Their faces frightened her so, that she tried to improve it away, and -explain she meant that she should like an every-day papa, like Mr. -Hitchings, not only a Sunday one, like George. I know of course what she -meant, a papa that one sees only from Saturdays to Mondays, and not -always then, is only half a papa. - -Ariadne's real name is Ariadne Florentina, after one of George's -friends' books. She has nice hair. It is reddish and yet soft, but it -won't curl by itself, which is a great grief and sorrow to her. But at -any rate, her eyelashes are awfully long and dark, and she likes to put -the bed-clothes right over her head and listen to her eyelashes -scrabbling about on the sheet quite loud. She has big eyes like nursery -saucers. The new cook calls them loving eyes. On the whole, Ariadne is -pretty, she would think she was even if she wasn't, so it is a good -thing she is. She considers herself wasted, for she is over eighteen -now, and she has never been to a party or worn a low neck in her life. -We have neither of us ever seen a low neck, but we know what it is from -books, and from them also we learn that eighteen is the age when it -takes less stuff to cover you. The new cook says that all her young -ladies at her last place came out when they were only seventeen. What is -outness? I asked George once, and he said it was a device of the -Philistines. I then told him that the new cook said that Ariadne would -never be married and off his hands unless he gave her her chance like -other young ladies, and he said something about a girl called Beatrice -who was out and married and dead before she was nine. Her surname was -Porter, if I recollect. The new cook said "Hout!" and that Beatrice -Porter was all her eye and just an excuse for selfishness! - -Anyhow it is Ariadne's affair, and she doesn't seem to care much, except -when the new cook fills her head with ideas of revolt. She walks about -the green garden reading novels, and waiting for the Prince, for she has -a nice nature. I myself should just turn down the collar of my dress, -put on a wreath and go out and find a Prince, or know the reason why! - -We keep no gardener, only Ben. Ben is short for Benvenuto Cellini, -another of George's friends. He is thirteen, old enough to go to school, -only George hasn't yet been able to make up his mind where to send him. -It is a good thing Ben has plenty of work to do, for he is very cross, -and talks sometimes of running away to sea, only that he has the North -border to dig, or Cat Corner to clear. - -That is the corner George calls The Pleasaunce--it is we who call it Cat -Corner. Not only dead cats come there, but brickbats and tin kettles -with just one little hole in them, and brown-paper parcels that we open -with a poker. I hope there will be a dead baby in one some day, to -reward us. The trees are so dirty that we don't like to touch them, and -the birds that scurry about in the bushes would be yellow, like -canaries, Sarah says, only for the dirt of London. I hardly believe it, -I should like to catch one and wash it. In the opposite corner George -has built a grotto, and we have to keep it dusted, and he sits there and -writes and smokes. The next garden is the garden of a mad-house. The -doctor keeps a donkey and a pony. Once a table-knife came flying over -the wall to us. George's nerves were so thoroughly upset that he could -not bear anything but Ouida and Miss Braddon read aloud to him all the -rest of the day. Mother happens to like those authors and another -Italian lady's books that we are forbidden to mention in this house. She -never reads George's own works; she says she has promised to be a good -wife to him, but that that wasn't in the bond. She knows them too well, -having heard them all in the rough. Behind the scenes in a novel is as -dull as behind the scenes in a theatre, you never know what the play is -about. Aunt Gerty says that all George's things are rank, and quite -undramatic, and George says he is glad to hear it, for he doesn't like -Aunt Gerty. - -The other persons in the house are George's cats. There are three. The -grey cat, the only one who has kittens, I call Lady Castlewood, out of -_Esmond_ by Thackeray. George sometimes says "that little cat of a Lady -Castlewood"--it occurred to me that "that little Lady Castlewood of a -cat" just suits ours, for she is a jealous beast, a cantankerous beast, -and goes Nap with her claws all over your face in no time! She hates her -children once they are grown up, and is merely on bowing terms with -them, or you might call it licking terms--for she doesn't mind giving -them a wash and a brush-up whenever they come her way. Robert the Devil -was the one that stayed away a week. He is very big and mild; he can lie -down and wrap himself in his fur till he looks all over alike, and you -couldn't find any particular part of him, no more than if he were a kind -of soft hedgehog. George talks to them and tells them things about -himself. - -"I am sure they are welcome to his confidence!" that is what the new -cook said. She likes them better than she likes him. She is quite kind -to cats, though she gives them a hoist with her foot sometimes, when -they get in her way. They are valuable, you see. I wish I was, for then -people care what you eat and give you medecines, which I love. It isn't -often you are disappointed in a new bottle of medecine, except when -there's gentian in it. - - - - -CHAPTER II - - -You don't get a very good class of servant down this way, my mother -says, but then she is so particular. She is the kind of mistress who -knows how to do everything better herself, and that kind never gets good -servants; it seems to paralyze the poor girls, and make them limp and -without an idea in their heads, or what they choose to call their heads, -which I strongly suspect is their stomachs. You can punish or reward a -servant best through its stomach, and don't give them beer, or -beer-money either! Beer makes them cross or cheeky, depending, I -suppose, on the make of the beer. Mother never gives it. They buy it, I -know, but I never tell. It would be as much as my place (in the kitchen) -is worth, and I value my right of free entry. - -Mother is terribly down on dust too. She has a book about germ culture, -and sees germs in everything. It doesn't make her any happier. But as -for dusting, so far as I can see, what they call dusting is only a plan -for raising the dirt and taking it to some other place. It gets into our -mouths in the end. I do pity Matter that is always getting into the -wrong place, chivied here and there, with no resting-place for the sole -of the foot. For whenever Mother sees dust anywhere, or suspects it, she -makes a cross with her finger in it, and the servants are supposed to -see the cross and feel ashamed. Though I don't believe any servant was -ever ashamed in her life. 'Tisn't in their natures. They just grin and -bear with it--with the dust, and the scolding too. - -"It's 'er little way," I heard Sarah say once, not a bit unkindly or -disagreeably, though, after Mother had come down on her about something. -But once I caught the very same girl shaking her fist at George's back -and calling him "an old beast!" - -"Sarah," I said, "whom are you addressing?" - -"The doctor's donkey, miss," she said, as quick as lightning, pointing -to it grazing in the doctor's garden next door. People were always -overloading that donkey, and shaking their fists at it. - -I must get to the new cook. The last one gave Mother notice, and I never -could find out why, because she was fond of Mother and could stand the -cats. - -"Oh, I like _you_, ma'am," I heard her say, just as if she disliked some -one else. Mother took no notice, but left the kitchen, and Cook took a -currant off her elbow and pulled down her sleeves, and mumbled to Sarah, -"It isn't right, and I for one ain't going to help countenance it. -A-visiting his family now and then between jobs, just like a burglar--or -some-think worse!" - -What is worse than a burglar? I was passing the scullery window, and -Sarah had just thrown a lot of boiling water into a basin in front of -them both, so that it made a mist and she didn't see me. I knew, though, -she was saying something rude, for when Sarah told her she "shouldn't -reely," she muttered something more about a "neglected angel!" I did -think at first she meant me, or perhaps the doctor's donkey as usual, -but then the words didn't fit either of us? I asked her straight if she -did mean the donkey, just for fun, and she said the poor beast was -minding his own business and I had better do the same. - -She left us next month, crying worse than I ever did in my life for -really serious things. Mother patted her on the back as she went out at -the back door, and she kept saying, "A poor girl's only got her -character, mum, and she is bound to think of it--" and Mother said, -"Yes, yes, you did quite right!" and seemed just to want her out of the -house and a little peace and quiet and will of her own. The very moment -Sarah's back was turned, she set to work and turned everything into the -middle of the room and left it there while she and Cook swept round into -every corner. Ariadne and I rather enjoyed clearing our bed of the -towel-horse before we could lie down in it, and having dinner off the -corner of the kitchen-table because the dining-room one was lying on its -back like a horse kicking. - -Of course George wasn't allowed home all this time. Mother wrote to him -where he was staying at the Duke of Frocester's for the shooting -(George shooting! My eye!--and the keeper's legs!) and said he had -better not come home till we were straight again. I was in no hurry to -be straight again. It was like Heaven. When I was a child I always built -my brick houses crooked, and Ariadne called me Queen Unstraight, and -that made me cry. But she liked this too. We made all the beds, and -didn't bother to tuck them in. It isn't necessary to do so when we turn -head over heels in the bed-clothes onto the floor every night three -times to make us dizzy and sleepy. We washed up everything with a nice -lather of three things mixed that occurred to me, Hudson's, Monkey Soap, -and Bath Eucryl. In the end there wasn't a speck of dirt, or pattern -either, left on the plates. It looked much cleaner. Why should one eat -one's meat off a fat Chinese dragon or have bees all round the edge of -one's soup plate ready to fall in? It is a dirty idea. We basted the -joints turn and turn about, and our own pinafores. They couldn't scold -us for not keeping clean, any more than they can pigs when they put them -in a sty. We asked no questions or bothered Mother at all, but we -black-leaded the steps and bath-bricked the grates, and washed down the -walls with soda-water. The wallpaper peeled off here and there, but that -shows it was shabby and ready for death. - -Mother said afterwards that she couldn't see any improvement anywhere, -but anyhow we enjoyed ourselves and that is everything. We spent money -on it, for we bought _decalcomanie_ pictures, and did bouquets all over -the mantelpieces, but Mother insisted we should peel all these off again -before George came back. He couldn't come back till we got that cook, -for George is most absurdly particular about our servants. Sarah has got -used to him, and there seems to be no idea of her going. She has to -valet him, for he is always beautifully dressed. She has to take the -greatest care of her own appearance, and get her nails manicured and her -hair waved when he is at home. That is about all for her. But the cook -he calls the keeper of his conscience, that is to say, his digestion. -His digestion is as jumpy as he is. Sometimes it wants everything quite -plain, and he will eat nothing but our rice-puddings and cold shapes of -tapioca, etc.; at another time he calls it "apparition," and says the -very name of it makes him shiver. I am used to cold shapes, alas! He -sometimes brings things down from town himself--caviare and "patty de -foy." Children are not supposed to like that sort of thing, but we do, -and George gives them us; he is not mean in trifles. Sometimes it is -pheasants and partridges, that he has shot himself on ducal acres. They -are shot very badly, not tidily, with the shot all in one place as it -ought to be: Mr. Aix explained this to me. They are not to be cooked -till they are ready, and when they are they are a little too ready for -Mother and us, so Papa and Mr. Aix have to eat it all. George belongs to -the sect of the Epicureans; I heard him tell the cook so, also that he -is the reincarnation of a gentleman called Villon. - -For a month Mother "sat in" for cooks, and all sorts of fat and lean -women came and went. Our establishment didn't seem attractive. George -bespoke a fat one, by letter, but Mother inclined to lean. These women -sat on the best chairs and prodded the pattern of the carpets with their -dusty umbrellas, and asked tons of questions,--far more than she asked -them, it seemed to me, and this one that we have at last got was the -coolest of all, but in rather a nice way. She was tall and thin, with a -long nose with a dip in it just before the tip, which was particularly -broad. Ariadne said afterwards that a nose like that seemed to need a -bustle. She said she was a north-country woman, and that is about all -she did tell us about herself, except her name, Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -She sat and asked questions. When she came to the usual "And if you -please, ma'am, how many is there in family?" Mother answered, "Myself -and my son and my two daughters,--and my sister--she is -professional--and is here for long visits--that is all." - -"Then I take it you are a widow, ma'am?" - -Mother, getting very red, explained that George is very little at home, -so that in one way he didn't count, but in another way he did, for he is -very particular and has to be cooked for specially. Being an author, he -has got a very delicate appetite. - -"A proud stomach, I understand ye. Well, I shall hope to give him -satisfaction." She said that as if she would have liked to add, "or I'll -know the reason why." - -She seemed quite to have settled in her own mind that she was going to -take our place. She "blessed Mother's bonny face" before that interview -was over, and passed me over entirely. - -She came in in a week, and the first time she saw George she was "doing -her hall." Ariadne and I were there as George's hansom drove up and he -got out and began a shindy with the cabman. - -"Honeys, this will be your father, I'm thinking!" she said. - -Perhaps she expected us to rush into his arms, but we didn't; we knew -better. We just said "Hallo!" and waited till he was disengaged with the -cabman, who wanted too much, as we are beyond the radius. George didn't -give it to him, but a good talking to instead. The new cook stopped -sweeping--servants always stop their work when there is something going -on that doesn't concern them, and looked quite pleased with George. - -"He can explain himself, and no mistake!" she said to Sarah afterwards, -and she cooked a splendid dinner that night, for, says she to Sarah, -"seemed to her he was the kind of master who'd let a woman know if she -didn't suit him." - -She doesn't "make much account of childer," in fact I think she hates -them, for when Ariadne showed her the young shoots in a pot of snowdrops -she was bringing up, and said, "See, cook, they have had babies in the -night!" Elizabeth, meaning to be civil, said, "Dis_gust_ing things, -miss!" - -Still, she isn't really unkind to children, and admits that they have a -right to exist. She will boil me my glue-pot and make me paste, and lets -Ariadne heat her curling-tongs between the bars of the kitchen fire. She -doesn't "matter" cats, but she gives them their meals regular and -doesn't hold with them loafing in the kitchen, and getting tit-bits -stolen or bestowed. And they know she is just, though not generous, and -never forgets their supper. They were all hid, as it happened, when she -came about the place, but she said she knew she had got into a cat house -as soon as she found herself eating fluff with her tea, and she thinks -she ought to have been told. George laughs at her and calls her "stern -daughter of the north," but he wasn't a bit cross when she told him that -Ben ought to be sent to school. He even agreed, but Ben isn't sent. Ben -is still eating his heart out, and he keeps telling Elizabeth Cawthorne -so. He is much in the kitchen. She is very sensible. She just stuffs a -jam tart into his mouth, and says, "Tak' that atween whiles then, my -bonny bairn, to distract ye." Ben takes it like a lamb, and it does -distract him, or at any rate it distends him; he has got fat since she -came. - -She orders Mother about as if she were a child. Mother _does_ look very -young, as I have said. She ought, and so ought Aunt Gerty, considering -the trouble they both take to keep the cloven hoof of age off their -faces. They go to bed with poultices of oatmeal on them, and Aunt Gerty -once tried the raw-beef plaster. But what she does in the night she -undoes in the day, with the grease paint and sticky messes that are part -of her profession. - -She lives with us except when she is on tour, and is only here when she -is "resting" in the _Era_, and all that time she is dreadfully cross, -because she would rather be doing than resting, for "resting" is only a -polite way of saying no one has wanted to engage her, and that she is -"out of a shop," which all actresses hate. - - - - -CHAPTER III - - -I have forced George's hand, so I am told, and neither he nor mother -take any notice of me. - -But Aunt Gerty hugged me all over when she heard what I had done, and -scolded Mother for not being nice to me. - -"I don't see why you need put that poor child in Coventry?" she said. -"You had more need to be grateful to her than not. How much longer was -it going to go on, I want to know? Hiding away his lawful wife like an -old Bluebeard, and me Sister Anne boiling over and wanting to call it -all from the house-tops!" - -"Well, Gerty, you seem to have got it a bit mixed!" said Mother. "But, -talking of Bluebeard, I always envied the first Mrs. B. the lots of -cupboard room she must have had! I wonder if she was a hoarder, like me, -who never have the heart to throw anything away? If I do happen to see -the plans for the new house, I will speak up for lots of cupboards, and -that is all I care about." - -"See the plans! Why, of course you will! Isn't it your right? You must -make a point of seeing them and putting your word in. Look after your -own comfort in this world or you will jolly well find yourself out in -the cold, and 'specially with a husband like you've got!" - -"Bother moving!" said Mother, in her dreary way that comes when she has -been overdoing it, as she has lately. "It is an odious wrench; just like -having all one's teeth out at once." - -"Hadn't need! Yours are just beautiful. One of your points, Lucy, and -don't you forget it." - -"The life here suited me well enough; I had got used to it, I suppose." - -"You can get used to something bad, can't you, but that's no reason you -are not to welcome a change? Oh, you'll like the new life that's to be -spent up-stairs in the daylight, above-board like, instead of this kind -of 'behind the scenes' you have been doing for eighteen years. And a -pretty woman still, for so you are. Cheer up! You are going to get new -scenery, new dresses, new backcloth----" - -"You see everything through the stage, Gerty. I must say it irritates -one sometimes, especially now, when----" - -"I know what you mean. No offence, my dear old sis. And you can depend -on me not to be bringing the smell of the footlights, as they call -it--it's the only truly pleasant smell there is, to my idea!--into your -fine new house. Pity but _He_ can't get a little whiff of it into his -comedies, and some manager would see his way to putting them on, -perhaps? No, beloved, me and George don't cotton to each other, nor -never shall. He isn't my sort. I like a man that is a man, not a -society baa-lamb! Baa! I've no patience with such----" - -"Sh', Gerty. You seem to forget his child sitting messing away with her -paints in a corner so quietly there!" - -That was me. Aunt Gerty stopped a minute, and then they went on just the -same. - -"We have never minded the child yet" (which was true), "and I don't see -why we should begin now. Tempe is getting quite a woman and able to hold -her tongue when needful. And she knows her way about her precious father -well enough. What you've to think of now, Lucy, is getting your hands -white, and the marks of sewing and cooking off. Lemons and pumice! -Cream's good, too. You have been George Taylor's upper servant too -long--Gracious, who's that at the front-door?" - -Aunt Gerty nearly knocked me over in her rush to the window. We were all -three sitting in the front bedroom, which is George's, when he is at -home, and Mother had been washing my hair. It was a dreadfully hot -day--a dog-day, only we haven't any dogs, but the kittens were -tastefully arranged in the spare wash-basin all round the jug for -coolness. They had put themselves there. We humans had got very little -clothes on, partly for heat and also having got out of the habit of -dressing in the afternoons, for no callers ever came to The Magnolias. -But there were some now. There was a big, two-horsed thing at the door -such as I have often seen driving out to Hampton Court, but never, never -had I seen one stop at our gate before. It was most exciting. I hoped -Jessie Hitchings and her mother saw. - -There were two ladies inside, one of them old and frumpy, the other was -Lady Scilly, whom I knew, though Mother didn't. I haven't got to her yet -in my story. A footman was taking their orders, and Sarah was standing -at the door holding on to her cap that she'd forgotten to put a pin in. -Lucky she had a cap on at all! Mother doesn't like her to leave her caps -off to go to the door, even when George isn't here, out of principle, -and for once it told. - -"For goodness sake get your head in, Gerty, you have got the shade a bit -too strong to-day," cried Mother, pulling my aunt in by her petticoats, -and nearly upsetting the mirror on the dressing-table. Aunt Gerty came -in with a cross grunt, and we all sat well inside till we heard the -carriage drive away and Sarah mounting the stairs all of a hop, skip and -a jump. - -"Please m'm!" she cried almost before she got into the room, "there's a -carriage-and-pair just called----" - -"Anything in it?" Mother said. - -"Two ladies, m'm, and here's their cards." - -I took one and Aunt Gerty the other. - -"Dowager Countess of Fylingdales!" Aunt Gerty read, as if she was Lady -Macbeth saying, "Out, dammed spot!" - -The card I held was for Lady Scilly, and there was one for Lord Scilly, -but it had got under the drawers. - -"I said you wasn't dressed, ma'am," Sarah said, looking at Mother's -apron all over egg, and her rolled-up sleeves. - -"No more I am," said Mother, laughing. "Don't look so disappointed, -Gerty. I couldn't have seen them." - -"But you shouldn't have said your mistress wasn't dressed, Sarah," said -Aunt Gerty. "It isn't done like that in good houses. You should have -said, 'My mistress is gone out in _the_ carriage.'" - -"But that would have been a lie!" argued Sarah, "and I'm sure I don't -want to go to hell even for a carriage-and-pair." - -"Oh, where have you been before, Sarah," Aunt Gerty sighed, "not to know -that a society lie can't let any one in for hell fire? Well, it is too -late now; they have gone. And it was rather a shabby turnout for -aristocratic swells like that, after all." - -"They didn't really want to see me," said Mother. "They only called on -me to please George. He sent them probably. I have heard him speak of -Lady Fylingdales. He stays there. She is one of his oldest friends. She -is lame and nearly blind. Lady Scilly I shall never like from what I -have heard of her. Tempe, run in the garden in the sun and dry your -hair. Off you go!" - -"And get a sunstroke," thought I. "Just because she wants to talk to -Aunt Gerty about the grand callers!" - -So I stayed, and they have got so in the habit of not minding me that -they went on as if I really had been out broiling in the sun. - -Mother began to talk very fast about the new house, and getting -visiting-cards printed, and taking her place in Society. These ladies -coming had given her thoughts a fresh jog. She nearly cried over the -bother of it all, and what George would now go expecting of her, and she -with no education and no ambition to be a smart woman, as Aunt Gerty was -continually egging her on to be, saying it was quite easy if you only -had a nice slight figure, like she has. - -"Bead chains and pince-nezs won't do it as you seem to think," Mother -said. "And even if I get to be smart, I shall never get to be happy!" - -"Happy!" screamed my Aunt Gertrude. "Who talked of being happy? You -don't go expecting to be happy, unless it makes you happy, as it ought, -to put your foot down on those stuck-up cats who have been leading your -husband astray all these years, and giving them a good what-for. It -would me, that's all I can say. Happiness indeed! It is something higher -than mere happiness. What you have got to do, my dear Lucy, is just to -take your call and go on--not before you've had a trip to Paris for your -clothes, though--and show them all what a pretty woman George Taylor's -despised wife is. There's an object to live for! That's your ticket, and -you've got it. He married you for your looks, now, didn't he?" - -"Nothing else," said Mother sadly. - -"Nonsense! Weren't you--aren't you as good as he? You are the daughter -of a respectable Irish clergyman. Whose daughter--I mean son--is he? A -French tailor's, I expect. You married him eighteen years ago in Putney -Parish Church by special licence, when he was nothing and nobody cared -whom or what he married. Little flighty, undersized foreign-looking -creature! You have been a good wife to him, borne his children, nursed -him when he was ill, and kept a house going for him to come back to when -he was tired of the others, and if it's been done on the sly, it hasn't -been through any will of yours! And now that the matter has been taken -out of his hands, and a good thing too, and he's obliged to leave off -his dirty little tricks and own you, and send his grand friends to call -on you, and build a nice house to put you in, you want to back out and -hide yourself--lose your chance once for all and for ever! You are -good-looking, your children are sweet--you'll soon catch them all up, -and then you can be as haughty and stuck-up as the rest of them. If it -is _me_ you are thinking of, I shan't trouble you--I have my work and I -mean to stick to it!" - -"I shall never disown you, Gerty." - -"No, I dare say not, but I shan't put myself in the way of a snub. I've -got one thing that's been very useful to me in this life--that's tact. I -shan't make a nasty row or a talk, but you'll not see more of me than -you want to. I'm a lady--I'll never let anybody deny that--but I've -knocked about the world a bit, and it's a rough place, and that soft -dainty manner people admire so, rubs off pretty soon fighting one's own -battles. The aristocracy can afford to keep it on. Clothes does it, -largely. Where you're wearing chiffon, I'll be wearing linen, that's the -diff. Now I'm off--'on' first act and share a dresser with three other -cats, where there isn't room to swing one. Ta-ta! I'm not as vulgar as -you think!" - -She put on her picture-hat carefully with sixteen pins in it, and went -away. Mother asked me why I hadn't been drying my hair in the garden all -this time? Because I wanted to hear what Aunt Gerty had to say, I -answered, and Mother accepted the explanation. But now I went and found -a cool place and meditated on my sins. - -I am not what is called a strictly naughty child. I am too busy. Satan -never need bother about me or find mischief for me to do, for my hands -are never idle, and I can generally find it for myself. - -On the eventful morning that decided our fate three weeks before this -incident, I was in the drawing-room, where we hardly ever sit, making -devils with George's name with the ink out of the best inkstand. I spilt -it. Why do these things happen? It is the fault of fatality. - -There is nothing I hate more than the sickening smell of spilt ink, or -rather, the soapy rags they chose to rub it up with, so I went up to my -room quietly intending to get my hat and go out till it had blown over, -or rather soaked in. Sarah was there, tidying or something, and she said -immediately, "Now whatever have you been up to?" I told her that the -word "ever" was quite surplus in that sentence, and that George objected -to it strongly. Thus I got away from her, wishing I had a less -expressive face. - -I found myself in the street without an object. I have got beyond the -age of runaway rings, thank goodness, but they did use to amuse me, till -one day an old gentleman got hold of me and went on about the length of -kitchen stairs generally, and the shortness of cooks' legs, and the -cruel risk of things boiling over. He changed my heart. So this day I -just walked along to a motor-car, that I saw at the end of the next -street but one, standing in front of the "Milliner's Arms," with nobody -in it. I expected the man was having a drink, for it was piping hot. I -got into the car and sat down, and just put my hand on the twirly-twirly -thing in front, considering if I should set the car going. It was the -very first time I had ever been in a motor in my life, and I simply -hadn't the heart to miss the chance. - -A lady came out of the Public. I never saw anything so pretty, and her -dress was all billowy, like the little fluffy clouds we call Peter's -sheep in a blue sky, and the hem of it was covered with sawdust off the -public-house floor. Yet I can't say she looked at all tipsy. - -"I wanted a pick-me-up so badly, I just had to go in and get it." She -said this in an apologizing sort of way, while I was just wondering how -I should explain my presence in her car. She settled that for me, by -saying with a little sweet smile, "Well, you pretty child, how do you -like my motor-car?" - -"It is the first time I----" - -"Oh, of course! Would you like to be in one while it is on the move?" - -I confessed I should, and she jumped in beside me, saying, "Sit still, -then, child!" and moved the crissy-cross starfish thing in front, and we -were off. - -Mercy, what a rate! Policemen seemed to hold up their hands in amazement -at us, and she looked pleased and flattered. We drove on and on, past -the Hounslow turning, through miles of nursery gardens and then miles of -slums, till at last the houses got smarter and bigger, and I guessed -this was the part of London where George lives, only I did not ask -questions. I hardly ever do. I did see a clock once, and I saw it was -nearly our lunch time. I realized that I had missed rice-pudding for -once, and was glad. She talked all the way along, and I listened. I find -that is what people like, for she kept telling me that I was a nice -child, and that she thought she should run away with me. - -"You _are_ running away with me," I said. - -"And you don't care a bit, you very imperturbable atom! I think I shall -take you home with me to luncheon. You amuse me." - -She amused _me_. She was a darling--so gay, so light, as if she didn't -care about anything, and had never had a stomach-ache in her whole life. -If George's high-up friends are like this, I don't wonder he prefers -them to Aunt Gerty. Mother can be as amusing as anybody,--I am not -going to try to take Mother down--but even she can't pretend she is -happy as this woman seemed to be. She was like champagne,--the very dry -kind George opens a bottle of when he is down, and gives Mother and me a -whole glassful between us. - -We were quite in a town now, and on a soft pavement made of wood, like -my bedroom floor. The streets, oddly enough, grew grander and narrower. -She told me about the houses as we went along. - -"That is where my uncle, the Duke of Frocester, lives," she said, and -pointed to a kind of grey tomb, with a paved courtyard in a very tiny -street. I knew that name--the name of the man George stays and shoots -with--but of course I didn't say anything. Then we passed a funny little -house in a smaller street called after a chapel, and there was a -fanlight over the door, and a great extinguisher thing on the railings. - -"You have no idea what a lovely place that is inside," she told me. "A -great friend of mine lives there, and pulled it about. He took out all -the inside of the house, and made false walls to the rooms. One of them -has just the naked bricks and mortar showing, but then the mortar is all -gilt. He always has quantities of flowers, great arum lilies shining in -the gloom, and oleanders in pots, and stunted Japanese trees. He gives -heavenly tea-parties and little suppers after the play. He writes plays, -but somehow they have never been acted that I know of? Bachelors always -do you so well. I declare, if I wasn't going to see him this very -afternoon at my club, I would go in and surprise him, now that I have -got you with me, you little elf! You have certainly got the widest open -eyes I ever saw. He is probably in there now, working at his little -table in the window, getting up the notes for his lecture, so we should -put him out abominably. I will take you to the lecture instead. And -remind me to lend you one of his books,--that is, if your mother allows -you to read novels." - -I explained to her that I was a little off novels, as my father kept us -on them. - -"Oh, does he? How interesting! I love authors! You must introduce him to -me some day. Bring him to one of my literary teas. I always make a point -of raising an author or so for the afternoon. It pleases my crowd so, -far better than music and recitations, and played-out amusements of that -kind; and then one doesn't have to pay them. They are only too glad to -come and get paid in kind looks that cost nothing. The queerer they are, -the more people believe in them. I used to have Socialists, but really -they were _too_ dirty! Some authors now are quite smart, and wear their -hair no longer than Lord Scilly, or so very little longer. Now, there is -Morrell Aix, the man who wrote _The Laundress_. I took him up, but he -had been obliged, he said, to live in the slums for two years to get up -his facts, and you could have grown mustard and cress on the creases of -his collar. And I do think, considering the advertisement he gave them, -the laundresses might have taken more trouble with the poor man's -shirts!" - -I knew Mr. Aix, of course, and I have often seen Mother take the -clothes-brush to him, but I said nothing, for I like to show I can hold -my tongue. Knowledge is power, if it's ever so unimportant. We didn't go -far from the house with walls like stopped teeth, before she pulled up -at another rather smart little door in a street called Curzon. - -"Here we are at my place, and there's Simmy Hermyre on the doorstep -waiting to be asked to lunch." - -It was a nice clean house with green shutters and lovely lace curtains -at the windows, that Ariadne would have been glad of for a dress, all -gathered and tucked and made to fit the sash as if it had been a person. -The young man standing at the front door had a coat with a waist, and a -nice clean face, and a collar that wouldn't let him turn his head -quickly. He helped us out, and she laughed at him as if he was hers. - -"Are you under the impression that I have asked you to lunch? Why, I -don't suppose there is any!" - -Imagine her saying that when she had brought me all the way from -Isleworth to have it! I didn't, of course, say anything, and she made me -go in, and the young man followed us, quite calm, although she had said -there wasn't anything for him to eat. - -"I would introduce you to this person" (I thought it so nice of her not -to stick on the offensive words little or young!) "only it strikes me I -don't know her name." She didn't ask it, but went on, "It's a most -original little creature, and amused me more in an hour than you have in -a year, my dear boy!" - -Now, had I said anything particularly amusing? I hadn't tried, and I do -think you should leave off calling children "it" after the first six -months. Mothers hate it. Still, though I didn't think her quite polite, -I told her my name--Tempe Vero-Taylor--in a low voice so that she could -introduce me to her great friend, as we were going to lunch at the same -table. I thought there wouldn't be a children's table, as she didn't -speak of children, and I was glad, for children eat like pigs and have -no conversation. - -Her eyebrows went up and her mouth went down, but she soon buttoned up -her lips again, though they stayed open at the corners, and didn't -introduce me to Mr. Hermyre at all. I didn't suppose I should ever meet -him again, so it didn't matter. - -We went in and had lunch, and it was quite a grand lunch, hot, and as -much again cold on a side-table. But I was actually offered -rice-pudding! I wouldn't have believed it, in a house like this. I -refused rather curtly, but she ate it, and very little else. I generally -take water at home, but I did not see why I shouldn't taste champagne -when I had the chance, and I took a great deal, quite a full glass full, -and when I had taken it, I felt as if I could fight a lion. George often -says when he comes back from London that he has been fighting with wild -beasts at Ephesus. I wondered if I might not meet some this afternoon -at the lecture at the Go-ahead Club? Lady Scilly (that's her name) said -she must take me, and I knew I should be bored, but I couldn't very well -say no. - -"You may come too, Simmy," she said to the young man; "it will be -exciting, I can promise you!" - -"Not if I know it," he said. Then he tried to be kind and said, "What is -the lecture about?" - -"The Uses of Fiction." - -"None, that I can see, except to provide some poor devil with an -income." - -"That's a man's view." - -"It is," he said, "a man, and not a monkey's. You don't call your -literary crowd men, do you?" - -I was just wondering what he did call them, when Lady Scilly shut him -up, and I thought she looked at me. Presently he went on-- - -"You're quite spoiling your set, you know, Paquerette. I used to enjoy -your receptions." - -"I don't see why you should permit yourself to abuse my set because -you're a fifth cousin. That's the worst of being well connected, so many -people think they have the right to lecture one!" - -"All the better for you, my dear! Do you suppose now, that if you were -not niece to a duke and cousin to a marquis, that Society would allow -you to fill your house with people like Morrell Aix and Mrs. Ptomaine -and Ve----" - -Lady Scilly jumped up and said she must go and dress, and if he wouldn't -come to the lecture he must go, and pushed me out of the room in front -of her and on up-stairs. - -"Good-bye!" she called to him over the bannisters. "Let yourself out, -and don't steal the spoons." - -That was a funny thing to say to a friend, not to say a relation! We -went up into her bedroom, and her old nurse--I suppose it was her nurse, -for she wore no cap and bullied her like anything--came forward. - -"Put me into another gown, Miller!" she said, flopping into a chair. -Miller did, putting the skirt over her head as if she had been a child, -and even pulling her stockings up for her. Then she had a try at tidying -me. - -"Don't bother. The child's all right. She's so pretty she can wear -anything." - -I think personal remarks rude even if she does think me pretty, but I -said nothing. She looked at herself very hard in the glass, and we went -down-stairs and got into the motor again. Lady Scilly sat with her hand -in mine, and a funny little spot of red on the top of the bone of her -cheek that I hadn't noticed there before. It was real. - - - - -CHAPTER IV - - -We went into a house and into a large empty room with whole streets of -coggley chairs and a kind of pulpit thing in the middle. A jug of water -and a tumbler stood on it. There was a governessy-looking person -present, presiding over this emptiness, whom Lady Scilly immediately -began to order about. She was the secretary of the club, and Lady Scilly -is a member of the committee. - -"Where will you sit, Lady Scilly?" said this person, and she asked a -good many other questions, using Lady Scilly's name very often. - -"I shall sit quite at the back this time," Lady Scilly answered. "Too -many friends immediately near him might put the lecturer out!" As she -said this she looked at me wickedly, but I could not think why. - -We then went away and read the comic papers for a little until the place -had filled. In the reading-room we met a gentleman, who seemed to be a -great friend of Lady Scilly's. He spoke to me while she was discussing -some arrangement or other with the secretary, who had followed her. - -"How do you like going about with a fairy?" he asked me. - -"I'm not," I said. "She's a grown-up woman, old enough to know----" - -"Worse!" he interrupted me. "She is what I call a fairy!" - -"What is a fairy?" I asked, though he seemed to me very silly, and only -trying to make conversation. - -"A fairy is a person who always does exactly as she likes--and as other -people sometimes don't like." - -"I see," I said, as usual, although I did not see, as usual, "just as -grown-up people do." - -"But she isn't pretty when she is old! I wonder if you will grow up a -fairy? No, I think not, you don't look as if you _could_ tell a lie." - -"I beg your pardon," I said. He then remarked that Lady Scilly had sent -him to take me into the room where the lecture was to be given, and we -went. Of course I politely tried to let age go first, but he didn't like -that, and said "_Jeunesse oblige_," and "_Place aux dames_," and -"_Juniores ad priores_"--every language under the sun, winding up with -that silly old story about the polite Lord Stair, who was too polite to -hang back and keep the king waiting. - -"Oh yes, I know that story," I said, just to prevent him going on -bothering. "It's in Ollendorff." - -The lecture-room was quite full, and we--Lady Scilly and I--squeezed -ourselves in at the back in a kind of cosy corner there was, and we were -almost in the dark. - -"Sit tight, child, whatever happens!" she kept saying, and held my hand -as if I should run away. When among a rain of claps the lecturer came in -I saw why, for it was George! - -Lady Scilly grabbed my arm, and said, "Don't call out, child!" - -As if I was going to! But now I saw why she had kept calling him the -lecturer instead of saying his name whenever she had spoken of him -before. Now I saw why she was so full of nods and winks and grins, and -had brought me to the lecture so particularly. Now I saw why the old -gentleman had called her a fairy--that meant a tease, and I wasn't going -to gratify her by seeming upset or anything. Not I! So I sat quite still -as she told me, and George began. - -I borrowed a pencil of the Ollendorff man, and put down some notes to -remind me of what George said, for Ariadne. It took me some time to get -used to the funny little voice George put on to lecture with, quite -different to his Isleworth voice. Presently when I began to catch on a -little I found that the lecture was all about novels and the good of -them, as Lady Scilly had said. This is the sort of thing-- - -"_A novel_," said my father, "_is apt to hold a group of quite ordinary, -uninteresting characters, wallowing in their clammy, stale environment, -like fishes in an aquarium, held together by a thin thread of narrative, -and bounded by the four walls of the author's experience. His duty is to -enlarge that experience, for to novels we go, not so much for amusement -as for a criticism of Life. That portion of life which comes under the -reader's own observation is naturally so restricted, so vastly -disproportionate, to the whole great arcana_." (I do hope I got this -down right!) "_The novelist should be omniscient and omnipotent._" (Once -I got these two great words, all the rest seemed child's play.) "_A -great responsibility lies with the purveyors of this necessary panorama -of existence, the men who monopolize the furnishing and regulating of -the supply._" (Loud applause.) "_The right man, or peradventure, the -right woman_" (he bowed at Lady Scilly), "_knows, or ought to know, so -many sides, while the reader, alas, knows but one, and is so tired of -that one!_" - -Everybody sighed and groaned a little to show how tired they were, and -George went on-- - -"_I see my audience is in touch with me. It works both ways._" (What -works both ways? I must have left something out.) "_A Duchess of my -acquaintance said some poignant, pregnant words--as indeed all her words -are pregnant and poignant_" (he bowed to an old corpulent lady in -another part of the room)--"_to me the other day. She said that her -novel of predilection was not a society novel. 'I know it all, don't I, -like the palm of my hand?' she objected. 