with an expression which denoted that she considered herself to be one
of this favoured few. ‘How can you explain however,’ she added, ‘that
few, if any, know the mysteries?’
‘Simply because there are so few people living who can keep a secret
or hold their tongues. The one great or tremendous task of the ancient
priesthoods, as of the modern Jesuits, was not to get great ideas, but
to train men to keep quiet, and not to tell tales out of school.’
‘There again you are _quite_ wrong,’ remarked the lady. ‘If mere
firm reticence would attract revelation, _I_, certainly, would be
among the favoured. On that subject you need not speak further, for
it simply does not admit discussion. I have kept,’ she added, ‘in my
time a secret of vast importance, on which the fate of a great family
depended, for many months, till it all blew over.’
‘And then,’ reflected Flaxius, ‘came the great blow-up in consequence
of her blowing, or letting it out. I remember it all. Truly she
deserves a lesson for all this. Do you know,’ he added amiably, ‘I
think, Miss Rockhard, that this matter may possibly be tested. There is
an ugly little old story about certain nuns who wanted a Pope to make
female confessors, and he promised to do so if they would keep a box
unopened for a day. They all swore on their salvation to do so; but
the Pope was hardly out of the convent before they all ran to the box
and lifted the lid, when out flew a bird, which vanished through the
window.’
‘If you think that a silly and slanderous old tale, which is only
disgraceful to one who tells it, is an _argument_,’ said the lady, ‘I
have no more to say.’
‘But I have this to suggest,’ replied Flaxius. ‘I have heard--for I do
not assert it--that there is even now in London a person who is endowed
with such strangely supernatural gifts that she may be ranked with the
witches or fairies.’
‘At a guinea a visit, I presume,’ remarked Miss Rockhard with her
sarcastic smile more fully developed than ever. ‘_Merci_, my means do
not permit of such expensive researches into occult philosophy.’
‘Ah, that is the most remarkable part of it all,’ replied Flaxius.
‘She takes nothing; nay, she invariably makes very valuable gifts; but
on the strictest conditions of secrecy--and she is to the last degree
exacting in this respect--as also that those whom she favours shall be
gifted with superior intellects--not led by mere curiosity.’
‘And you expect me to believe this?’
‘Certainly not. I never said a word as to belief. I only say that _I_
believe you will incur no kind of risk or cost if you seek her.’
‘And you will obtain access for me to your witch?’
‘She is not _my_ witch, and I have no desire whatever to send you to
her. I only say that if you will promise on your honour to observe
sacred secrecy even as to knowing of her existence, I will give you her
address.’
‘Very well, I swear!’
‘She lives in Devonshire Street, near Regent’s Park. There is her card.
But I give you every warning. What you seek will require great truth,
secrecy, and self-command. And remember’--here the face of Flaxius
assumed an expression which Miss Rockhard had not seen before, and
under which she for an instant quailed, it was so marvellously strange
and dignified, as if he had forgotten himself into grandeur--‘remember
that if you succeed, I shall expect no thanks, and if you fail, yours
alone is the responsibility.’
‘Oh, I accept it,’ replied Miss Rockhard, recovering her flippancy.
‘Thanks awfully. I accept the _entire_ responsibility. What fun!’
And so with all her grace and vanity she swept away.
* * * * *
At four o’clock on the following afternoon--or ‘morning,’ as it
is called by those who probably look for midnight at fourteen
o’clock--Miss Rockhard found herself in Devonshire Street, seeking
the dwelling of the witch-fairy. And it was very naturally with an
intensely sarcastic smile that she finally discovered on a door a small
silver plate bearing the words:
MISS ALBAN,
DRESSMAKER.
‘I might have expected it would be some humbug of the kind!’ thought
the fair Jesabelle. ‘I wonder whether the fairy drops her h’s. But let
us enter all the same into this Egyptian Hall and take a miracle or
two.’
