Almost the whole of my female acquaintance seemed to be gathered in my
rooms, and seemed, moreover, to be doing its collective best to persuade
me of the superfluity of my presence. The occasion was the eve of
Caroline’s wedding, and the natural interest I myself took in the event
paled before the engrossing fascination it appeared to have for these
ladies. The company consisted largely of Mrs. Loring Chatterton; but she
was ably supported by the remainder of her particular set and half a
dozen supernumerary bridesmaids, not one of whom--with the exception,
perhaps, of a quiet little creature who sat apart and said nothing--but
would willingly have turned me out of house and home had she dared, as a
person who could perfectly well be dispensed with. From the whispered
conversations and secret conferences around me I was rigidly excluded,
which I regretted the more as I felt I should have taken a peculiar
pleasure in them.
“My good man,” said Mrs. Loring, striding over my feet with an armful of
bridesmaids’ frippery, “what a lot of room you take up! You are sure you
have no engagement this evening?”
“Nothing of importance, Mrs. Loring,” I replied, looking up from an
entry-book of bridal gifts I was curiously scanning, with mental notes
of my own. “You may consider me entirely at your disposal. My duty is
here to-night of all nights; and when you and Mrs. Carmichael can spare
Caroline, I also have certain advice to give her not inappropriate to
the occasion.”
“Don’t you think you’d better go and give Arthur the benefit of your
wisdom?” she rejoined.
“Alas,” I replied, “it is too late--he cannot draw back now. He must
take the inevitable consequences of engagement. He has made his bed----”
“I see no reason for your being indelicate, Mr. Butterfield,” answered
Mrs. Chatterton; and she rustled away, dignity in flounces.
Never had my flat known such wealth of plate and tissue-paper. Had
Jupiter, in wooing Danaë, adopted a silver currency, he could scarce
have crowded more lavishly the Grecian tower. Ladies slipped in and out
of the miscellaneous collection with feminine calculations and
judgments, which I noted in secret joy, estimating, apparently, the
whole affair in its comparison with previous functions. And above all,
and more insistent from their very quietness, were heard the mysterious
confabulations.
I crossed over to Mrs. Carmichael and Caroline. “Well, little sister,” I
said, glancing at Mrs. Carmichael, “and what unspeakable things has Mrs.
Kit been telling you now?”
“Oh, Rollo,” she replied, placing her hand pleadingly on my sleeve, “she
hasn’t. Please don’t tease me to-night, dear. I am not a bit happy. I
almost wish I was not going to be married.”
“Then she has?” I returned. “Mrs. Kit, how could you? But there--you’re
all alike. They’re not in the least interested in you, Carrie, my dear.
It’s just a wedding. A woman and a bridecake----”
“What do you know about it?” Mrs. Carmichael said disdainfully.
“Madame,” I replied, “the exultation of your sex in all that pertains to
a wedding is barely fit for the contemplation of a bachelor. Cannot you
disguise your interest in some seemly manner?”
“If you’ll arrange these cards,” she retorted, “instead of concerning
yourself with things of no moment to you, you’ll be of much more
service. _Will_ you be so good as to label these presents--and with as
little talk as is convenient to you?”
This to me, mind, in my own house! I looked to Caroline to espouse my
cause and to resent the outrage on my feelings; but she merely looked
plaintively. With a sigh, which Mrs. Kit, calling after me, qualified as
“avoirdupois,” I tried Mrs. Vicars, who was fluttering round the other
end of the glittering table, arranging the nuptial tribute in symphonic
harmonies of the Kensington amateur order. Mrs. Vicars is æsthetic at a
street’s length, and, as Millicent Dixon had once spitefully said, wears
her art upon her sleeves for Jays to laugh at. She was placing her own
offering, something in plush and oil colour, modestly, shrinkingly, all
but out of sight.
I was saying something about the spiritual reality of which all this
external show was but the outward symbol, when she cut me off.
“Oh, Mr. Butterfield,” she said, “why _did_ Cissie Bingham give Caroline
a _green_ fan?”
“Possibly, Mrs. Vicars,” I replied, “for the same order of reason that
causes a miller to wear a white hat.”
“But a green one--how horrid! Look at her complexion!” And she bent the
trifle coquettishly round her chin, with a well-studied sparkle over the
top of it--a lesson in feminine Arts and Crafts.