'I know how to behave in a -drawing-room and how not to behave in a boudoir!' So she complained. The -substance of her complaint, as I understand it, is this;--what she wants -is worlds not realized! She wants to see the actress in her -drawing-room, the flower-girl in her garret, the laundress at her tub, -the burglar at his work_----" - -Here George made a little bob at Mr. Aix in the audience, for there he -was, and there was another fit of clapping. Then he went on-- - -"_I mean to say that what we mostly seek in fiction is to be taken out -of our own lives, and put into somebody else's--to temporarily change -our moral environment. High life is deeply interested in what is going -on below stairs. Bill Sykes and 'Liza of Lambeth, if they have any time -for reading, want to know all about countesses and their attendant -sprites._" (Fancy calling Simon Hermyre that!) "_The Highest or the -Lowest, but no middle course, is the novelist's counsel of perfection. -There is no second class in the literary railway._ - -"_Yet there is a serious issue involved in this proposition. If, for -instance--only for instance, for I am very sure that most of us here -will have to rely on imagination, not fact, to support my -illustration--if our home is a suburban one, and our wildest actual -dissipation a tea-party in Clapham or Tooting--even Clapham Rise or -Upper Tooting--we must transport ourselves in seven-league boots to the -better quarters of London, to visualize the giddy cultured throng in the -halls of Belgravia, and set down accurately the facile inaccuracies of -the small talk of Mayfair. It is the tale of the mad, bad great world -that sets the heart of the matron of Kennington Common aflame, and makes -her waking dreams 'all a wonder and a wild desire.' Que voulez vous? She -is our staple standing reader. She does not want to bend her chaste -thoughts towards Hornsey Rise and Cricklewood, to envisage, stimulated -by the novelist's art, its bursten boilers, its infant woes, its humdrum -marrying and giving in marriage. No, she prefers, in her grey unlovely -Jerry-built parlour, to gloat over the morbid, rose-coloured sins that -are enacted in the halls of fashion; the voluptuous sorrows of the -Bridge-end of the week; the mystery of Royal visits postponed are her -chosen pabulum. To all these novelists whose ways are cast in safe and -humdrum middle-class places I would say that they had best ignore their -entourage as a help to local colour. In this case, character drawing, -like charity, should not begin at Home. Go out, go out, young man, from -thy homely nest in the suburbs, where the females of thy family hang -over their flaccid meat teas in faded blouses----_" - -I think it was about here that I half got up, quite determined, and Lady -Scilly pinched me in several places at once. - -"Don't nip me, please," I said. "I think somebody ought to get up and -tell George he's drivelling, and if nobody else does, I will." - -"Bless the child!" she said. "You may answer him when he's done, if you -like, and can. It will be quite amusing." - -I think that she really was a fairy, but never mind! I did think -somebody ought to stop George, and take Mother's side. So I waited, -though I stopped my ears and would not listen to any more till George -sat down and the secretary lady asked if some one would care to answer -Mr. Vero-Taylor's speech? Lady Scilly poked me up, and I got up so that -George and all of them could see me, and I didn't feel a bit shy--no, -for I had something to say, and off I went, to speak up for Mother who -wasn't there to speak up for herself. - -"Ladies and Gentlemen," I said--I noticed that George began like -that--"I don't agree at all with what the gentleman--who is my -father--has been saying about Tooting--Upper Tooting, I mean. He ought -to be more patriotic, as he lives at Isleworth, which is pretty nearly -the same thing, part of his time anyhow, and I suppose he needn't do it -unless he likes. And as for what he says about Mother, why, I can tell -everybody that Mother doesn't read novels about Duchesses or anybody. -She hasn't time, she's much too busy in the house, bringing us up, and -cooking specially for George, and so on. That's all!" - -I sat down with a bump. George seemed to subside, and I lost him, but I -hardly expected him to come and hug me. Lady Scilly went and comforted -him, perhaps! I don't know what happened, except tea and coffee, but I -didn't feel inclined, and I asked Mr. Aix to take me home. - -He did, in a hansom. He held my hand all the way. We didn't talk, but I -am sure he wasn't cross with me, and held my hand to show it. He seemed -to know I was going to have a bad time. - -I did. Even Mother scolded me. - -Papa didn't come near us for a week, and when he was due I asked if I -might have a cold and be in bed. God sent me a real cold to make me -truthful. Aunt Gerty nursed me. It wasn't so bad. She read to me about -Thumbelina and Boadicea, my two favourite heroines, one big and the -other little, and poetry about my painted boy, which I love and that -always makes me go to sleep. I believe it is spelt with a u, and doesn't -mean a child at all. But, I like it best my way-- - - "We left behind the painted buoy - That tosses at the harbour-mouth, - And madly danced our hearts with joy - As fast we fleeted to the South." - -While I was ill, though, I missed all the discussions about moving, and -the results of the lecture and all that. Ariadne reported what she -could. She said that Mother and George never mentioned me, but talked as -if the drains had gone wrong, or a pipe had burst, or as if George had -lost a lot of money somehow. Everything is to be altered and the world -will be topsy-turvey when I get down-stairs again. Though I don't -suppose that even if I did get a chance of putting my word in, I could -alter anything as I wished it? These grown-ups, once they get the bit -between their teeth----! - - - - -CHAPTER V - - -It is no fun for George now, when everybody knows he is a married man. -Lady Scilly took care of that, and told everybody as a good joke, and -all her friends at the Go-ahead Club told their friends how George -Vero-Taylor's little girl had burst into the middle of his lecture there -and given him away--such fun, don't you know! It wasn't fun for me, for -I had nothing but the consciousness of a bad action to support me in -Coventry, where they all put me for a month. It wouldn't have mattered -so much if George hadn't been at home a good deal about that time. I -think I prefer George as a visitor, and so does Elizabeth Cawthorne, -though she says it is more natural perhaps for a gentleman to stop with -his family, though wearing to the servants. - -George is a philosopher. He has been forced to own up to a family, and -thus has lost a certain amount of prestige, but he is now trying a new -line. At any rate, he has been a good deal talked about, and got into -the newspapers, and that will sell an edition, I should think. He has a -volume on the stocks. Misfortunes never come single-handed, luckily. He -settled to build a house--a house that should express him and shelter -his family as well. Mother didn't want to build. If we _had_ to move, -she wanted a dear little house on the river at Datchet, or even at -Surbiton, and she and I used to go down for the day third-class to see -if there were any to let. We used to take a packet of sandwiches and a -soda-water bottle full of milk for us both. Mother never hardly touches -spirits. In this way we looked over heaps of little earwiggeries trimmed -with clematises and pots of geraniums hanging from the balconies, with -their poor roots higher than their heads, and manicured lawns right down -to the water's edge. George didn't stop our doing this and taking so -much trouble; I believe he thought it amused us and did him no harm. But -all the time, he was hansoming it backwards and forwards to St. John's -Wood, where he meant to settle. He quietly chose a site, and bought it, -and was his own architect, though a little Mr. Jortin he discovered, -made the plans from his dictation. He got no credit, except for the -blunders. George, being a man of the widest culture, wanted to show the -world that he can do other things than write books. In _Who's Who_, he -doesn't mention writing as one of his occupations, not even as one of -his amusements. These are Riding, Driving, Shooting, Fishing, Fencing, -Polo, Rotting and Log-rolling, or at least, that's what his friend Mr. -Aix read out to us one afternoon he came to see us, out of the very -newest edition, and George was in the room too, and laughed. - -All this time Ariadne and I were kept hard at it copying things. George -talked of nothing but atriums and tricliniums and environments. I only -interrupted once, when I said that they had never mentioned a main -staircase, and was it going to be outside, like those wooden ones you -see in the country, with the fowls stepping up to bed on them? They -thanked me, and added an inside stairs to the plan at once. - -As soon as we get into the new house, George intends to raise his -prices. He expects to get ten pounds per "thou." He told Middleman, his -literary agent, so. Up to now his price was four pound ten per "thou." -for articles, and the royalties on his last book are going to pay for -the new house. Middleman says George will be quite right to charge -establishment charges. Middleman is supposed to have a faint, very faint -sense of humour, and that's the only way people get at him. Mr. Aix says -Middleman can run up an author's sales twenty per cent. in no time, if -he fancies you personally, or thinks there's money in you. - -George's new book is going to be not mediaeval this time; people have -imitated him and _The Adventures of Sir Bore and Sir Weariful_ was -brought out just to plague him, so he is going to quit that for a time. -He thinks that the Isles of Greece would be a good place to dump a few -English aristocrats and tell their adventures on. He will go abroad -soon, but is waiting for some of the aristocrats to make up a party and -pay his expenses. - -Meanwhile Cinque Cento House, as it is to be called, rose like a thief -in the night, and as it grew higher and higher Mother's face grew longer -and longer. She refused to go near it, and it was Lady Scilly who helped -George to arrange the furniture. - -Aunt Gerty, however, is practical, and tried to get Mother to take some -interest in her own mansion. - -"I do," Mother said, "but at a distance. I couldn't be of any use -advising, and whatever I advised, George would still take his own way. -That odious woman, whom I thank God I have never set eyes on, is always -about, and would put my back up if I met her there, and I should say -things I should be sorry for after. No, Gerty, let them arrange it as -they like, and buy furniture and set it up. It is George's own money. He -earned it." - -"Not by the sweat of his brow, at all events!" sneered my aunt. - -"I came to him without a penny, and I haven't the right to dictate so -much as the position of a wardrobe." - -"You're the man's lawful wife," said Aunt Gerty, as she always did. One -got tired of the expression. - -"Yes, unfortunately," said Mother. "Or I'd have a better chance! But I -am _not_ going to fight over George with that minx!" - -How Mother did hate Lady Scilly, to be sure, a person she had never -seen! I once told her she needn't be cross with Lady Scilly, and how -harmless she was, and how very little she really thought of -Papa--snubbed him even, and treated him like dirt; and then she was -cross with _me_, and said George was a man of whom any woman might be -proud. - -Ariadne and I went over to the new house often, to get measurements for -blinds and curtains and things at home. Mother made them, and then we -took them round. Lady Scilly was always there, from twelve to two, and -George generally met her and they shut themselves into first one room -and then another, discussing it. Vanloads of furniture kept coming in, -and all George's furniture from his old rooms in Mayfair. She kept -saying-- - -"Oh, that dear old marquetry cabinet! How I remember it in Chapel -Street, and how the firelight caught it in the evenings!" or else--"That -sweet little pair of Flemish bellows? Do you remember when you and -I"--something or other? - -She marched about and settled everything. George took it quite mildly, -and made jokes, at least I suppose they were jokes, for he made her -laugh consumedly, so she said. It's extraordinary how he can make people -laugh--people out of his own family! - -She is very friendly to me and Ariadne, and has promised to present -Ariadne at the next Court. It's to please George, if she does remember -to do it. But if I were Ariadne I should refuse till my own mother had -been presented first, so that she could introduce me herself. George -ought to insist on it, but he always says "Let them rave!" and that -means, Do as you like, but don't bother me. What he won't like will be -forking out forty pounds for Ariadne's dress, and it will end by her -staying at home. Ariadne wants to be presented badly; she is practising -curtseys already, and longing for the season to begin. I would not -condescend to owe even a pleasure to Lady Scilly, but Ariadne is so -poor-spirited, and Aunt Gerty continually advises her to take what she -can get, and make what she can out of George's "mash," when well -disposed. - -About Easter, George got his chance. Lady Scilly proposed a month's -yachting trip in the Mediterranean in somebody's yacht that they were -willing to lend her, on condition she invited her own party and included -them. If I had a yacht, I would ask my own party, that is all I can say. -She asked George to go with them--"We shan't see more of Mr. Pawky (i.e. -the owner) than we can help, and you can have a study on board and write -a yachting novel, like William Black's, and put old Pawky in. He is -quite a character, you know, with a gilded liver, as they say--dyspeptic -and all that. I can't stand him, but you might bear with him a little in -the interests of Art!" George had no objection to visiting the scene of -his new book at Mr. Pawky's expense, in the company of his own pals, and -accepted at once. I wonder if they will batten down the hatches on Mr. -Pawky as soon as they get out to sea, and keep him there for the rest of -the voyage? It would be just like them. - -George proposed to Mother that she should move in while he was away. He -said somebody must go in to get the painters out. Then he would come -home fresh and full of material, and find his study organized and -everything ready for him to begin. He said there would be ructions, -inseparable from a first installation, and that would put him off work -abominably, and spoil the whole brewing! - -"Dear," said Mother, "I fear we shall do badly without you--you are a -man, at least--but I'll be good, and spare you cheerfully!" - -So he went. Then Mother set to work, and was perfectly happy. There was -to be a sale in this house, because the furniture in it would not go -with what George and Lady Scilly had chosen for Cinque Cento House, but -there were some old pieces Mother could not do without. Her nice brass -bedstead, and the old nursery fender that Ariadne nearly hanged herself -on once in a fit of naughtiness, and of course all the bedding and linen -and kitchen utensils from "The Magnolias"--one could hardly suppose Lady -Scilly had troubled herself about that sort of thing? The greengrocer -"moved" us for two pounds. Mother and Aunt Gerty and the cook saw the -things off at Isleworth, and Ariadne and I and Kate--Sarah had gone, and -I never got any better reason than that she "had to"--received them at -Cinque Cento House. Mother had stuck to it, that she would not go near -the place till she went in for good, so it was to be all quite new to -her and Aunt Gerty. Ariadne and I, who had been in and out for months, -wondered how they would like it, and expected some sport when their eyes -first fell on it. - -We had a long delightful day of anticipation, and putting things where -they had to go, and in the evening Mother and Aunt Gerty came. They had -got out of the train at Swiss Cottage, and asked their way to their own -house. Aunt Gerty had her mouth wide open; Mother had hers tight shut. -She was not intending to carp or pass opinions, but the front-door -knocker was a regular slap in the face, and took her breath away. - -She tried to talk of something else, and whispered to Aunt Gerty, -"Rather an inconvenient place for a coal-shoot, isn't it! Right -alongside the front-door!" - -I hastened to explain that that was the larder-window she saw, to -prevent unpleasantness. - -Mother shivered when she got into the hall, which is vast and flagged -with marble like a church. "It strikes very cold to the feet!" she said -to Aunt Gerty. "Mine are like so much ice." - -"Oh, come along, and we'll brew you a glass of hot toddy!" Aunt Gerty -said cheerfully. "It's a bit chilly, I think, myself, but 'ansom, like -the big 'all where 'Amlet 'as the players!" - -Aunt Gerty is generally most careful, but she is apt to drop a little h -or so when she is excited. She could hardly contain herself, as Ariadne -and I had hoped, when she saw the gilt stairs leading up into the study. - -"What price broken legs? Why, I shall have to get roller-skates or take -off my shoes and stockings to go up them!" - -"So you will, Aunt Gerty," said Ariadne. "It is one of George's rules. -He made Lady Scilly even leave off her high heels before she used them." - -"Took 'em off for her himself with his lily hands, I suppose?" snorted -my aunt. "Well, I don't expect you will find me treading those golden -stairs very often. I ain't one of George's elect." - -"Such wretched things to keep clean," Mother complained. "The servants -are sure to object to the extra work, and give up their places, and I am -sure one can't blame them, and such good ones as we've got, too, in -these awful times, when looking for a cook is like looking for a needle -in a bottle of hay. Heavens, is the girl there all the time listening to -me?" - -Kate was, luckily, down-stairs, showing Elizabeth Cawthorne the way -about her kitchen, or else it would have been very imprudent to tell a -servant how valuable she is. Mother was cowed by the danger she had -escaped, but Aunt Gerty went on flouncing about, pricing everything and -tinkling her nails against pots and jugs, till she stopped suddenly and -put her muff before her face-- - -"Well, of all the improper objects to meet a lady's eye coming into a -gentleman's house! Who's that mouldy old statue of?" - -I told her that was Autolycus. - -"Cover yourself, Tollie, I would," Aunt Gerty said, going past him -affectedly. "Oh, look, Lucy, at all those dragons and cockroaches doing -splits on the fire-place! Brass, too, trimmed copper. My God!" - -"I shall just have to clean that brass fire-place myself," said Mother. -"I shall never have the face to ask Kate to do it." - -"And no proper grate, only the bare bricks left showing!" Aunt Gerty -wailed. "How could one get up any proper fireside feeling over a -contraption like that! The Lyceum scenery is nothing to it. It makes me -think of Shakespeare all the time--so _painfully_ meretricious----" - -Lady Castlewood in a basket under Mother's arm, suddenly began to mew -very sadly. Aunt Gerty had put Robert the Devil down on the floor, in -his hamper, and I suppose a draught got to him, for he spat loudly. -Ariadne and I let out the poor things and they bounced straight out on -to the parquet floor, and their feet slid from under them. I never saw -two cats look so silly! - -"Well, if a cat can't keep his feet on those wooden tiles," said Mother, -"I don't suppose I can," and she jumped, just to try, right into the -middle of a little square of blue carpet, which, true enough, slid along -with her. - -"You can give a nice hop here, at any rate," cried Aunt Gerty, catching -her round the waist, and waltzing all over the room, till both their -picture hats fell off, and hung down their backs by the pins. "Ask me -and all the boys, and give a nice sit-down supper, and do us as well as -the old villain will allow you." - -She was quite happy. That is just like an actress! Ariadne and I danced -too, and the cats mewed loudly for strangeness. Cats hate newness of any -kind, and they weren't easy till I got some newspaper, crackled it, and -let them sit on it, and then they were all right. Then Mother and Aunt -Gerty rang the queer-shaped bell, as if it would sting them, and got up -some coals which Mother had had the forethought to order in, and lit a -modest little fire in a great cave with brass images in front of it -under the kind of copper hood. It wouldn't draw at first, being used to -logs, and when it smoked we threw water on it, lest we dirtied the -beautiful silk hangings. At last we fetched Elizabeth Cawthorne. - -"Hout!" she said. "I'd like to see the fire that's going to get the -better of me!" - -She made it burn, sulkily, and Ariadne and I went to a shop we knew of -round the corner, and bought tea and sugar and condensed milk, to make -ourselves tea with the spirit-lamp Aunt Gerty had brought. We had no -butter or bread, only biscuits luckily, so we couldn't stain the Cinque -Cento chairs, whose gold trimmings were simply peeling off them. Sit on -them we dared not, they would have let us down on the floor for a -certainty. Mother and Aunt Gerty had a high old time blaming Lady Scilly -for all her foolish arrangements, and then we all went down to the -so-called kitchen to see how Elizabeth Cawthorne was getting on there. -She was in a rage, but trying to pass it off, like a good soul as she -is. - -"Well, I never! Here's a gold handle to my coal-cellar door! I shall -have to wipe my lily hands before I dare use it. And a fine lady of a -dresser that I shall be shy to set a plain dish on. Beetles here, do you -ask, woman?" (To Kate.) "They'd be ashamed to show their faces in such a -smart place as this, I'm thinking. And what's this couple of drucken -little candlesticks for the kitchen? Our Kate'll soon rive the fond bit -handles from off them, or she's not the girl I take her for!" - -She banged it hard against the dresser as servants do, to make it break, -but it didn't, and she looked disappointed. Mother then suggested she -should unpack a favourite frying-pan she never goes anywhere without, -and sent Kate out for a pound and a half of loin-chops, and cook was to -fry them for our dinners. - -The kitchen fire, after all, was the only one that would burn, so we ate -our chops there, and sat there till bed-time. Ariadne looked like a -picture, sitting at a trestle-table, and a thing like a torch burning at -the back of her head. She was thoroughly disgusted, and got quite cross, -and so did Elizabeth, as the evening went on. She hated trestles, and -flambeaus, and dark Rembrandtish corners, and couldn't lay her hand on -her things nohow, so that when we all went up to bed, Mother said to -her-- - -"Good-night, Elizabeth. You have been a bit upset, haven't you? I wonder -we have managed to get through the day without a row!" - -"So do I, ma'am," said the cook. "Heaps of times I'd have given you -warning for twopence, but you never gave me ought to lay hold on." - -A horrid wind sprang up and moaned us off to sleep. I thought once or -twice of George out on the Mediterranean on a tippity yacht, and didn't -quite want him to get drowned, though he had made us live in such an -uncomfortable house. I had tried to colonize a little, and put up a -photograph of Mother done at Ramsgate in a blue frame, to make me feel -more at home. Ariadne had hung up all her necklaces on a row of nails. -She has forty. There is one made of dried marrowfat peas, that she -nibbles when she is nervous, and another of horse's jesses, or whatever -you call them, sewn on red velvet. We have a bed each, costing -fourteen-and-six. They are apt to shut up with you in them. There is no -carpet in our room, and there are not to be any. We are to be hardy. -Nothing rouses one like a touch of cold floor in the mornings, and cools -one on hot nights better than the same. Our water-jug too is an odd -shape. I tilted all the water out of it on to the floor the first time I -tried to use it. It must be French, it is so small. I shall not wash my -hands very often in the days to come, I fancy. - -Ariadne began to get reconciled to our room when she had made up her -mind it was like the bower of a mediaeval chatelaine, or like Princess -Ursula's bedroom in Carpaccio, but I prefer Early Victorian, and cried -myself to sleep. - -Next morning Ben come along; he had stayed all night at the Hitchings', -in Corinth Road. Jessie Hitchings likes Ben best of the family. She may -marry him, when he is grown up, if she likes. He has birth, but no -education, so that will make them even. The only glimmering of hope I -see for Ben is that in this house there seems to be no bedroom for him, -unless it is a room at the top with all the water tanks in it, which -makes me think perhaps George is going to send him to school? For the -present we have arranged him a bed in the butler's pantry. Ben says -perhaps George means him to be butler, as he has laid it down as a rule -that only women servants are to be used in Cinque Cento House. They look -so much nicer than men, George says; he likes a houseful of waving -cap-ribbons. Mother thinks she can work a house best on one servant, and -better still on none. George doesn't mind her having any amount of boys -from the Home near here, but that doesn't suit Mother. She says one boy -isn't much good, that two boys is only one and a half, and that three -boys is no boy at all. I suppose they get playing together? Ariadne and -I would, in their place, I know, and human nature is the same, even in a -Home, though I can't call ours quite that. - - - - -CHAPTER VI - - -George makes a point of refusing to be interviewed. He hates it, unless -it is for one of the best papers. Then he says that it is a sheer -kindness, and that a successful man has no right to refuse some poor -devil or other the chance of making an honest pound or two. So he -suffers him gladly. He even is good enough to work on the thing a little -in the proof: just to give the poor fellow a lift, and prevent him -making a fool of himself and getting his facts all wrong. In the end -George writes the whole thing entirely from beginning to end, and makes -the man a present of a complete magazine article, and a very fine one -too! - -"I have been generous," he tells us. "I have offered myself up as a -burnt sacrifice. I have given myself all, without reservation. I have -nothing extenuated, everything set down in malice. I have owned to -strange sins that I never committed, to idiosyncrasies that took me all -my time to invent, and all to bump out an article by some one else. I -have been butchered to make a journalistic holiday!" - -This is all very nice and self-sacrificing of George, but this -particular interview read very well when it came out, and made George -seem a very interesting sort of man with some quaint habits, not half so -funny as his real ones, though, and I think the interviewer might just -as well have given those. - -So, when I got a chance of telling the truth, I did, meaning to act for -the best, and give Papa a good show and save him the trouble of telling -it all himself, but nobody gave me credit for my good intentions, and -kind heart. - -In the first place, how dared I put myself forward and offer to see -George's visitors! But the young man asked for me--at least, when he was -told that George was out, he said might he see one of the young ladies? -Of course I don't suppose that would have occurred to him, only I was -leaning over the new aluminium bannisters, and caught his eye. Then an -idea seemed to come into his head. The look of disappointment that had -come over him when he was told that George was out changed to a little -happy perky look, as if he had just thought of something amusing. He -crooked his little finger at me as I slid down the bannister, and said -would I do? and would he come in? Kate is a cheeky girl, but even the -cook admits that Kate is not a patch upon me. Kate evidently didn't -think it quite right, but she slunk away into the back premises, and -left me to deal with the young man. - -He handed me a card. I thought that very polite of him, and "_Mr. -Frederick Cook_," and Representative of _The Bittern_ down in the -corner, explained it all to me. We take in about a hundred rags, and -that's the name of one of them. It's called _The Bittern_ because it -booms people, so George says. - -"I suppose you have come to interview my Father," I said. "I'm sorry, -but he is out. Did you have an appointment?" - -"No, I didn't," said the young man right out. - -I liked his nice bold way of speaking; he was the least shy young man I -ever met. - -"I don't believe in appointments. The subject is conscious, primed, -braced up, ready with a series of cards, so to speak, which he wishes to -force on the patient public--a collection of least characteristic facts -which he would like dragged into prominence. It is as if a man should go -to the dentist with his mind made up as to the number of teeth that he -is to have pulled out, a decision which should always rest with any -dentist who respects himself." - -He went running on like that, not a bit shy, or anything, and amused me -very much. - -"But then the worst of that is, you've got no appointment with George, -and he is not here to have his teeth pulled out." - -I really so far wasn't quite sure if he was an interviewer or a dentist, -but I kept calm. - -"All the better, my dear young lady, that is if you are willing to aid -and abet me a little. Then we shall have a thundering good interview, I -can promise you. You see, in my theory of interviewing, the actual -collaboration of the patient--shall we call him?--is unnecessary. -Indeed, it is more in the nature of an impediment. My method, which of -course I have very few opportunities of practising, is to seek out his -nearest and dearest, those who have the privilege--or annoyance--of -seeing him at all hours, at all seasons, unawares. If a painter, 'tis -the wife of his brush that I would question; if an author, the partner -of his pen--do you take me?" - -Yes, I "took" him, and as George had called me a cockatrice--a very -favourite term of abuse with him--only that morning, and remembering how -she swaggers about being George's Egeria, I said, "You'll have to go to -Lady Scilly for that!" - -"Quite so!" he said very naturally. "Your distinguished parent dedicated -his last book to her, did he not? Did you approve, may I ask?" - -"No," I said. "People should always dedicate all their works to their -wife, whether they love her or not, that's what I think!" - -"Quite so," he said again. "I see we agree famously, and between us we -shall concoct a splendid interview. But now, if you would be so very -good, and happen to have a small portion of leisure at your -disposal----" - -"I'll do what I can for you," I said, delighted at his nice polite way -of putting things. "I'll take you round the house, shall I? Have you a -Kodak with you? Would you like to take a snapshot at George's -typewriter?" - -"Certainly, if she is pretty," said the silly man, and I explained that -Miss Mander was out, and that it was the machine I meant. He said one -machine was very like another, but that if he might see the study, -where so many beautiful thoughts had taken shape? He said it quite -gravely, but I felt he was laughing in his jacket all the time. - -"We'll take it all _seriam_!" I said, not wishing him to have all the -fine words. "And we will begin at the beginning--I mean the atrium." - -He had a little pocket-book in his hand, and he said, as I led the way -through the hall, "You won't mind my writing things down as they occur -to me?" - -"Not at all!" I said. "If you will let me look at what you have written. -I see you have put a lot already." - -He laughed and handed me his book, and I read-- - -"_Through dusky suites, lit by stained glass windows, whose dim -cloistral light, falling on lurid hangings and gorgeous masses of -Titianesque drapery, and antique ebon panelling, irresistibly suggest -the languorous mysteries of a mediaeval palace...._ Do you think your -father will like this style?" - -"You have made it rather stuffy--piled it on a good deal, the drapery -and hangings, I mean!" I said. "Now that I know the sort of thing you -write, I shan't want to read any more." - -"I thought you wouldn't," he said, taking it back. "I'll read it to you. -'_Behind this arras might lurk Benvenuto and his dagger----_'" - -"Not Ben's dagger, but Papa's bicycle." - -"We'll leave it there and keep it out of the interview," he said. "It -would spoil the unity of the effect. '_On, on, through softly-carpeted -ante-rooms where the footstep softer falls, than petals of blown roses -on the grass...._'" - -"I hate poetry!" I said. "And we mayn't walk on that part of the carpet -for fear of blurring the Magellanic clouds in the pattern. Do you know -anything about Magellanic clouds in carpets?" - -"No, I confess I have never trod them before," he said, becoming all at -once respectful to me. I expect he lives in a garret, and has no carpet -at all, and I thought I would be good to him, and help him to bump out -his article, and not cram him, but tell him where things really came -from. So I drew his attention particularly to the aluminium eagle, and -the pinchbeck serpent George picked up in Wardour Street. I left out -George's famous yarn about the sack of our ancestral Palace in Turin in -the fifteenth century, when the Veros were finally disseminated or -dissipated, whichever it is. I don't believe it myself, but George -always accounts for his swarthy complexion by his Italian grandmother. -Aunt Gerty says it is all his grandmother, or in other words, all liver! - -We went down-stairs into the study, which is the largest room in the -house. - -"Your father has realized the wish of the Psalmist," said _The Bittern_ -man. "_Set my feet in a large room!_" - -"He likes to have room to spread himself," I said, "and to swing -cats--books in, I mean." - -"So your father uses missiles in the fury of composition?" - -"Sometimes; but oftenest he swears, and that saves the books. He mostly -swears. Look here!" - -I had just found a piece of paper in Miss Mander's handwriting, and on -it was written, "Selections from the nervous vocabulary of Mr. -Vero-Taylor during the last hour." - -_The Bittern_ man looked at them, and, "By Jove! these are corkers!" he -said. Then I thought perhaps I ought not to have let him see them. There -was Drayton, the ironmonger's bill lying about too, and I saw him raise -his eyebrows at the last item, "_To one chased brass handle for -coal-cellar door_." - -"That's what I call being thorough!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I'm -thorough myself. See this interview when it is done!" - -He was thorough. He looked at everything, and particularly asked to see -the pen George uses. "Or perhaps he uses a stylograph?" he asked. - -"Mercy, no!" I screamed out. "He would have an indigestion! This is his -pen--at least, it is this week's pen. George is wasteful of pens; he -eats one a week." - -"Very interesting!" said he. "Most authors have a fetish, but I never -heard of their eating their fetish before. This will make a nice fat -paragraph. Come on!" - -You see what friends we had become! We went into the dining-room, and I -showed him the dresser, with all the blue china on, and the Turkey -carpet spread on it, instead of a white one--that was how they had it -in the Middle Ages. He sympathized with me about how uncomfortable -Mediaeval was, and if it wasn't for the honour and glory of it, how much -we preferred Early Victoria, when the drawers draw, and the mirrors -reflect--there's not one looking-glass in the house that poor Ariadne -can see herself in when she's dressing to go out to a party--or chairs -that will bear sitting on. Why, there are four in one room that we are -forbidden to sit upon on pain of sudden death! - -"Very hard lines!" said _The Bittern_ man. "I confess that this point of -view had not occurred to me. I shall give prominence to it in my -article. Art, like the car of some fanatical Juggernaut, crushing its -votaries----" - -"Yes," I said. "Mother draped a flower-pot once, and sneaked Ariadne's -photograph into a plush frame. You should have heard George! 'To think -that any wife of his--' 'Caesar's wife must be above suspicion!' And as -for Ariadne, he had rather see her dead at his feet than folded in blue -plush." - -"Capital!" said _The Bittern_ man. "All good grist for the interview! -And now, will you show me the famous metal stairs of which I have heard -so much? There are no penalties attached to that, I trust?" - -"Except that we are not allowed to go up them--Ariadne and me--without -taking our boots off first, for fear of scratching the polish. We have -to strip our feet in the housemaid's pantry, and carry them up in our -hands. That's rather a bore, you will admit!" - -"And your father? Does he bow to his own decrees?" - -"Oh, no!" I said. "Papa is the exception that proves the rule." - -"Capital!" again remarked _The Bittern_ man. "I am getting to know all -about the great Mr. Vero-Taylor in the fierce light that beats upon the -domestic hearth! But, by the way," he said, with a little crooked look -at me, "it is usual--shall I say something about Mrs. Vero-Taylor? -People generally like an allusion--just a hint of feminine presence--say -the mistress of the house flitting about, tending her ferns, or what -not?" - -"You must put her in the kitchen, then," I said, "tending her servants. -Would you like to see her?" - -"I should not like to disturb her," he said politely. "Will you describe -her for me?" - -"Oh, mother's nice and thin--a good figure--I should hate to have one of -those feather-beddy mothers, don't you know? But I don't really think -you need describe her. I don't think she cares about being in the -interview, thank you, but you may say that my sister Ariadne is -ravishingly beautiful, if you like?" - -"And what about you, Miss----?" he asked, looking at me. - -"Tempe Vero-Taylor," I said. "But whatever you do, don't put me in! -George would have a fit! He won't much like your mentioning Ariadne, -but I don't see why she shouldn't have a show, if I can give her one." - -"Very well," he said. "Your ladyship shall be obeyed. Now I really think -I have got enough, unless----" I saw his eyes straying up-stairs. - -"There's nothing much to see up those stairs, except George's bedroom, -and I daren't take you in there. It is quite commonplace, too; not like -the rest of the house, but very, _very_ comfortable." - -"Oho! Your father reminds me of the man who plays Othello, and doesn't -trouble to black more than his face and arms," said _The Bittern_ man. -"And _your_ rooms?" - -"Oh, our rooms are cupboards. Bowers, George calls them, and says we -have more room to keep our clothes in than the lady of a mediaeval castle -would have. Now that's all, and----" - -The truth was, I wanted him to go before George came home, for I thought -it might be awkward for me if I were found entertaining a newspaper man. -George might have preferred to do his own interview, who knows? This -reflection only just occurred to me, as all reflections do, too late. -_The Bittern_ man was very quick, however, and understood me. He thanked -me very much, far more than he need, for on reflection I did not see how -he was going to make an interview out of all the scrappy things I had -told him, and I said so. He assured me I need be under no uneasiness on -that score, that this particular interview would be unique of its kind, -and would gain him great credit with his editor, and increase the -circulation of the paper. If it had nothing else, he said, it would at -least have a _succes de scandale_, at least I think that is what he -said, for I don't understand French very well. While he was making all -those pretty speeches we stood in the hall, and I heard the little -grating noise in the lock that meant that George was fitting his key in, -and oh, how I just longed to run away! But I didn't. George opened the -door, and came in and shook off his big fur coat. Then he saw _The -Bittern_ man and came forward, and _The Bittern_ man came forward too, -with his funny little smile on his face that somehow reminds me of the -Pied Piper we used to read of when we were little. - -"I came from _The Bittern_," he said, and George nodded, to show he knew -what for. "To ask you to grant me the favour of an interview----" - -"I am sorry I happened to be out!" began George, and then I knew, by the -sound of his voice, that _The Bittern_ was a _good_ paper. "But if it is -not too late, I shall be happy----" - -"No need, no need to trouble you now, my dear sir," the interviewer -said, waving his hand a little. "I came, and I go not empty away, but -with the material of a dozen articles of sovereign interest in my -pocket. You left an admirable _locum tenens_ in the person of your -daughter here, who kindly consented to be my cicerone and relieved me of -the necessity of troubling _you_. You will doubtless be relieved also. I -shall have the pleasure of sending you a proof to-morrow. Good-day!" - -And before George could say what he wanted to say, Mr. Cook had opened -the door for himself and had gone. I said he had plenty of cheek. George -said so, too, and a great deal worse. I was black and blue for a week, -and _The Bittern_ man never sent a proof after all, so when the article -came out--"_Interviewing, New Style. A Talk with Miss Tempe -Vero-Taylor_,"--I got some more. That is the first and last time I was -ever interviewed. George has peculiar theories about interviewing, I -see, and I shall not interfere with them in future. I should think Mr. -Frederick Cook would get on, making tools of honest children to serve -his ambition like that. George didn't punish him, of course, he is a -power on a paper; while I am but a child in the nursery. - - - - -CHAPTER VII - - -I wonder if other families have got tame countesses, who come bothering -and interfering in their affairs? I don't mind our having a -house-warming party at all, but I do hate that it should be to please -Lady Scilly. - -"A party! A party!" she said to George, clasping her hands in her silly -way. "My party on the table!" like the woman in the play of _Ibsen_. -"Ask all the dear, amusing literary people that I adore. And I'll bring -a large contingent of smart people, if I may, to meet them. Please, -_please_!" - -I don't know what a contingent is, but I fancy it's something -disagreeable. Lady Scilly is George's friend, not Mother's. She has only -called on Mother once, and that was in the old house, and then Mother -was not receiving as they call it, so she has never even seen the -mistress of the house where she is going to give the party. Christina -Mander, George's secretary, says that is quite the new way of doing -things, and she has been about a great deal, and ought to know. - -Miss Mander is a lady. She is very thin, one of those lath-and-plaster -women, you know, that seem to live to support a small waist that is -their greatest beauty, but when we first knew her, she was plump and -jolly-looking. We practically got her for George. Years ago, when we -were quite little and had had measles, we were sent down to a sort of -boarding-house at Ramsgate to an old lady, an ex-dresser in some theatre -Aunt Gerty knew, and who could neither see to mend or to keep us in -order, though she got thirty shillings a week for doing it. They never -got us up till nine; I suppose the slavey thought sufficient for the day -was the evil thereof, and tried to make the evil's day as short as -possible. One morning when it was quite nine, and the sun was shining -in, Ariadne and I were feeling frightfully bored, so we got up in our -night-gowns, moved a wardrobe, and found a door behind it into another -house. It was quite a smart house, with soft plush carpets and -nicely-varnished yellow doors. We went all over it. Only the cat was -awake, licking herself in the window-seat. The bedroom doors were all -shut except one, and we went in and found a nice girl in bed with her -gold hair all spread over the pillow. She didn't seem shocked at us, but -laughed, and when we had explained, she wished us to get into the bed -beside her. It had sheets trimmed with lace, and her initials, C. M., on -the pillow. We did this every morning till we went away. She kept us up, -afterwards sending us Christmas cards and so on, and when George -advertised for a secretary to help him to sub-edit _Wild Oats_, she -answered it, among the thousand others, and we remembered her name and -made George engage her. - -She had been to Girton, and to a journalistic school, and Mr. D'Auban's -dancing academy, and to Klondike--where all her hair got cut off, so -that she hasn't enough to spread over the pillow now--and behind the -scenes at a music-hall, and a month on the stage, and edited a paper -once and wrote a novel. All before she was thirty! At every new -arrangement for amusement she made her people opposed her, and prayed -for her in church. But she always got her own way in the end. Her -mother, Mrs. Stephen Cadwallis Mander, came here to sniff about when -George first took Christina on. She is a woman of the world, -tortoise-shell _pince-nez_ and all, but she took to Mother at first -sight, and talked to her quite naturally about this "new move of dear -Christina's." - -She spoke in a neat, sighing voice, and told us that Christina had -developed early, and was so different to her other children; she kept on -saying the name of George's new magazine, as if it shocked her very -much. - -"_Wild Oats!_ Such a crude name! Though I suppose she must sow them -somewhere, and best, perhaps, in the pages of a magazine. You'll look -after her, won't you? Is there any danger"--she looked towards the -study-door"--of her falling in love with her employer?" She laughed -carelessly. - -"Not the slightest!" said Mother, laughing too. "She will have her eyes -opened, that's all, to the seamy side of artistic life." - -"My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. -After all, it's only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they -must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But -we don't need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!" - -"I quite agree with you," said Mother. "Only if one happens to be the -scullery-maid----" - -Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I -was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual. - -"And," said Mrs. Mander, "she buys everything that comes out, especially -badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and -look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she -came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his -magazine--_Wild Oats_. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it -sounds so _very_ advanced!" - -"Oh, very," said Aunt Gerty. "But it won't live!" - -"You don't say so?" Mrs. Mander put up her _pince-nez_ and looked at -Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn't like. - -"None of my brother-in-law's things do!" Aunt Gerty went on calmly. "He -is a prize wrecker--of women and magazines!" - -Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the -conversation. - -"Oh, he's a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is," went on Aunt Gerty. -"But I don't think he'll convert Miss Mander to his views." - -"I hope not," said Mrs. Mander, "for I notice that if you make a law -unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! -At least as far as women are concerned." - -"People will always let you go your own way," said Mother; "but the -point is, will they come with you--join with you in a pleasant walk?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Mander, "my daughter is the most headstrong of young -women. I can't control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed -her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor." - -"I gathered as much," said Mother, not offended a bit. "But I will look -after her well!" She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make -her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week. - -Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecaenas! Ben says she a minx. Ben -hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a -cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but -then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother -won't go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that -George doesn't try to persuade her much. You see, he isn't used to -having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all -those years! - -George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina -is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should -he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide it under -a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she -says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She -says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the -hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old -house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; -anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, -for his Sundays were only for a select few--very selected. He only gave -tea and bread-and-butter--very little butter--and no table-cloth--plain -living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he -pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to -the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, -and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own -house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him -to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his -solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a -Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of -the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But -that would not do for George, for he isn't at all hermit-like, and he -can make epigrams! They say that is his _forte_. I hate them myself, I -think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people's feelings -so that they can't complain, but then, of course, the family gets them -in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home. - -George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He -said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out -of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he -would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging -from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, -and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and -peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat -on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the -smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other's -faces! That didn't suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much -as she could. - -Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still -Mediaeval, at six o'clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, -because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it -can't go all round. That's the reason we have finger-bowls now, and -little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to -eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can -see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own -trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that -loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen -Mother's face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said -she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers' -and the butchers' shops back a century? - -The first course, George explained, was quite easy--it was little bits -of toast with honey and hypocras. - -"Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?" Mother said, -meaning to be funny. "There's a very civil young man there might help -me?" - -"Next course, smoked eels," went on George. "Any soup you like, only it -must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have -venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, -oranges, capers in vinegar----" - -"It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and -ever, that's one good thing!" Mother said, "for nobody will care to try -that _menu_ twice!" - -"It would look well in the papers, though," George said. "What do you -say to barbecued pig?" - -But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and -Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not -obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at -twelve o'clock, and all the guests to unmask then. - -The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but -at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had -designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing -red splotch in one corner, which signified George's passionate Italian -nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with -Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to -open everything! - -"My Goodness!" she said. - -"Isn't it right?" I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at -it I was no wiser, for I couldn't see what was wrong. There it was, -written out very nicely, "_Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the -twenty-first_," and the address in the corner, and all those rules about -the dominos, and that was all. - -"Oh, dear darling Christina," I begged, deadly curious, "do tell me what -is wrong with that? I cannot guess." - -"It's just as well, perhaps," she said. "Preserve your sublime -ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can." - -And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that -being loyal to her employer. - -I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one -better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was -_Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home_! I think that was absurd, for -though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn't quite live -here yet! and Mother does, and what's more, Mother never goes out at all -except to take a servant's character, or scold the butcher, or something -of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from -him, and looked at it, and I'll swear I saw her smile before she tore it -up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn't tell me what was wrong -with the first card. - -We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole -morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, -though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I -don't believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now -and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted -asked--six, no less, if you please--and she's only been out six months! -And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a -card trick! But he didn't take any notice, and kept walking up and down -the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody -wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; -there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have -than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of -course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more -of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there -had been about it. I kept saying, "Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You -give me all the plain people to do." - -Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all -away after fifty had been written. - -Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to -do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he -was going to announce it in the pages of _The Bittern_, and that all his -friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how -should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that -depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know -that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that -you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and -find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real -friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the -acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and -lemonade. There should be a password, _Hot with_, and _cold without_, -and they roared when I told them this, but I didn't see why. Then the -party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where -they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn't call -themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn't be able to -come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems -to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They -have to be paid for coming, surely, and I'd rather see them than any of -the others. "If they don't come the party will be spoilt for me," I said -to Christina. - -"It will be all right," she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of -course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like. - -Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that -brother of Caesar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of -Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny -thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, -while I look like a big boy. My legs are very long. George has a monk's -costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of -looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very -nice. - -I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it -somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that -anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, -bell-like--I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but -he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others. - -The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs -of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved -away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently -lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in -moderation; it was rather fun--I felt as if I were planting bulbs. -George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be -put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to -put it on the fire. - - - - -CHAPTER VIII - - -About nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o'clock the house was -overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger's -costume he had borrowed, with George's consent, and I do believe he -enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was -to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the -evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, -for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. -I'm sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people -didn't come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were -detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at -their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a -detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with -a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of -course, but the devil needs no domino. And _I_ knew all the time that it -was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for _The -Bittern_, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, -and I had no butter to my bread for a week because of him. How I was -supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I -can't see, only _The Bittern_ man knew well enough, I expect! Never, -_never_ again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer! - -There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them -discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get -jammed in behind, "powerless to move," as they say in the novels, even -if I had wanted to. People _are_ careless. I heard heaps of -conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, -without stopping to think whether or no I wasn't one of the family. I -suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn't -matter what they said, and it needn't count afterwards. - -The man I listened to was _The Bittern_ man, dressed as the devil. The -woman's domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any -colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. _The -Bittern_ man seemed to know her. - -"I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in -London?" - -The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask. - -"Not quite, but very nearly," she said. "I am a gas. Give me a name!" - -"I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?" - -"Is it a noxious gas?" she said, "for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I -only speak of things as I find them, and one must send up bright copy, -or one wouldn't be taken on. I tell the truth----" - -"Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!" said he. "The devil -and _The Bittern_ are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that -makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than -one. Now tell me, can't we exchange celebrities? I'll give you my names, -and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?" - -"All the world--and somebody else's wife!" she said quickly, and the -devil rubbed his hands. "But that is the rub--we can't know who they all -are till twelve o'clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will -decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest -mended." - -"Then we shall have to invent them!" he said. "The very form of -invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me -which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here." - -"Naturally! Wasn't it she who discovered George Vero-Taylor and made him -the fashion, you know?" - -"Do you suppose he was particularly obliged to her for digging his -family out as well?" - -"You naughty man! But it was a most extraordinary thing, wasn't it? -Delightful, and not too scandalous to use. For the man is really quite -harmless, only a frantic _poseur_ and----" - -"Ah, yes, and posed in London Society for ten years as an unmarried man! -Suppose some nice girl had gone and fallen in love with him?" - -"Ah, but he was careful, as careful as a good _parti_ has to be in the -London season. He lent them his books, and guanoed their minds -thoroughly, but he always sheered off when they showed signs of taking -him seriously." - -"Chose married women to flirt with, for preference? What does the wife -say?" - -"The wife? So there is a wife! But no one has ever seen her. Perpetual -hay-fever, or something of the sort." - -"That is what Vero-Taylor gives out." - -"Oh, I don't really think there is anything in--with Lady Scilly, I -mean. He is too selfish--they are both too selfish. Those sort of women -are like the Leaning Tower, they lean but never fall. It is an alliance -of interest, so to speak. He introduces the literary element into her -parties, and writes her novel for her, and in return she flatters him -and takes his daughter out. Poor girl, she would be quite pretty, if she -were properly dressed, but the mediaeval superstition, you know--she has -to dress like a Monna Somebody or other, so as to advertise his books. I -believe she did refuse to have her hair shaved off her forehead _a la -Rimini_, but she mostly has to comply----" - -"Well, I never heard of a man using his daughter as a sandwich-man -before. Which is she?" - -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen pointed out Ariadne, whose bath-towel was -tumbling all over her eyes. - -"She looks half-starved!" said _The Bittern_ man. - -"My dear man," said Sulphuretta Hydrogen, "don't you know that they -have a crank about meals, and refuse to have them regularly? I am told -that they have a kind of buttery-hatch--a cold pie always cut in the -cupboard, and they go and put their heads in and eat a bit when so -disposed." - -"Well, they are free, at any rate--free from the trammels of custom----" - -"Oh yes, they are free, but so very sallow!" - -I was getting pretty much out of patience at having so many lies told -about my family, and I was just going to contradict that about the -buttery and the poking our heads into a cupboard, when the fat woman -that they had said was Mother, but whom I was sure was not, strode up to -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, and said-- - -"Begging your pardon for contradicting you, Madam, but I am in a -position to state that that is not so. Miss Ariadne is thin because she -chooses to be, and thinks it becoming, but I can assure you that she -eats her three meals a day hearty, and Mr. Taylor isn't far behind-hand, -though he is yellow!" - -And then she swooped away, and I knew that it was Elizabeth Cawthorne! -But where on earth had she got a domino and leave to come to the ball? - -I thought I would go and look after Ariadne, who I saw could manage to -make eyes out of the holes of a mask. But I suppose where there's a will -there's a way. She was doing it all right, and the young men seemed to -like it. Though I don't believe young men marry the girls who make eyes -at them best, and as Ariadne's one object is to marry and get out of -this house and have me to stay with her, I think she is going the wrong -way to work. I went to her, and I asked her where Mother was. - -"I am sure I don't know," she said crossly. - -"I'll tell you where Elizabeth Cawthorne is," I said. "She is in the -party--in the room!" - -"Well, I can't help that!" said Ariadne, tossing her head. "Mother ought -to look after her better." - -I was sorry for poor Mother, because nobody seemed to mind about her in -her own house, and even her own daughter didn't seem to care whether she -was in the room or not. As for George, he was looking all over for Lady -Scilly, and at last he thought he had got her, but it wasn't, for I -thought I knew a little join in the hem of the domino--I seemed to -remember having helped to hem it. They needn't say that eyes can't look -bright in a mask, for this woman's did. She went up to George, and she -didn't speak in a squeaky voice at all, but in French, not the kind of -French she teaches me, but a thick, deep sort, right down her throat. - -"_Eh, bien, beau masque!