She rang, and was admitted by a very pretty maid to a hall which was
somewhat singularly, but most artistically, decorated with antique
objects, the real meaning of which was, however, hardly apparent; and
was then conducted up a broad old staircase to a large _salon_, in
which the visitor detected a most extraordinary and original taste,
as regards furniture, without the least obtrusive sign of expenditure
or cost. There was not a thing in the room which looked as if it
had been the ‘gem’ of a bric-a-brac shop, or worthy a place in the
great Rothschild pawnbroker collection of Frankfort, or bought at a
Demiduffer sale, and many of the antiques would not have been valued
at twopence by the Jew; but even Miss Rockhard, albeit her archæology
was of the slenderest, save on Chippendale, lace, Japaneseries,
Chineseries, crockeries, glass, Sèvres, and rococery in general, or
trash in particular, could not help admitting that there was a hidden
depth of knowledge and artistic taste in what she saw, which had
nothing in common with bargains, fashion or the shop.
Suddenly looking up, Miss Rockhard saw before her a lady who, though
beautiful, was not to be lightly described as ‘a beauty,’ considering
the usual vulgar associations with the word. There was a depth of
expression and moral truth, allied to strength of character, in her
face which would have shamed into oblivion the charm of a Helen, who
was (according to Flaxius) only a professional beauty of the popular
kind after all. ‘And such,’ adds Flaxius, ‘I have invariably found all
fashionable belles of the season (“whom every one is talking about”) to
be.’
‘I am Miss Alban,’ said the lady to the visitor, ‘and I shall be
pleased to aid you in the object of your call. You desire indubitable
proof of the existence of supernatural or magical influences or beings,
and I can supply it.’
‘You are, ahem! I believe, a--dressmaker,’ said Miss Rockhard, with
considerable sarcasm. For she felt with every word and glance that
Miss Alban was immeasurably her superior in exactly that in which she
would have liked to be great herself: or in calm self-possession,
penetration, and the terrible art of influencing others, and being
invulnerable. Therefore it was with something like suppressed
exasperation, wrapped up in a smile, that she exclaimed: ‘A dressmaker!’
‘I appear to every one,’ replied Miss Alban, looking the other clearly
in the eyes, ‘as the ideal ministrant of what they most desire in life.
What _you_ prize above everything is simply to appear well before
everybody, be it in good looks or clothes as regards the body, and
accomplishments and setting people down and “besting” them as regards
the mind, which all amounts to mere show or dress, and therefore I
appear to you as a _modiste_.’
‘I confess,’ declared Miss Rockhard, who had always, with all her
failings, a substratum of frank courage as regarded her poverty and
unavoidable defects, being therein no snob, ‘that as I have only one
decent evening-dress in the world, and am getting to the end of my
twenties, or to a time when dress becomes more needful, and as I live
for society, I _do_ regard externals with love and envy. But as for the
proof of enchantment----’
‘I promise,’ replied Miss Alban, ‘to fully and perfectly convince and
satisfy you before you leave this room, that there is such a thing
as magic, by which I mean simply to show you something absolutely
inexplicable by _your_ knowledge of science.’
‘I ask no more than _that_ as regards your sorcery,’ said Miss Rockhard
with a complacent smile.
‘While as to dress, I promise that you shall be at no expense, and for
life, the best dressed woman in London, or even in New York or Paris.
But on one condition.’
‘I know--absolute secrecy. That for me is a mere trifle.’
‘It is no “mere trifle,” as you will find, but, especially for you, a
terribly difficult and onerous task. For know that the secrecy must
be without speck or flaw. You are not to say that you have _heard_
of fairy dressmakers or jest with people who ask you whence you had
your garments, in such a way as to cause surmises as to the truth; and
if you fail you must not say, “_I thought_ this or that,” as people
of weak minds always do. There is to be no allowance for thought, or
prevarication, or independence, or misfortune or excuses. If you can
persevere in merely keeping a secret to your own advantage, I promise
you that dress shall not be the limit of my favours, and you shall lead
a long and happy and highly-honoured life. But if you fail, that is, if
by the _least_ inadvertency, or even accident, you betray the secret,
you will incur a terrible disgrace, and a suffering and humiliated
life. Consider well, and do not let your vanity lead you to ruin.’