“A fan, Mrs. Vicars,” I replied, “may be used either for flirtation or
concealment--before marriage. Afterwards, only for the latter. In either
case the appropriateness----”
“I think you are very horrid, Mr. Butterfield,” she answered, preening
the openwork effervescence of her corsage and turning her shoulders to
me in pique. “I believe Mrs. Bassishaw wants you.”
I tried my luck with Mrs. Bassishaw, Arthur’s mother. Mrs. Bassishaw is
a comely widow, as young as is compatible with having a son on the eve
of marriage, and still possessing what her friends call “excellent
chances.” She made a place for me by her side.
“You and I will be less in the way in this corner, Mr. Butterfield,” she
said, “and we can watch the young people. Doesn’t this make you feel
terribly old? I declare I feel myself ageing already.”
She passed her hand over her glossy hair.
“I also feel it keenly, Mrs. Bassishaw,” I replied.
“And only think, Mr. Butterfield,” she continued, “should--should you
become an uncle, I shall be a grandmother! Oh, I do hope they’ll be
comfortable--and happy!”
“I have not a doubt, Mrs. Bassishaw,” I answered, “that they will be
exceedingly comfortable--and becomingly happy.”
“Only that?” she inquired.
“Is not that a good deal?” I replied.
“They are, I believe, made for each other; but I do not expect anything
epic from either of them, nor will they, so far as I can see, mark the
beginning of an æon in the annals of matrimony.”
“You are very hard on them, Mr. Butterfield--poor things!” she
answered--apparently because I had not granted them the beginning of an
æon. Thus does one suffer for principle! I rose to interview an
automatic reporter from a fashion paper, whom Mrs. Loring handed over to
me with a request to be good enough to take the thing seriously. I told
him that the presents were numerous and costly, including--here followed
a list; and crossed over to a knot of frolicking bridesmaids that was
gabbling millinery in one corner.
These young ladies had apparently a good deal to say; and prominent
among the chatter could be heard Miss Nellie Bassishaw’s voice declaring
that something or other of hers was of a poorer quality of silk than
some one else’s; which was always the way, she remarked, with a grown-up
toss of the head, when one bought six gowns at the same shop. Miss Flo
Bassishaw and another maid were talking simultaneously, the one saying
that the organist was sure to play the march too soulfully for it to be
of much use as walking music, and the other that old----(a respected
friend of mine) could afford to give cheap salad bowls now that he had
married all his daughters. And above all, and to an extent that was an
enlightenment even to me, the pairing arrangements for the breakfast
were discussed with a freedom and pointedness that took entire
precedence of any other significance the occasion might have. In this
theme again Miss Nellie revelled.
“I don’t care,” she said, “I shall ask Carrie. He’s not a bit too old;
and I _have_ met him before--you haven’t. I’m not going to be bored to
death by Jack Somers, and have to do all the talking myself; and that’s
my decision,” she said irrevocably.
“We shall have _our_ hair up to-morrow, too,” returned Flo, with the
spiteful familiarity of a younger sister, “and I shall hear every word
you say, because I shall be on the other side.”
“I don’t know why they ask such a crowd,” another half-blown bud of
sixteen joined in. “I expect Rollo Butterfield went to school with most
of them--they’re old enough.”
And fat enough--and dull enough--and bald enough--the poise of her chin
seemed to say. I admired her confidence.
“And what about----?” a nod of Miss Nellie’s head gave the direction to
my eyes. I looked, and saw apparently unheeded by the noisy group, the
pretty, timid creature I had remarked once or twice before, an imported
cousin of somebody’s, condemned to wear pink because it suited the rest.
She was out in the cold; but something in the abstracted quietness of
her pose told me it was perhaps as much from choice as from the
passing-over of her companions.
“Oh,” Miss Flo replied, “she can go somewhere near Rollo
Butterfield--she’ll be less awkward near him than with anybody else. And
then Jack Somers.”
Seeing myself so allotted, I thought it well to make the acquaintance
beforehand of the maid for whose conversational flow I was to be
responsible. I skirted the group, and sat down by her.
“I see you’re taking a short rest from your duties, Aggie,” I remarked.
“Are you having a good time?”
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Butterfield,” she answered shyly. “I think it’s all
lovely.”
“The dresses and things?” I asked.
“No,” she replied, turning grey eyes upon me. “Mr. Bassishaw and the
wedding--and Caroline. The presents don’t matter much, do they, Mr.
Butterfield?”