_" was what she said. "I know you, but you do -not know me!" - -"I know you by your eyes," he said. "Eyes like the sea----" - -Now, Lady Scilly's eyes are quite common, it is only the work round them -that makes them tell, and that would be hidden by the mask. One saw that -George was talking without thinking. - -"Eyes without their context mean nothing!" she said, and then I knew the -woman was Christina, for that was the very thing she had once said to -Ariadne to tease her. She evidently thinks it good enough to say twice. - -"Come!" she said to George. "Speak to me, say anything to me that the -hour and the mood permit. I want to hear how a poet makes love!" - -"Madame!" said George, bowing. I think he was a little shocked, but -after all, if he will give a masked ball, what can he expect? Only I had -no idea that Christina could have done it so well! - -"Come," she said again, tapping her foot to show that she had grown -impatient. "Come, a madrigal--a _ballade_, in any kind of china!" - -I fancy it was then that George began to suspect that it wasn't Lady -Scilly. She couldn't have managed that about ballads and lyrics. - -He asked her if she would lift up the lace of her mask a little--just a -little. - -"No, no, I dare not!" she cried out. "There is a hobgoblin called Ben in -the room--a sort of lubber fiend who loves to play pranks on people. Why -on earth don't you send that boy to school?" - -I could not help giggling. George looked cross, for this was personal, -and he took the first chance of leaving the mask's side. There wasn't a -buzz of talk in the room, no, not at all, for everybody was trying so -hard to say something clever and appropriate, that they mostly didn't -say anything, but mooned about, trying to look as if they were enjoying -themselves hugely, and secretly bored to death all the time. The only -time people are really gay, I observe, is at a funeral, or at _Every -man_, or somewhere where they particularly shouldn't be jolly. - -I was thinking sadly about my dear Mother, and wondering where she was, -when I ran against a Frenchman, a real Frenchman, and he asked me where -was the mistress of the house, and that showed me that other people -thought about her too; I didn't answer for a moment, and he went on in a -kind of dreamy voice-- - -"I was brought here to see an English interior----" - -"Well," I said. "It's inside four walls, isn't it?" - -"_Mon Dieu, mademoiselle_," said he, "I had made to myself another idea -of _le home Anglais_--the fireside--the _maitresse de la maison_ with -her keys depending from her girdle--the children--the sacred children, -standing round her--_bebe_ crowing----" - -"There isn't any baby!" I said, "and a good thing too! But this is a -party, don't you see, and we are all playing the fool, and we shall be -sensible to-morrow, and if you will excuse me, I am one of the sacred -children, and I am just looking for my mother's knee to go and stand -against." - -He made way for me with a "_Permettez, mademoiselle!_" and I went, -thinking I would go and ask Ben at the door if he knew where she was. -Ben didn't know, but he said that a woman who was standing near the -door, letting the cool night-wind blow in under her mask and telling -people how she enjoyed it, was Lady Scilly. She was standing almost in -the street, with a man, who was George. There are tall bushes near our -door, rather pretty at night, though they belong to the next-door -gardens. Ben didn't know till I told him; he is the stupid child that -doesn't know its own father. He told me what they had been saying. She -had begun by asking him if he approved of women wearing ospreys? There's -a silly thing to ask, for what could he say but that he didn't, being a -poet? Then she made a face, prettyish, out of habit, forgetting that it -couldn't be seen under her mask, and whined, - -"Oh, I'm so sorry, it is the least wicked thing I do!" - -"For beautiful women--I assume you are a beautiful woman, for purposes -of dialogue," George said; "there is no law of humanity. Go on. Pluck -your red pleasure from the teeth of pain." ... - -"Yes, I am very wicked," she said. "My impulses are cruel. Sometimes, do -you know, I am almost afraid of myself." - -"As I am--as we all are," said George. - -"Why, am I so very terrible? What do I do to you? Speak to me. Why are -you so guarded, so unenterprising?" - -She cast a stage glance round. It was very funny, but George knew that -Ben was the commissionaire and Lady Scilly didn't, so she couldn't think -why George was so stiff. In fact, if George had only known it, he was -bi-chaperoned--if that is the way to put it--for there was me too. Ben -and I enjoyed it hugely, but I don't think George did, because he could -not quite make a fool of himself before Ben. Besides, it was draughty -out there, and George takes cold easily. He kept trying to get her to -come in, and she pretended to be babyish and wouldn't. She said she had -never been out in the open street at midnight in her life before, and -she thoroughly enjoyed it; that it was a Romeo and Juliet night, or some -rot of that sort, and that she might never have such an opportunity -again. But poor George felt he could not play Romeo, because of Ben, and -there was nothing to climb, except a lamp-post that led to nothing, -since Juliet was standing in the gutter below it. - -George looked at his watch, and said, "In ten minutes they will give the -signal for the removal of masks. Had you not better----?" - -"I shall leave the party," she said. "I shall walk straight home! It -will spoil all the effect of this enchanted night, if we have to meet -again in the glare of----" - -"The lights are shaded," George put in. - -"I alluded to the glare of publicity!" she said. "I shall ask this -commissionaire," she said, "to call my carriage----" - -"Better not," said George hastily, "for you would have to give him your -name,--your name which I know. For my sake--won't you slip back into the -ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like -the rest? Believe me it is best." - -"It is my host commands, is it not?" she said slyly, to show him that -she had known it was he all the time, and ran past him, in a skittish -way. As if he hadn't known all the time that she knew that he knew that -she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in -pretending. - -Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up -a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which -seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted -so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the -devil was going with her. He was _The Bittern_ man, of course, only I -didn't know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly. - -"You know the way?" she was asking him. - -"I know the house, like the inside of a glove," he said, and indeed he -did, for hadn't I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me -instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, -rather like Puck was, in _Midsummer Night's Dream_, so I thought I would -stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off -her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved -so badly in both. _The Bittern_ man offered to show her the way to -George's sanctum. - -"You see, you can go where you like in a show-house--or ought to be able -to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate." - -"The press is too much with us, soon and late," said she, laughing. - -"Ah, but confess, my lady, you can't do without us!" said this awful -young man--though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose -in everywhere in the interest of his paper. "You suffer us gladly." - -"I don't suffer at all--I shouldn't allow you to make me suffer," said -she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out -of the Bible. - -I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn't steal -the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs. - -"I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe," said -_The Bittern_ man. - -"Haven't you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less -eccentric as one goes up," said Lady Scilly. - -"Art is only skin-deep," said _The Bittern_ man. "Just look at that bed, -which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive -or artistic than Staple's.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and -let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear -our host give the word for unmasking." - -So they marched out of George's bedroom, for that was where they had got -to--and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and -modern--and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. -Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I -wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her -work, for though the supper was all sent in from a shop, there would be -sure to be something for her to do. - -These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in -a blaze of light and an empty kitchen--for the moment only, for one -heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, -and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady -Scilly and _The Bittern_ man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a -checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and -looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen -fire, which had caught her face on one side. - -Lady Scilly and _The Bittern_ man took no notice of her, but walked -about looking at things. - -"And so this is the Poet's kitchen!" Lady Scilly said, rather -scornfully. "How his pots shine!" - -"Very comfortable indeed!" said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise -George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask--"It's no end of a -privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet's use. -This is his soup-ladle, and----" - -Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook's sentence for -him. - -"And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat--and -I'm his wife!" - -Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of -polite. He isn't a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and -he began to come here. - - - - -CHAPTER IX - - -Smart women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in -the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn't got either of her own, so she is -always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom -asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age--too near. -That's what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene -about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the -thing, I don't care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly's motor is -always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We -run into something live--or else the kerb--most times we are out, and -it's extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though -once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get -into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is -just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. -I read an interview with her in _The Bittern_ the other day (she had to -start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it -said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was -the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how -could she be? There isn't room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, -unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely. - -Lord Scilly is very well born too, he's the eldest son of the Earl of -Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with -expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes -he would, but Lord Scilly doesn't, because he's not quite a beast. He is -very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding -her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have -heard that he doesn't think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering -herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn't understand -why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write -novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. -George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every -morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn't mind in the least her -collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; -but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to -collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different. - -I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who -tells me everything, doesn't think so much collaborating is quite what -is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, "blessed if she'd -let herself be put upon by a countess." - -Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy--that's what her name means, -Paquerette. That's what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a -grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it -makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. -Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she -is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all -times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won't. If she -gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may -say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and -listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am -always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish. - -The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve--Lady Scilly had -sent a messenger for me--she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue -tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was -writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a -few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly -all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers -with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and _La Femme -Polype_ was the name of one, and _Madame Belle-et-m'aime_ another. Lady -Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French -if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also -on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that -made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and -the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors -hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush -things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw -so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with "To darling, -from Kitty London," and as many more with "Best love, yours cordially, -Gladys Margate," and I have given up trying to count the ones of -actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy -forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote _The Sorrows of the Amethyst_, -and one of the K.C. who wrote _Duchesses in the Divorce Court_--the -Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play -called _The Up-and-Down Girl_, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces -once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his -volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I -think he's put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, -which isn't often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. -There's a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes--I don't -suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so -big it would burst the post-bag--and there are two sorts of racks on it, -one to hold her bills that she hasn't paid, and that's got printed on it -in gold "_Oh Horrors!_" and another with those she has paid with "_Thank -Heaven!_" on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays -bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends -something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however -broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker -would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances -are you'll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, -being dead, you can't be expected to pay! - -I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and -also, if they are writing, I can't help seeing what it is, and then if -it is "_Dearests_" and "_Darlings_" I do feel awkward. But to-day when -she had said "How do you do?" she handed me the writing-board. - -"Write for me, dear," she said, "to the most odious woman in London. And -the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she -dared to play Lady Ildegonde in _The Devey Devastator_ at a _matinee_ at -Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses--stood by the -management of course--and nails like a coal-heaver's. Now don't you -think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round -my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene -Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not -forgive her. Now you write. '_Dear thing!_' Don't be surprised, I can't -afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! '_You were wonderful -yesterday! I know what's what, and believe me that's it!_' I mean the -dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call -diplomacy. Don't say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will -see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything -for me, and _The Bittern_ will do anything for her. We will go and see -her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, -dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!" - -She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it -didn't matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and -then she seemed to feel better. - -"I wish I could do without Miller!" she said. "Old Miller hates me, and -I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good 'perks' for that. -She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her -one day. So they will! I can't afford to quarrel with a woman who can do -my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear -to-day, Miller?" - -"Well," said Mrs. Miller (she's Scotch, and she is rather stingy of -"ladyships"), "there's your blue that come home last week. It seems a -pity to leave it aside just yet." - -"You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can't -put that on, it's too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it." - -"Then there is the grey _panne_." - -"Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own -maid. No offence to you, Miller." - -"I don't intend to take any, my lady," said Miller, pursing up her -lips. "What about your black with sequins?" - -"Yes, let's have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child's hair. -You see, I dress to you, my dear." - -But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just -as she chooses her horses to be a pair. - -Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only -thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her -nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once -had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I -shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it--the -best paints--and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year. - -Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in -Paris--rather purplish--it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is -just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and -looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked -away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, -and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if -her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little -tendrils of hair down on her forehead. - -"Child, child," she said to me. "Do you know what makes me sigh?" - -"Indigestion?" I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn't, -that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so -diabolically, so preternaturally ugly. - -"Oh no, you look sweet!" I said. I really thought so, but Miller -grinned. - -"You are delightful!" Lady Scilly said. "And you can have that boa you -are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me -meretricious; and, child, when your times comes, don't ever--ever--have -anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can't leave it off, -and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to -subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the -time. Oh, _la, la_!" - -I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we -read of in a book. I've seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her -black and blue, and she kept saying, "Go on! Harder! Harder!" but as it -didn't seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn't do it again. But I -took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself. - -When Lady Scilly was ready she said--"We won't lunch in, we will go to -Prince's and have a _filet_. Scilly's in a bad temper because of bills. -Well, bills must come,--and I may go, I suppose. There's no reason one -shouldn't keep out of their way." - -She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she -told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us -at three o'clock. - -The butler said, "Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party -of ten!" all in the same voice. - -"So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!" and she flopped into a hall -seat. - -"Yes, my lady," Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door -again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude. - -So we took off our hats, at least I did--she wears a hat every time she -can, except in bed--and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and -her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I -know. - -Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, "You have got too much -on!" - -She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so -as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office -laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like -blackberries on every bush--one of the penalties of greatness. - -"I've never really seen your face, Paquerette," he said, "and I do -believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are -right not to make it too cheap. Who's coming? Smart people, or one of -your Bohemian crowds?" - -"You'll see," she said. "Mrs. Ptomaine, for one." - -"Dear Tommy!" said he. "I love her.... Desist, O wasp!" he said to one -that had come in by the window and was bothering him. "This is a -precursor of Tommy." - -"Tommy's all right, so long as she hasn't got her knife into you. She -favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see -that she doesn't make eyes at my tame millionaire." - -"Oh, Mr. Pawky!" said Simon. "Is he coming? You should put me opposite, -so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn't Tommy have a bit -of him? She's terribly thin!" - -"Because he isn't a very big millionaire--only half a one--and there's -only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may -flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else -is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and -mortally afraid of Lauderdale--and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I -nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should -like to have seen all your faces!" - -Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the -millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and -indigestible, and as if millionairing didn't agree with him. He could -only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little -"How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear" conversation with me, but he attended most -to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss -Lauderdale, and _Lady Ildegonde_ and the dresses, and discussing -Society, as it is now. - -"Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No, -the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can't -forgive is for people to bore us!" - -I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can't culture, -while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn't waste -her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society -takes count of that she didn't mention? - -"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to -Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale -now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour -into my life!" - -"Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly. - -"That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty -London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can -play billiards on his own back!" - -"Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant, -but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his -hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and -stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They -say he runs it? - -He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs. -Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to -have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to -distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and -flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared -her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much -tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats -were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across -the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly -never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her -other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice -painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for -him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash -the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting -Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I -wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did -women, but I was born too late for that. - -When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a -leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but -waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at -it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the -flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction, -and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the -drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent -somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes. - -At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady -Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs. -Ptomaine. - -"I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had -several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put -a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked -to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!" - -"What does she do?" I asked. - -"Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers. -Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to -make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free. -I don't care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if -their names are given, and then they don't worry so with their bills. -And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a -lesson--things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite -say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one's quarrels through -the press, isn't it? Here we are at Tommy's flat! Up at the very, very -top! The vulture in its eyrie--is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I -know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift! -One oughtn't to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!" - -I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door. - -"So soon, darling! Delightful!" she said. She didn't look very pleased -to see us, I thought, but she was "in to tea," I could see, for there -were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with -egg-powder. - -"I wanted to prime you about your critique of _Lady Ildegonde_, you -know. Now, Tommy, it is understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and -punished for her impertinence in daring to act _me_, in Camille's -dresses." - -"Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you -don't trust your Tommy." - -"Not so much darling dear, now, if you don't mind," said Lady Scilly. -"We are alone, and this child doesn't need impressing. It fidgets me." - -"All right, sweetheart--I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite -obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state. -"Is it too early for tea?" - -"Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a -headache?" - -"Three distinct headaches," said poor Tommy. "Did three first nights -last night, and got a separate headache for each." - -"How interesting!" said Lady Scilly. "I mean I am very sorry. Is there -nothing I can do?" - -"No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest -will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think -of nothing for an hour." - -Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were -just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire! - -Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very -pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her -in an undertone, "No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea. -_Must_ you go?" - -Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as -my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine," -in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more -"dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?" -and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have -serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink -toast-and-water in her house any more. - -"There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it," -she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after -another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon -motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?' -But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking -the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll -get him to give her a new carpet!" - -I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it -was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and -then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having -nothing marketable about her, not even a title. - -If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so -obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they -seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then. -Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was -Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted -with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of -Frederick Cook, perhaps? - -She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write -Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs. -Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the -night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office -and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs. -Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to -take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to -change it for another and a nicer. - - - - -CHAPTER X - - -It is a very odd thing that with a father a novelist, who can sell ten -thousand copies of a book, you can't get any sort of useful advice on -the subject he has made peculiarly his own. Ariadne would much sooner -consult the cook about such things. And it is not nice to ask advice -from a person who can oblige you to follow it! George can't in fairness -advise as an author and command as a father, so the result is that -Ariadne makes blunders at all these parties she goes to now. Poor girl, -she only has me to consult. I say it is a mistake the moment you enter a -room to fix your eyes on the man you want to dance with you, or even to -ask him for a dance as Ariadne did once. She said she thought he was too -shy to ask her, though he did know her a little, and she wanted to see -if he danced as beautifully as he looked. A man shy! It takes a shy girl -like Ariadne to imagine that! For Ariadne is both shy and superstitious. -She gets that from Lady Scilly and Lady Scilly's aunt, the Countess of -Plyndyn. A very fat old lady with a corresponding hand, that when she -holds it out to a fortune-teller, it is like counting the creases in a -feather-bed. She makes them take count of every crease though, and begs -them to invent a fate for her. - -"Haven't I got a future like other people?" she whines, and then the -poor paid fortune-teller, in a great hurry, sows a crop of initials in -her hand, and she is not more than pleased, and takes it as a right to -have three husbands, although she is already seventy. - -Lady Scilly never thinks of having an afternoon-party now without at -least two fortune-tellers in different parts of the house. You see -people waiting in little lumps at the doors; in a little more, and they -would be tying their handkerchiefs to the handles, just as you do to -bathing-machines, to say who has the right to go in first. They go in -shyly, just like people who have made a stumble in the street, looking -silly, and they come out looking humble, like people who have been -having their hair washed. The fortune-teller doesn't tell women the very -serious things, for instance, that they are going to die themselves, -though she tells them when their husbands are. They always tell Ariadne -what sort of coloured man she is going to marry, but as there are only -two sorts of coloured men, fair and dark, it is sure to come right -sometimes. The last time the woman said, "Fair--verging on red!" and as -Ariadne doesn't know any man who has anything like red hair except Mr. -Aix, whom she doesn't care for, she frowned and said, "Are you quite -sure?" The woman changed it to dark, almost black, in a great hurry, -and Ariadne was pleased, for it is a safer colour. Ariadne wears a piece -of wood let into a bracelet that Lady Scilly gave her, just the same as -she wears herself, and touches it whenever she thinks misfortune is in -the air, or when she is afraid of making a fool of herself more than -usual. She took me out to gather May dew in Kensington Gardens, and very -smutty it was. She always counts cherry-stones, and once at the -Islingtons' lunch when it came badly, she actually swallowed Never! - -Now, in Lady Scilly's set, they call her "The girl that swallowed -Never," and it seems to amuse them. Anything amuses them, especially a -nickname. I myself wonder Ariadne did not have appendicitis, or at least -that apple-tree growing out of her ear they used to tell us of when we -were children. At luncheon parties now, they make a joke of refusing to -help her to greengage, cherry, or plum-tart, in fact to anything -countable, and Ariadne doesn't seem to see that it is plain to them all -that she is anxious to be married, which, though it is true, sounds -unpleasant, at any rate for the men. She is wild to be married, and to -go away and leave this house and have a house of her own that she can -ask me to come and stay at, and Miss Mander. I think it is a very good -wish, only why make it public? Nor she needn't let every one know that -George only gives her fifteen pounds a year to dress like a lady on. It -is cheaper to dress like an artist or a Bohemian, or in character, and -so she does. We don't have any dressmaker, we hardly know the feel of -one even. Mother and Ariadne make their own clothes, and Mother never -going out, is able to give Ariadne a little extra off her own allowance. -I don't know how much that is. She will never tell. - -Mother has all the taste that Aunt Gerty hasn't got. It is odd, how -taste skips one in a family! Aunt Gerty is like a very smart rag-doll, -dressed in odds and ends to show the fashion on a small scale. And -fashion after all is only a matter of "bulge." You bulge in a different -place every year, and if you can only bulge a little earlier, or leave -off bulging in any particular place sooner than other people, well, you -may consider you are a well-dressed woman! - -Ariadne makes money doing his reviews for George. He gives her sixpence -a head, when he remembers to. Dozens of books come in to our house every -week, from _The Bittern_, and for _Wild Oats_. George is "Pease Blossom" -on _The Bittern_. We don't need to subscribe to a library, we live in a -book-shop practically, for they are all sold in Booksellers' Row -afterwards. George takes the important ones, of course, and gives the -smaller fry to Ariadne to do. She is his understudy. When they are ready -George writes hers up, and Christina types them, and it all goes in -together. He once reviewed a batch of bad ones under the heading of -_Darnel_, and people thought him clever but malicious. - -Papa doesn't know it, but Ariadne has an understudy too. She lets the -novels out to me, and gives me twopence a head. I must say that she has -no idea of beating one down. I read them as carefully as I have time -for--it depends on how many Ariadne gives me--and then when she is doing -her hair, I sit beside her, and tell her the plots. The more improper -ones she keeps to herself, but I read those for pleasure, not work, so -it's all right. - -Ariadne knows about a dozen useful phrases that she didn't invent, but -found ready made. "Up to the level of this author's reputation" is one; -"marks a distinct advance," "breezy," "strong, or convincing," and the -opposites, "unconvincing," "weak," "morbid," "effete," are useful ones. -She uses all these turn and turn about, and always mentions "a fine -sense of atmosphere" if she honestly can. - -She has great fun sometimes, when she meets the authors in society. She -flirts with them till they get confidential, and tell her about their -books, and how totally they have been misunderstood by the press, and -what a crassly ignorant set reviewers are! They explain to her that not -one of the whole d--d crew has the slightest sense of responsibility, -especially The _Bittern_, which has got the most God-forsaken staff that -ever paper went to the devil with! Ariadne is amused at all this and -gives them another chance of conversation, and then they go on to quote -her own words to her! - -Once, though, she got caught, and George very nearly took all the -reviewing away from her, for he had to stand the racket himself, of -course. She had actually said at the end of the review that it was a -pity Mr. ---- I forget the author's name--did not relieve our anxiety as -to the perpetrator of the hellish crime, which to the very end he -allowed to remain shrouded in obscurity. Well, as a matter of fact, -there was a hanging scene and dying confession in the last chapter but -one, but Ariadne unfortunately burnt that before she had got to it. She -was using the novel as a screen to keep the draught off the flame for -heating her tongs, and so she never read that part, and had to make up -her own end. The editor of _The Bittern_ had to acknowledge the error -and apologize in a footnote, because the author threatened a libel -action. Ariadne doesn't care about meeting that man in society! - -It is fairer at any rate for Ariadne to review books than George, -because she doesn't write them. People who write books shouldn't have -the right to say what they think of other people's; it is like a mother -listening to tales in the nursery, and putting one child in the corner -to please another. I once went into the study and saw George walking up -and down, and throwing light bits of furniture about. - -"D--m the fellow! He's stolen the babe unborn of an excellent plot of -mine, and mauled it and ruined it, beyond recognition!" - -It was no use my putting in my word, and saying, "Well, then, George, -you can use it again." He went on fuming and fussing, loudly dictating a -regular corker of a review. - -"I'll let him have it! Go on, please, Miss Mander. '_The signal -ineptitude of this author's_----'" - -I am sure that was going to be a very unpleasant review to read, though -I never saw it in print. - -Ariadne is sentimental, and doesn't care for realistic novels at all, -which is a pity, as George's greatest friend, and the person who comes -oftenest to this house, is a realist, and wrote a novel called _The -Laundress_. He lived in Shoreditch in a tenement dwelling for a whole -year to learn how to write it from the laundresses themselves,--he went -to tea with a different laundress every afternoon? The one he wrote -about had three diamond rings and three husbands to match. He himself -wore flannel shirts then, not nice frock-coats such as he has now, but -the flannel shirts weren't because he was poor, but so as not to -frighten the laundresses by looking too smart. Then the book came out, -and there was a great fuss about it, and it was published at sixpence, -and our cook bought it, and it lies on the kitchen-table beside the -cookery-book. - -That is the reason Mr. Aix, being a realist, makes more money than Papa, -who is an idealist. You see, Duchesses and Countesses want to hear all -about laundresses, just as much as cooks do, but though Duchesses and -Countesses are interested in mediaeval knights and maidens, cooks--nor -yet laundresses--aren't. - -"The suburbs do not appreciate me as they do you, old man!" he says -sometimes. "If I was proper, they wouldn't even look at me!" - -"Ay! the suburbs?" George says dreamily; "the kind, the mild, the -tenderly trustful suburbs. I manipulate them freely. I have taught -Peckham Rye and Clapham that there are stranger things in Pall Mall and -Piccadilly than are dreamt of in their simple philosophy----" - -"You have tickled the Philistines, not smitten them!" says Mr. Aix. - -"I have shocked them--they love being shocked! I have startled -them--that does them good. I have puzzled them--not altogether -unpleasantly. I have inured them to Dukes and familiarized them with -Duchesses, as the butcher hardens his pony to a motor-car. I reduce to a -common, romantic denominator----" - -"You are like those useful earthworms of _le pere_ Darwin, bringing up -soil and interweaving strata," said Mr. Aix wearily. - -George accepted the worm reluctantly, and went on. "Yes, I dominate the -lower strata, they dote on any topsy-turvy upper-class gospel I chose at -the moment to formulate for their crass benefit. Miss Mander, did you -ever envisage Peckham?" - -"I lived there and sold matches once," said she, "and, moreover, I've -kept a Home for distressed female-authors in the Isle of Dogs." - -"Is there anything you haven't done?" said Mr. Aix, quite jealous of a -woman interfering in his own line. He always makes a point of living -among his raw material. When he was writing _The Serio-Comic_, in order -to get the serious atmosphere--which I should have thought gin would -have done for well enough--he went every night of his life to some music -hall or other, and went behind and talked to them, and fastened their -frocks at the back for them, and put in hair-pins when they stuck out -just as they were going on. Then he stood them drinks, and didn't preach -for his life, for if he had, the serio-comics wouldn't have told him -anything or shown him the secret of their inner life. He had to pretend -that he thought them and their life all that was perfect. Christina -calls this novel "The Sweetmeat in the Gutter," and loves it, though -George says it is as broad as it's long, and that ladies shouldn't read -it. But Christina has been to Klondike and seen the seamy side, so it -doesn't matter. _I_ have read _The Serio-Comic_, and I can't see -anything wrong. There's more seriousness than fun in it. Miss Deucie -Dulcimer's real name is Frances Raggles, and she's the mother of five in -the course of three hundred and fifty pages, and there's a -brandy-and-soda in every chapter. - -Mr. Aix is forty, but he looks like a boy. He has a snub soft nose like -Lady Scilly's pug, with wrinkles on the bridge of it. He wears -spectacles because of his weak eyes, and he always says "Quite so," as -if he were good-natured enough to agree with Providence in everything. -He is the opposite of George, who is proud to be considered cat-like. -Perhaps that is why they are friends. If Mr. Aix were a dog, he would -knock over everything with his tail. He has no tact. He never drinks -anything but water, and does calisthenics before breakfast with an -exerciser on a door. He is the kind of man who would put stops in a -telegram--so very punctilious. His eyes are wall, and look different -ways, and Aunt Gerty says that once at a dance he asked two girls for -the same polka, and they both accepted, because he looked at them both -at the same time. - -He is about the only person who doesn't think Ariadne pretty, so Ariadne -naturally dislikes him. She can't help it. If we didn't let her think -she was pretty, she would have jaundice, or something lingering of that -sort. She snubs Mr. Aix, but somehow he won't consider himself snubbed. -It comes of having no sense of decency, as the reviews say of him. -Christina chaffs him, and teases him about his next novel, and asks him -if it is to be called _The Dustman_ or _The General_, and what the -_locale_ is to be, the scullery or the collecting-places just outside -London? - -I have an idea that it will be called _The Seamstress_, for he has -lately taken to coming up into the little entresol on the stairs where -we sit and stitch, and make our frocks, and asking us to teach him to -sew. He puts out a hand like a sheaf of bananas, Ariadne fits a needle -into one of them, and he cobbles away quite painstakingly for an hour. - -Once he came up when Ariadne was awfully tired, and could hardly keep -her eyes open, as she always is after a dance. - -"I have often wondered," he began, "what must be the sensations of a -young girl on entering on her kingdom of the ball-room. Is she dazzled, -is she obfuscated by the twinkling repetition of the lights? are her -senses stunned or stimulated by the ponderous beat of the time, -relentless under its top-dressing of melody, like despair underlying -frivolity? Is she----?" - -He