‘I think,’ said Miss Rockhard, with the same old contemptuous smile,
‘that we may proceed to the proof. As I happen to know my own mind a
little better than you probably do, I am better aware of my capacity
for secrecy. I accept your conditions.’
‘The proof is very easy,’ replied Miss Alban, taking from a drawer in
a cabinet what seemed to be a large walnut. ‘Did you ever hear of the
famous wardrobe walnuts of the witch tree of Benevento? Legend says
that a prince once filled a palace with the splendid garments in
cloth of gold, ermine, velvet and pearls, which he drew from this one
nut.[10] Now, are you ready?’
‘Certainly,’ replied the visitor.
‘And should I perform this miracle, you will, unconditionally once and
for all accept it on your honour as a proof of magic power? If not, we
will try something else.’
‘No,’ answered Jesabelle, who was thinking more of being beautifully
attired than of all the miracles or oaths ever heard of. ‘The dress
will be proof enough in all conscience.’
As she spoke, her outer garment fell off, and she stepped out of it,
while Miss Alban, opening the walnut, drew from it what seemed at
first to be a mere cobweb, which she shook and shook out into greater
fulness, till she placed it on Miss Jesabelle who, to do her justice,
had really a fine little figure, just made to be very well dressed,
with the one drawback of large feet and hands.
‘Now tell me,’ said the dressmaker, ‘what colour or material or style
would you prefer?’
‘Nothing extravagant as regards expense,’ replied Miss Rockhard, ‘no
cloth of gold or pearl-embroideries or anything to make people wonder
where the money came from, when all the world knows how poor I am. Grey
silk will do; but as elegant, original, and beautiful in fit and fold
as a robe can be.’
‘_C’est fait_,’ said Miss Alban. ‘Rise and look into yonder glass!’
Then Miss Rockhard looked and could hardly believe her own eyes, such
a vision of beauty was before her. For, as has been already intimated,
she was really very ‘good-looking,’ with a fine figure, both being of
the kind which are incredibly improved by tasteful dress, so that she
came out (like fireworks) in a grand ball, or at a fête, when fortune
favoured her.
But never before, under the most benign influence of a grand cheque
from her benevolent aunt, had she bloomed out like this. It was more
than a fit, more than modelling to the form, more than artistic
folds after any painting, for there was in the fluent grace and easy
elegance of that skirt and bust an æsthetic apocalypse. ‘Which is,’
pencils Flaxius, ‘a big word for a man, but not too much, under the
circumstances, for a woman.’
Even the fairy smiled, being feminine, at the success, and said:
‘There is still a trifle or two wanting.’ She took from the drawer a
wisp of straw, a coarse cord, or circle of clothes-line, and a simply
_horrid_ brooch of brass and glass, or of agate, which seemed, from
afar off, to have been bought in a common toy shop in the Burlington
Arcade, or under the cliff in Brighton, for threepence. She fastened
the wisp of straw round the wrist of Jesabelle, and lo! it became a
massy bracelet of gold in old Etruscan style, which would have maddened
Castellani, and sent a whole ball-room into convulsions of envy. The
brooch turned to a brilliant bouquet of diamonds, while the rope, with
eccentric, yet pretty, taste, remained exactly as it was, but in pure
gold, and, being tied in a bow-knot with folding ends, formed a very
original and elegant head-dress.
The world hears a great deal about the tact of women, but there is a
great deal to be said on the subject--for and against. For while she
believed she had the keenest insight into everything, Miss Rockhard,
like all of her class and kind, had no more tact than an oyster, or
a hedge-hog, when it behoved her to suppress her needless pleonasms,
sarcasms, and little spasms of ‘pure cussedness.’ And over and above
all this, petty scepticism had so worked into all her being that as
soon as she had got over the first flush of admiration at her dress,
the old devil whispered in her ear not to show too much astonishment
or gratitude, ‘which means,’ he said, ‘that she has been too much
for you.’ Therefore, with exquisite good taste and characteristic
refinement, she said:
‘Well, it’s an awfully clever bit of hanky-panky, I must say. I wonder
how on earth you do it!’