would have gone on for ever if I had not interrupted-- - -"I can tell you. She's thinking all the time, 'Is there a hair-pin -sticking out? Is the tip of my nose shiny? Is my dress too short in -front, and is it properly fastened at the back, and what does Mr. ---- it -depends which Mister is there that evening--think of it all?" - -"Don't, Tempe!" said Ariadne. - -"No, no, Miss Tempe, go on, I beg of you. Go on being indiscreet. Tell -me some more things about women." - -"Do you know why women always sit on one side when they are alone in a -hansom?" - -"No, I have no idea. Some charmingly morbid reason, I suppose?" - -"Oh, you can call it morbid, if you like," I said. "It is only because -there happens to be a looking-glass there." - -George and Mr. Aix have different publishers, but the same literary -agent. A publisher once took them both to the top of a high hill in -Surrey and tempted them--to sell him the rights of every novel they did -for ten years, and be kept in luxury by him. But they both shook their -heads and said, "You must go to Middleman!" Then he took them to a -London restaurant and made them drunk, and still they shook their heads -and sent him to Middleman, who makes all their bargains for them, but -he can't control all the reviews. - -One morning Mr. Aix came in to see George, with a blue press-cutting in -his hand; I was in the study then, as it happened, and I did not go. -George never minds our hearing everything, he says it is too much of an -effort to be a hero to one's typewriter, or one's daughter. - -"I am in a rage!" Mr. Aix said, and so I suppose he was, though he -looked more like a white gooseberry than ever. "Just let me get hold of -this fellow they have got on _The Bittern_, and see if I don't wring his -neck for him!" - -George didn't say anything, and so I asked--somebody had to--"What has -_The Bittern_ man done, please?" - -"Done! He has dammed me with faint praise, that's all! I'd have the -fellow know that I'm read in every pothouse, every kitchen in England! -Here, George, take it, and read it, the infamous thing!" - -George read it--at least he ran his eyes over it. He didn't seem to want -to see it particularly, and gave it back as if it bit him, saying-- - -"Well, my dear fellow, you must take the rough with the smooth--one can -always learn something from criticism, or so I find!" - -"What the devil do you suppose I am to learn from an incompetent -paste-and-scissors understrapper like that? He wants a good hiding, -that's what he wants, and I for one would have no objection to giving it -him!" - -"Well, it wasn't me wrote it, Mr. Aix," I said, "nor Ariadne!" He isn't -supposed to know that George farms out his reviews. - -Mr. Aix laughed, and left off being cross. The odd thing was, that it -had only just missed being Ariadne or me, for the book certainly came in -for review. Most likely George wrote it, or else why didn't he trouble -to read it, when it was given him to read? It looks as if he were -growing a little tiny bit of a conscience, for he knows he ought to have -said to _The Bittern_ editor, "Avaunt! Don't tempt an author to review -his friend's book, when he knows he cannot speak well of it for so many -reasons!" That is my idea of literary morality. - - - - -CHAPTER XI - - -George came back from his yachting tour with the Scillys very brown and -cheerful, having collected enough sunshine for a new book, and Christina -is typing it at his dictation. - -George is a cranky dictator, and it takes her all her time to keep in -touch with him. I have watched her at it. Sometimes he stops and can't -for the life of him find the right word, and I can tell by her eyes that -she knows it, and is too polite to give it him; just the way one longs -to help out a stutterer. But I have seen her put the word down out of -her own head long before George has shouted it at her, as he does in the -end. She picks and chooses, too, a little, for George is a tidy swearer, -as the cabman said. I suppose he learned it in the high society he goes -among! He does it all the time he is composing; it relieves the tension, -he says, and she doesn't mind. She manages him. George pretends he knows -he is being managed, which shows that he doesn't really think he is. I -asked her once why she didn't marry, but she said the profession of -typewriting was not so binding as the other, for you could get down off -your high stool if you wanted. - -Christina always says rude things about epigrams and marriage. She is -not very old, only thirty; but she says she has outgrown them both. Of -course in this house epigrams are the same as bread-and-butter, hers and -ours, for George pays her a good salary for typing those that he makes -ready for print. As for epigrams, she says she can make them herself, -and here are some I found written out in her handwriting on a china -memorandum tablet. I expect she keeps a separate tablet for her remarks -on Marriage. - -1. Man cannot live by epigram alone. - -2. Epigrams are like the paper-streamers they fling out of the boxes at -a _bal masque_ at the Opera. They flat fall immediately afterwards. - -3. An epigram is like the deadly Upas Tree, and blights everything in -the shape of conversation that grows near it. - -4. Reverse an epigram and you get a platitude. - -5. The savage, sour, and friendless epigram. The last sounds to me all -wrong, for it has no verb. But I give it as I find it. - -George's new novel is to be called _The Senior Epigrammatist_, and the -scene is laid in the Smart Sea Islands. - -"Our well-known blend," said Mr. Aix, "of opaline sea and crystal -epigram knocks the public every time! But mark me, Christina dear, this -sunlight soap won't wash clothes. It isn't for home consumption. It -gladdens publishers' offices, but leaves the domestic hearth cold. The -fires of passion----" - -"Don't talk to me of passion," said Christina. "I just detest the word. -Passion is piggish! It's a perfect disgrace to have primitive instincts, -and I wouldn't be seen dead with a temperament, in these days." - -She was putting a new ribbon into her typewriter and trying it. She -typed something like this-- - -Christina x x x Ball x x C.B. x x (----) C. Ball B B---- - -"Who is Ball?" said Mr. Aix anxiously. - -Christina answered as if she meant to bite his head off. - -"A man who never made an epigram in his life, and stands six foot six in -his shoes." - -"The noble savage, eh? Well, well, I wish him luck!" - -I knew who Ball was; it is Peter Ball, and Christina likes him. She -hasn't said or typed anything against marriage since she knew him. - -It was at a concert that some friends of hers gave in Queen's Gate, that -she first met him. I was with her, and we all sat in rows on rout seats, -that skidded and flew off like shirt-buttons across the room whenever -you got up suddenly. Peter Ball sat next us, and his legs were long, -though his feet were small. He had a golden beard, which I hate, and so, -I thought, did Christina. She had always said there was one thing she -would not marry, and that was a beard. - -He wished out loud that he hadn't got let in for the sitting-down seats, -so that he could not make a clean bolt of it when he had had enough of -Miss Squallini. There was not any Miss of that name on the programme, so -though he said loud, no one could be offended. A Maddle. Xeres told us -quite slyly, lifting her eyebrows up and down, that "she knew a bank!" -as if she had got up early like the worm, and found it all by herself. -After that, one of the spare hostesses came wandering by and introduced -him to us. He began to talk to Christina without looking at her, and -gradually he forgot his legs and put one under the rout seat in front of -him and lifted it up without thinking. The lady on it looked round -indignantly and Christina smiled. After that he talked to us all through -the programme though people shoo'd him, and then he stopped for a little -and apologized, and went on again. - -"I don't often turn up at this sort of function, do you?" he asked -Christina. - -"No, I do not," she replied, "I have too much to do as a general thing." - -"And stay at home and do it," said he; "you're wise." - -"I have to!" said Christina. "Oh," she sighed, "I am so dreadfully hot." - -It was June. - -"Why do you wear that bag?" he said, meaning her motor tulle veil, which -was absurdly thick and made her look as if she had small-pox. But every -one else apparently had a different form of the same disease, shown by a -different size in spots. She said so, and that she wore a veil like -every one else. - -"Get out of it, can't you, and let me take care of it for you, and that -boa thing you have got round your neck." - -She took it off, and the boa, and gave them to him. - -"I am afraid you will drop the boa, and let the veil work under the -seat," she said in a fright, as he nipped them both in one great hand. -So he pinned them, boa, veil, and all, to his grey speckled trousers -with her hat-pin, and sat all through the rest of the concert, looking -at the bunch at his knee. I never saw a man like that before, he didn't -seem at all like the people who come to Cinque Cento House. I didn't -seem to see him there, and I rather thought I should like to. Why, he -would make George straighten his back! - -"I say," he said presently, "do you like gramophones?" - -"I love them," said Christina, and I knew it was a lie. - -"My people have a perfectly splendid one!" said he, and his whole face -lighted up. "I wish you could hear it." - -Christina wished she could, and he said-- - -"Oh, then, we will manage it somehow." - -When the concert was over he didn't bolt as he had said he wanted to, -but gave us ices, Christina one, me two, and then Christina put the bag -on again. - -"If you were in my motor in that thing in a shower you'd get drowned," -said he. "Why, it would _hold_ the water. I should like to drive you in -my motor all the same. I say, can't I call on you?" - -Christina told him very nicely that she was private secretary to the -author, Mr. George Vero-Taylor, and hadn't much time for herself. She -seemed to say that this made a call impossible. - -"Ah, I see! Live in, do you? Well, I'll call there, drop my pasteboard, -all straight and formal, you know, and then there can be no objection to -my giving you a spin in the motor. Right you are! Sinky Cento House. -What a rum name! Suggests drains! Never mind, I'll be there, and then -when I've made the acquaintance of your chaperon, she'll allow you to -come to tea with my mater, and make the acquaintance of the gramophone. -My mater's too old to go out. It's a ripper, the gramophone, I mean, -like some other people I am thinking of!" - -"What a breezy man!" said Christina, on the way home. "He reminds me of -The Northman I used to draw at South Kensington. I broke him, and had to -pay seven-and-six for him." Then she began to think--I believe it was -about Peter Ball. He _was_ handsome, for he had blue eyes and a little -short, straight nose like the Sovereigns in Madame Tussaud's. - -"Isn't he exactly like Harold of England?" I said to Christina. "I hope -George won't snub him when he comes to see you?" - -"He won't come," said she; "but if he did he wouldn't know he was being -snubbed." - -"No, he would say to George, 'Keep your snubs for a man of your own -size.' But, Christina dear, I always _thought_ you hated both marriage -and gramophones." - -"I am not so sure about gramophones," said she. "Perhaps a very big -one----?" - -"A six-footer, like Mr. Peter Ball, eh?" - -She was quite moody and absent in the 'bus going home, and wouldn't go -on top to please me. Then I accidentally stuck my umbrella in over the -top of her shoe as I walked beside her, and then she was too cross to -speak at all. I respected her mood. That is why I am beloved in the home -circle. But I have my own ideas, and they keep me amused. - -I was unfortunately out of the way when Mr. Peter Ball did call, three -days later. Mother and Christina were in, and Ariadne, who gave me a -true account of it all. She says the first thing he said to Christina -was, "I hope you don't think I have been too precipitate?" I suppose he -meant in calling? He stared about him a good deal at first, and she -thought that George's queer furniture made him feel shy, and that he -thought the ivory figure of Buddha quite indecent. She was sure he -didn't admire her (Ariadne), but only Christina, because Christina is a -"tailor-made" girl, that men like. Mother made the tea very strong that -afternoon, so as to make him feel at home, and then after all he didn't -touch tea. She kindly offered him a brandy-and-soda and he declined -that, but I expect it was only because it would have seemed -disrespectful to Christina. All men are alike, and prone to a b. and s. -if they can get it without disgrace. Mother was sure that he had fallen -head-over-ears in love with Christina, and she with him at the very -first sight. She told me so, and said she meant to help it on. - -"It is because Christina is so used to seeing George every day," said I. -"Peter Ball is very different, isn't he?" - -Mother said that there was no accounting for tastes, and that for her -part she considered George's type was the nicest. But whatever we did, -she said, we were not to chaff Christina about it, and put her off a -very good match. A girl of Christina's sort never took kindly to chaff, -and though she should be sorry to lose Christina as a secretary to -George, it being impossible to tell what sort of minx he might engage in -her place, she for one wouldn't like any personal consideration whatever -to interfere with Christina's establishment in life. Peter Ball is a -landed gentry. He is M.F.H. in the county of Northumberland to the -Rattenraw Hunt, and a capital shot and first-rate angler. When his old -mother dies he will be richer, but he is a good son, and often stays -with her in Leinster Gardens where he has asked me and Christina to go -to tea next week. - -I promised not to chaff, but if she had only known, it would have taken -a steam-crane to put Christina off that particular thing. She talked -lots about Peter. He was the "finest specimen of humanity she had ever -come across!" "Such a contrast to the little anaemic, effete, -ambisextrous (I hope I have got it right?) creatures that haunt Cinque -Cento House, who are all trying to get more out of their heads than is -in them!" "Greek in his simplicity, a sort of mixture of John Bull and -Antinoeus!" I say, just wait till you see his mother; nice men's mothers -are sometimes sad eye-openers, and Peter Ball is always talking about -his. Also it is quite on the cards that she may not like Christina, and -then I am sure he will never propose to her. He is an admirable son. I -believe he keeps a gramophone just to attract the girls he admires into -his mother's cave, and give her the opportunity of looking over them, -and making up her mind if they are fit to be her Peter's wife or no. - -When the eventful day came, Christina was on thorns. She didn't know how -to dress. She finally left off the chiffon bag and wore a fringe-net, -and her best-cut "tailor-made," and took out her ear-rings lest they -should damn her in his mother's eyes. Then at exactly five minutes to -four we rang the bell in 1000 Leinster Square. - -A proud butler opened the door. George will only let us have maids, -although he could afford ten butlers. - -The house was beautiful, and not a bit like ours. "Early Victorian," -Christina whispered me. She was dreadfully nervous, and made me too. I -dropped my umbrella in the rack with such a clatter that she blushed and -scolded me. Then a palm-leaf tickled my head as I went by, and I begged -its pardon, thinking some one behind was trying to attract my -attention. We were taken into a big room with pedestal things in gold -and stucco set down at intervals, and a clock with a bare pendulum which -looks simply undressed to me, and a bronze Father Time with his sickle -lying lazily across the top. On another clock there was a gilt man in a -gilt cart whipping up two gilt horses. The carpet had large bouquets of -roses on it, and I thought what a good game it would be to pretend they -were islands and hop across from one to the other. I began, but she -stopped me. In a corner was the gramophone, like a great brass ear put -out to hear what you were saying. It was playing when we went in, like -an old man with a wheeze, and in came Peter Ball looking as if he had -just got out of a bath, and said, "How-do-you-do! it is playing -'Coppelia.'" Then it played "Valse Bleue" and "Casey at the Wake," and -"Casey as Doctor," and "When other Lips," and then Peter Ball said his -mother was ready. - -Into another room we went, full of Berlin wool-work chairs, and screens -of Potiphar and his wife, and the curtains were of green rep with ropes -of silk to tie them back and gilt festoons to hide their beginnings, and -an old old lady in a big arm-chair and a lace cap with nodding bugles -was in a corner, just like another and older bit of furniture. - -We were introduced; she was very deaf and very blind, and I am not sure -she didn't think I was the girl Peter wanted to marry. However that -might be, she seemed pleased with us, and we talked of her son and the -house. Christina, who used to say she preferred a Cheret poster to a -Titian, and plain deal to mahogany, admired everything freely. The -rosewood wheelbarrow with silver fittings given to Peter Ball's father -when he laid a first stone somewhere, she said was superb and so -graceful; the picture of old Mrs. Ball by Ingres in a poke bonnet and -short waist she said was far superior to anything by Burne Jones. - -"Who is Burne Jones?" said the old lady, and Christina denied Burne -Jones cheerfully. I thought of my favourite piece of poetry-- - - "See, ye Ladies that are coy, - What the mighty Love can do!" - -Then we had tea (the cake in a silver basket on a fringed mat, if you -please!), and after we had talked a little more, we said good-bye, and -Peter took us out. He had rushed out of the room just five minutes -before, when the first symptoms of leave-taking manifested themselves, -and we saw why, when we passed out through the first room where the -gramophone was. It played us out with "The Wedding March," surely a -graceful thought of Peter Ball's! - -"He's very nice, but what a pity he hasn't got taste!" I said as we came -away. You see, I am used to Cinque Cento House, and I have always been -told that there is only one taste, and that ours is it. - -"Taste!" Christina mooned, as we got into a 'bus. "There's so much of it -about, isn't there? On my word, it will soon be quite _chic_ to be -vulgar." - -It was not difficult to tell which way the wind was blowing after that. -It was about this time that Mr. Aix found Christina typing her own name -and Peter's on a sheet of III Imperial. He hadn't even set eyes on Peter -Ball then, but he did a few days later, when Peter Ball came to tea, -holding his grey kid gloves in his hand. George, luckily, was out again, -really out, not pretending to be in his study, and Mr. Aix it was who -opened the front-door for Peter when he went away at seven. - -"A man!" he said, when he came back to us all in the winter garden, and -Christina was just going out--escaping to her own room to think over -Peter Ball, I dare say--and she said as she passed him-- - -"I could hug you for saying that, Mr. Aix." - -"No, you couldn't," said he. "I am popularly supposed to be repellent. A -lady said I was like a white stick of celery grown in a dark cellar. -Another, of music-hall celebrity, compared me to a blasted pipe-stem. I -do not look for success with your sex. It was kind of you to think of -it, though." - -Peter Ball meant business, or else we could not have all spoken of it so -openly. George was awfully cross at the idea of having to find a new -secretary. Lady Scilly said she thought he could do better than -Christina, who was too forward (and too pretty). She tried very hard to -flirt with Peter herself, but perhaps Peter thought _he_ could do -better, and wouldn't. She looked into his face and said, "You great big -beauty!" She told him "high" stories, as Christina and I call them, and -he wouldn't laugh. She asked him right out why he wouldn't, and he -answered equally right out, "Because I disapprove of all jesting with -regard to the relations of the sexes!" - -Lady Scilly looked disgusted, and left him severely alone, as he meant -her to. - -For weeks after this he was like a full pail of water one is afraid to -carry without spilling. At last he slopped over, and asked Christina to -be his wife. I wasn't in the room, of course, but Christina was nice and -told us afterwards. He went on his knees, she says, and I believe her, -because I found a cushion on the floor immediately after, before the -housemaid had tidied the room, and I think he had managed to put it -under his knees without her seeing. Our floor is bony. - -"The very moment," she said, "he had got me to say yes, he jumped up and -rushed out without his hat, to send a telegram to his mother with the -good news!" - -She thought this so nice of him and so flattering, as showing that he -hadn't made quite sure of her. For though we all knew she meant to take -him, he was not supposed to be aware of it. Considering that Christina -is grown up, she ought to be able to make a man think exactly what she -wishes him to think about her. Such power comes, or should come, with -advancing years, and is one of its compensations. Ariadne, of course, -isn't old enough to have left off being quite transparent, and regrets -it deeply in some of her poetry. - -Christina was married to Peter Ball almost directly, and Ariadne and I -were her bridesmaids. Mrs. Mander gave us our dresses and hats. They -were quite fashionable; she would have no nonsense or necklaces. Ariadne -looked smart and like other people, for once. She didn't look so pretty, -but it is a mistake to want to go about the streets looking like a -picture. Prettiness isn't everything, and the really smartest people -would disdain to look simply ready for an artist to paint them. - -Simon Hermyre, Lady Scilly's best friend, was Peter Ball's best man. He -had met Ariadne at the Scillys', but at Christina's wedding he said that -he should not have known her again. He began to take some notice of her. -She at once asked him to call, and it was a great mistake, for he never -did. It is awkward for Ariadne, I admit, for Mother not going out, and -George being perfectly useless as a father, she has to do all her own -asking. - -That can't be helped, but Ariadne is always hasty and strikes while the -iron is too hot. Simon Hermyre did _rather_ like her, but he wasn't -quite sure that he actually wanted to take her on, and all that that -means--and whether he liked her enough to risk making Lady Scilly angry -about it, as of course she would be. At all events he didn't come--his -chief kept him in till six o'clock every day, or some excuse of that -sort. As if a man couldn't always manage a call if he wanted to, even if -he were third secretary to some one in the planet Mars! - - - - -CHAPTER XII - - -We never used to go away for more than a week every summer to Brighton -or Herne Bay, but now that we live in the heart of the town, as of -course St. John's Wood is, it has been decided that we want a whole -month at the sea. This year Mother and Aunt Gerty chose Whitby in -Yorkshire. It is convenient for Aunt Gerty--something about a company -that she is thinking of joining in the autumn. George didn't care where -we went, as he isn't to be with us. He just forks out the money as -Mother asks for it; he trusts her implicitly not to waste it, and to do -things as cheap as they can be done and yet decently, because after all -we _are_ his family, and everybody knows that now. - -I sometimes think he would come with us himself, if Aunt Gerty wasn't so -much about. - -Ariadne and Aunt Gerty haven't got an ounce of country fibre in them. -They get at loggerheads with the country at once. The mildest cows chase -them, they manage to nearly drown themselves in the tiniest ditches, the -quietest old pony rears if they drive him. If they pick a mushroom it is -sure to be a toadstool; if they bite into a pear there's a wasp inside -it; if they take hold of a village baby they are sure to drop it. They -haven't country good manners, they leave gates open, they trample down -grass, they entice dogs away, they startle geese and set hens running, -and offend everybody all round. - -So they weren't particularly happy in the first rooms we took, at a farm -just out of Whitby. There was one stuffy little best parlour, sealed up -like a bottle of medecine, and one mouldy geranium looking as if it -couldn't help it on the window-sill, and the "Seven Deadly Sins" in -chromo on the walls, and Rebecca at a well of Berlin wools over the -mantelpiece. They covered the family Bible with an antimacassar, and -Aunt Gerty's theatrical photos without which she never travels, and -suppressed the frosty ornament in a glass case of one of Mrs. Wilson's -wedding-cakes. Mrs. Wilson married early, she says, and I say she -married often, for there are three of them! It _was_ uncomfortable. -Mother didn't complain, Aunt Gerty did. She had nowhere to hang up her -dresses; they were all getting spoilt; she couldn't see to do her hair -in the wretched little scrap of looking-glass, and the room was so small -that she twice set fire to her bed-curtains, curling her hair, which she -did twenty times a day, for there was always wind or rain or something. -The walls were so thin that she could hear every word Mr. and Mrs. -Wilson said to each other in the next room, quarrelling and arranging -the bill and so on. She couldn't sleep with the window shut, and all -sorts of horrid buggy things came in if you left it open. It was so -dreadfully lonely here, and she had never "seen so much land" in her -life. - -Aunt Gerty has been on tour often enough to get used to uncomfortable -lodgings, lodgings not chosen by herself, very likely, and her luggage -all fetched away the day before she leaves by the baggage man! But it is -in a town, and that makes all the difference. Give her a strip of mirror -in the door of her wardrobe, and a gas-jet ready to set fire to her -window-curtains, and a row of shops outside to cheer her up, and she -won't think of grumbling. - -The landlady didn't consider us a particularly good "let." I used to -hear her in bed in the mornings explaining to Mr. Wilson, who is a -railway porter, how glad she would be to be "shot" of us if it wasn't -for the money. "Ay, lass!" he would answer, and then I used to hear him -turning over in bed and going to sleep again. - -"They're better to keep a week than a fortnight!" she used to say. "What -with their late dinners and breakfasts in bed, and their black coffee, -and all sitting down for an hour o' mornings polishing up them ondacent -brown boots--they darsen't trust the help, no, not since she went and -rubbed them with lard--poor girl, she meant well,--and she fit to rive -her legs off answering the parlour bell every minute! Well, the sooner I -see their backs, the better pleased I shall be!" - -We took the hint and gave up the rooms, and got some nicer ones in town -on the quay. Aunt Gerty left off bothering Mother to have late dinner -and strong coffee, and we lived on herrings and cream cheeses, the -cheapest things in Whitby. I mean the herrings. When they have a good -catch, they sell them at a halfpenny each on the quay-side, or slap -their children with them, or shy them at strangers. Anything to keep the -market up! - -Mrs. Bennison, our new landlady, isn't a Whitby woman, but her husband -is, and owns a boat, and takes Ben out sailing, and tries to make a man -of him. We hardly ever see him, so we know he is happy. Mother and Aunt -Gerty sit one on each side of the bow window the greater part of the -day, and make blouses, and read at the same time. George would throw -their books into the harbour if he caught them in their hands; they are -the sort he disapproves of. I won't say who the authors of these are, as -being a literary man's daughter it might give offence, but they are by -women mostly. George vetoes women's books too, for they are generally -bad, and if they are good, they have no business to be. - -Just now, George isn't here to object, he is at Homburg, doing a cure. -He always gets brain fag towards the end of the season like his other -friends. It seems to me the smartest illness to have, except -appendicitis. The moment Goodwood is over, they all troop off to Germany -or Switzerland and pay pounds to some doctor who only makes them leave -off eating and drinking too much, and go to bed a little before -daylight. It is kill and then cure with the smart set, every year. -George does what is right and usual--bathes in champagne at Wiesbaden, -and drinks the water rotten eggs have been boiled in at Homburg. He does -it in good company, to take the taste away. Mr. Aix drew us a picture of -George and a Duchess walking up and down a parade, with a glass tube -connected with a tumbler, in their mouths, talking about emulating "The -Life of the Busy Bee" as they went along. - -About the middle of August we heard he had come back to England and was -paying his usual round of visits to Barefront, and Baddeley and -Fylingdales Tower. Nearly all these places have real battlements and -ghosts. Fylingdales Tower is near here. Mother and I and Aunt Gerty -joined a cheap trip to it, the other day, and were taken all over the -house for a shilling. I don't even believe The Family was away, but -stowed away _pro tem._ and staring at us through some chink and loathing -us. I did manage to persuade Aunt Gerty not to throw away her sandwich -paper in the grate of the fire-place of the room where Edward the Third -had slept on his way to Alnwick, but kindly keep it till we were got -into the Park. But she was very irreverent all the same, and insisted on -setting her hat straight in the glass of Queen Elizabeth's portrait, and -that was the only picture she looked at at all. I don't care for -pictures much. I like the house, which is old and grey and bleached, as -if it never got a good night's sleep. Too many spirits to break its -rest. I don't believe in ghosts really, but I often wonder what are the -white things one sees? I don't see so many as I did when I was quite a -child. Aunt Gerty shivered and went Brr! She hated it all, she is so -very modern. She admitted that she only went with us because she had -hoped George might be actually staying there, and would see his own -sister-in-law among the trippers and get a nasty jar. Mother is a lady, -and knew quite well that he wasn't there, or else she would not have let -Aunt Gerty go, or gone herself, even _incog._ George _had_ been there -recently, though, for the black-satin housekeeper said so, and that she -read his books herself when she had time, or a headache. "He's quite a -pet of her ladyship's," she told Aunt Gerty, who had spotted one of -George's books on a table and asked questions. She was dying to tell the -old thing that we were relations of the great Mr. Vero-Taylor, but -dursn't, for Mother's eye was on her. Mother looked as pleased as Punch -though, and gazed at the chairs (behind plush railings) that her husband -had sat on, and at the portrait in Greek dress, by Sir Alma Tadema, of -the lady who "made a pet of him." - -George had written from Homburg once or twice to me, and I used to read -his letters out to Mother, who naturally wanted to hear his news. She -was a little annoyed because he didn't mention if he was wearing the -thicker vests as the weather was getting chilly, and begged me to ask -him to be explicit in my next, but I did not, because it might have -shamed him in the eyes of his countesses if he left the letter about, as -of course he would. George respects the sanctity of private -communication so much, that he never tore up a letter in his life; the -housemaid collects them when she is doing his room, and brings them to -Mother, who hasn't time to read them, any more than the housemaid has. - -The third week in August George wrote to me, and told me to engage him -rooms in Fylingdales Crescent on the East Cliff. You might have knocked -me down with a feather! - -Mother was hurt at George's having written to me, not her, on such a -pure matter of business, until I explained that he merely did it to -please the child! One doesn't mind making oneself out a baby to avoid -hurting a mother's feelings. I don't know if Mother quite accepted this -explanation, but she said no more about it, and told Mr. Aix the good -news. He is in lodgings here, to be near us--Aunt Gerty thinks it is to -be near her, and he lets her think anything she likes. He looks forward -to George's coming with great interest, and says he will look like some -rare exotic on the beach, such as a humming-bird or a gazelle. Aunt -Gerty at once got hold of the visitors' list. - -"Let's see which of his little lot is coming to Whitby?" she said, and -hunted carefully through three columns till she found that Adelaide -Countess of Fylingdales, Mr. Sidney Robinson, nurse baby and suite, were -at the Fylingdales Hotel, on the East Cliff. Lord Fylingdales, her -eldest son, is the widower of a Gaiety girl who actually died after she -had been a Countess a year, poor dear! Aunt Gerty knew her. He is Lord -of the Manor here, and his portrait is all over the place. - -"Old Adelaide's a shocking frump, Lucy; you needn't distress yourself -about her!" said Aunt Gerty consolingly to Mother. - -"I am not distressing myself about her, Gertrude," replied my Mother, -and she didn't look at all distressed in her neat short blue serge -seaside dress, and shady hat. She looked ten. - -"I know her son," Aunt Gerty went on. "A fish without a backbone. I very -nearly had the privilege of leading him astray myself. It is Irene -Lauderdale now, I hear." - -"I wish you'd stow your theatrical recollections, Gerty," said Mother. -"Come, Tempe, get your things on, we will go and take rooms for your -father and my husband." - -"Brava!" said Mr. Aix. "Capital accent there." - -"Oh, you go along!" said Mother, and we went off at once and engaged -George's rooms. We got very nice large ones, with dark green outside -shutters to the windows, and took a great deal of trouble to explain -George's little ways to them, for their sake as well as his. Ben will -valet him. Mother told the people that he is bringing his man, who will, -however, sleep out. George never gets up till twelve, French fashion. - -Poor Ben, he may as well make himself useful, for he certainly isn't -ornamental just now. He can't speak, he can only croak, and though he -isn't very big, he seems to have the power of burrowing inside himself -and bringing up a great voice like a steam-roller. He is not a manly -man, yet, but he certainly is a boily boy. He has got some spots on his -face that he thinks much bigger than they really are, and he keeps them -and himself out of sight as much as possible. He says just now he -doesn't care at all what he does, he doesn't even mind playing servant -for a bit, if George would like it. Mother tells him he is a good boy -and the comfort of her life, and that if she can manage it, she will get -him sent to college after this, only he had better please the mammon of -unrighteousness all he can. So he means to be a good valet to the -Mammon. - -The Fylingdales Hotel is in the best part of the town, on the East -Cliff, and they dine late there every evening, and don't pull the blinds -down, and the townspeople walk backwards and forwards, and watch the -people dining at seven-thirty, dressed in their nudity. I think evening -dress looks quite wrong at the seaside. Aunt Gerty and Mother put on a -different blouse every evening, and look nice and cosy and comfortable, -though George does say sarcastic things about the tyranny of the blouse, -and the way Aunt Gerty will call it Blowse. I wash my face, that is all -the dressing _I_ do. Ben puts on an old smoker of George's, and flattens -out his hair to support the character of being the only gentleman of the -party, unless Mr. Aix is there to supper, and the less said about Mr. -Aix's clothes the better. - -Ben makes boats all day, when he isn't in one, and Ariadne makes poetry. -Her one idea, having come to the sea for her health, is to avoid it, -and seek the rather scrubby sort of woods which is all you can expect at -the seaside. So every afternoon nearly we take a donkey to Ruswarp or to -Cock Mill, and "ride and tie." We used to pick out a very smart donkey, -but a very naughty one. He was called Bishop Beck, perhaps for that -reason, and he went slow,--that was to be expected, but when he stopped -quite still and wouldn't move for an hour or more in the middle of Cock -Mill Wood, long, long after one had stopped beating him (for he looked -at us and made us feel ridiculous), Ariadne said she would rather do -without adventitious aid of this kind, for it interfered with her -afflatus. - -She walks up and down in the wood paths, finding rhymes, which seems the -hardest part of poetry. - -"Dreams--streams--gleams--" she goes on. - -"Breams?" I suggest. - -"Not a poetical image!" - -"It isn't an image, it is a fish." - -"It won't do. Am I writing this poem or are you?" - -I don't argue. It doesn't really matter much how Ariadne's poems turn -out. Being Papa's daughter she is sure to find a hearty reception for -her initial volume of verse. - -We used to stay out till what Ariadne called Dryad time. She thought she -saw white figures hiding behind the trees in the dusk. Little pellets -made of nuts and acorns and dead leaves, and so on, used to fall on us -out of the thickets, and Ariadne said it was the Dryads pelting us. She -thinks trees are alive, and that one of the reasons you hear ghosts in -all old houses, is the wood creaking because in the night it remembers -it was once a tree. I prefer to believe in ordinary solid ghosts instead -of rational explanations like that. But still Ariadne's funny ideas make -a walk quite interesting. Of course we never talk of such things at -home, among materialists and realists like Aunt Gerty and Mother and -George. George makes plenty of use of birds in his books, but he once -came home from a visit to St. John's College at Cambridge, and told us -that he had been kept awake all night by a beastly nightingale under his -window. Now I have never heard this much-vaunted bird, but I am sure, -from Matthew Arnold's poem where he calls it Eugenia, it must be a -heavenly sound, quite worth while being kept awake by. - -Ariadne and I stay out very late till it is getting dark, hoping to hear -it, in Cock Mill Wood, and then we go home and race through supper, and -then go out again, on the quays and piers this time. We don't know or -care what George and his friends are doing, up above us, in the smart -hotel on the cliff. What I should just love would be for some of them -and George to come down for a walk in the dark and perhaps meet us, and -for George to say, "Who are those little wandering vagabonds flitting -about like bats? Why doesn't their father or mother keep them at home in -the evenings?" It would be so nice, and Arabian Nightish! - -At very high tides, we stay out very late, and take a shawl, and sit on -a capstan and tuck it round us, and listen for a certain noise we love. -It is when the water gets into a little corner in the heap of stones by -the Scotch Head, and gets sucked in among them somehow, and then we hear -a sort of sob that is better than any ghost. Ariadne and I put our heads -under the shawl when we hear it, but not quite, so as to prevent us -hearing properly. - -The harbour smells at low water, and the town children yell and scream, -and it isn't poetical then. So Ariadne and I like to go away on the -Scaur and put our fingers in anemones' mouths, and pop seaweed purses, -and pretend we are lovers cut off by the tide, as they are in novels. In -the afternoons when the harbour is full we sit on the mound above the -Khyber Pass, and watch the water filling up the hole between the -opposite cliff and the cliff ladder. It is all quite quiet then. We -don't hear any town cries, for the children that make the noise are -turned out of their playground, and their mothers out of their good -drying-ground, and the boats begin to go out of the harbour in a long, -soft, slow procession-- - - _And the stately ships go on_ - _To their haven under the hill._ - -I am sure Tennyson meant Whitby when he wrote that. - -One night we could not sleep because the woman next door had had her -"man" drowned, and cried and moaned for hours. He was a fisherman, and -we had seen his boat go out third in the row the day before. He is -supposed to have fallen overboard in the night? Next day, Mother went in -and gave her five shillings and she stopped crying. - -Mr. Aix had a try to paint the view in front of our windows. At least he -said there was no such thing in nature as a "view," and left out the -Church and the Abbey, because they "conventionalized" things so. He -belongs, he said, to the Impressionist School, if any. He got quite -excited about his drawing, and at last went and borrowed a station truck -to sit on; it raised him a little. One day a chance lady sat down on one -of the handles, and over he went. It served him right for leaving out -the two best things in Whitby. - -When George came, Ariadne and I used to take turns to go and lunch with -him at his breakfast, where we had French cookery. There were leathery -omelets that bounced up like the stick in the boys' game when you -touched the end of them with a spoon, and fillets that you wouldn't have -condescended to have for a pillow, but still, it was French. - -We were dressed nicely and took our clean gloves in our hands, and -George wasn't ashamed of us, and introduced us to his friends. Lady -Fylingdales' Mr. Sidney Robinson said I was like George--that I had his -nose. I went to bed that night with a clothes-peg out of the yard on it, -to improve its shape. But the old lady was half blind, and all made of -manner. I also saw the Lord Aunt Gerty might have led astray, and he -hadn't a manner of any sort, and his nose wanted to run away with his -chin. - -George had no fault whatever to find with the arrangements Mother had -made for his comfort, and he told her so, the first time he saw her, in -Baxter Gate, coming out of the Post Office. The first place George flies -to in a town is the Post Office, to send telegrams. He corresponds -entirely by telegram with some people; he says it is paying five-pence -more for the privilege of saying less. We had been shopping. George -spotted us, and Mother thought he had rather not be recognized, but he -was good that day and he actually left Mr. Sidney Robinson--a commoner, -married to a countess, and that exactly describes him, Aunt Gerty -says--to say a word to his own wife. It was market day, and we had -bought several things in the Hall across the water. A pound of -blackberries and a cream cheese, and a chicken and a cabbage, each from -a different old woman with a covered basket. Mother had a net and I a -basket to put them in. I was glad that George did not offer to "relieve" -us of them, like the young men Aunt Gerty picks up here; but he stopped -and talked to us quite nicely for a long time. He and Mother seemed to -have a great deal to say to each other, and the basket-handle began to -cut my arm in half. Also it was a very hot day. George had on a white -linen suit, and a straw hat from Panama. He looked quite cool, and like -Lohengrin or the Baker's man. Mother didn't. She looked hot. I touched -her elbow, not so much because of my arm that ached, but because she -looked like that, nor did I think it looks well to stand talking in the -street to gentlemen, even if it is your own husband. - -"Well, George," she said, taking my hint at once, "we must be going on. -The butter is melting and the chicken grilling and the cabbage wilting -while I stand here talking to you." - -"Charming!" said George, but he wasn't thinking of us, but of Mr. -Robinson, who was champing a few yards away. We said "Good-bye" without -shaking hands. George, I think, might have lifted his hat. I have read -of fine gentlemen who lifted their hat to an apple-woman, let alone -their wife and child. - -George and his friend walked off together. I suppose the Robinson man -was too well-bred to ask George who his lady-friend was, as any of Aunt -Gerty's men would do, but he certainly stared a good deal. Of course he -knows who we are, everybody in Whitby does, I should think, and they -most likely conclude that it is less unkindness than the eccentricity of -genius. If you haven't got that blasted thing called genius, I suppose -you can bear to live in the same house with your wife! - -We walked slowly home with our purchases. Mother had a headache all -dinner, and lay down in the afternoon. - -"I met your father, Ben," she said at supper. "His boots want a little -attention." - -"I don't believe," said Ben crossly, "that any one ever had a more -tiresome man to valet. He will wear his clothes all wrong, and then is -always ragging and jawing at a fellow because they don't look nice." - -"Hush, Ben, he is your father." - -"Hah, I was forgetting!" said Ben, and gave one of his great laughs, as -if you were breaking up coal, or something. Ben is now so changeable and -nervous that you never know where to have him. He is growing up all -wrong, but what can you expect of a boy brought up by women? He never -sees a boy of his own position, though I know that in London he has some -low companions he daren't bring to the house. The Hitchings are his only -respectable friends, but they live such a long way off now. Jessie -Hitchings is devoted to Ben, but she is only a girl like Ariadne and me. -Mr. Hitchings told mother, years ago, that the boy was being ruined, and -Mother cried and said she knew it, but could do nothing, for his father -was by way of educating him at home till something could be settled. -Snaps of Latin, and snacks of Greek, that is all George gives the poor -boy when he has a moment, and that is never. - -This is the only grievance Mother has, although Aunt Gerty is always -trying to persuade her she has several, and putting her back up. Mother -ends by getting cross with her. - -"For goodness' sake, you Job's comforter, you, leave off your eternal -girding at George. Can't you see, that as long as a man has his career -to establish--his way to make----" - -"His blessed thoroughfare is made long ago, or ought to be. That is what -I can't get over----" - -"You aren't asked to get over it. It is not your funeral, it is mine, so -shut up. A man like George, who is dependant on the public favour, needs -to be most absurdly particular, and careful what he does lest he injure -his prestige. Look at yourself! You know very well in your own -profession how very damaging it is for an actor to be married; that if -an actress marries her manager, he has to pay dear for it in the -receipts. She had better not figure as his wife in the bills, if she -wants him to get on. You can't eat your cake--I mean your title--and -have it. No, it's bound to be Miss Gertrude Jennynge on the bills, even -if it is Mrs. What-do-you-call-it in the lodgings, with a ring on her -finger, and every right to call herself a married woman. The public -don't care for spliced idols. An artist has to stand clear, and preserve -his individuality, such as it is!" - -"And run straight all the time. I'll give George credit for that. But -there, whatever's the good of it to you? A man can make a woman pretty -fairly miserable, even if he is stone-faithful to her. It's then it -seems all wrong somehow, and doesn't give her a chance of paying him in -his own coin!" - -I think Aunt Gerty is the reason why George fights so shy of his family. -He hates her style, and yet he can hardly forbid Mother seeing as much -as she likes of her own sister. The trail of the stage is over us all. -Not that I see anything a bit wicked about the stage myself! I have -never noticed anything at all wrong, and actors and actresses are the -kindest people in the world! But there is a queer, worn, threadbare, -rough, second-rate feeling about them. Off the stage--and I have never -seen them on--they are tired and slouchy and easy-going. Aunt Gerty is -most good-tempered and will do anything to help a pal, and takes things -as they come; those are her good points. But she talks such a lot about -herself, and never opens a book that isn't a novel, and wears cheap -muslins and beaded slippers in the street, and lots of chains that seem -to be always getting caught on men's buttons. She calls men "fellows." -She is always going to play Juliet at one of the London houses. Meantime -she puts up with provincial companies. She makes the best of it, and she -tells us she is going to play Nerissa in the Bacon Company, as if she -had got engaged for a parlourmaid in a good house, and discusses Ariel -as if Ariel were a tweeny or up-and-down girl between the sky and the -earth, and Puck a smart clever Buttons. She speaks of her nice legs as a -workman might of his bag of tools. She can sing and dance, when she -isn't asked to act. She has cut all her hair short to make it easier for -wigs. Her great extravagance is in wigs. She calls them "sliding roofs" -for convenience in talking about them in trains and omnibuses. When she -did wear her own hair she dyed it, so I like the wigs better, as there's -no deception. - -If Mother was ever an actress, which I don't somehow believe, though -Jessie Hitchings said once that she had heard people say so, it has all -been knocked out of her. She dresses very well, always in simpler things -than Aunt Gerty. She left off her waist years ago, to please George, and -now that it is the fashion not to have one, she is in the right box--I -mean stays. Her hair is brown, and she mayn't frizzle it, so it is soft -and pretty like a baby's. She generally wears black, over lovely white -frilled petticoats that she gets up herself to keep the bills down. She -has such little hands that she can pick her gloves out of the -five-and-a-half boxes at sales, which are always much reduced. So few -people have small hands. She may not wear high heels, and that is a -grief to her, as she isn't very tall, but hers are very pretty feet, and -she can dance. - -George doesn't know that she can dance. I do. Once Mr. Aix asked her to -dance for him when I was in the room. Aunt Gerty played on the -tin-kettle piano. Mother danced a cake-walk, which I thought very ugly, -and then a queer step that a friend had taught her when she was a child. -In one part of it she was dancing on her hands and her feet at the same -time. It was the queerest thing, and she left her dress down for that -and it lay in swirls about the carpet. Mr. Aix said it was the dance -that Salome must have danced before Herod, and he quite understood John -the Baptist, and where did she get it? But Mother wouldn't tell him. -She said it was a memory of her stormy youth in the East End. - -Mr. Aix said that she could make her fortune doing it as a turn at a -Society music hall, as it would be something quite new and decadent. -That is just what Society wants--the slight, morbid flavour! Then Mother -put on her short skirt and did the ordinary vulgar kind of dance they -teach now, and I liked it best. She was everywhere at once, smart and -spreading out in all directions, like spun glass on a Christmas card. -Her eyes danced too. Ben said he couldn't have believed she was his -mother! - -Then Aunt Gerty performed, and she is professional. But it was not the -same thing. Aunt Gerty's legs are thick, and compared with Mother's like -forced asparagus to the little pretty, thin, field-grown kind. Mother's -dancing was emphatically dramatic, Mr. Aix said. - -I asked him if Mother could act, and he answered, "My dear child, your -mother can do anything she has a mind to." - -"Then why doesn't she have a mind?" I at once said, forgetting how it -would upset our household and George if she were to go on the stage. -Mother naturally remembers this, and stays domestic out of virtue. - -"I wish you would write a play for me, Mr. Aix," said Aunt Gerty, "and I -would get a millionaire to run it. I wonder, now, what one could do with -Mr. Bowser?" - -She went off in a brown study, and Mr. Aix said rudely, "I will write a -play for Lucy sooner," looking at Mother, who was sitting fanning -herself with her pocket-handkerchief. "She has got the stuff in her, I -do believe. Gad! What a chance! What a lever! What a facer--!" - -And he dropped off into a brown study too! Mother went and mended Ben's -blazer. - -Mr. Aix isn't staying with us, we have no room in our house; he has a -room over the coast-guard's wife, but he comes in to us for his meals. I -don't believe George realizes this, or he would tell him he is throwing -himself away, and losing a good chance of advertising his books. Mr. -Aix's books seem to go without advertising, more than George's do--I -suppose it is because they are so improper. - -At any rate, he prefers to throw in his lot with us. One day we were all -having a picnic-tea at Cock Mill. The party consisted of Mother, me and -Ariadne, Aunt Gerty and Mr. Aix, and an actor friend of hers and his -wife, who was acting for a week at the Saloon Theatre. Mr. Bowser, whom -Aunt Gerty wants either to marry or get a theatre out of, was with us -too. They call him the King of Whitby, because he owns so many plots in -it, and is going to stand for it in the brewing interest next election. -We had secured the nicest table, the one nearest the stream, and had -just tucked our legs neatly under it, when a carriage drove up. Aunt -Gerty and the King of Whitby were at that moment in the old woman's -cottage who gives us the hot water, toasting tea-cakes. - -The Fylingdales' party got out of that carriage, and George got slowly -down off the box. They trooped into the enclosure, and Mr. Sidney -Robinson, trying to be funny, asked the old woman if she could see her -way to giving them some tea. - -"Here o' puppose, Sir!" said she, as of course she is. She pointed out -the table that was left and that led them past us. - -If Aunt Gerty had been there with Mr. Bowser she would certainly have -claimed George as a relation and said something awkward, but she was -luckily toasting tea-cakes, and had perhaps not even seen them. I saw -George just look at Mother, and I saw her smile a very little, and make -him a sign that he was to go right past us, and not speak or seem to -know us before. Of course Mr. Aix never spoils any one's game, not even -George's. So he went on talking hard to the actor's wife, though I saw -his lip curl. I, of course, never need be given a cue twice, so I kicked -Mother hard under the table for sympathy, but preserved a calm superior. - -Aunt Gerty and Mr. Bowser came out with plates full of tea-cakes they -had cooked, and I didn't know if it was the fire or Mr. Bowser had made -Aunt Gerty's cheeks so red--I hoped the latter for her sake. They had no -idea of what had happened while they had been toasting and flirting, it -appeared from their manners, which were bad. Aunt Gerty always puts an -extra polish on hers when George is present, and even Mr. Bowser would -have added a frill or so to suit the aristocracy. - -Our party was very gay. Actors all can make you laugh if they can do -nothing else, and our shrieks of laughter must have made the other party -quite envious, for they were as quiet as a mouse and as dull as the -stream all overshadowed with nut-bushes and alders that grew over it -just there. - -Suddenly George got up, and left them, and came over to us, and Aunt -Gerty swallowed her tea the wrong way round, and had to have her -shoulder thumped. - -George took no notice of her, but put his hand on Mr. Aix's shoulder and -said something to him in a low voice. - -"Not if I know it!" Mr. Aix answered, quite violently, adding, "Many -thanks, old fellow, I am happier where I am." - -George looked awfully put out. Of course I knew what he wanted. Those -smart people up at the other table had expressed a wish to see Mr. Aix. -He is a successful though painfully realistic novelist, and George had -told them he was actually sitting at the next table, and had promised to -bring him over to them to be introduced. In his disappointment, he -glared at us all, especially the actor, who didn't care a brass farthing -for George's displeasure, and went on eating tea-cake _ad nauseam_. - -"Oh, all right!" said George, to cover his vexation, "if you prefer to -bury yourself in a----" - -"Easy all!" Mr. Aix said. "Leave everybody to enjoy themselves in their -own way. And we are depriving your delightful friends of----" - -George had turned and gone back to his delightful friends long before -Mr. Aix had finished his sentence, and Aunt Gerty patted the poor man on -the back till he wriggled. - -"Loyal fellow!" she said several times. She had got well on to it now, -and she started a fit of giggles that lasted all the rest of the time we -were there. It didn't matter much, for we were all quite drunk on weak -tea and laughter. - -But we turned as silent as mice as the Fylingdales' party, having had -enough of their dull tea, streamed past us, and got into their carriage, -and rolled away. George was not with them. I dare say he had got over -the hedge and gone round to meet the break by the road, not wanting to -walk past our party again, and to avoid unpleasantness. I supposed he -had paid for the tea; but no, this grand party forgot to do that, so -that in the end Mr. Aix paid for their refreshment for the old woman's -sake that she should not suffer. - -When they had gone, we felt relieved; but it sobered us somehow. Aunt -Gerty and the gentlemen smoked quietly, and we were so still that we -could hear the little beck bubbling over the loose stones beside us. -Then Aunt Gerty was persuaded to recite something, and she did "Loraine, -Loraine, Loree!" in a shy, modest voice. You see these were all her real -bosses, and she valued their approval, and the actor's wife is -considered very stiff in the profession. She herself sang "The banks of -Allan Water" very sadly and solidly, and Aunt Gerty cried. To cheer us -all up again the actor--rather a famous one, Mr. D--L----, did one of -his humorous recitations out of his London repertory for us, so that we -nearly died with laughing, and Aunt Gerty dried her tears, and whispered -to me that trying to laugh like a lady was so painful that she longed to -take a short cut out of her stays. - - - - -CHAPTER XIII - - -Lady Scilly came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda's Terrace. - -"They can't be parted long, poor things!" Aunt Gerty said, and Mother -hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her, -for a good blow, before she went to America. - -Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in "smalls" as Dick -Turpin, and Irene as "The Pumpeydore," and Irene as Greek Slave, and -Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the -principal stationers' windows. I should have thought she would have been -ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row -of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid--what Aunt -Gerty calls "la-di-dah" sort of people--can stand anything, so long as -it's public. - -When she wasn't dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just -a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out -a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two -gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with -her, and its lead kept getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and -round my father's legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He -wouldn't have stood that from any one but a popular favourite. - -I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt -Gerty. They stopped at Truelove's and looked at the picture-postcards. -She became very serious all at once. - -"I must go in and procure Myself!" she said to George, sniggling. In -they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove's -shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as -good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained -from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to -ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for -one never knows how a daughter's presence may interfere with a father's -plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don't want to injure his sales! - -Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not -approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her -face altogether. - -"The blighted idiot!" she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, "has -completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly -meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!" - -She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket, -and she sang out loud, while Aunt Gerty's open mouth betrayed her shock -at her audacity-- - - "Oh, I'm Contrition Eliza, - And she's Salvation Jane. - We once were wrong, we now are right, - We'll never go wrong again." - -"I can't quite promise that, alas! My friends won't let me. I will send -Salvation Jane to Lord R----y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen -dozen, please; isn't that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you -pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?" - -"Good business!" said my Aunt. "Let me see? How much has she rooked -him?" - -"Please don't ask me to do sums," said I. "Besides, George has a perfect -right to do as he pleases with his own money!" - -George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them. - -"Whatever do you want them for?" asked Irene. (He never lets me say -whatever.) - -"To send to my children." - -"Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked. - -"In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in -the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, -however. - -"And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great -book." - -"There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and -made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove -sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would -bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. -George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), -and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The -Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero -really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked -blank. - -"I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----" - -George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_, -that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or -_The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of -them." - -Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary! -Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty -soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of -sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear, -dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of -imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with -light----" - -It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty -didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand -suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water. - -"Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept -saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who -had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own -stupidity in upsetting the water. - -"Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew -well enough. - -"Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say -what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even -then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago. -She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the -sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind." - -"Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing. - -"Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be -electrified!" - -But Mother wasn't a bit electrified. - -"All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who -chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my -wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead -in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so -civil to her." - -"Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?" snorted Aunt -Gerty. - -"Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly's best friend." - -"Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural -friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always in -each other's pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there -she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I -don't believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may -well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take -it all out of one poor woman's life!" - -"I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure." - -"You sham it." - -"That is the next best thing to being it." - -"A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and -have got a husband that doesn't come within a hundred miles of -appreciating you." - -"Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do; -I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted -on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of -them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn't -condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!" -said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so -mild. - -I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty -thought so too, for she screamed out, "Bravo, Luce!" Mother burst into -tears. I don't think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother's tears, -so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at -something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever to go into -the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that -was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the -head, not hard--Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the -shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away. - -A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see -George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these -Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of -George, don't understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn't -like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is -death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for -half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches -cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing -with him--George _believes_ himself into his colds. He says that the -sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic -temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn't that, what he has is -the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this -may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and -that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to -talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother -came to him. - -"My dear boy, no!" Mother said, and George groaned as he always does -when she calls him boy, but invalids can't be choosers of phrases. "You -aren't going to die just yet." She went on, kindly banging his pillows -about--"I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to -look after you. I shouldn't wonder if they didn't make objections in the -house. There will be a bit of a fuss." - -"Who will make a fuss, Mother?" I asked, "and why should they?" - -"Don't ask questions about what you don't understand," Mother said -sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? "Run home -and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or -two, and that she is to send my things, just what I'll want for a couple -of nights." - -"Night-gown and toothbrush," said I. As I left George put out his hand -to Mother and said quite nicely-- - -"You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the -sick man's pillow?" - -Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his -cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She -kept saying, "I _know_ they'll think I am not respectable." - -The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left -them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty -chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said-- - -"This will clear up George's ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly -illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely, -don't he? Is its blessed poet's nose a good deal swollen?" - -I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture of the Pope and -Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things. -George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over -his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too -active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he -begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat -Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George's chest to soothe him. -It did, and he played with my hair. - -"I am an angel when I am ill," he said; "don't you find me so? Strong -natures like mine----" - -Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,--seaside roses always -look coarse, I think--and a lot of cards. - -"Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and -Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has -left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it, -for I don't mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room, -exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them, -though I don't suppose you can smell anything just now." - -She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene's card was on the top. It -had a monogram in one corner--a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard -of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one -lives and learns. - -"I don't, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman," -George said. "But what, as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as -an actress?" - -"I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half -her chances," Mother said eagerly. - -"No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances! -Irene has a genius for advertisement." - -"Look after the 'ads,'" said my Mother, "and the acts will take care of -themselves." - -"Good!" said George, "I should like to have said that myself." - -"I dare say you will, George," said Mother quite nicely, "when once I -get you well again." - -I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less -than a week, but she didn't let him out once during that time, and had -him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering -about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the -house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they -were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who -we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them. -I was too proud, but Ariadne's decision was complicated by a hopeless -attachment she had started. "Love is enough!" she used to say, "and I -_must_ go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!" - - - - -CHAPTER XIV - - -The young man that Ariadne loves is a more than friend of Lady Scilly, -and I knew him first. He was there that day I lunched for the first -time. On rice-pudding, I remember. Ariadne hardly knew him till we came -here, though they had both taken part in Christina's wedding. He had -just noticed her then; for once she was well turned out. On the strength -of that notice she asked him to call, and he didn't; he would call now -if she asked him, but we don't want him coming to the house on the quay, -for we couldn't insulate Aunt Gerty. - -He stays with Lady Scilly in the house she has taken in St. Hilda's -Terrace. Irene Lauderdale is there. He hates Irene, and contrives never -to be in her company more than he can help! That's one to us. - -His own family lives up in the dales, Pickering way. George stayed there -once, when Lady Hermyre was alive, and builds a sort of little -recitation on what he observed in his friend's house. Whatever isn't -ormolu is buhl. There are six Portland vases along the cornice of the -house containing the ashes of the family. Portraits of stiff horses and -squat owners all the way up-stairs. Everything, including the butler, -excessively _collet monte_, excepting the portraits of the ladies of the -family, frowning ascetically over their own bodices _decollete a -outrance_. Sir Frederick is one of the most prominent racing men of -Yorkshire, and the stables are model, but the house isn't. Prayers, bed -at ten, no bridge, and early breakfast, and prayers again. I don't think -George will ever be asked again, but I don't wonder Lady Scilly was able -to get hold of Simon. _She_ doesn't frown over her _decollete_ bodices, -and she is amusing in her silly way. Simon hangs round like one of those -young fox-hound puppies "at walk" that one sees in the villages, and -Lord Scilly looks after his future and got him into the Foreign Office. -I believe, though, Lord Scilly twigs about Ariadne caring for him, that -Lady Scilly doesn't, or else she would not let him out so freely. She -would be like most teachers and insist on her pupil's finishing his -term. A wise woman would not have brought Irene Lauderdale down here, to -preoccupy her. It will take her all her time to keep Simon away from -Ariadne, if once I give my mind to it. I do. Ariadne and Simon don't -make appointments, but they keep them. I am generally there, but I don't -count. There is the Geological Museum on the Quay, which is never used -for anything but casual appointments, and the old Library, where they -have all the three-volume people, Mrs. Gaskell and Miss Jewsbury and -Mrs. Oliphant. Ariadne and I read three a day regularly. We sometimes -meet Simon on the quay, when we are carrying a whole hodful, and -Ariadne won't let him carry them for her, she doesn't like him to know -that she is reading all about Love. - -Simon doesn't really want to find out. He never wants very much -anything. He never fights any point. That is what I like about him, and -hate about Bohemians. They never glide or slip over things, they always -scrape and drag and insist. But people who have got their roots in the -country, as Simon has, are simple and not fussy and have no fads. I -wonder what Simon thinks of George? It is the last thing he would tell -me or Ariadne. He likes Mr. Aix, rather, but he would not, perhaps, if -he had read any of his novels? Mr. Aix makes him laugh, and I like to -hear his nice little curly laugh. If only Simon's eyes were bigger, he -really would be very handsome. Ariadne's, however, are big enough for -two. - -This is the first time she has ever been in love, she says, and it -hurts--women. It doesn't hurt a man who loves in vain, only clears up -his ideas a little, and shows him the kind of girl he really does want -when the first choice refuses him. A refusal from first choice only -sends him straight off with his heart in his mouth to second choice, who -is waiting for the chance of him. I am sure that is the way most -marriages are made--hearts on the rebound. The first girl is a true -benefactor to her species, and gets her fun and her practice into the -bargain. Ariadne has now reduced this to a system, from novels. In -refusing, you must remember to hope after you have said that it can -never be, that you will at least always be friends. With regard to -accepting, she thinks and I think, that the nicest way is to hide your -burning face on the lapel of his coat and say nothing, and then when you -come up again the rough stuff of his coat has made you blush, a thing -neither Ariadne nor I have ever been able to manage for ourselves. - -Novels tell you all sorts of things, for instance, when and what to -resent, otherwise you might say thank you! for what is really an -affront. Out on the Cliff Walk the other day, it came on to rain, and a -man offered to lend Ariadne his umbrella, and see her to her own door. A -harmless, nay useful proposal. But my sister knew--from novels--that -that sort of thing leads to all sorts of wickedness, and that she must -unconditionally, absolutely refuse. She was broken-hearted at having to -sacrifice her best hat, but bravely bowed and refused his offer, and -went off in the rain, feeling his disappointed eyes right through the -back of her head, and hearing the plop-plop of the rain-drops on the -crown of her hat all the way home. But she had behaved well. That was -her consolation. - -Aunt Gerty took that man on afterwards--she met him turning out of the -reading-room at the saloon, and he offered the very same umbrella! Aunt -Gerty accepted it, and hopes to accept the owner too some day, for it -was Mr. Bowser. - -Ariadne goes the wrong way to work. Her one idea when she gets on at all -with any man--and she does get on with Simon, that is certain--is to -collar him, to curtail his liberty, and give him as many opportunities -of being alone with her as she can. She says it is an universal feminine -instinct. Very well, if she chooses to be guided by this wretched -feminine instinct, she will muff the whole thing. She should let the -idea of being alone with her come from him, lead him on to propose it, -and manage it himself, and then--squash it! - -Men are very easily put off or frightened; a racehorse isn't in it with -them. To feel at ease, they must be made to think that it is all quite -casual, that nobody has arranged anything, and that as for themselves, -though there is no harm in them, no one particularly wants them. If they -can get it into their heads that they won't be conspicuous by their -absence, they buck up immediately, and want to be in your pocket. When -one is at a theatre, one is quite comforted by the sight of Extra Exit -stuck up here and there, although I dare say if you came to thump at -those doors in despair you would find it no go! - -So when Ariadne makes a face at me to leave her, I don't see it. I sit -tight, wherever we are, knowing that young men adore being chaperoned. -And at parties, if you notice, the one woman they never throw a word to -is the woman they adore, and mean to secure. They want to marry her, not -talk to her. The casual Society girl will do for that. Ariadne sometimes -comes back from a party quite disconsolate, because so-and-so hasn't -said a word more than was strictly necessary for politeness to her. - -"Excelsior!" I said. "I do really believe he is thinking of it." - -Simon always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, and gives to beggars -in the street. Yet his eyes are little, and Cook always said that that -goes with meanness. Anyway they are very bright, like an animal that you -come on suddenly in a clump of green in a wood, perhaps I mean a hare? -He always sees jokes first, and looks up and laughs. He is very keen on -hunting, and singing, but his father snubs him, and says he doesn't ride -as straight as Almeria, and has no more voice than an old cock-sparrow. -He would see better to ride if he wasn't short-sighted, anyway. I don't -believe he ever reads, except Mr. Sponge's Tour and Mr. Jorrocks' -something or other, and books in the Badminton Library. He knows a -little history, about St. Hilda and the Abbey, and I shouldn't be -surprised to hear that he thought she was some sort of ancestress of -his, and that Caedmon was a stable-boy about his Aunt Fylingdales' -estate. - -I feel quite like a mother to him, and Ariadne loves him passionately, -and is leaving off eating for his sake. Not on purpose exactly, but -because she is so worried about him. He is awfully nice to her, but he -never gets any nicer. He is nice to anybody; it is only because Ariadne -is the only girl in the set here about his own age, that it seems as if -it would be neat and right that he should fall in love with her. I am -not quite sure that Simon can fall in love, it is the dull men who do -that best, not the universal favourites. But if Simon has any love -latent, I am anxious to get it all for Ariadne. - -She hates herrings now, and doesn't care for cream. She lives -principally on jam-tarts and cheese-cakes. It is the proper thing to go -about eleven in the morning to that shop on the quay and eat tarts and -cheese-cakes standing, and watch people pass, and the bridge opening and -shutting to let tall funnels go through. Ariadne sometimes has to wade -through half-a-dozen tarts before Simon and Lady Scilly and the dogs and -the rest of them come round the corner of Flowergate, and surely it is a -pity to spoil your complexion for the sake of any young man in the -world? No digestion could stand the way Ariadne treats hers for long. -She plays it very low down on her constitution generally. She won't go -to bed till awfully late, but sits by the window telling her sorrow to -the sea and the stars, and writing poems to the harbour-bar, that never -moans that I know of. Luckily, as yet, it doesn't show in her face that -she has been burning the midnight oil, or candles. She burns three short -fours a night sometimes that she buys herself. She has made three pounds -altogether by writing poems that Mr. Aix puts in an American paper for -her. She doesn't let Simon know that she publishes, for it would -discredit her in his eyes. He says there's no harm in girls scribbling -if they like, but he is jolly well glad his sister doesn't. - -Simon is proud of his sister Almeria, and thinks her a "splendid girl." -She lives at their place with her widowed father, eight miles inland, -and only comes to Whitby when rough weather and wrecks are expected. -Then every one walks up and down the pier, and hopes that a hapless -barque will come drifting to their very feet. I don't mean we actually -want there to be a wreck, but if it has to be, it may as well be where -one can see it. For Ariadne has a tender heart, and when Aunt Gerty put -the loaf upside down on the trencher the other day, Ariadne at once -kindly put it on its right end again, for a loaf upside down always -betokens a wreck, and she knows all the superstitions there are. - -The two piers here are so awkwardly placed that in rough weather the -poor boats can't always clear them. So it is a regular party on the pier -when the South Cone is hoisted at the coastguard-station. Irene -Lauderdale wears a little shawl over her head like a factory girl. It -can't blow away, she says. She has been photographed like that, with -Lord Fylingdales. They say she is going to marry him, and do what Aunt -Gerty refused to do. - -I don't know if they are a very united family, but certainly his sisters -chaperon him most carefully, and have taken care to be great friends -with Irene, so as to have an excuse for being always with her. Lord -Fylingdales never gets a chance of seeing her alone. Dear Emily (Lady -Fenton) and dear Louisa (Mrs. Hugh Gore) are devoted to dear Irene, and -she thinks it is because she is so nice, so good form, not because she -is so nasty. They perfectly loathe and detest her. I heard Lady Fenton -abusing her to some one, talking in the same breath of Almeria Hermyre -as "one of us." The sisters would prefer Lord Fylingdales to marry his -cousin Almeria, of course, but her get-up is simply appalling. She wears -plain skirts and pea-shooter caps, and no fringe. George says she has -the most uncompromising forehead he ever saw--a _front candide_ with a -vengeance! I should think she soaps it well every morning, it looks like -that. - -Her father is about as queer as an old family can make him. I wish some -one would tell me why if you came in with the Conqueror you are -generally queer, or without a chin? Why do you always marry your near -relations? Do you get queerer as you go on? No one ever answers these -questions. Sir Frederick Hermyre has acres of stubbly chin, true, but he -takes it out in queerness. He always wears white duck trousers, like the -pictures of Wellington, whom he is rather like. He says "what is the -good of being a gentleman if you can't wear a shabby coat?" and does -wear it. His house at Highsam is a show house, only they don't show it. -They are too careless, and too untidy, and too mean in the shape of -housekeepers. One day some Whitby tourists went over to Saltergate in a -break, and strolled up his drive to look at the Jacobean Front, and met -Sir Frederick, as shabby as usual; he had been working in a stone quarry -he has there, I believe. - -"Did you wish to see me?" he asked the front tourist politely. - -"Thanks, old cock, any extra charge?" said the tourist. It was of course -all the fault of those old trousers and linen coat, and I have heard -that Sir Frederick was not so very angry, and stood the man a glass of -beer. He is a Liberal in spite of owning land. Simon is a Conservative. -Eldest sons are always different politics to their fathers. We never see -the old man hardly except on these stormy pier parties, and then he -stalks up and down the pier with his daughter among us all, and though -he isn't exactly rude to anybody, he never seems to hear or care to hear -what anybody is saying. Blood tells. Lady Scilly has given him up in -disgust long ago; he simply answered her straight as long as he could, -and when he didn't understand her, he just shook his head and grinned -and turned away. - -Simon stood by, looking rather like a little whipped dog. He is awfully -afraid of his father, who isn't proud of him, but of Almeria, who he -says has got all the brains of the family, and ought to have been the -boy. - -Simon tried introducing Ariadne to Almeria, but Ariadne's fringe proved -an insuperable barrier. As for Ariadne, Almeria's naked forehead made -her feel quite shy, she said, such a double-bedded kind of forehead as -that needed covering. I said, all the same, she was an idiot not to make -friends with Simon's sister, for he had obviously a great respect for -the girl's opinion. She might have plenty of sense in spite of her bald -forehead and clumpers of boots! But it was no use, they stood glaring at -each other like two Highland cattle, while Simon was trying to invent a -mutual bond between them. - -"My sister writes a little," he said. - -"Only for nothing in the Parish Magazine," said Almeria, witheringly. - ---"And goes about," he went on, "with a hammer collecting----" - -"Bedlamites and Amorites," said I, to make them laugh. - -They didn't laugh, and Simon continued-- - -"And pebbling and mossing and growing sea anemones in basins." - -Then I got excited, and as Ariadne stood mum, I supported the -conversation. - -"And isn't it funny to feel them claw your finger if you put it in their -mouth--well, they are all mouth, aren't they?" - -"And stomach!" said Almeria, turning away politely. - -Ariadne had hardly said a word, but had left the conversation to me. But -any one could see that these two never could get on. Ariadne looked as -she stood on the pier, plucking at bits of hair that would get loose, -just like a pale butterfly caught in the rain, while Almeria stood as -fast as a capstan and as stumpy. And the abominable thing was, that -Almeria was not in the least rude. She was always civil, perfectly -civil--but civility is the greatest preserver of distances there is if -people only knew. - -Simon gave her up as far as Ariadne was concerned. He stuck to Ariadne, -but did not neglect other girls or any one else for her sake, and so -compromise her. He has got a lot of tact. Ariadne hasn't any, but she is -gentle and easily led, and Simon is the kind of boy who is going to grow -masterful, and likes a girl who gives him the chance of standing up for -her and managing for her. Perhaps he is a little bit sorry for her. Not -because she is so dreadfully in love with him; he isn't conceited enough -to see that, or Ariadne would have shown him long ago. He is sorry for -her because she gives herself away so in so many ways, looking pretty -all the time. That is important, for it is no good looking pathetic, -unless you look pretty as well. He chaffs her about her fluffy hats that -go all limp in the salt sea-spray, and her pretty thin shoes that let -the water in, and her hair that never will stay where she wants it. She -has got into the way of continually arranging herself, patting a bow -here, pulling her sleeves down over her wrist, and arranging her hair. -"Always at work!" he says suddenly, and Ariadne's guilty hands go down -like clockwork. It isn't rude, the way he says it. He looks at her -kindly, not cheekily. It is that kind sort of fatherly look that I like, -and that makes me think he is fond of Ariadne. - -She is different from Lady Scilly, whom he is beginning slightly to -detest. Sometimes he looks quite glum when she is ordering him about, -but he obeys. What do married women do to men to make them their slaves -as they do, and yet one can see by their eyes that they don't want to? -And why are the women themselves the last to see that the servant wants -to give notice and would willingly forfeit a month's wages to be allowed -to leave at once? Lady Scilly is just like a mistress who avoids going -down into her own kitchen to order dinner, at a time when relations are -strained, lest the cook takes the chance of giving her warning. Lady -Scilly is the least bit afraid of Simon's cooling off, and just now -prefers to give him his orders from a distance. - -She calls Lord Scilly "Silly-Billy," and "my harmless, necessary -husband." He is not dangerous, and he certainly is useful, for she -really could not go about alone wearing the hats she does. She has one -made of a whole parrot, and a coat made of leopard skins. I like Lord -Scilly. He is rather fat, and knows it. He has a hoarse sort of voice, -and yet I don't think he drinks much. Perhaps it is the open-air life -that he leads among horses and dogs and grooms; at Summer Meetings and -Doncaster, and so on. He is well known as a fearless rider, and risks -his neck with the greatest pleasure. If I were Lady Scilly, I should -much prefer him to George, though not to Simon. His chest is broader -than George's, and he is taller than Simon, but then she isn't married -to either of those. Marriage is like the rennet you put into the -junket--it turns it! - -He seems quite used to the kind of wife he has got. He isn't at all -anxious to change her. He hardly ever talks about her--even to me. That -is manners. Even George has got that sort of manners, so that half these -smart people don't realize that my father has got a wife, or ever had -one! They might, if they liked, and after all, if Mother doesn't choose -to know his friends, he cannot force her! She won't go out with him, -though she makes no difficulties about our going. She likes us to go, as -it opens our eyes and gives us chances. Her business is to see that we -are clean and have nice hair not to disgrace him, and we don't, or he -would soon chuck us. - -Lord Scilly always insists on our being asked to the picnics and parties -they give. He likes us. He takes more notice of us than she does. I -think he is a very lonely man, and quite glad of a little notice and -attention even from a child. He is very observant too, I don't believe -much goes past his eye. He thinks of everything from the racing point of -view. Once when Lady Scilly and Ariadne were both standing on either -side of Simon, receiving about an equal share of his attention, or so it -seemed, Lord Scilly suddenly chuckled and said-- - -"I back the little 'un!" - -He always talks of and to Ariadne as if she were very young indeed, and -it is the surest way to rile her. She never forgave Mrs. Ptomaine a -notice of hers on the dresses at some Private View or other, when she -alluded to Ariadne's frock as worn by "a very young girl." Lord Scilly -thinks a girl ought to be able to stand chaff, and is always testing -her. - -Ariadne had a birthday while we were at Whitby, and it fell on the day -fixed for a picnic to Robin Hood's Bay. Simon sent her a present by the -first post in the morning, a fan that he had written all the way to -London for, in payment of some bet or other he had invented--I suppose -he did not think it right to give an unmarried girl a present without -some excuse like that?--and of course Mother and Aunt Gerty and I gave -her something, and even George forked out a sovereign. That was all she -expected, and not even that. - -However, all the way driving to the picnic, Lord Scilly kept telling her -that he was going to give her something as well; I was sure he was only -teasing her, for there are no shops worth mentioning in Robin Hood's -Bay, so I advised her to brace herself for a disappointment. - -The moment he got to Robin Hood's Bay, he was off by himself, and away -quite ten minutes, coming back with a showy paper parcel. At lunch he -gave it her with a great deal of ceremony, so that everybody was -looking. It was worse than I even had thought, a hideous china mug with -"A Present for a Good Girl" on it in gilt letters. Ariadne has it now, -only the servants have washed off the gilt lettering, using soda as they -will. The baby was christened in it. But I am anticipating. - -I had my eye on her as she untied the parcel, hoping and wondering if -she would stay a lady in her great disappointment? She did. She thanked -him quite formally and prettily for his charming present, though I saw -her lip tremble a very little. I was awfully pleased with her, and so -was Simon Hermyre, for I saw he particularly noticed her behaviour. As -for the Scillys, their nasty little joke fell rather flat in consequence -of Ariadne's discretion. - -It was a most fearfully hot day. We all sat on the cliff in tiers, and -talked about the delightful golden weather which was so oppressive and -beastly that there was nothing to do but lie about and smoke. So they -did. The men mopped their foreheads when they thought no one was -looking, and the women used _papier poudree_ slyly in their -handkerchiefs. Only Ariadne had none to use, and kept cool by sheer -force of will. I was all right, being only a child. - -Ariadne was sitting a little apart, with me, and she was writing a Poem -to the sea, and she told me in a whisper as far as she had got-- - - "The patient world about their feet - Lay still, and weltered in the heat." - -"What else could it do but lie still?" I said, and suddenly just then -Simon got up-- - -"I say! I'm going to take the kids for a sail! Bring your new mug, -Missy, and take your tiny sister by the hand, so that she doesn't fall -and break her nose on the cliff steps." - -After the mug incident I don't see how anybody could have objected, or -tried to prevent Ariadne from taking the advantages of being treated as -a baby, and I expect that was what Simon thought. Anyhow, Ariadne got -up, and went with Simon and me as bold as any lion. It is a well-known -fact that Lady Scilly can't stand the sea in small quantities like what -you get in a boat, though of course she goes yachting cheerfully. None -of the others were enough interested in Simon to care to move, and take -any exercise in this heat. George gave her an approving little nod as -she passed him. - -We had a lovely sail of a whole hour's duration. We had an old boatman -wearing his whiskers stiffened with tallow, who told us he had been a -smuggler, and treated Ariadne and Simon as if they were an engaged -couple, out for a spree, with me thrown in for a make-weight. It came on -to blow a little, and got much cooler. Ariadne lost her hat, and had to -borrow a red silk handkerchief of Simon's and tie a knot in it at all -four corners and wear it so. She looked most proud and happy, as if she -had on a crown, not a hat. - -When Lady Scilly saw the latest thing in hats, she cried out, "Oh, my -poor Ariadne!" and helped her to hide herself more or less in the -waggonette going home. I didn't know before how becoming the cap was! - - - - -CHAPTER XV - - -When George came, he took out a family subscription to the weekly balls -at the Saloon, and we go, Ariadne and I. Mother will not and Aunt Gerty -may not. Mother expressly stipulates that she shall refrain from doing -as she wishes in this one particular, and as Aunt Gerty is mother's -guest, she has to please her hostess. She grumbles a good deal at -George's bearishness to her, in depriving her of any source of amusement -in this dull place, but as a matter of fact she is very much taken up -with Mr. Bowser. He was Ariadne's umbrella man. The Umbrella dodge came -off with Aunt Gerty, and this unpoetical two became fast friends on the -cliff-walk one rainy day. Mr. Bowser is a rich brewer, and very much -mixed up with the politics of this place. He owns three blocks of -lodging-houses on the Front. Of course Simon Hermyre's people won't have -anything to do with him. It would be awkward if Ariadne married Simon -and Bowser had previously married Ariadne's legal aunt. If Aunt Gerty -does marry Mr. Bowser, then I do think George would be justified in -cutting himself off from us all. To be the brother-in-law of Mr. Bowser -would be the ruin of him. Well, chay Sarah, Sarah! as George says -sometimes. At any rate we have no right to interfere with Aunt Gerty -trying to do the best she can for herself. She is awfully kind to us and -very loyal, Mother says, and she never gets a good word from George to -make her anxious to please _him_. Mother gives her plenty of rope in the -Bowser business, on condition she doesn't try to squeeze herself into -the Saloon dancing set where George's friends go. - -The dancing at the Saloon is very poor. The balls are only an excuse for -going out on the Parade and watching the sea with a man. I like to watch -it best myself, without a man. I like to see the whole dark sheet of -water far away, and the thin white line near by that is all there is to -tell one where the little waves are lying flattened out on the shore. -The tide slips in so softly, minding its own business through the long -evening while the idiots above galumph about and dance polkas in the -great hall inside, with flags from the Crimea on the walls that flap in -the draught of the North wind, and remind us constantly that we are hung -over the sea. - -There is a nice boy I like--he is twelve, quite young, and doesn't need -conversing with. I simply take him about with me to prevent people -meeting me and saying, the way they do, "What, child, all _alo-one_ by -yourself?" which is so irritating. - -He never interferes, he trusts me, he likes me. He is the son of Sir -Edward Fynes of Barsom, and they keep horses. I might say they eat -horses and drink horses and sleep on horses there. Ernie wants me to -like him, so he brought me a list of his father's yearlings, with their -names and weights and what they fetched at the sale written out in his -own hand. It interested him, so he thought it would interest me. It must -have taken him hours to do, and when he put it into my hand, and ran -away, what amusement do you think I could get out of this sort of thing? - - Witch, ch. f. (II.B.), 2 yrs., Mr. Brooks, 21 guins. - Milkmaid (h.h.), 3 yrs., " Wingate, 30 guins. - Sappho (H.B. + ch.f.), Foal, 6 yrs., Lord Manham, 35 guins. - -And so on for a page of foolscap. Rather an odd sort of love-letter, but -I saw he meant it, and didn't tease him. - -Ernie and I moon about all the evening and watch the others. It is not -etiquette to interfere with a lady who has her own cavalier, and that is -why I annex Ernie, as Lady Scilly does Simon. We don't dance. I don't -care to begin the dance racket till I am out and forced, not I, nor do I -suppose the grown-ups want a couple of children getting into their legs -and throwing them down. No, I watch them, and Ernie watches me. - -Simon Hermyre and Lady Scilly dance half the time together. I suppose it -is _de rigueur_. And when they are not dancing they are talking of -money. I have heard them. I don't mind listening, for, of course, money -isn't private. And I think it revolting to talk business on moonlight -nights by the sea. They argue about bulls and bears and berthas, which -puzzled me at first, till Ernie told me they did not mean either animals -or women. Simon is not at all interested in any of them. Ernie (who is -at Eton) says it is because he has nothing on, and only talks about -stocks to please her. - -Simon does not talk about dirty money when he is with my sister, he does -not talk much about anything, and yet they seem to be enjoying -themselves. Perhaps Ariadne is a rest after Lady Scilly? - -One damp evening, Ariadne and he came out of the big hall together, but -before she sat down in her white dress on one of the iron seats outside, -Simon carefully wiped it with his handkerchief, though it hadn't been -raining. Then, without thinking apparently, he put it up to his own -forehead. - -"Phew! I'm hot," he said. "It's a weary old world! Hope I die soon!" - -Simon talks broad Yorkshire, I notice. Lady Scilly had been Simon's -partner before Ariadne, and I had passed with my boy--that's what the -grown-up women always call their special men!--just as Simon had taken -out his nice gold-backed pocket-book with his initials in diamonds that -I envy him so. - -"Blow these wretched figures! They won't come!" I heard him say. - -"On they come fast enough, not single spies, but in battalions," Lady -Scilly had answered pettishly; "what I complain of is that they won't -go! See if you can't pull me through, dear boy." - -I thought it indecent of her to make poor Simon do her sums for her, on -a heavenly night like this, when the tide is fully in, and all you can -see through the white rails of the Esplanade is a soft creeping heap of -dark water, like a pailful of ink. Simon now got up and looked down into -it, and his forehead became one mass of wrinkles, like a Humphrey's iron -building. - -And Ariadne got up too, and looked into the water with him, but she said -nothing. I know her pretty well, and that it was because she had nothing -to say, and as he evidently didn't want her to say it, it didn't matter. -She had put her hand on the railing, and it looked very nice and white -in the moonlight somehow, quite like a novel heroine's, so she is repaid -for her trouble and expense in almond paste-balls. Simon Hermyre looked -at it, as I used to stand and look at a peach or an apple on the wall -when I was little. He would have liked to pick it, as I would the apple -or peach, and hold it tight in his own hand, I thought, but he didn't, -but sighed instead and said-- - -"I wish I had a mother!" That wretched Ernie boy began to giggle. I -nearly smothered him, for I wanted to hear what Ariadne would say. - -"Do you?" she said. "I have." - -Did any one ever hear anything so stupid and obvious? Yet Simon seemed -to like it, for the next thing he said was-- - -"Why don't I know your mother? I expect she is gentle and sweet like -you." - -I have no doubt Ariadne would have been imbecile enough to answer Yes, -not seeing the pitfall there was hidden in the words, but at that very -moment George and Lady Scilly came out with a lot of other people. They -came drifting along to the balustrade where we were, and Lady Scilly put -her hand on Simon's shoulder very lightly, and George put his heavily on -Ariadne's. - -Simon whisked away his shoulder and wriggled as much as he dared. -Ariadne of course could not move at all. She said afterwards she felt as -if it was her own marriage-service, and that George was "giving this -woman away" quite naturally. He likes to see her with Simon and shows -it, it is the only time in his life that he is what they call fatherly. - -Lady Scilly gave Simon two taps. "I love this thing, you know," she said -to George. Then, going a little way back--"Just look at them! Isn't it -idyllic? Romeo and Juliet spooning on a balcony over the sea instead of -over a garden, and with a squawking gull instead of a nightingale to -listen to. And I--poor I--am Romeo's deserted Rosaline. Did Rosaline -take on Mercutio, I wonder, when she had had enough of Romeo?" - -She glared up at George, and the moonlight caught her face the wrong way -and made her look old. All the same, she would not have dared to say all -this if she hadn't felt sure of Simon, and it proved that he hadn't been -silly enough to make her think it worth while to be jealous of Ariadne. - -"I always thought Mercutio by far the most interesting character in the -piece. Come, good Mercutio! Romeo, fare--I mean flirt well!" - -They turned away and left Simon grinding his little pearly teeth. - -"I consider all that in _beastly_ taste!" he said, whacking the rail -with Ariadne's fan. Of course it broke, and Ariadne cried out like a -baby when you have smashed its favourite toy. - -Simon was thoroughly out of temper with all the world, Ariadne included. -Lady Scilly had called him Romeo; well, he was jealous of Mercutio! Such -is man--and boy! He spoke quite crossly to Ariadne. - -"I'll give you a new one. I'll give you twenty new ones. Let us go in -and dance--dance like the devil!" - -Ernie told me a great deal about Lady Scilly after they had all gone in. -He knows a lot about her, through his father, who has a place near the -Scillys in Wiltshire. He says his father says that at this present -moment she hasn't got a cent to call her own; what with gambling, and -betting, she is fairly broke. I wish, then, she would try to borrow -money off George--just once--for that would choke him off her soonest of -anything, and then he would perhaps be nicer to mother? - -Ariadne would not go to bed at all that night. She sat in the window, -eating dried raisins, just to keep soul and body together. And all the -time her affairs were progressing most favourably. She was vexed -because she saw that Lady Scilly did not consider her worth being -jealous of. I told her she was never nearer getting Simon than now when -he was bringing a heart that Lady Scilly had bruised by sordid monetary -considerations to her, to stroke and make well by her soothing ways. And -Ariadne is soothing, she can do the silence dodge well. She is a regular -walking rest-cure, I tell her, for those that like it. - -Simon was unusually nice to her all the next week, just as I prophesied -he would be. Then an untoward event happened. - -There were dances at the Saloon only once a week. Next night a conjuror -came to the Saloon Hall, called Dapping, and Aunt Gerty took us, paying -one shilling each for us. There were worse seats, only sixpence, but -there were also better, viz. the first four rows were three shillings. -The Scilly party with Irene Lauderdale were in them, and on the other -side, very obviously keeping themselves to themselves, there was Sir -Frederick Hermyre and Almeria, and a severe woman aunt, and Simon in -attendance. The Hermyres were staying all night at the hotel, and he had -to be with them for once, waiting on his father, not on Lady Scilly. It -couldn't have been as amusing for him as her party, that laughed and -joked, but still Simon as usual looked quite happy as he was. He would -have thought it rude to look bored, and he did look so nice and clean, -with his little _retrousse_ nose next to his father's beak, and -Almeria's large knuckle-duster of a proboscis framing them. I don't -suppose Simon even knew Ariadne and I were there, for we were a long way -behind, and he doesn't love Ariadne enough yet to scent her everywhere. -Next us was Mr. Bowser, Aunt Getty's mash, as she calls him. I believe -she had told him we were to be there. Ariadne and I were disgusted at -being mixed with Bowser, and tried to make believe we were a separate -party, and talked hard to ourselves all the time. Ariadne was in a white -muslin she had made herself--window-curtain stuff from Equality's sale. -It was pretty, but casual. She never will have patience to overcast the -seams or settle which side they are to be on, definitely. She had made -her hat too, of chiffon with a great trail of ivy leaves over the crown. -I wished she had been dressed more soberly, considering the company we -were in. - -I wasn't attending very much, but presently I heard Mr. Dapping with Mr. -Bowser, who as a leading citizen had gone on the stage, planning out a -sort of trick. Dapping was first blindfolded, and Bowser was to go into -the body of the hall and pretend to murder some one, and Dapping would -tell him afterwards whom he had murdered. Dapping even went off the -platform so as to be quite sure not to see, and Mr. Bowser came down the -gangway in the middle, shaking his snub head about as he selected a -victim--and he had actually the cheek to choose Ariadne! - -He didn't ask Aunt Gerty or Ariadne either, if he might take this -liberty, but just seized Ariadne by her thin muslin shoulder, and -pretended to drive a knife into her back. It all happened before she had -time to stop him. She wriggled, but of course they thought she was -acting up. Then he sat down, quite pleased with himself, beside Aunt -Gerty, and Mr. Dapping was released and his eyes unbandaged, and he came -plunging down the gangway till he came to our row. He was intensely -excited and puffing like a steam-engine, very disagreeable to hear. - -He seized Ariadne by the same shoulder Bowser had murdered her at, and -shook her, saying, "This is the victim!" - -It made Ariadne horribly common, Aunt Gerty said afterwards, though she -might easily have prevented it and told Bowser to hit one of his own -class! Anyhow, poor Ariadne turned all the colours of the rose and the -rainbow, and nearly cried for shame. She might as well have been on the -stage, for she was just as public. All the Scilly party had of course -turned round and were staring with all their eyes. Sir Frederick and -Almeria never moved at all. Poor Simon did,--just once--and I saw his -scared, disgusted face looking over his shoulder. I had never seen him -look like that before. It was awful! - -The conjuror went calmly on to the next trick, but poor Ariadne had been -thoroughly upset. She whispered to me, "I can't stand any more of this. -I believe I shall faint!" - -That wasn't true, I knew, she can't faint if she tries, but still any -one could see that she was feeling very uncomfortable. - -I said to my aunt, "We are going, Ariadne and I. You can stay behind if -you like." - -And we got up and passed out amid a row of sympathetic--that was the -worst of it--faces. Of course Aunt Gerty followed us out presently, and -scolded Ariadne all the way home for allowing herself to be made a -victim of. Ariadne never spoke, till we got in and up in our room. Then -she burst out crying. - -"He will never speak to me again. I know he won't. He is very proud, and -I have disgraced him--disgraced him before his order!" - -"You can't disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and -now you never will be." - -"No," Ariadne said, meekly, "I am unworthy of him." - -"You are very weak!" said I, "but on the whole I consider it was Aunt -Gerty's fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!" - -Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I -tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call -next day to show that _noblesse oblige_, and that he didn't think -anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn't suppose -he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser -and then by Dapping, again. - -All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the -eye of Whitby. It rained luckily. Next day she still wouldn't, and as -it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was -going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her. - -"No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else," I said; -"and they can't see that your shoulder is black and blue under your -gown." - -"I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin -too," she moaned, though I don't know what she meant, that it had made a -more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what. - -"I know one thing," she gulped. "Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall -cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him--cut him dead." - -"Why not? He murdered you." - -I think this was Ariadne's first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She -would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother -encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she -said several times, "Never again!" which is the most awful thing to say -to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn't to be trusted with girls, -and especially George's girls. Mother gave it her well. - -"You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! -I shall never hear the end of it from George." - -"George indeed! Why wasn't George looking after his own precious kids -then? I don't think he's got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be -having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much -surprised!" - -"You hold your wicked, lying tongue!" was all Mother said to her. -Mother, somehow, hasn't the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty. - -I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He -can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. "Paquerette -knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is -a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a -bit! She and I understand each other!" - -He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly -doesn't agree with him, or says she doesn't. "Scilly and I," she once -said to Ariadne, "are an astigmatic couple." She meant, she explained, -that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the -long-sighted eye. - -Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were -concerned. George's scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and -she couldn't possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne -could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn't stir out of -the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. -Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing -them into each other's arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If -Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon's being near her made her look -quite old and anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored. - -One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the -quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it's fashionable, and if -you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen -by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats -were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed -sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on -the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure -and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as -they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and -took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much -that he didn't ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of -Simon Hermyre's is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses -to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be -rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no -criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still -think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy. - -"Do let me have the pleasure," he kept saying, and "Do let me!" and -goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I -suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be -trying to do what they want in spite of themselves. - -"Then that is settled, thank the Lord!" I heard him say at last. (My -sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and -rather drowned their conversation.) "Just look at that sheet of silver -on the floor of the boat--all one night's haul! Suppose it was shillings -and half-crowns?" - -"Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as -you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is -very like a full court-train, isn't it, the one you are going to have -the privilege of paying for?" - -Simon said yes it was, but he didn't seem to like her quite so much as -he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have -grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched -look come over his face. - -Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come -there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my -sailor and came round behind her and said, "How do you do?" - -Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to -speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their -bathe. - -"How is your sister?" Simon asked me. - -"Very well, thank you--at least I mean not very well----" - -"I don't wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night." - -"Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did." - -"Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute -Bowser some injury I'll---- And the people she was with----? I beg your -pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both--wasn't it her -business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor's good-nature being imposed upon?" - -He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was -best to do for the best of all. - -"Oh, _that_ person," said I. "She wasn't anything to do with us. Miss -Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?" - -"I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like -that alone." - -"Why, I was with her!" - -"What earthly good are you, you small elf?" asked Simon seriously and -kindly, smiling down at me. "I wish to goodness _my_ sister----" - -I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take -to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn't say it. He is so prim and -reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, -and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called -Henderland in Northumberland. - -"Henderland," said I, "that's near where Christina lives." - -"Who is Christina?" - -"Why, George's old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best -man." - -"Peter Ball's! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. _'Have you forgotten, -love, so soon--That_ church _in June?'_ Yes, of course I used to call -her the Woman who Would--marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over -there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation." - -He wouldn't say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little -way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now -Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina -for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this -talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down -to a time, but I was wiser. I said "Good-bye" quite shortly, as if I -wasn't at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little -ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her -before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty -Aunt Gertys can't hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin -her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did -it at lunch. - -"Please, Aunt Gerty," I said, "if you meet me on the quays or anywhere -when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be -familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I -gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were." - -"Oh, did he ask?" said Aunt Gerty, jumping about. "He must have seen me -somewhere. In _Trixy's Trust_ perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, -you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course." - -"All right," said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now -don't you call that eating your cake and having it! - - - - -CHAPTER XVI - - -We all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough -to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly -that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the -air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it -more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she -completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which -she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the -brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very -patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was -feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented -it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken -heart. - -George left for Scotland. He _says_ he is going to shoot with the -Scillys. I don't know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben -Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn't matter. It was settled -that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland. - -Ariadne didn't like going straight on from Whitby, because she would -have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the -difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious -things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we -should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a -penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The -all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three -hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written -up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few -months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George's black velvet -fencing costume and his neat legs. - -George has _so_ much taste. He simply lives at Christie's. He cannot -help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says -they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them. - -The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina's. -I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after -a proper _bona fide_ shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George -gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and -another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing -mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the -out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She -has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All -types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a -_Miriam's Home Journal_, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the -Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye -Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a -heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling -about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn't scold them -lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and -the little tailor kept saying, "A pleat here would be beneficial to it, -Madam," or to his assistant, "Remove that fulness there!" till there -wasn't a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge. - -Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came -home. "Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne," I said to her, -imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him -and made him take ten shillings off the bill. - -I couldn't help thinking of a real country girl like Almeria Hermyre, -when Ariadne put this confection on for the first time in the -privateness of our bedroom. It was brown tweed turned up with "real cow" -as Ben said; there is even a piece of leather stitched on to her -shoulder where she is to rest her gun. Ariadne, who once pulled one leg, -that I daresay he could easily spare, off a daddy-long-legs, and -considered herself little better than a murderer! - -Ben, who was present at this private view, did not like her in it, and -told her so. He is so truthful that he never waits to be asked his -opinion. So long as he didn't tease her about Simon Hermyre, it did not -matter, but he is quite a gentleman, though rough. Indeed, nobody -mentioned Simon, though I could not help thinking of him a good deal in -connection with Ariadne's new dress. I was sure we should see him -somewhere in Northumberland. It isn't as big as America, and where there -is even a faint will there is generally a way. Ariadne was thinking of -him when she bought a billycock hat on purpose to stick in a moorcock's -wing Simon had once given her that he had shot. I did not interfere, for -I thought if he saw her in it he might think some other fellow had given -her a moorcock's feather; there are plenty of them about, and plenty of -fools to shoot them. - -I myself did not make much preparation. Just a new elastic to my hat, -and new laces to my boots. How delightful it is to care for no man! How -it simplifies life! All this bother about Ariadne has choked me off love -for a long while to come. I don't care if it never comes my way at all. -But I am only fourteen, and have not got the place in my head ready for -it yet, anyway. I don't believe that Love is a woman's whole existence -any more than it is a man's. We are like ships, made in water-tight -compartments, so that if something goes wrong with one compartment the -whole concern isn't done for. Until I am old enough to set a whole -compartment aside for Love, I can be easy and watch the others -wallowing. Life is one huge party to me, and the girls who are not out -yet watching it through the bannisters and getting a taste of the ices -now and then. - -I don't study dinners at home, we have never given one in Cinque Cento -House. George entertains a good deal at the Club, when he can get Lady -Scilly or some one like that to play hostess and give the signal to rise -for him, a thing, somehow, that no man ever seems capable of doing for -himself. - -Mother and Aunt Gerty saw us off for Morpeth, at Whitby station. Aunt -Gerty looked far more excited than just seeing a couple of nieces off -could make her, and I soon saw the reason of it, Mr. Bowser was leaving -by the same train! He went first-class of course, which was annoying for -Aunt Gerty, as that made him be at the other end of the train, too far -off to see how prettily she kissed her nieces good-bye, and bought them -_Funny Bits_ and chocolate creams. We got the creams anyhow. Children -often profit by their elders' foolish fancies. - -Mother wouldn't even let us kiss her out of the carriage-window for fear -the train started and we got dragged out, and sure enough we did go on -suddenly, in that slidy, masterful way trains have. I have a particular -affinity to trains. My great-grandfather built an engine and had it -called after him. When he was dying, he was taken in his chair to where -the Great Northern trains pass every day, and drew his last breath as -the Scotch Express rattled by. - -To return. I noticed that Aunt Gerty looked awfully pleased about -something, and kept sticking her hip out in an engaging way she has, -and I concluded that Mr. Bowser had at last spotted her and thrown her -an encouraging nod, perhaps blown her a kiss, only he is perhaps not -quite low enough for that? But whatever it was, it made her happy. Oh, -if they only could all get the man they want _at the time_ they want -him, what a nice place the world would be, for children at any rate! All -grown-up people's tempers come because they can't get what they want. -And here was I, boxed up with one who hadn't got what she wanted, for a -whole blessed day! She was simply weltering in love, if I may say so. -She had a penny note-book ready to write poetry in, and meant to dream -and write and cry for four hours. I had a nice improper six-penny of my -Aunt Gerty's, but I scarcely hoped that Ariadne would allow me to enjoy -it. - -Of course not. She soon began bothering. As soon as we were properly -started, she pulled up her thousand times too thick veil, badly put -on--Ariadne is too simple ever to learn to put on a veil properly as -other women do--and looked hard at herself in her pocket looking-glass, -and sighed and settled her loose tendril and unsettled it, and pinched -her cheek to massage it and restore the subcutaneous deposit the doctor -had told her about. She seemed hopeless and sad, for presently she -said-- - -"No, I am not looking beautiful to-day!" - -A pretty white tear, like a pearl button, shook on her eyelashes, and I -wondered how long she could keep it hanging there? I do believe she was -anxious to look nice because she had an idea she might see Simon at -Morpeth. But one never does see people at stations, and personally, I -think that Ariadne would be far prettier if she didn't know she was -pretty. It is most unkind and inconsiderate of her so-called friends to -keep telling her so. It is just like our horrid lot. In Simon's set, -they would die sooner than pay a girl a compliment to her face. But she -has got so hardened to it that I always have to take her down gently, so -as not to hurt her, same as one does with invalids. - -"It doesn't matter how you look," I said, "there is nobody but porters -to see you, and you don't want to mash them and distract them from their -work and make them get the points all wrong. I should have thought you -preferred being alone. You can write in your book. Let us do George's -dodge, and stand at the window whenever we come into a station and look -as repulsive as we can." - -George likes to keep the carriage all to himself, and taught us what to -do to secure it, the only time he ever travelled with us. We made a -prominent object of Ben, very sticky with lollipops, and managed to be -by ourselves all the way. - -Ariadne was unwilling to do this now. She sat still in her corner and -brooded, and that did just as well, for the would-be passengers looked -in and saw her, and made up their minds that she was recovering from -scarlet fever, or at least measles. I stood in the window, squarely, and -looked ugly for two. I was interested in the country. It is quite -hideous between Whitby and Morpeth. The reason is that it is an -industrial centre. I began to wish that our eating (kitchen boilers) and -keeping warm (coal) didn't mean so many people having to live black, and -whole counties in a blanket of smoke. I don't think I approve of -civilization, if this is what it comes out of? - -When the train slowed down at Morpeth, I could not help calling out to -Ariadne, "I told you so!" for there was Christina Ball in a muslin -dress, with a soft floppy chiffon hat and no veil at all. She was -sitting in a little pony-cart, with an ugly child that couldn't be hers; -we saw her from the train. It was a shock to Ariadne, and she was wild -to get our box into the cloak-room first and unlock it and get out one -of her old dresses. But how could she dress in the waiting-room? And -besides, she would be certain to muddle the next thing I told her (and -so she did). - -We got out of the station and into the trap. Christina had a new pony -and couldn't get down--and it was arranged that our luggage was to come -on by carrier, as our wicker trunk would be sure to scratch the smart -new dog-cart. - -Off we went, I thought, and I am sure Ariadne thought, a little too like -the wind. But Ariadne wanted to appear at ease, and casual and -countrified, so she pretended to take an interest in the scenery, and -said to Christina, "Look at the lovely tone of that verdigris on the -pond!" - -The ugly child twitched her feet under the rug beside me; she said -nothing, but looked it. - -"Oh, the duck-weed!" said Christina, who knows Ariadne too well to be -amused by anything she says. "Miss Emerson Tree here--allow me to -introduce Peter's American niece, Miss Jane Emerson Tree--calls it the -'stagnance.'" - -The ugly child still didn't say anything, though "stagnance" was just as -absurd a word for mildew on a pond as verdigris, and I began to be quite -afraid of one who, though so young, didn't seem to want to fly out. She -turned half round though, and seemed to be staring hard at the body of -Ariadne's shooting dress with its patch on the left shoulder. Christina -went on enlightening us about the country and telling us the sort of -things we were likely to ask and make fools of ourselves about. I do -believe she was afraid of our saying something specially silly before -Jane Emerson Tree, and wanted to save us from ourselves. - -It came at last, and Ariadne nearly toppled out of the cart. The ugly -child spoke in the most strong American accent, and the way she leant -upon the last syllable of the word _despise_ was the nastiest thing I -ever heard. - -"Oh, I do just _despise_ your waist!" she said to Ariadne; "I've been -looking at it all the way we've come." - -Christina absently took hold of her whip and then rattled it back in its -socket. She then scolded Jane till I should have thought any ordinary -child couldn't have gone on sitting up, but this one did, never saying -a word, but pursed her mouth in till there was hardly a line to be seen. -Then Christina began to tell us how dull she had found it living in the -country, and how difficult to get acclimatized at first. - -"But in the end, the country rubs off on one," she sighed, "and a good -thing too. Oh, the mistakes I made at first! You know that Peter and I -have both been staying with the dear Bishop of Guyzance." - -"Oh, Christina, you _have_ changed!" said I. - -"I know, dear, three services on Sunday and a shilling for the -offertory. So different from Newton Hall and Farm Street. As I was -saying, I came back from Lale Castle the day before yesterday, post -haste, to hatch some chickens----" - -"I thought a hen did that?" ventured Ariadne. - -"Right you are! I pretended to Peter that it was an insane desire to -kiss the baby, but I was an hour in the house before I even thought of -the child. The hen was due to hatch fifteen. I interviewed her every -hour, much to her disgust. At last, crack!--one came out----" - -"You mean chipped the shell," said Ariadne primly. - -"Right again! I put it in a basket by the kitchen fire, the servants -shunted it for dinner, it got cold, it died in the night. Yesterday five -more happened, I popped them in the mild oven for a minute, just then -some one pinched my baby--he screamed, and went on screaming like an -electric-bell gone wrong. I had to go and look after him--cook made a -blazing fire, do you see?--I have only saved five out of that brood." - -"How very funny!" said Ariadne, who wasn't a bit amused. - -I was. Christina told us of a little hen Peter had before, who had been -used to be set to ducks, and who had learned to march them all down to -the nearest pond. The first lot of chickens had been driven to a watery -and unfamiliar death. - -"Would you like to go and be photographed to-morrow?" she asked Ariadne, -and Ariadne was on the _qui vive_ at once. "They all think one an -unnatural parent here, if one doesn't take one's brood to be perpetuated -at Oldfort every year. But the trains there are so awkward for us. I am -fighting the railway authorities tooth and nail, trying to persuade them -to put on a slip carriage. They do it for Keiller and his marmalade, so -why not for me? Say! I am on the pony's neck! I am going to put the seat -back, take the reins a minute!" - -Ariadne didn't of course like her giving them to me, but everybody -always sees at once that I am the practical one. - -When the seat was arranged she went bubbling on. - -"Next week is our Harvest Festival and School feast, and Ball in the -school-house. The gaieties of this Parish! I haven't had tea with myself -for a whole week. I am a very hard worker, you don't know! Peter says I -lie awake at nights thinking of stodgy moral books to recommend for the -Village Library. I recommend some, not all, of my late patron's, your -father's, works. The Vicar here is a dear old dodderer, and was so -shocked when I recommended him _The Road to Rome_! It's a book of -travel, you know. We have a young man here, too, quite an eligible, he -told me so. He is so shy, you see, he says the wrong thing. I wonder -whether you'll make anything of him? To a flirt, all things are -possible." - -"I am not a flirt--now," said Ariadne. - -She was nearly giving the whole thing away, only the pony bolted, at -least Christina said it was an attempt at bolting. "My God, pony!" she -said to it, and it stopped, shocked at her swearing, I suppose. - -"And there's Simon Hermyre in the neighbourhood. Henderland is not more -than ten miles off." - -Ariadne at once sat tight--too tight. It was almost painful, and showed -in her face too. - -Just as we were driving in at the gate of Rattenraw, Jane Emerson Tree -spoke again, and actually about Ariadne's body. - -"Any way, it's on all crooked," she said, as if she was continuing the -previous discussion. Peter came out to meet us, and she was lifted down. -They couldn't, I suppose, leave her sitting and just put her away in the -coach-house all night. That is what I should have done, and cooled her -hot blood. But I saw how it was when we got in and were having tea. She -had hers "laced"--I mean brandy in it. Peter is awfully proud of her and -thinks she will be a great actress and astonish the world some day. She -certainly mimicked Peter to his face. I will let her know if I catch her -mimicking Ariadne! Peter enjoyed it. The moment a child is really rude, -people think it is going to do great things. I have noticed that. Now I -would no sooner think of criticizing a grown-up person's things to her -face as I would of--kissing Emerson Tree's very ugly mug, though I -wouldn't tell her so, otherwise than by my reluctance to embrace her. -Peter calls her "the little witch." - -"The little witch," he says, "was being neglected, or thought she was, -at lunch the other day, and in a trice she called out to the butler, 'I -say, Holmes, old man, look alive with those potatoes, will you!' You -should have seen the old boy's face!" - -I did see the old boy's face. He was waiting at tea. - -Christina told us stories about her all tea-time; she listened quietly -as she munched buns. How when she saw the new baby she said, "Dash it -all! why it's bald!" How one rainy day she was lost, and they found her -with six of her village friends walking in a straight line down to the -pond, barefooted and bareheaded and their mouths open, quacking, and to -catch the rain-drops like ducks do. How she has done all the absurd -things children do in books, such as aspinalling the cat--as if a cat -ever stayed to be aspinalled!--and gunpowder into ovens, and frogs into -boots, and hedgehogs into beds. (She says so, but I believe she put the -clothes-brush, and Peter mistook it with his feet in the dark!) And once -when a noted Socialist man had been staying there and rashly talked -before her, she had given away the furniture. - -"She went solemnly down the village," said Christina, "making presents -of the unearned increment in the shape of things she didn't want and I -did. Missing tensions of sewing-machines and valves of cycles and stray -door-knobs and other bits of rolling stock--all disappeared. When it -came to the spare sugar-tongs and my best silver scissors, however, I -had to scold her. Oh, she'll be a great actress some day." - -We listened, and I am sure no one could tell from my face how I -disapproved of it all,--unless Duse the second, who, after all, was a -child too, twigged how ridiculous they were making her look? Anyhow, -after she had made three usual scenes and one extraordinary one because -we were there, and had been noisily taken off to bed, they left off -discussing her and took up a perfectly safe subject; "shoots" and who to -have. Christina teases, she always did, even in the days when she used -to put us head first down rabbit-holes. - -"Has he a wife?" she asks, whenever Peter proposes a man. - -"My dear, I haven't the slightest idea. All I know is he is a capital -shot, and brings down his pheasants in good style!" - -"These good shots bring down such bad wives--I mean from the house-party -point of view," she says. "To look at their choice, they would always -seem to have fired recklessly into the brown and got pot luck. You see I -am boxed up with your friends' bad shots all day. I can't possibly make -my housewifely duties last all the morning, and I object to have Jane -brought down in her best frock and her worst behaviour to make sport for -idle women. And she hates grown-up ladies, and has the wit to come in -with segments of the Wanny Crag on her boots and her hair full of -straws, so as to be sent out of the drawing-room to 'muck herself up.'" - -"I don't like that phrase, Christina!" - -"Don't be so aggressively pure, Peter!" - -Ariadne and I have called him "Pure Peter" ever since, but he is not -bad, really. It is a mercy when one's friends show a little -consideration in their marriage, and one mustn't be too particular, for -the world is full of bounders one might have got, and had to be civil -to. Peter Ball talks about "Vickings" and keeps a chart of the weather, -but except for fussy ways like that, he is quite a gentleman. - - - - -CHAPTER XVII - - -Ariadne got fatter at Rattenraw, which is humiliating enough to a girl -in her position. I can't say that she kept that up at all well, beyond -looking sad, sometimes when she wasn't thinking, or at meals. She has to -pretend to be _distraite_, for really she is very all there, and likes -her dinner. Peter Ball, carving the roast red beef, holds his knife up -in the air to tease her, and says to her, when she won't answer his -question whether she wants some more?--"Thinking of the old 'un, what?" -He doesn't know how near the truth he is, except in age. He knows -nothing of Ariadne's affairs, he prefers not to know, but takes her word -for it that she has a secret sorrow connected with a member of his sex. - -Jane Emerson Tree doesn't take any notice of Ariadne or of me either; -she is put out at not being allowed to say rude things about us. She is -a free-born American citizen. Christina has made Ariadne rip the leather -patch off the shoulder of the waist Jane Emerson objected to, and has -lent her a common straw sailor hat, which suits her better than the -billycock. A sailor hat, you see, isn't a hat, it is a tile, and so -can't either become or unbecome. - -Simon Hermyre might have been at Henderland, or at Lord Manham's, or at -Barsom, Sir Edward Fynes' place; neither places are more than ten miles -or so off; but he made no sign, nor did he answer a letter Christina -wrote to him, so Ariadne was practically forced to flirt with the only -other man of her own rank in the village, besides Peter. He is the -Squire of Rattenraw, and lives in the old Hall, and plays the fiddle, -and keeps only one servant. Yet he came in before the Conquest. That is -what becomes of all our old families. He isn't old, but very wrinkled. -That comes of so frequently meeting the wind and exposure. His corduroy -velvet coat and his skin are much of a muchness. He is shy and wild, as -Peter remarked of the grouse this year. As I said, he is all there is, -here, till Christina's "shoots" come off, and Ariadne egged him on--the -amount of egging on a shy man takes!--to ask her, and then accepted to -go out fishing with him. She sat all the afternoon on a bank near by, in -a biting North-west wind straight down from the Wanny Crags, that blew -the egg off the sandwiches and the froth off the ginger-beer. He asked -her if she felt chilly ("Chilly!" she thought) about sixteen times, and -said By Gosh when he didn't catch anything, which was frequent, and -"What in thunder's got 'em?" alluding to the trout, when at last in -despair they packed up to go home. Ariadne got back to tea chilled to -the bone and disappointed at the heart to find him so coarse without -being interesting. She thinks all local farmers and squires ought to be -like Mr. Heathcliff in _Wuthering Heights_ and hide a burning lava of -passion under their upper crust of cold indifference. Squire Rochester -is good and dull. He does admire Ariadne, I daresay, though I am not up -in the country signs of love, and it seems the least he could do for a -real London beauty who is good enough to sit on a sticky and muddy bank -bald of grass and full of worm-holes, and some of them protruding -disgustingly as she said, for a whole afternoon watching him not -catching fish! - -He leaves vegetable marrows and nosegays as big as cabbages "for the -ladies" at the back-door, because he is so shy. He squeezes all -Christina's rings into her hands whenever he meets her, but these are as -much signs of love for Christina as for Ariadne, and Peter Ball says -Ariadne must take care and not to be like "Miss Baxter (whoever she was) -who refused a gent before he asked her." - -Christina thinks he _is_ a bit attracted, and that it is a good thing -for Ariadne to have a man to play with, in her forlorn condition, and -that whatever the Squire gets, even a hopeless passion, that he will be -able to get over it. She considers that men have a thicker sort of skin -than women, and if they are unhappy, can turn up their shirt-sleeves and -get very hot and throw it off. The Squire keeps lots of cattle and is by -way of being butcher to the village. Christina buys a whole sheep of him -sometimes. He has plenty of distractions, and she always takes the side -of the woman--_esprit de corpse_, I think they call it. I myself think -there should be the same law for men as for women, and I have a great -mind to tell the Squire to save his nosegays, for Ariadne is in love -with Simon. I even threatened her with this _expose_, and she turned -round on me, and said I should be a liar, for she _wasn't_ in love with -Simon. Then, I said, she might as well leave off taking the biggest half -of the bed at night and all the looking-glass in the morning and first -go at the bath, and other special privileges she has sneaked, because -she is supposed to be unhappy. I am willing to make every allowance for -one so persecuted by fate, but not for a woman who enjoys all the usual -pleasures of her age and sex, as if nothing was the matter. Then she -cried, and said I was unkind, that she wanted all the comfort she could -get, and went off fishing with the Squire to spite me, that very -afternoon! What can one do with a weathercock like that! - -Then Church decorating came on, and Ariadne could do without the Squire. -We worked all day, and in the evening we doctored our cuts and the -places where the Lord had let us get bruised and scratched in smartening -up His Church for His Harvest Festival. Ariadne had a big brown bruise -done by a jagged pew on her upper leg shaped like a tortoise, and so we -called it, so to be able to allude to it at all times and seasons. - -At lunch, Christina used to ask Ariadne how her tortoise was, and -Ariadne answered demurely that it was getting a nice pea-green, or a -good strong blue, till Peter and the Squire were so much puzzled, that -they teased Ariadne till she let it out, and then Peter teased her worse -than ever. - -Two local ladies hindered us at decoration and we could not get rid of -them, as they had pulled their gardens about to give us flowers. But we -had to make a rule that we wouldn't allow gentlemen in the church during -decorations. It upset Miss Weeks so that she hammered her fingers -instead of the nails, and put flowers into the men's button-holes -instead of threading them into the altar-rails, in fits of absence. Miss -Day, the other young lady, agreed with Christina that one must really -keep a firm hand on Miss Weeks, and that she herself didn't care for so -many men-folk about, talking their nonsense, and interfering with steady -work, but she was sorry, her sailor cousin had just come home and she -_reely_ could not spare more than half-an-hour every other day away from -him! We were only decorating for three days. - -During the half-hour she did come, however, she and Miss Weeks got on -very badly, finding they could not work together, and they had it out in -the middle aisle every five minutes or so. Christina and Ariadne had -taken the chancel, while these two were responsible for the font, so we -did not get mixed up so very much. But when Miss Weeks boxed Miss Day's -ears with a Scarborough lily, and Miss Day retorted with a double -dahlia, the Vicar interposed, and ordered them out of his church just -as the cook orders me out of her kitchen, and it is about as much their -own, in either case. - -Then we had some peace, and the Vicar used to come himself (he has no -wife), and worked very hard at handing flowers to Ariadne, who did not -look half bad on top of a ladder, a little weak and tottery, so that she -had to be steadied by a strong hand now and then. - -At home there was cooking to be done, cakes and pies and things for the -village ball and tea-treat. We both cooked. Christina says there is a -want of concentration about us, and that the trail of the flour-bin is -all over her best chairs. She says it to callers to amuse them and to -make them think her witty. Though really, Ariadne's untidiness is -trying. We find baking-powder in our workboxes, and currants as -book-markers, and butter--well, everywhere but in the butter-dish! -Ariadne goes about with white hair, and Peter Ball complains that the -door-handles are sticky. He says that Ariadne's cakes, when made, will -form a capital hunting lunch, sustaining if eaten, and capable of -breaking the nastiest fall. - -Christina's cook (cooks are the same, I see, all over the world!) gave -her annual notice which is never taken any notice of, just before the -Festival, when all the servants are so overworked that they get -fractious. Luckily this time something happened to put them in a tearing -good temper again. Farmer Dale died, and Christina blessed him for -giving us a good funeral to cheer the household up a bit. So the status -was preserved. - -On the Sunday morning, of course, we all attended Divine Service. Peter -Ball came too and read the lessons. He is called one of the pillars of -the church. He once spoke to some men who were lounging about outside -while the service was proceeding, and told them that he looked to them -to be pillars too. They sniggered, because they felt ashamed, and one of -them said, "Ay, Sir, but aren't we men the buttresses a-leaning up -against it and propping it up like?" Peter was only shocked. - -We workers could not attend much on this particular occasion, any more -than a cook can enjoy the dinner she has cooked. We could not take our -eyes off our own special rail that we had wreathed, and kept hoping our -flowers wouldn't topple suddenly because we hadn't tied them securely -enough, or wilt during the sermon. I noticed a curious sort of doll, -standing on the altar-steps, dressed in three tissue-paper flounces and -a sash. As we came out I asked old John Peacock what it was, and he -said, "Why, that wor t' Kern babby!" I was no wiser. But Ariadne, who -dotes on superstitions, said she would ask the Vicar. She wrote him a -pretty note in her all backwards hand, and said she felt sure the doll -on the altar-steps was a heathen survival of some sort. This was his -answer; he was pleased. - - "MY DEAR MISS VERO-TAYLOR, - - "Your interest in the study of folk-lore is highly commendable in - one so young. The little mannikin--or rather womankin--is, as you - aptly conjecture, a remnant of a custom dating from a period of the - very remotest antiquity. In our Northumbrian villages it is the - custom, the moment the sickle is laid down, for the villagers to - dress the last sheaf in tawdry finery and carry it through the - streets, finally when it presides at the Harvest, or Mell Supper, - and the people dance round it singing: - - 'Blest be the day that Christ was born! - We've getten Mell of _Ball's_ corn! - It's well bun' and better shorn! - Hip! Hip! Hurray!' - - "This custom was found, however, so prevocative of disorderly - scenes that my revered predecessor here decreed that in future the - Mell Doll (or Kern baby) should be simply placed on the altar-steps - during Divine Service. Is it not wonderful to reflect that this - grotesque image prefigures no less a personage than Ceres, the - goddess of plenty, the Frigga of the Teutons, sometimes called - Freia, Frey, conf. Grimm's Teutonic Mythology, passim--" - -"Oh yes, pass him, pass him!" said Peter impatiently, who won't however -let any one else make fun of the church, and scolded Christina for -saying, - -"Rather a come-down for a goddess, wasn't it?" - -"Well," she remarked to Ariadne later on, "you had better be getting up -your mythology" (meaning the Bible, only Peter didn't twig anything so -wrapped up as this), "because you will be sure to be subpoena'd to -take a class in the Sunday school after you have fished for it. _Nemo -Dodd impune lacessit!_" - -"Can't Dodd lace his boots with impunity?" I asked Peter. I knew it -wasn't that, any more than _Res angusta domi_ means "Please to keep -Augusta at home," and some others like that I have made. - -Sure enough, Mr. Dodd made Ariadne take a class in his Sunday school, -and Christina chuckled. It is the price of Mr. Dodd's admiration, and he -admired Ariadne very much. She is not really any happier for it, rather -bored by it in fact. She spent three whole days getting up Sacred -History for fear the school children, who have of course been properly -brought up and grounded, should floor her, a poor feckless literary -man's daughter. Peter Ball gave her a little arithmetic. She got as far -as Proportion with him. There was one sum about how many men it would -take to build a wall of so many feet in so many hours. If it was Inverse -Proportion, which it might be, and then again it mightn't, you put the -men under the wall and divide by the hours; as many of them as are left -after such treatment is the answer. It came, stupidly enough, -two-and-a-half, so I suggested to Ariadne, as I was helping her, to put -_Two men and a boy_. Peter said she didn't repay teaching, and saw -nothing to laugh at, though his wife seemed to. - -Then Ariadne started an essay club with prizes. The Squire bought those -for her in Morpeth when he went in to sell pelts and hides. Fancy -touching his hand after that! They were bits of his poor beasts that he -had killed! Billy Scott's short essay on the elephant, "_an animal with -a leg at each corner and a tail at both ends,_" was funny; and Sally -Moscrop's description of "_any animal she liked to choose._" She -invented "_The Proc,_" a beast with four legs, "_two of whom are bigger -and longer than the others, for the Proc lives all around a hill._" -Grace Paterson's essay was quite long. "_The Pin is an exceedingly -useful article. It has saved the lives of many men, many women and many -children by not swallering of them._" - -Grace is fourteen and the beauty of the village. She has begun a tale in -ten chapters. She has to write it up in the apple-tree, for fear her -father should "warm" her. - -She and Ariadne were the two belles of the Ball in the Parish Room on -Monday evening. They both danced with the Squire, who said he was in -luck to get two literary ladies to dance with him on the same night. But -Ariadne walked home with him, and I went with Christina. Mr. Rochester -had one of his own roses Ariadne had given him back, in his button-hole. -She is so unhappy about Simon that she doesn't care who proposes to her. -That is the way girls take it--a very selfish way, but they are selfish -all through when they are in love. Ariadne actually thinks the Squire -thinks he proposed to her going home that night. I don't. It was pitch -dark as we went home, the village is not lighted, and it is a very -wicked village. She says, long arms like tentacles came groping out from -the wall in the dark, and the Squire dragged her past them. As the -village young men couldn't see, they thought her one of their own -sweethearts, for by then the party had broken up and was all over the -place. The chucker-out had been very much occupied and had found the -brook near the school-house door very handy. - -But I don't myself think the Squire did propose. He offered to take care -of her, past the tentacles, but not for life. I think if a girl is -always dreading proposals and thinking of how men will feel it when -refused, proposals never come to them. That is what Christina said, and -that Peter Ball took her entirely by surprise, when he asked her. I knew -better, for I had chaperoned that affair. She says Peter wears very -well, and that there's some gilt left on the gingerbread still. The -gramophone is still in all its glory, and when she was ill up-stairs, -when Jim was born, Peter used to send up a message by the nurse for her -to leave the door of her room open for half-an-hour before dinner, and -then she would hear it. The nurse always forbade it, but Christina -always insisted on it, to please Peter, and lay with her ears stopped up -with sheet till the half hour was over. It is a new gramophone, not the -one he had in Leinster Gardens. That shouted itself out, I suppose? -Christina found an entry in his old pocket-book-- - -_"July 19--a memorable year in my life. I bought a new gramophone and I -got married. I won't say anything about my wife here, but the gramophone -was a beauty when she was new----"_ - -Ariadne was disgusted. She doesn't believe Simon would say such a coarse -thing. Well, I wish she had some experience on the subject, what Simon -would say, that's all! - -When Simon did come over to shoot, Ariadne hardly spoke to him during -the three days he was here. No one did, much. He is so fearfully -eligible that all the nice girls feel they must snub him, and he hardly -gets a cup of tea. If Christina hadn't known nice girls only, Ariadne -would have had a better chance. What is the good of being a nice modest -girl among other nice modest girls? And though Ariadne would not believe -it, she did badly without her foil Lady Scilly, who showed up her -niceness and made Simon draw comparisons. Then there was another adverse -circumstance. The Squire came and followed Ariadne about with his eyes, -till it really wasn't safe to sit in a line with them both. That put -Simon off. He is too nice to prefer a girl because another man is making -himself unhappy about her. - -Indeed Simon looked most uncomfortably serious and even sad. He has got -his first wrinkle fixed between his eyebrows. He looks at Ariadne often, -but in a puzzled sort of way, and takes himself up with a jerk, shaking -his head, that the curls are cut off from too short to waggle. - -"He cares for me--yes, he cares desperately," said Ariadne one night, -just as she was arranging her watch and her handkerchief on the chair -beside our bed, and his photograph under her pillow. I have to take that -away every morning lest the housemaid should see it and make fun of her. -Ariadne forgets. We also arrange the strap of our box down the middle of -the bed so that neither of us should encroach in the other's part, and -all these arrangements take time. Ariadne, though she is so gentle and -so in love, always looks sharply to her rights, and more than her -rights, and I generally find myself lying on the very rim of the bed. -She is the eldest, unfortunately, and once she took the strap out of the -bed to me when I objected. - -"He loves me--oh, he does!" she moaned, "only he is not free." - -"He is in the power of a wicked witch, like the one who enchanted -Jorinde and Joringel in Grimm!" I said, and tried to go to sleep and -thought a little. Lady Scilly isn't old, like the German witch, but I -remember what the Ollendorff man said to me about her being a "fairy," -and I know there is some connection between them. Fairies are those who -would do harm if they had the power; witches have the power, but only -because they are old and don't care for the things they cared for when -they were young. Ariadne will never be a fairy when she grows up, she -will always be too silly, and get put upon in society, though in private -life she is quite up to her rights, and talks as loud as any one and -doesn't trouble to be die-away. Men never see that side of girls, -mercifully they are able to keep it out of sight till they are at least -married, and on the pig's back, as Peter says. It is the unromantic -things they are ashamed of. Ariadne wouldn't mind Simon knowing she had -appendicitis, but not for worlds that she had a corn on her foot and had -to have it cut, or a chilblain, and it burst. - -Presently she woke up and said, "Will any one tell me why a woman like -that should be allowed to ruin his young life?" - -"All young men have nine lives like a cat, there will be eight left for -you to ruin, when you get him--but you never will." I always add this -not to raise false hopes. "And, goodness me, you can't expect to get a -young man all to yourself, as fresh and shining as a new pin!" - -"Yes, I do!" said Ariadne crossly. "I want a safety-pin even. I am a new -pin myself--I have never loved anybody but Simon, now have I?" - -I didn't answer that, but said I did wish we might turn over and go to -sleep, when Christina rapped on the wall with a hairbrush and begged us -to be quiet. - -"Yes. All right! We will!" I yelled, and I certainly wouldn't have said -another word, but Ariadne began again, five minutes later. - -"Tempe, why do these wretched married women--I'd be ashamed to be -one--always want everybody at once? She has got Mr. Pawky, and----" - -"Mr. Pawky is only for money," I said. I was not going to tell her -about her dear Simon paying Lady Scilly's bills as well as poor Pawky. - -"And Simon's for love, then--oh dear! And George for literature. I am -prettier than her, Tempe? Say I am--oh say I am, I want to hear you say -it." - -"I won't say it. You are far too conceited already." - -"That is the same as saying it," answered Ariadne, and got calmer. "And -at all events I am real, and that's more than she can say. I don't have -to peel off my charms and put them away in a drawer like she has to." -(Ariadne is able to put her poems quite in grammar, but I suppose she -thinks it unnecessary to be always at a stretch.) - -"I don't believe realness counts at all with young men," I said. "I -believe they really and truly enjoy kissing paint, and groping about the -floor for pin curls when they've done, and powder on their shoulders -when they go out into the street from calling." - -"Goodness!" cried Ariadne, almost shrieking, "you don't suppose Simon -ever went as far as kissing her? If I thought that, I'd----" - -"What?" - -"Never let him kiss me again. He hasn't of course, yet! Oh, Tempe, I -wish he had!" - -"There you go!" I cried out, sick of her changeableness. "First you want -him not to, then you wish he had. And the poor thing must kiss -somebody--he's got no mother, and kissing Almeria would be like kissing -a cactus or cuddling a porcupine. Do please keep to your own part of the -bed, you don't respect the strap a bit! I shall be on the floor in a -minute. I'm lying right in the hem of the sheet now." - -Ariadne kindly made a little more room for me as I was patiently -listening to her, and went on. - -"Tempe, I have learned in three short seasons some of the bitter truths -of so-called society----" - -Just then, as any one could have foretold from the noise we were making, -Christina walked right into the room. - -"Will you two children be quiet! Why are you crying, Ariadne?" - -Ariadne said she wasn't crying, and at the same time asked Christina to -be good enough, as she was up, to get her a clean pocket-handkerchief -out of the drawer, one of those tied up with blue ribbon, not pink, for -they are larger and plainer. Christina got it and then came and sat on -my foot, which she could scarcely help doing, as I was only just but -tumbling out of the bed altogether. She was exceedingly nice and -sympathetic and agreed that Lady Scilly ought to put Simon back, for he -was too little a fish for her to hook, being only twenty-four and she -thirty-eight. She assured Ariadne, much as Mother used to assure me, -that there were no ghosts--then if there aren't, what are the white -things one sees hanging about the doors of rooms?--that Simon didn't -really care for an old thing like that, and that if he did, her -attraction must naturally wear out in the course of ages, and that -Simon wouldn't be so very old by the time that happened, and would know -a nice girl when he saw one, with his unjaundiced eyes. - -She also thought Ariadne should not put upon me so, and should give me a -bigger piece of bed. - -I was thinking all the time she was talking of George, and how Mother -too as well as Ariadne was unhappy because of this evil fairy. I wished -the Scilly motor-car might upset and spoil Lady Scilly a little sooner, -and that Simon mightn't be in it when that happened. - -When Christina had tucked me in, and kissed us, and gone away, I made -Ariadne make me a solemn promise that come what would, if she were ever -married to Simon Hermyre, or indeed to any one else, that she would let -all the others alone and not poach; for even if a young man seems -unattached, you may be pretty sure there's a girl worrying about him -somewhere in the background. One woman, one man! That's my motto, and -indeed a woman now-a-days is lucky if she gets a whole man to herself as -Christina has Peter, and well she knows when she is well off, and only -laughs when her Peter says, as he did at breakfast, when she offered him -Quaker Oats, "Woman, haven't you learnt that my constitution clashes -with cereals?" - -Ariadne woke up with a plan, and after Simon had gone back to his -friends at Henderland without proposing, and a hearty breakfast, we went -out into the village and bought sixpenny-worth of beeswax, and pinched -it into the shape of a skinny woman like Lady Scilly as near as we -could. Then we laid it in a drawer on one of Ariadne's best silk ties, -and we stuck a pin into it every day. I don't know if it did Lady Scilly -any harm, but it did Ariadne a great deal of good. She looked down the -columns of the _Morning Post_ every day to see if Lady Scilly was ill, -or perhaps even dead? When we left Rattenraw she gave the waxen image to -Christina, and asked her to be good enough to finish up the boxful of -best short whites on it. Christina promised faithfully that she would, -and said that we might rely on her, as she had a little private spite of -her own to work off on that lady. I knew what it was, _i. e._ Lady -Scilly's having tried to flirt with Peter, or at least Christina thinks -that she did. Wives always think that only let them get into the same -room with them, other women make a bee-line for their own particular -dull husbands! Christina is nice, but she is just like another wife when -it comes to preserving Peter. - -The Squire saw us off, with an enormous bouquet, that we put under the -seat, having started, and forgot. So did Ariadne forget the Squire. One -can only hope that after a decent interval he will marry Grace Paterson. - -She is a substantial farmer's daughter, in spite of her thinking she can -write. But she can wring a fowl's neck, and make butter, two things that -Ariadne never would be able to do, the one from disgust and the other -from native incompetence and a hot hand. As regards the Squire's -position, Grace is very nearly a lady, and he is very nearly not a -gentleman, so it ought to turn out all right. - - - - -CHAPTER XVIII - - -Lady Scilly has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor -spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on -beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the -figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had -consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. -I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that "Devil! -Devil! Devil!" repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that -was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the -best. - -Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if -possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a -novel of Ouida's. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandiere. I suppose it is -Mother's neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores -Ouida, and Dore is his favourite artist. He has "that beautiful Pilate's -wife's Dream" hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it -looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully -afraid of beetles! - -Christina came on to us for a few days after staying with her -mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and -taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears -so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was -learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was -an advent. - -Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with -holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her -undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, -do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not -young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above -all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in -our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George's -request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does -not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, -Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about -making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death -about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I -used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up -in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which -Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would -disapprove of it. - -Ariadne managed to "sneak" a waist, and George never noticed. That is -the odd part of it; we all think that that inch more or less makes such -a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, -and to the outward eye look as thick as ever! - -Ariadne's figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find -out one's best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of -friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but -doesn't want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn't come out in -self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut -fibre, _I_ think, but Papa's friends admire it, and she gets the -reputation of being a beauty on it in our set. - -But in Lady Scilly's set, that is Simon's set more or less, they think -her a pretty girl, badly turned out! - -"Ah, you are your father's daughter, I see!" Christina said at once to -her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, -because she couldn't find a white one. I did not mention that I myself -had begun to sew one of Ariadne's iron pills on to my shoe, and only -stopped because it didn't seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we -have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes -down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes -out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing -and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor -points out to her that she hasn't got on any waistband, and another in -the hall sticks a pin in somewhere, that shines in the sun, when she -gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and -looks at it fixedly. - -"_Degagee_, as usual!" he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was -two years at a crammer's to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in -Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something -better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least -shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon -says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one -be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not -Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can't stand chaff as a general thing. -Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her. - -Simon has curly hair--not at all neat--which he can neither help nor -disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict's so as -to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and -Ariadne's estimation. "Can't help it. Couldn't bear to look like one of -those chaps." - -He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here -sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his -visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic -now. She can't bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, -and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who -come to describe it and photograph it for the Art papers, and wonders -if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different -from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he -seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at -all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won't -let Highsam be done for _Rural Life_, or lend Mary Queen of Scots' -cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria's -portrait in _The Bittern_ with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria -wrote him such a letter, _almost_ rude, giving him her mind about -interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon -has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I -grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know -of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy -the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the "festive gee" now, he -says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and -frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam -Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they -aren't the same as Ariadne's. - -"Great Scott!" he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one -afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that -George had specially designed for her. "If Almeria saw you in that -frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won't -wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg's on the -twenty-fourth! If you do, I swear I won't dance with you in it!" - -Of course he didn't mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in -her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it -seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to -please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington's dance had been sent -out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time -to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a -ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her -marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in -a county family, not a Bohemian one. - -Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost -ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting -either of us. Christina said _Quem Deus vult_--and that though you might -look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look -smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne's body was all over the place, -with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn't. When it was -basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were -working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are -three Empire mirrors in that room, you can't see yourself in any one of -them, so we had to tell her it didn't do, and never would do. - -"Take the beastly thing off then!" said Ariadne, almost crying, and -pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia's head. -(Amelia is the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) "I won't -wear anything at all!" - -"And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!" I said to tease -and console her, but she wouldn't be, and she left the body clinging to -Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good -thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in. - -"Dear me!" Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of -lying in bed late. "You look like Burne-Jones' _Laus Veneris_--'all the -maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.' I persuaded your father to bring me -up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make -all your own dresses." - -So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses -grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers' bills. - -"The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her," said -George. - -"Ninepence-halfpenny isn't going to express me!" Ariadne said, under her -breath. "It covers me, and that's all!" - -"I always think," George maundered, "that the symbolic note struck in -the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, -of the prevailing wind of a woman's mood. Her moods should be variable. -She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, -some mad scarlet incoherent thing another----" - -"I don't see how you are going to do all that on ninepence-halfpenny," -Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to -listen to her impertinence. "Why you can't even get the colour!" - -"It is every woman's duty to set an example of beautiful dressing -without extravagance!" and he looked at Lady Scilly's pretty pink -fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go. - -"Oh, this," she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it -was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. "This! This cost nothing at all! -I have a clever maid, you know?" - -"If all the women had clever maids that say they have," Christina -whispered to me. "What would become of Camille, I wonder?" - -George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, "You must never quit -an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable." - -"My dresses quit me," said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so -that the hole in it didn't show. "I'm jealous of the sofa! It's better -covered than me." - -I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she -is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear "this -creation." - -"At Lady Islington's," Ariadne answered rather sulkily. - -"Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, -my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to -dance in--it is too _debutantish_ for me, and I do wish some one would -wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will -do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?" - -"The day after to-morrow!" I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with -gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly's little dresses were like. -Camille's "little" would beat Ariadne's biggest. - -"Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall -be so much obliged." - -Ariadne said "thank you," a little ashamed to think that Simon was -coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to -dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, -and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady -Scilly's little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when -she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick -and no mistake, and I really thought so. - -But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress -into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress -didn't come. "Put not thy trust in smart women!" she said, and as it -happened, she was right, for the dress never did! - -At five o'clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn't a sign of it, -and Ariadne hadn't let herself worry over it, by my and Christina's -advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to -carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn't -worry, but she was very angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes -so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would -be all right. The dress wasn't so very bad either; we had given up all -attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell -that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. -Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her "girl" when she was dressed, she -nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet. - -"That'll get him, that'll get him, Miss Ariadne, you'll see!" she kept -saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love -that she couldn't help liking it. She had taken particular care of her -hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten -curlers in to make sure of it's looking nice. And it did, like Moses in -the burning bush. - -At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, -and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o'clock. I was just jumping in -(I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting -stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. -Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. -And she is learning to drop her h's in the south. - -"'Ere!" she said. "'Ere!" and shoved a great card-board box under my -nose. "_With Lady Scilly's love and compliments._" - -I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the -string, and there was a ball-dress--_the_ ball-dress! - -I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne--so near -and yet so far--dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre's -affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked -home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless -on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I -indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. -It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe -it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed -to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. -It said-- - - "DEAR CHILD, - - "My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must - be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and - I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with - my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste. - - "Ever yours, - - "PAQUERETTE SCILLY." - -"That's all she cares about--that George should think her generous! But -if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed -to get it here in time. I don't care for misplaced generosity." - -"Suppose, Miss," said Elizabeth, "that you was to take a cab and go to -where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I -say." - -"My sister isn't a music-hall artist," I regret to say was what I -answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn't -altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get -Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the -dress out on Ariadne's bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with -my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed. - -I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it -was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was -Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her -off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would -tease her a little first. - -"Well, did you have a good time?" I asked her. - -"Fairly," answered Ariadne. - -"Did you have any offers--in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure -you would." - -"I believe I am all torn to bits?" said Ariadne, walking round and round -her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take -any notice of my question. - -"Now don't expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!" - -Ariadne said, "I shall not touch it. I don't mean to wear it again, but -hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful -dress!" - -"Don't drivel!" I said, "unless there is really something particular -about the dress that I don't know." - -She didn't even rise to that, so I said, "I wonder you don't light up, -and have a good look at it." - -"There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?" Ariadne said, -sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn't mean to go -to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly's dress on her bed, and -was keeping calm just to tease me. - -"Did any one see you home?" I asked. - -"Yes, some one did," she answered, still in a sort of dream. - -"Did he kiss you in the cab?" I at last asked her, thinking that if -anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could -tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she -wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was -riled to extinction. - -"Oh, for Goodness' sake, get to bed!" I cried. "And if you are going to -undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get -into your bed very _very_ carefully!" - -That did it. - -"You naughty girl," she said quite quickly. "Have you been putting Lady -Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It's too bad of you!" - -She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She -saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it. - -"So you have come?" she said, talking to it as if it were a person. "You -are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you." - -"Well," said I, "you _are_ condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one -might ask?" - -"Mr. Hermyre." - -"Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! -I believe she's shy? How often did you dance with _Mister_ Hermyre?" - -"Oh, don't tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid." - -"Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, -there!" - -"He is going to," said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn't -know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night! - -I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it. - -"Did you--did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, -as we have always agreed you would?" - -"I may have--I don't know--I hope not!" - -"You hope you didn't, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not -run into him, or put his eye out or something?" - -"Beast, what do you mean?" - -"Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, -and I presume it has been there all the evening!" - -Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and -told me all about it quite nicely. - -As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight -difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a -Count--fancy, at Lady Islington's?--and he had been rude to Ariadne -about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn't so -near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other -man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite -him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new "mash" he was. I -believe he's the German chauffeur I saw in her car. - -But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought -it on--that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he -had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of -course never mentioned it to Simon. - -Lady Islington is Simon's Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. -After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange -and frightened--he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they -are riled--and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery -sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she -could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. -She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold -hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her -spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn't say anything, he -seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or -other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything -else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would -get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby--that he would take -hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, -imagining his taking hold of it, "willing" him to do it. She wanted him -to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; -but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own -free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not -begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow -that he was thinking of this too, or something like it--something to do -with her, at any rate. - -She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always -solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer -took place. - -Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of -them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon -take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, "Have you got a -fan?" - -Ariadne didn't know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all -part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite -truly-- - -"I haven't got one. You broke it." - -"And didn't I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! -Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn't see me?" - -And he kissed her. - -This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, -quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he -then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly -all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter -that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, -except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And -of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine. - -Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be -married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, -subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was -able to assure Simon that George won't, he doesn't care about keeping -Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre's _fiancee_ -she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course -Simon won't let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And -she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all -engaged girls. She bores me. - - - - -CHAPTER XIX - - -Dear Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne -in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane -Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am -told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her -bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood -next her, couldn't prevent it, for she hadn't a single pin on her she -could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that -stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her -what she thought of Ariadne's "waist" this time, and didn't she wish she -could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found -time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne's dress was -made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, -the coal-agent's daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. -Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who -adores her, and doesn't see that she is a bit common. Men in love never -do. Still, she is our only childhood's friend, so Simon and even Almeria -didn't make the least objection to have her included in the procession. -They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to -afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out -wonderfully, and I really don't mind her at all. As the bridesmaids' hat -wouldn't set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it -to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and -stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much -softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at -Highsam later on and learn to ride. - -George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so--a set of his own -works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always -had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave -her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter -Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her -his mother's best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or -beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had -practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon -said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she -meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a -joke, and that _Punch_ wouldn't put in; but Ariadne never noticed and -was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, -I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the -Latin word _Donec_ engraved on it. I did not know what that meant, and -Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog's collar -afterwards. - -Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took -note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so -shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn't care for her -own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in -Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to -make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, -_after_ marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair. - -They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father's six places. He has -given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and -is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas. - -George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all -to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a -plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and -plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all -the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right -time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any -ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she -can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over -the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and gets -us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one -dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all -of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don't know if George -would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd -circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody's -fault but the plumber's, who came to put them right last time and -carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule -has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don't burst at all. - -When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, -and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect -Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were -undoing a few, and damned "this whirling season of string and brown -paper!" - -"I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post -early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all -mention of the egregious subject!" - -And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our -bedrooms in future. - -The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn't mind obeying him, we were -so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed -having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took -to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and -poor Ben's chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite -desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother to make some arrangement by -which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside -for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he -might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn't get much better -there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, -she couldn't save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any -rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She -would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some -books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly -to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, -since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can't do without him, -and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George -swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching -trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he -doesn't get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the -money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him -that she meant to pay the cost of Ben's education, for it is money, she -is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind -which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a -necessary evil for the sons of men. - -I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with--"he is the -devil for country houses!" Mr. Aix says, "he has got them in the -blood,"--I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to -breakfast--he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at -home--they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and -three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful -guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses -where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, -and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at -the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him -madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer. - -George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. -His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a -sad deer's. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to -wearing stays. I don't believe this. I am the only one in the house who -sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on -hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of -him, so I don't know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is -always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written -about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a -"singularly colourless personage," whom Mother likes very much. She -isn't half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more -suitable. - -After Christmas was over, George left us and went to "The Hutch," Lady -Scilly's place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says -she has piped all hands on deck--I mean all the people who are helping -her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor -among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will -drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I -am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be -fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It's such a good -old title. - -I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never -stayed so long at "The Hutch" before. He has his own suite there, and -all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or -characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment? - -Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there--Never no more!--but she has a lady -friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get -"restive." - -Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; -she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky -episode. - -"And I didn't make much of him, after all!" she told Mother and Aunt -Gerty. "Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn't trust women -any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty -purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy -any one--even a millionaire's--confidence in human nature. She borrows -of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it's quite -awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your -sweet innocent daughter rescued him from the wiles of Scilly, and -perhaps Charybdis--who knows? He looked weak!" - -"And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his -hands!" said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn't "quite -eighteen carat," Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a -woman's own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and -journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to -get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its -inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press -in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. -Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty -of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house -except the study. Mother won't let them go in there at all while George -is away. I hear them talking between the puffs-- - -"You can engage to work so and so, eh?" or "Have you got thingumbob?" - -Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes -them, and gets Mother to speak the woman's part for him, so that he sees -how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her -continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on -him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to -understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he -takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix -always speaks the brutal truth--he can't wrap anything up--he is as -"crude as the day," so George often says--I don't see Mother's -cleverness. - -They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. "Mustn't christen it before -it is brought into the world," and "One thing you can confidently -predict about it, it can't be born prematurely!" and so on. They use the -study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George's swivel-chair, and -Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman's part out -aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often -calls out, "Oh, you darling!" when she has said a particular piece. -"What a divine accent you give it!" "That will knock them!" "Wicked to -hide such a talent!" and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to -read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises -Mother all the time. - -"Pooh, pooh!" says Mr. Aix, "leave her to her intuitions! You battered -professionals don't know the value of a new note." - -So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George -married her. And a good thing too! - -Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be -finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his -study of course, but we hadn't the remotest idea of his arriving when he -did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time. - -We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah -blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was -in George's swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George -was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a -slap. - -"Our child comes on bravely!" he was just saying to Mother, as George -appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth. - -Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, "I'll bet you Lord Scilly has had him -kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!" and bolted into the hall, -forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk. - -"Welcome back, old fellow!" said Mr. Aix, turning round in the -swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty's blouseries. -They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George -turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught -it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a -great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as -servants always do when it is a question of not paying one's just debts. - -She began "If you please, sir, the cabman----" but her voice was quite -drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and -George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time. - -"Won't you pay your cab, George?" said Mother gently, "and then you can -abuse me at your leisure!" - -Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the -room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother -like a little school-girl before him. I don't know what they said to -each other, but George wouldn't come out to dinner, but had a plate sent -in. - -Mother didn't alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix. - -George's plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own -father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been -kicked out of "The Hutch" as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady -Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel -she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion. - -He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was -on his hands among Aunt Gerty's blouse trimmings. - -"Shall I take these away?" I asked. "Don't they make you angry?" - -"I haven't noticed." - -I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty's horrid pink shape all -over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn't even -scold me. - -"Where is Lucy--my wife?" he asked me presently. - -"My Mother?" said I. "She's gone to the theatre." - -"Is that usual?" - -"Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty -has gone with them." - -"Chaperons them, eh?" - -I didn't like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix _them_ in that -insulting bracketting way, so I said-- - -"Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change." - -"Aix?" said he, "for a change! God!" - -"She's collaborating with Mr. Aix." - -"Damn him and his play too." - -"Oh, not his play, George. Mother would be _so_ grieved." - -Then George suddenly pulled a paper out of his pocket and said, "Read -that aloud, child." - -"Is it a bit of your new novel?" - -"Yes, it is a bit of my new novel. Read." - -I did. - -"_We talk and talk, and never act. Oh, this curse of civilization! You -make excuses for S----, for your bitter enemy. Magnanimous, but effete! -He is behaving well, but so unpicturesquely. He offers a woman no excuse -for staying with him. Oh, Italy! Italy! You, magician, have made me long -for the life of Italy, the silver incandescent sands, the passionate -brown of the olives--but why should I try to outdo you in your own -imitable manner?_" - -"_In_imitable, you mean, don't you, child? But no, we will not trust -this white devil of Italy. Go and fetch me a plateful of cold meat. And -here are the keys; go down to the cellar and get a bottle of Burgundy. -Corton eighty-eight. You'll see the label. We will carouse." - -I was delighted. George and I finished the bottle between us, and he -ate a good supper, and said no more of Mr. Aix, or Mother either. - -I almost liked George just then. I saw why Lady Scilly liked him. He is -funny and gentle. I asked him to choose a school for Ben, and he said he -would think about it. It is the oddest feeling to suddenly become "pals" -with one's own father. I had never known it before. There is some good -in George, and his eyes are very bright. - - - - -CHAPTER XX - - -My mother is changed--not horrid, but quite changed. She goes out nearly -every morning at ten, with Aunt Gerty, whose manners are worse than -ever, and who has a little chuckling, cheerful way of going about that -simply irritates me to death! There is a secret, evidently, and George -and I are out of it. It brings us together. He is not happy, no more -than I am, no more than Mother is. She is excited, not happy. She has -taken to wearing her mouth shut lately; once we used to tease her -because she kept it open, and looked always just as if she were going to -speak, or had done speaking. But Mother is a good woman. Although she -gads about so much, she doesn't neglect her household duties. She sees -after George's comfort as much as ever, and keeps all onions out of the -house as usual. The more she fusses over him, the less he likes it. He -shook his head once, when Mother had tidied his writing-table for -him--it took her two hours--and then he said half-laughing, "A bad sign, -Tempe! Read your Balzac." - -I don't read Balzac, and I don't know what George means. I don't try, -and I find that is the best sort of sympathy one can give. At any rate, -he likes it, and he is always having me in his study, and teaching me to -type-write, and saying little things, like that I have put down, under -his breath. He mutters a good deal to himself, not to me, and wants not -so much some one to talk to, as some one to talk at. - -We hear no more of Lady Scilly. She has not been here since Ariadne was -married. Ariadne was an excuse. Mother never gave her an excuse to come -to see her, she had never accepted her, or been rude to her either. She -simply ignored her. So Lady Scilly not having Ariadne to come and fetch, -had no particular reason for coming to us, unless she came to see -George, and she could have seen him more easily at "The Hutch" or her -town-house, till quite recently. She used to come here about her novel, -but most uncomfortably, for Christina was a sad dragon, and looked down -her nose at her. Christina could curl her nostril really, which very few -women can do. It is a horrid thing to have done at you, and withers you -soonest of anything. Now the novel is finished, and the type-written -copy, tied up like Christmas meat, is going the social round of all the -literary men who have been asked to her dinner-parties with a view to -their favourable opinion. I know that Mr. Frederick Cook has had it, and -written her a polite letter about it, though that won't prevent him -slating it in _The Bittern_ if he wants to. So Mrs. Ptomaine says. - -I know that what Aunt Gerty said in spite, and to give Mother a stick to -hit George back with when he came and found us doing dressmaking in his -sacred study, was true. Lord Scilly had told George not to go to his -house any more. Perhaps Lady Scilly had said he might? Having no more -use for George, she may have given Lord Scilly a free hand with him, and -perhaps a free foot, who knows? I think she is not nice. I am on -George's side now, as far as outside politics go, though I shall never -approve of the way he treats my brother Benvenuto. - -Lady Scilly came to Cinque Cento House at last, and George didn't "look -that pleased to see her," as Elizabeth Cawthorne said afterwards. -Elizabeth Cawthorne has no opinion of her, nor of the way she goes on -with that German fellow. She means the man who was so rude to Ariadne at -the Islingtons', at least he was far too kind for politeness. He was a -Count then, but he is also Lady Scilly's chauffeur. He was waiting -outside on her motor at this very moment, quite the servant. She took -him to her aunt's ball for the fun of it, I suppose, and it was easy to -pretend he was somebody, for he looks quite military and distinguished. - -Elizabeth showed her into the study, saying gruffly, "A female to see -you, sir." - -"Paquerette!" said George, in real amazement, as she floated in, and -when the door had closed on Elizabeth Cawthorne, went a little down on -one knee and looked up into George's face, saying, as I have heard the -French do to their professors of painting or music,--"_Cher maitre!_" - -George had taught her to do this in the days when he was really her -professor, and she wanted to do everything as Bohemians do in the -Quartier Latin, but only the way she looked at him as she said it I -could tell that she had no further use for him. - -I was sitting at the type-writer, in the corner of the room, as if I -were in my castle, and I stayed there. It was getting dark and they -didn't think of turning on the electric light. Besides, George had at -first made me a little sign which I understood, because of the _entente -cordiale_ we had had for some time, to stay where I was, and I like -doing what people seem to want, especially when it goes with what I want -myself. Then he forgot me altogether. Lady Scilly, I believe, never saw -me at all, for she never said how-do-you-do, or looked my way, and yet -we had not quarrelled. George put on his "pretty woman" manner, and -raised her, and made her sit in a nice high-backed chair that suited -her. - -"How nice of you to come! My wife is out. By the way, I may as well tell -you, she is leaving me." - -I nearly fell off my chair. Lady Scilly looked upset; for she hadn't -come to see Mother, and hadn't thought of asking whether she was out or -not. She collected herself, and said to George with some dignity-- - -"You put it crudely." - -"I do. I never mince my words, except in books. It is as I say. I shall -not oppose it. I hope that my unhappy partner may one day come to know -the bourgeois happiness I have been unable to give her. Unlucky fellow -that I am--_coeur de celibat_, you know; an Alastor of Fitz John's -Avenue, the Villon of Maresfield Gardens----" - -"No woman's such a fool as to leave a place like this----" - -"What does Shelley say? _Love first leaves the well-built nest----_" - -"You certainly are a most extraordinary man!" she mumbled. George -puzzled her by changing about so. - -"Yes," he answered her, smiling. "Come, take off your furs and make -yourself at home. Compromise yourself merrily. I suppose now, by all the -rights and wrongs of it, I ought to invite you to bolt with me, but I am -weak, I shall not." - -"Are you quite sure you won't be stronger by the end of this interview?" - -"Oh, is this an interview? Ah, why be formal and boring? Why stable the -steed after the horse--I mean the novel is out? It will be a huge -success, so your enemies predict. Frederick Cook of _The Bittern_ writes -me that this, the latest output of a militant aristocracy, seeking to -beat us with our own weapons, is chockful of cleverness and primitive -woman. What more do you want?" - -"D. the novel! I want _you!_" she said, stamping her foot. - -"Oh, throw away the fugitive husk and the rind outworn--the creed -forgotten--the deed forborne--how does it go? Give a poor author a -chance, now that you have sucked his commonplace book dry, and torn the -heart out of his theories, butchered him to make a literary agent's -holiday." - -"You _are_ unkind." - -"Don't say that. It is unworthy of you. Stale! like the plot of the new -novel you propose we should work out together." - -"I am prepared to go all lengths to assert----" - -"Your powers of imagination. I don't doubt it. But I have been thinking -it over, and I find it a ghastly, an impossible plot. No, it would never -do, not even if we made a motor-motif of it. It won't go on all fours. -It would not even begin to sell. It has none of the elements of -popularity. To begin and end with, there's not an atom of passion about -it, not even so much as would lie on twenty thousand pounds of radium, -and you know how much that is!" - -"Don't imply that I am incapable of passion in that insulting way!" she -said quite angrily. "It shall never be said----" - -"It will never be said, unless we run away and apply the test of -Boulogne and social ostracism. Believe me, Paquerette, things are best -as they are--going to be. There's true evolution in it. When the feast -is over, you put out the fluttering candles, tear down the wreaths, open -the windows. When the novel is done----" - -"I hate you to talk like this!" said she, making a cross face. - -"Women hate realism." - -"Women hate lukewarmness. Pull yourself together, George, and let us lay -our heads together to make Scilly--look silly. He's mad just now, but it -will pass off, he will get over it, and you will come down to us at 'The -Hutch' as usual and more so. Dear old Scilly will be the first to climb -down----" - -George shook his head. - -"No, no, _non bis in idem_. Not twice in the same place." (I wasn't sure -if he was alluding to the kick Lord Scilly had given him or not.) "Go -now, you sweet woman. I want to be alone. You are staid for." - -"Yes, yes, I must go. You remind me. The Count will be so deliciously -irritated. Thanks so much, so very, very much, for all your help and -timely assistance, your----" - -"Has the play been worth the scandal?" George asked her, while he was -kissing her hand to hide how much he loathed her, and was glad she was -going. He knew, as well as I knew, that she was the kind of woman who -kicks away the ladder she has just got up by with a toss of her fairy -foot, and that he would never be asked to "The Hutch" again. Mr. Aix -would, more probably, because he may chance to review what George has -helped her to write. And it seemed to me that she has been massaged so -much or so long or something, that her cheeks are like flabby oysters, -and her figure brought out in all the wrong places. She was too pretty -to last kittenish and fluffy as she was when I saw her come out of the -public-house that first day. - -"Good-bye--then--George!" she said, with something between a sneer and a -sob. "We meet again--in society, not under the clock at Charing Cross." - -What should take George and her there I cannot imagine, but George -bowed, and led her out, and I followed them. There was her chauffeur in -the car as large as life--and as a German. Though indeed he is very -good-looking. - -"I can see that he is cross in every line of his back," Lady Scilly -whispered to George as she left him on the steps, and tripped down them, -and got in beside her crabstick Count. He received her most coldly, and -it was easy to see he was her master more than her servant. - -George grunted as he fastened the door. There was an east wind blowing, -and he was afraid of catching cold after standing there bareheaded. - -"She will probably bolt with him before the year is out," he said, as we -went back to the study shivering. He played cat's-cradle with me till -dinner-time. It was all he was good for, he said, and as the game -appeared to amuse him, I didn't mind making a fool of myself for once. - -About Mother's going away that he spoke of to Lady Scilly! I believe it -really is with Mr. Aix, as George is so very civil to him. I don't see -who else it could be, for we see more of him than of any one else. He is -George's greatest friend, as well as Mother's, and people don't run away -with perfect strangers, as a rule. - -Mother was certainly up to something, for her eyes were as bright as -glass, and she had hysterics two days running. Aunt Gerty used to say -while these were going on, slapping Mother's palms and vinaigretting -her--"It is natural, you know--the excitement." The excitement of -running away, I suppose. She used to make her lie down a great deal, and -"nurse her energy," for she "would want it all!" Mother was by far the -most important person in the whole house in these days, and instead of -George being out late, and needing his latch-key, it was Mother who was -always on the go, and dining with the Press every other night of her -life. At least, I suppose Mrs. Ptomaine and Mr. Freddy Cook are the -Press, they are certainly nothing else of importance. Mother joined a -club, and stayed there one night when there was a fog. - -George never asks her any questions. He is too proud, and of course he -knows that she is too. She wouldn't stand having her movements -questioned, any more than he would. But he began to look ragged and -grey, and to have indigestion. He lived chiefly in his study. He fenced -a good deal, with Mr. Aix. He asked Mr. Aix to leave the button off his -foil, but Mr. Aix would not. George's other distraction is Father Mack, -who comes to see him a good deal, and when George goes out now, which he -seldom does, it is to see Father Mack. Father Mack is not oppressively -stiff. Once George came back from confession and set us all to try and -translate "The Survival of the Fittest" into French, a problem Father -Mack had asked him. Father Mack also gave Mother the address of a very -good little dressmaker. He lent George the _Life of Saint Catherine -Emmerich_, a lovely book. She was one of those women who can think so -hard of something that it comes out all over their bodies, in spots. -People came from far and wide to look at her and admire her, and her -family allowed it, instead of getting a trained nurse at five-and-twenty -shillings a week, and giving her a free hand till Catherine was cured. -It is my belief that she did not want to be cured, she liked being -praised for having so many spots that you could fancy it was all in the -shape of a crown of thorns. Still it is a nice romantic story, and the -poor woman meant well. - -Aunt Gerty says George is going to be a 'vert, and that I shall have to -be baptized over again, and not buried in consecrated ground when I die. -She said I need not bother to go on with preparing for my confirmation, -as all that would be stopped. I was hemming my veil and I went on, for I -believed she was teasing. And as for Father Mack, he is quite a nice -man, and George doesn't swear half so badly since he came under his -influence. - -One of these nights, when Mother had gone off to dine at some restaurant -or other, with a merry party, Aunt Gerty said, I had a talk with Ben. -George, as usual now, dined in his study alone. Ben told me some things -Mother had been saying to him, about better times coming, and darkest -before dawn, and so on. He wanted me to explain her, but I couldn't, for -the only fact I knew, viz. her going to Boulogne with Mr. Aix, would -not do Ben any good that I could see? It is really no use trying to find -out what grown-up people mean, sometimes, it is like trying to imagine -eternity; one has nothing to go on. - -We went to bed early, but I couldn't sleep; after what Ben had said I -felt I must see Mother again that night. I kept awake with great -difficulty till I heard the swish of her dress on the stairs, and then I -slipped out of bed and faced her. She was too tired to scold, she had -trodden twice in the hem of her dress going up-stairs. When we got into -her own room, she let her cloak slide off on to the floor, and came out -of it like a flower, and looked awfully nice in her low neck and bare -arms. - -"Oh, my pretty little Mother," I said. "I do love you." - -"You are just like every one else," she answered me pettishly. - -"I'm not," I said, but of course there is no doubt about it, one does -love people more in evening dress and less in a nightgown. - -"Did George ever see you like this?" I asked. - -"Often. Is he gone to bed?" - -"Yes, with a headache." - -She took a candle and we went on tiptoe to his room, Mother first taking -off her high-heeled shoes, for they would tap on the parquet and make a -noise. George was asleep. He had eaten one of his bananas, and the other -was still by the side of his bed. - -"Hold the candle, Tempe!" Mother said quickly. It was that she might go -down on her knees beside George. She then buried her head in the quilt -and cried. - -"Oh, George, I am doing it for the best--I am, I am! For my poor -neglected boy--my poor Ben." - -She upset and puzzled me so by alluding to Ben, after my conversation -with him that very evening, that I dropped a blob of candle-grease on -the sheet near George's arm, and I was so afraid I had awakened him, -that I at once shut the stable-door--I mean blew out the candle and made -a horrible smell. Mother jumped off her knees as frightened as I -was--Father Mack hasn't cured George quite of swearing!--and we made a -clean bolt of it back to her room, where she re-lit the candle and began -to get out of her dress as quickly as she could, while I sat in a -honeypot on the floor, and kept my nightgown well round my legs not to -catch cold, and talked to her nicely, so as not to startle her. - -"Of course, Mother dear, you are doing it for the best, even if it is to -run away." - -"Run away! Who says I am going to run away?" - -"George." - -"He told you?" - -"He told Lady Scilly." - -"Did he, then? He deserves that I should make it true." She laughed, a -laugh I did not like at all. It wasn't her laugh, but I have said she -was quite changed. - -"Oh, Mother, don't laugh like that!" - -"You are like the good little girl in the play, who preaches down a -wicked mother's heart! Well, my dear, I'll promise you one thing. I will -never run away without you. Will that be all right?" - -"That will be all right," I answered, much relieved. For although I am -so much more "pally" with George and sorry for him, I don't want to be -left with him. Perhaps I shall be allowed to run over in the -_Marguerite_ from Boulogne sometimes on a visit? Then I could darn and -mend for him, as Mr. Aix would not be able to spare Mother from doing -for him. I did not mention Mr. Aix to her. I thought she would rather -tell me all in her own time. - -I often wonder if we three will be happy in Boulogne, or wherever it is -social ostracism takes you to? I fancy the inconvenience of running away -is chiefly the want of society. - -That is the only want Mother will not feel after all those years buried -away in Isleworth. Ariadne is now happily married, so it won't affect -her, though I suppose that if this had happened a year ago, a -mother-in-law spending her days in social ostracism would not have -suited Simon's stiff relations. It might have prevented him from -proposing. I see it all; Mother unselfishly waited. - -One thing really troubles me. Why does not Mother do some packing? I -hope that she is not going to run away in that uncomfortable style when -you only throw two or three things into a bag? A couple of bottles of -eau-de-cologne, and some hair-pins, like Laura in _To Leeward?_ I, at -any rate, have some personal property, and I shall do very badly without -it in a dull, dead-alive place like Boulogne. But I will be patient. -Whatever Mother does is sure to be right, even running away, which gets -so dreadfully condemned in novels. - -George's new secretary is quite utilitarian and devoted to him, she is -not so _farouche_ as Christina, Mr. Aix says, or so charming. George -keeps her hard at work typing his autobiography, and doesn't go to see -Father Mack any more. I asked him why he was "off" dear Father Mack, and -he says last time he went to see him it was the Father's supper-time, -and he saw a horrid sight. He could not think, he says, of entrusting -his salvation to a man whom he had seen supping with the utmost relish -off a plateful of bullock's eyes. Just like George to be put off his -salvation by a little thing like that! Though I always felt myself as if -Father Mack was not quite ascetic enough for a real right-down sinner -like George. - -Tickets have come to George for the first night of Mr. Aix's play. -George calls it Ingomar, which vexes Aix, because Ingomar is a certain -old-fashioned kind of play that only needs a pretty woman who can't act, -as "lead." - -"Who's your Parthenia?" he asked him. - -Mr. Aix answered, "Oh, a little woman I unearthed for myself from the -suburban drama--the usual way." - -"Any good?" asked George casually. - -"I am telling her exactly what I want her to do, and she looks upon me -as Shakespeare and the Angel Gabriel in one," said Mr. Aix, glancing -across at Mother, who pursed up her lips and laughed. - -"I will take Tempe to your first night," said George suddenly. - -"A play of Jim Aix's for the child's first play!" cried Mother in a -fright. "I shouldn't think of it." - -"Children never see impropriety, or ought not to," George said. "But if -you don't wish it, I will take Lady Scilly and the Fylingdales instead. -It will do the play good." - -"It's a fond delusion," said Aix, "that the aristocracy can even damn a -play." - -Of course I understood the impropriety blind. Mother wanted me to be -free to go away with her, and the twenty-sixth was to be the night, -after all. I thought of the crossing by the nine o'clock mail that we -should have to do, and that I only know of from hearsay, and wondered -why they must choose such an awkward time? Perhaps we should not after -all cross that night, for surely Mr. Aix would want to come before the -curtain if called, and that wouldn't possibly be till about ten o'clock, -too late for the train? - -Perhaps we should stay the night at an hotel? I should simply love -that. - - - - -CHAPTER XXI - - -"Shall I type your Good-bye to George?" I asked Mother. She said, "What -do you mean?" I said, "The one you will leave pinned to your pincushion -in the usual place?" - -She laughed, and I again thought her most fearfully casual. There was no -packing done, although one would have thought she would have liked her -clothes nice and fresh and lots of them, so that she shouldn't feel -shabby at Boulogne, and let Mr. Aix and herself down. As for my -clothes--I really only had one--one dress I mean--and it was hanging -loose where it shouldn't, and with a large ink-spot in front nobody had -troubled to take out with salts of lemon or anything. - -But I began to think some things had been sent on beforehand, as advance -luggage or so forth, for Mr. Aix came in one evening, and when Aunt -Gerty raised her eyebrows at him, he said "A 1!" That I fancied was the -ticket number for the luggage, so I felt more at ease. - -One eventful evening, after Mother had been lying down all day, I was -told to put on my sun-ray pleated, and to mend it if it wanted it. I did -mend it and I put a toothbrush in the pocket of it, and I kissed all -the cats until they hated me. Cats don't like kissing, but then I didn't -know when I should see them again? I supposed some time, for running -away never is a permanent thing. People always come back and take up -housekeeping again, in the long run. - -The funny thing was, they had chosen the day of Mr. Aix's first night to -run away on. I suppose it was in case he was boo-ed. Then the manager -could come on and say, "The author is not in the house, having gone to -Boulogne with a lady and little girl, by the nine o'clock mail!" That, -of course, was the train we were to catch. I looked it out, I am good at -trains. - -George took Lady Scilly to dine at the Paxton that night, and on to the -theatre where some others were to meet them. I have never been to a -theatre myself, only music halls. At six o'clock George went off, all -grin and gardenia. The grin was as forced as the gardenia. I observed -that. - -Aunt Gerty badly wanted to go with Mr. Aix and hold his hand, as he was -as nervous as a cat. But he wouldn't have her with him, and I don't -wonder. It would have been impossible to shake her off by nine o'clock, -and he would have missed the boat-train, and Mother and me. - -After our dinner, Mother went up to her room and put on her hat, and -told me to go to mine and to put on my Shanter. I didn't intrude on her -privacy. I daresay she was saying a long good-bye to her old home, as I -was. I filled my pockets with mementoes. I took Ernie Fynes' list of -horses--for after all he is the only boy I ever loved, and it is my only -love-letter. I wondered what Mother would take? However, she came out of -her room smiling, and her pockets didn't stick out a bit. She is calm in -the face of danger; just as she was that awful day when I supplied a -fresh lot of methylated to a dying flame under our tea-kettle straight -from the bottle, and she had to put out the large fire I had started -unconsciously. - -"Goodness, child, how you do bulge! Empty your pocket at once!" - -I did as I was told. We must buy pencils over there, I suppose, but I -held on to the toothbrush. - -"Now you are not to talk all the way there and tire me!" Mother said, as -we got into a hansom. - -"I won't; but do tell me where we are to meet Mr. Aix?" - -"Mr. Aix? I am sure I don't know. He will be about, I suppose, unless -they sit on his head to keep him quiet! Don't talk." - -She put her hand up to her head, not because she had a headache, but to -keep her hair in place, as it was a windy night, and I couldn't help -thinking of the crossing that I had never crossed, only heard what -Ariadne said about it, when she came back from her wedding-tour. Ariadne -tried seven cures, and none of them saved her. - -It was ridiculously early, only seven o'clock. As we drove on and on I -began to hope that we were going to lose Mr. Aix and go alone. But it -was no good. We stopped at a door that certainly wasn't the door of a -station, and Mr. Aix came out to meet us. He squeezed our hands, and his -hand was hot, while his face was as white as a table-cloth. We went in, -up a dirty passage, and into a great cellar where there seemed to be -building constructions going on, for I noticed lots of scaffolding and -that sort of thing. There were also great pieces of canvas stretched on -wood, and one very big bit lying there propped against the wall had a -landscape of an orchard on it. - -"What is it?" I asked one of the people standing about--a man in a white -jacket. - -"That, Missie--that's the back cloth to the first scene," and then he -mumbled something, about flies and their wings, that I did not chose to -show I didn't understand. - -"Oh, yes, quite so," I said to the dirty man in the white (it had once -been) jacket, and got hold of Mr. Aix, who was mooning about in evening -dress, quite unsuitable for a journey. But he was always an untidy sort -of inappropriate man. - -"Where's my mother?" - -"Oh, your mother! Yes, she's gone to her room. I'll take you to her." - -"But are you going to make us live _here?_" I asked; but bless the man! -he was too nervous to take any more notice of me and my remarks. We -muddled along; I tumbled over a lump in the middle of the floor with -grass sown on it, and caught my foot in a carpet, made of the same. Mr. -Aix quite forgot me and I lost him. - -"Mind! Mind!" everybody kept saying, and shouldering past me with bits -of the very walls in their arms. They left the brick perfectly bare, as -bare as our old coal-cellar at Isleworth. (The one in Cinque Cento House -is panelled.) I saw an ordinary tree, as I thought, but I was quite -upset to find it was flat, like a free-hand drawing. My eyes were -dazzled with electric lights, mounted on strings, like a necklace, only -stiff, that they pushed about everywhere they liked. There were things -like our nursery fire-guard all round the gas, that was there as well as -electric. I noticed a girl go and look through a hole in a bit of canvas -or tapestry that took up all one side of the wall, and went near her. - -"Pretty fair house!" she said. She was a funny-looking little thing, -with hardly enough on, and what there was was dirty, or dyed a dirty -colour. In fact no two persons there were dressed alike; it was like a -fancy-dress party, such as the Hitchings have at their Christmas-tree. -The noise was deafening, they were shoving heavy weights about here and -there, without knowing particularly or caring where they were going. My -new friend had an American accent, and was as gentle as a cat. She went -a little way back from the curtain with me and stood by a man she seemed -rather to like, though he didn't seem to like her. He was very tall and -big, and when she had been talking to him a little while, she said -suddenly-- - -"Excuse me! I must not let myself get stiff!" and took hold of a great -leather belt he wore, and propped herself up by it and began to dip up -and down, opening her knees wide. The man didn't seem to like it much, -but he was kind and chaffed her, till I got tired of her see-sawing up -and down, and talking of her Greekness, and asked one or the other of -them to be kind enough to take me to my mother. - -"Certainly, little 'un," said the man; "kindly point the young lady out -to me. There's so many in the Greek chorus!" - -"It is Miss Lucy Jennings' daughter," said somebody near. - -"I'll take you to her after my dance," said the girl. "Wait. Watch me! I -go on!" - -It was a sort of hop-skip-and-a-jump, like a little spring lamb capering -about the fields and running races with the others as they do, but not -more than that. They made a ring for her, and we all stood round and -watched her, and somebody sang while she was dancing. She had no -stockings at all on her clean manicured feet, but a kind of open-work -boot of fancy leather. She came back as cool as a cucumber, and no -wonder, for she had nearly stayed still, not so much exercise as an -ordinary game of blindman's-buff, and said to me, "Now, pussy, I will -escort you to your mommer." - -She took me to the edge of the wall where a little stairs came down, -and on the way we passed a boy with one side of him blue and the other -green, and another man with wattles like a turkey hanging down his -cheeks and a baby's rattle in his hand. I hated them all, they were -streaky and hot, like a nightmare, and simply longed for my nice, clean, -natural mother. - -But when we got to a door and knocked, a woman like a nurse came and -answered it, and through her arm I could see my mother, standing in -front of a looking-glass, under a gas globe with a fender over it, and -she was streakier than anybody. She had a queer dress on too, with a -waistband much too low, and a skirt, shortish, and her hair was yellow! - -That finished me, and I screamed, "Oh, Mother, where have you put your -black hair?" - -Aunt Gerty, who was sitting on a large cane dress-basket, told me to -shut my mouth, and Mother turned round and said-- - -"It is only a wig, dear, and the paint will wash off, and then I will -kiss you. Meantime, sit down and keep still!" - -So I did, and watched the nurse arranging Mother as if she was a child, -nothing more or less. I turned this way and that, trying to get the -effect, but it was no use, I still thought she looked horrid. - -The others didn't think so. Aunt Gerty kept saying, "Really, Lucy, I -wouldn't have believed it! A little make-up goes a long way with us poor -women, I see. More on the left-hand corner of the cheek, Kate. The -lighting is rather unkind here, I happen to know." - -So Kate put more on, and Mother kept taking more off with a shabby bit -of an animal's foot she kept in her hand. She never looked at me at all, -she was much too busy. Then suddenly a little scrubby boy came and said -something at the door--"Garden scene on!" and went away. The nurse -called Kate threw a coat over Mother, and we all three went out and down -the stairs. - -Then for the first time I twigged what it was--a _Theatre!_ The people -were acting all round us. I knew acting well enough when I saw it, but -what I didn't know was behind the scenes, and goodness me, I have heard -Aunt Gerty talk about it enough! I was ashamed of having been so stupid, -and terribly disillusioned as well. - -The play was all the running away there was to be! Mother was going to -be no more to Mr. Aix than taking a leading part in his play amounted -to. My toothbrush literally burned in my pocket. I had been made a fool -of. - -But when I came to think it over quietly, I did not know but what I was -not rather glad. It would have been a horrid upset, this running-away -idea, and I believe George secretly felt it very much, though he did -swagger so and pretend he didn't care. The only thing was, perhaps he -would mind Mother going on the stage even worse than running away? I -longed to see him and hear what he had to say about it. - -Mr. Aix was standing quite near us, between a flat green tree and the -wall of a temple. He looked almost handsome; I suppose it was the aroma -of success, for certainly this _was_ a success. The audience seemed -delighted with Mr. Bell, a great fat actor in boots, with frilled tops -like an ancient Roman, who stood in the very middle of the stage raging -away at Mother about something or other she had done. - -"Bell's in capital form to-night," said Mr. Aix, quite loud. "I'm -pleased with him." - -"I hope I shall content you too," said Mother, who was shivering all -over, and I don't wonder, for the draughts in this place were terrific. -Kate handed her a bottle of smelling-salts. - -"Better by far have a B. and S.," said Mr. Aix. - -"No Dutch courage for me, thank you!" said Mother. "Tell me at once, is -George and the cat in the box?" - -"They are, and Mr. Sidney Robinson and the Countess of Fylingdales. You -must buck up, little woman, and show them what you can do!" - -"And what you can do!" she answered politely. "I shan't forget you have -entrusted me with your play." - -"And, by Jove! you'll bring it out as no other woman could. You can----" - -"I'm on!" said Mother, suddenly, and shunted the shawl, and pushed -forward and began to act. - -They clapped her at first and nearly drowned her voice, but she went -right on and abused Mr. Bell in blank verse. I was glad Mr. Aix hadn't -made her a laundress or a serio, but something nice and Greek and -respectable. - -I stood there with Kate and Mother's shawl and Aunt Gerty, and never -knew what it was to be so excited before! The Greek girl came up to me -and said-- - -"Say, your mommer'll knock them!" - -Then they seemed to come to a sort of proper place to stop, and the -curtain began to rattle down, and Mother and Mr. Bell were holding each -other tight, like lovers, only I heard her say in a whisper, "Mind my -hair!" - -They stayed there a long time looking stupid, even while the curtain was -down and people were clapping all round. Then I saw why they did it, for -it went up again, and again, and then they parted and took hands the -last time, and looked straight in front of them and panted, while people -shouted their names. Then the curtain came down again and Mr. Bell -limped off, for, as he said, politely, Mother had been standing all the -while on his best corn. She was so sorry, and he said it didn't matter, -and he hoped he hadn't disarranged her hair. - -Oddly enough the clapping began again. Aunt Gerty jogged Mother, who -stood near me looking quite giddy, and said "Take your call, silly!" - -Mr. Bell took her by the hand and made her walk along in front of the -curtain that a man held back for her by main force, and then we heard -the people roaring again, till it seemed more as if they thirsted for -their blood than wanted to praise them. This happened twice. When they -didn't seem inclined to clap any more she went off to her room with -Kate, while Mr. Aix thanked her for making his play. - -"Come and look at them!" said Aunt Gerty to me, and we went and looked -through the rent in the curtain, for that was the hole in the wall the -girl looked through. There was George and Lady Scilly talking away as if -Mother and her triumph hadn't existed. I think George was cross, but I -really couldn't tell. - -Mother wouldn't have me in her room at all this time, and I lounged -about with Aunt Gerty till it all began again. Mother didn't do this -next act so well, at least Aunt Gerty said not, and scolded her. - -"I can't help it, Gertrude," Mother said. "I thought George would -have----" - -"Never fear! He'll hold out till the end of the play. Then he'll be -round here bothering as sure as my name is Gertrude Jenynge!" - -And her name is Gertrude Jennings, which is pretty near, and in the -third piece of acting, when Mother was not on much, I heard George's -voice asking to be taken to her. - -"Miss Jennings left word she was not to be disturbed this wait." - -"I'm her husband." - -"Very likely, sir!" The man sneered. - -He didn't get in, and he stood there neglected by the staircase till the -beginning of the next and last act, as they said it was. I dared not go -and speak to him, for he looked so cross, and I was also afraid he -would carry me away to the box with Lady Scilly, so I just slipped -behind a bit of scenery and observed. - -Presently Mother came softly out of her room and passed George leaning -on the rail of the staircase leading to her dressing-room. - -She nodded and laughed. - -"Wait for me, George, please. Kate, take this gentleman to my room----" - -And she went gaily on to the stage. - -I followed George and Kate to Mother's room, and discovered myself to -him. He made no fuss, simply looked right through me, and began walking -up and down while Kate sewed a button on to something. - -We heard the clapping from the front quite distinctly. George ground his -teeth. Then Kate slipped out and Mother came in alone, panting, and took -hold of the dressing-table as if she was drowning. - -"I've saved the piece!" said she almost to herself, and then to George, -"I'm an artist. Oh, George, why weren't you in front to see me in the -best moment of my life?" - -"When I married you, Lucy----" George stuttered. - -"Yes, but that wasn't nearly such an occasion! Oh, George, forgive me, -and don't spoil all my pleasure." - -"Pleasure!" said George, as if he was disgusted. - -"Here comes Jim Aix to congratulate me. Poor Aix, he is so pleased...." - -She burst into tears as Mr. Aix came in. He took absolutely no notice of -George, but just caught hold of Mother's hands and said several times -over-- - -"Thank you! Thank you! Bless you! Bless you! Good God! You are -crying----" - -"It is my husband there, who grudges me my success! He does, he does! -Oh, George, for shame! I did it for Ben--for our son--to be able to send -him to college. I have made a hit--quite by accident--and you grudge it -me!" - -"He doesn't, he doesn't grudge you your artistic expansion!" said Mr. -Aix, and went to George and put his hand on his shoulder. "Old George is -the best sort in the world at the bottom. Pull yourself together, dear -old man, and be thankful you have a clever wife, as well as a good one. -She's a genius--she's better, she's a brick. I can tell you she's a -heaven-born actress, and you know what sort of a wife she has been to -you. Speak to her, man, don't let her cry her heart out now, in the hour -of her triumph. What's a triumph? At the best but short-lived! Don't -grudge it her! Congratulate her----" - -George came out of his corner and took Mother's hand and kissed it -nicely, as I have seen him kiss Lady Scilly's hand, but Mother's never. - -"One can only beg your pardon, Lucy, for this, and everything else. Can -you forgive me?" - -I re-open my MS. to add a few facts of interest. - -1. Ariadne got a baby in June; his name is Almeric Peter Frederick. - -2. Aunt Gerty got her brewer, and Mrs. Bowser has left the stage. - -3. Ben was sent to school, and they say he is clever, though I never -could see it. - -4. Lady Scilly has run away with the chauffeur and, so far, hasn't come -back. - -5. I am going to stay with Ernie Fynes' mother, Lady Fynes, at Barsom. -Ernie will be away at Eton, but he loves me. - -THE END - -_Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, London and Bungay._ - - -THE BEST BOOKS - -TO ASK FOR - -AT ALL LIBRARIES - -AND - -BOOKSELLERS - - -NEW NOVELS BY POPULAR WRITERS - -Price 6/-each - -VIOLET HUNT -THE CELEBRITY AT HOME -By VIOLET HUNT, Author of "The Maiden's Progress," -"A Hard Woman," etc. (Fourth Edition.) - -MARY STUART BOYD -THE MAN IN THE WOOD -By MARY STUART BOYD, Author of "Our Stolen -Summer," "With Clipped Wings," etc. - -ALICE AND CLAUDE ASKEW -THE SHULAMITE -By ALICE and CLAUDE ASKEW - -KEBLE HOWARD -THE GOD IN THE GARDEN -By KEBLE HOWARD, Author of "Love and a Cottage." -With Illustrations by FRANK REYNOLDS. - -H. C. BAILEY -RIMINGTONS -By H. C. 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Second Edition. - -SETTLING DAY -By ALFRED HURRY - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - - -_A FRENCH COUNTRY BOOK_ - -THE FIELDS OF FRANCE - -BY - -MADAME MARY DUCLAUX - -(A. MARY F. ROBINSON) - -Third Edition. Crown 8vo, 5s. net. - -_PRESS COMMENTS._ - -=The Times.=--"Madame Duclaux is in love with her subject, and brings to -it a mind full of sympathy, an imagination quickened by knowledge and -tender association, and a sense of beauty at once catholic, penetrating, -and minutely observant. She is also economic in a large and liberal -sense, deeply versed in the history of rural France, and well-skilled in -applying its teachings to the study of modern conditions. But Sociology -is a very arid title to give to essays so instinct with life, movement, -and poetry. Madame Duclaux has much more affinity with Wordsworth in his -better moods than with a Social Science Congress.... It is its variety, -its unobtrusive scholarship, its wide range of knowledge, the easy grace -and blithe modulation of its phrasing, the gentle kindly temper, shrewd -insight, and lively sensibility of the writer that contrive to make it a -book to be read with delight and studied with profit." - -=Daily News.=--"Everywhere she gives the sense of that wonderful world of -out-of-doors, which seems fading from the horizon of the modern -town-dweller. There is a reaching back to primitive things; night and -silence; the thrill and magic of growing life; all the spirit of spring -and harvest--and in this delightful land she shows the French -peasant.... In this rural life there is the secret of a civilization -which has vanished from England." - -=Daily Telegraph.=--"The little book presents a perfect gallery of -pictures, a sort of literary complement to Corot and Millet. All lovers -of pure literature will find something to like and to remember in pages -so freshly and sympathetically inspired." - -=To-Day.=--"It is, perhaps, the best book on agricultural France which has -yet appeared in England." - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -LIFE AND TOPOGRAPHY OF CARLYLE - -THE CARLYLE COUNTRY - -With a Study of Carlyle's Life - -BY J. M. SLOAN - - _With a Photogravure of the Whistler Portrait of Carlyle_, _two - other Photogravures_, _and about 100 Portraits_, _full-page_, _and - other Illustrations._ - -Crown 4to, 10s. 6d. net. - -This new Carlyle Book deals with the Carlyles in all their multiform -relations to the Carlyle Country, and casts much valuable light upon the -complex problems raised by Carlyle's earlier and later life. - -It forms a most useful and instructive Guide to the Carlyle Country, and -will appeal to old Carlylean readers by its careful grouping of -biographical events around the places with which they are inextricably -identified. - -It also serves the purposes of an Introduction to Thomas Carlyle in the -case of new Readers and Students of his Writings. - -The Book is divided into Twenty-eight short Chapters and an Epilogue, in -which the historical, physical, social, and religious features of the -Carlyle Country are reviewed, and Carlyle traced from place to place, -from incident to incident, in his "old familiar birth-land"; the whole -showing, once more, what a Great Story is that of Carlyle's ascent from -the peasant's cottage to the throne of literature in the Victorian age. - -The author accepts Carlyle for a modern Prophet; for one of the Great -Spiritual Teachers and Leaders of the last century; and Carlyle's -prophetic mind is traced in this Work to its original fountain and home -in the Burgher Secession, under the Erskines, as it invaded the Carlyle -Country in the eighteenth century. - -The Book is illustrated by nearly one hundred views--places and -portraits--all having some direct relation to the Carlyles in the -Carlyle Country. - -A valuable Carlyle Chronology is appended, together with an Index and -Map. - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -_SECOND THOUSAND_ - -LIFE AND TOPOGRAPHY OF DICKENS - -THE REAL DICKENS LAND - -With an Outline of Charles Dickens's Life - -BY - -H. SNOWDEN WARD AND CATHARINE WARD - -AUTHORS OF "SHAKESPEARE'S TOWN AND TIMES." - -_With a Steel Plate Portrait of Dickens, three Photogravures, and nearly -300 full-page and other Illustrations._ - -Crown 4to, 10s. 6d. net. - -_PRESS COMMENTS._ - -=Mr. Robert Barr=, in =The Idler=.--"Mr. H. Snowden Ward is probably the -greatest living authority on Dickens localities." - -=The Standard.=--"The work has never been done so thoroughly and -comprehensively as in 'The Real Dickens Land.'" - -=The Field.=--"A wonderfully complete, painstaking, and accurate survey of -every corner in England which Dickens visited and described." - -=The Daily Telegraph.=--"A very charmingly produced book.... A harvest of -fine photographs, many of which will be of enduring interest. The sketch -of Dickens's life and the running commentary on the pictures themselves -are excellently done, and are obviously the work of authors genuinely in -love with their subject and free from the extravagance of undue hero -worship." - -=The Sunday Special.=--"To our authors we owe the happy thought of -preserving, with the aid of their cameras, the real Dickens land as it -exists to-day, and by faithfully following the footsteps of the novelist -from boyhood up, they have succeeded in giving us an invaluable picture -gallery.... The handsome volume forms a distinct addition to Dickens -literature." - -=The Athenaeum.=--"The authors have made excellent use of the many -investigations by Mr. Kitton and other indefatigable Dickensians; they -have themselves made research and taken photographs; and since they -write well, their volume is a model of its kind. The illustrations are -numerous and excellent; the index is first-rate, and the events of -Dickens's life are skilfully woven into the narrative." - -=The Norwich Mercury.=--"In short, this volume is without a peer in the -matter that really illustrates Charles Dickens's life and works.... Mr. -and Mrs. Ward have hit the happy mean, so that the book is not a bald -statement of 'hard facts,' but is lightened by glimpses of art and -nature in her brightest moods wherever occasion served.... It cannot -fail to be a favourite half-guinea Christmas or New Year's gift-book." - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -MR. H. G. WELLS'S TWO GREAT WORKS - -MANKIND IN THE MAKING - -_Third Large Edition now ready. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d._ - -_A FEW PRESS OPINIONS._ - -"Mr. Wells's 'Mankind in the Making' ... is a book to read and to think -about, and one which obviously proceeds from a great deal of honest and -stubborn thinking on the writer's part. It both challenges the -stupidities of clever people and brings into sharp question the lazy -conventions and accepted servilities of modern English -life."--_Westminster Gazette._ - -"No more provocative and fascinating volume has been issued of recent -years than this 'Mankind in the Making.' Mr. Wells is a master of the -suggestive phrase which suddenly opens long vistas and great -issues."--_Speaker._ - -"'Mankind in the Making' is a courageous and earnest and suggestive -attempt to deal with the all-important problem of the future of the -race, and as such we hope it will be widely read."--_Onlooker._ - -"Mr. Wells is one of the few, very few, original thinkers of the present -day, and the result is that we have a book ... which stimulates thought -more than any work which one has come across in recent years."--_Graphic._ - -ANTICIPATIONS - -AN EXPERIMENT IN PROPHECY - -BY H. G. WELLS - -AUTHOR OF "THE TIME MACHINE," "WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES," ETC. - -_Seventh Edition. Crown 8vo, 7s. 6d._ - -_Popular and Eighth Edition. Cloth, 3s. 6d.; paper covers, 6d._ - -"'Anticipations' is one of the most remarkable pieces of social prophecy -which we have lately read.... In Mr. Wells we have not merely an -imaginative writer of truly original power, but a thinker of very -considerable calibre.... We cannot hesitate to recommend this book to -our readers as one of the most suggestive attempts that have yet been -made seriously to grapple with those great problems of the near future -which present themselves to every man.... Such vividness of perception -and picturesque wealth of detail as render it hard for the most -unwilling reader to evade its spell ... a most bracing, strenuous, and -interesting attempt to foreshadow the trend of our present activities, -which no open-minded person can read without being the better for -it."--_Spectator._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -THE WOMAN'S LIBRARY - -Edited by ETHEL M. M. McKENNA - -With Numerous Illustrations. - -_In Six Volumes. Crown 8vo, 5s. net per Volume._ - -VOL. I. EDUCATION AND PROFESSIONS FOR WOMEN - -Containing Articles by - - Miss JANET HOGARTH on "HIGHER EDUCATION." - Mrs. KENDAL on "THE STAGE." - Mrs. JOPLING on "ART." - Miss BEATRICE ORANGE on "TEACHING." - Miss BILLINGTON on "JOURNALISM." - Dr. ETHEL LAMPORT on "MEDICINE." - Miss MARGARET IRWIN on "PUBLIC WORK." - Miss MABYN ARMOUR ON "SANITARY INSPECTING." - -VOL. II. NEEDLEWORK - -Profusely Illustrated. Including Articles on - - "EMBROIDERY" by Miss RUTH M. DAY. - "DRESSMAKING," by Miss J. E. DAVIS, of the Women's Work Department of the - Manchester Municipal School of Technology. - "MILLINERY," by Miss CLARA HILL, Registered Teacher to the City and Guilds - of London Institute. - "KNITTING AND CROCHET," by Mrs. and Miss TURNBULL. - -VOL. III. NURSERY AND SICK-ROOM - -Containing - - "ETHICAL TRAINING OF CHILDREN," by Lady ISABEL MARGESSON. - "PRACTICAL CARE OF CHILDREN," by ETHEL LAMPORT. - "NURSING," by Miss H. F. GETHEN. - -VOL. IV. SOME ARTS AND CRAFTS - -With Numerous Illustrations. Containing Articles on - - "FURNISHING AND DECORATION," by Miss MAY CROMMELIN and Mrs. - CAROLINE SHAW. - "WOODCARVING," by Miss M. X. REEKS, Assistant Teacher at the School of Art - Woodcarving, South Kensington. - "ENAMELLING," by Miss HALLE. - "DECORATIVE WEAVING," by Miss CLIVE BAYLEY, Foundress of the Bushey - School of Weaving. - "BOOKBINDING." by ETHEL M. M. M'KENNA. - "ARTISTIC PHOTOGRAPHY," by ALICE HUGHES. - -VOL. V. COOKERY AND HOUSEKEEPING - -By Mrs. PRAGA. - -VOL. VI. THE LIGHTER BRANCHES OF AGRICULTURE - -By EDITH BRADLEY and BERTHA LA MOTHE, N.D.D. - -With an Introduction by Lady WARWICK. - -Numerous Illustrations. - -Containing "MARKET GARDENING AND FRUIT-GROWING," "POULTRY FARMING," -"MARKETING," "WOMEN'S SETTLEMENTS," "DAIRYING," "BEE-KEEPING." - -Mrs. F. A. STEEL in the _Saturday Review_ says--"They are admirable -pieces of work. Carefully compiled, excellently edited, and beautifully -issued. No fault in matter or manner." - -_T. P.'s Weekly_ says--"An interesting series, and one filling a -definite corner in the modern maze of book-making." - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -W. H. MALLOCK'S WORKS - -THE INDIVIDUALIST. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -THE HEART OF LIFE. Third Edition. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -A HUMAN DOCUMENT. Ninth Edition. Crown 8vo. 3_s_. 6_d_. - -"Among those novelists who have always avoided the merely artificial -plots and characters of commonplace fiction, and have endeavoured to -draw their subjects and personages on the lines of actuality, Mr. W. H. -Mallock must certainly be numbered.... A novel which only a clever and -observant man could have written, and which only a very dull man could -read without finding much to divert his mind."--_The Morning Post_. - -ELLA FULLER MAITLAND'S WORKS - -THE SONG-BOOK OF BETHIA HARDACRE. Large Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -PAGES FROM THE DAY-BOOK OF BETHIA HARDACRE. Fifth Edition. Large Crown -8vo. 5_s_. - -THE SALTONSTALL GAZETTE. Conducted by PETER SALTONSTALL, Esq., and -written by Various Hands. Large Crown 8vo. 7_s_. 6_d_. - -BY FIONA MACLEOD - -THE DIVINE ADVENTURE; IONA; BY SUNDOWN SHORES. Studies in Spiritual -History. By FIONA MACLEOD, Author of "The Washer of the Ford," "The -Dominion of Dreams," etc. Crown 8vo. 6_s_. - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -CHARLES DICKENS'S WORKS - -THE GADSHILL EDITION - -=Edited, with Introductions and Notes, by ANDREW LANG= - -_In Thirty-four Volumes. Square Crown 8vo. Price 6s. per volume._ - -THE AUTHENTIC EDITION - -_In Twenty-one Volumes. Square Crown 8vo. Price 5s. each._ - -THE BIOGRAPHICAL EDITION - -_In Nineteen Volumes. Large Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. each._ - -THE OXFORD INDIA PAPER EDITION - -_In Seventeen Volumes. Foolscap 8vo. Price 2s. 6d. net per volume, -cloth, and 3s. 6d. net per volume in leather._ - -THE FIRESIDE EDITION - -_In Twenty-two Volumes. Crown 8vo. With all Original Illustrations. -Price 1s. 6d. net and 2s. net per volume._ - -THE CROWN EDITION - -_In Seventeen Volumes. Large Crown 8vo, maroon cloth. Containing all the -Original Illustrations. Price 5s. per volume._ - -THE HALF-CROWN EDITION - -_In Twenty-one Volumes. Crown 8vo, blue cloth. Original Illustrations. -Price 2s. 6d. per volume._ - -THE SHILLING EDITION - -_In Twenty-one Volumes, each with Frontispiece. Price 1s. per volume. -Complete Sets in Special binding, Twenty-one Volumes. Gilt top, in sets -only, L1 1s. net._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - -THOMAS CARLYLE'S WORKS - -THE CENTENARY EDITION - -Edited, with Introductions, by H. D. TRAILL, D.C.L. - -_In Thirty Volumes. Square Crown 8vo. Price 3s. 6d. per volume._ - -LIMITED LARGE PAPER EDITION - -_In Thirty Volumes. Square Demy 8vo, L15 15s. net._ - -THE LIBRARY EDITION - -_In Thirty-four Volumes. Demy 8vo, red cloth. Price 7s. 6d. and 9s. per -volume._ - -THE EDINBURGH EDITION ON INDIA PAPER - -_In Fifteen Volumes. Cloth, 2s. net per volume. In leather, 2s. 6d. per -volume._ - -THE PEOPLE'S EDITION - -_In Thirty-seven Volumes. Small Crown 8vo, red cloth. Separate Volumes, -price 1s. per volume._ - -THE CHELSEA EDITION - -_In Eleven Volumes. In special red cloth binding, with gilt tops, L1 5s. -net._ - -CHEAP ISSUE - -_In Eleven Volumes. Crown 8vo, bound in blue cloth, L1 4s._ - -=The French Revolution.= With Portrait of Thomas Carlyle. 2_s._ - -=Sartor Resartus, Heroes and Hero-Worship, Past and Present=, and -=Chartism=. With Portrait of Thomas Carlyle. 2_s._ - -=Oliver Cromwell's Letters and Speeches.= With Portrait of Oliver -Cromwell. 2_s._ 6_d._ - -=Critical and Miscellaneous Essays.= Two volumes, 2_s._ each. - -=Wilhelm Meister.= 2_s._ - -=The Lives of Schiller and Sterling.= With Portraits of Schiller and -Sterling. 2_s._ - -=Latter-Day Pamphlets= and =Translations from Musaeus, Tieck, and Richter=. -2_s._ - -=History of Frederick the Great.= Three volumes. 2_s._ 6_d._ each. - -_This Edition is also bound in limp leather with gilt edges. Price 3s. -and 3s. 6d. net per volume._ - -LONDON: CHAPMAN AND HALL, LTD. - - * * * * * - -Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber: - -"Anything in it?" mother said.=> "Anything in it?" Mother said. {pg 26} - -look of dsappointment=> look of disappointment {pg 62} - -one of the man who did=> one of the men who did {pg 101} - -when your times comes=> when your times comes {pg 105} - -The fortune-seller doesn't=> The fortune-teller doesn't {pg 115} - -though the first room=> through the first room {pg 137} - -I dare said he had got=> I dare say he had got {pg 165} - -it is the only times in his life=> it is the only time in his life {pg -199} - -"The Survival of the fittest"=> "The Survival of the Fittest" {pg 284} - -Gerty and mother think=> Gerty and Mother think {pg 270} - - - - - - -End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Celebrity at Home, by Violet Hunt - -*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CELEBRITY AT HOME *** - -***** This file should be named 41556.txt or 41556.zip ***** -This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: - http://www.gutenberg.org/4/1/5/5/41556/ - -Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed -Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was -produced from scanned images of public domain material -from the Google Print project.) - - -Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions -will be renamed. - -Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no -one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation -(and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without -permission and without paying copyright royalties. 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