The fairy looked at her gravely, and replied:
‘You said seriously, before I showed you this marvel, that if I could
effect it you would accept it once and for all as a proof of my power,
and your first words are an utter denial of it. You are neither
spontaneously grateful at heart, nor graceful nor polite in words.
Society and petty persiflage and small sneering and flippant sarcasm
have killed in you every noble quality. But I will give you another
proof which will defy doubt. Observe! Though your figure is good you
have undeniably immense hands, and your shoes, as you are aware, really
look like badly built gondolas. It is a great pity and it cuts you to
the very soul. Now, if I reduce these extremities of yours to something
like smallness and harmony with the rest, will you believe?’
What the reader may very well believe is that this speech was as gall,
worm-wood, coloquintida, nux-vomica, rue, quassia, extract of aloes,
acetic acid, verjuice, vitriol, and strychnine to the palate of Miss
Rockhard, but the end thereof made her forget all these amaritudes, and
she gasped out:
‘Yes.’
‘And I am to hear nothing more about “hanky-panky,” or “how it is
done”?’
‘No.’
‘Then be it done!’ The fairy bade her be seated and took one of her
hands in her own, and began to sing a spell in a tongue which sounded
softly but strangely:
‘Tāni-rani, sove a lay!
Chovihani chivs apré!
Tiri waster, tiri piri,
Boro dukkerin mi-deary!
Me bitchava lende sā,
Tinkni-bitti, vel ajā!
Little lady, go to sleep!
Witch lays spell upon thee deep!
On thy hands and on thy feet,
Let the charm be strong and fleet!
So I order one and all
To become both neat and small!’
So Miss Rockhard did indeed go to sleep, and on awaking found herself
in her own home, lying on the sofa in her own room.
‘She would have thought it all a dream,
Save that round her form
Was still the dress of the fairy queen,
Which fitted her “like a charm”;
And her hands and feet were extremely neat,
And become intensely small;
“’Tis well, ’tis well,” said Jesabelle,
“For now I shall beat them all.”’
It was not long before Miss Jesabelle Rockhard found that the fairy was
right in declaring that it was not such an easy matter to keep a secret
when its results are brilliantly paraded before society. Therefore the
successful alchemists of the olden time were said to live so plainly,
and to go in disguise, dodging about the world, as did Thomas Vaughan,
to escape observation. And as even they found it a fearful task,
it may be supposed that Miss Rockhard, who had a ten times harder
secret to keep than theirs, with not one-tenth part of their sense or
experience to keep it on, began to wonder anon whether she had not
spoken over-hastily when she commended her own powers of discretion as
a subject not open to discussion.
‘The female sex,’ writes Flaxius in his great Analysis, ‘differs from
the male mostly in this, that it never takes naturally or instinctively
to rum or tobacco, neither does it ever feel conscience or remorse.
Fear of discovery it does indeed experience, and very sincere regret
or sorrow at incurring punishment, but whether any one woman since Eve
ever _regretted_ anything on principle, or _per se_, is as yet among
the unfound-outs.
‘Wherein I discover,’ he observes, ‘a great and wise provision of
nature. For when we consider what a vast quantity there is of confused
conscience and misplaced remorse in man, we cannot be too thankful
that woman is _not_ afflicted with the same calamity; it being very
evident that if she were, humanity must needs take a fresh start on new
principles. Therefore do I opine,’ he adds, ‘that “Things,” as Germans
call the evolution of humanity, are going on best as they are, although
I did have a tin of spoiled caviare brought to me this morning for
breakfast.’
As regards the dress and jewellery of Miss Rockhard, it was a
complete--or, as the French say, an insane--success. Her friends and
the public admired it with an envy which, as she often perceived,
amounted to agony; and there were peeresses who suffered the tortures
of the damned, and with them millionairesses who panted like harts
for the water-brook, with desire to learn the secret of those
transcendental toilets; which was all like nectar and ambrosia to her
small soul. And as she had the thin good sense and cautious taste to
rarely use expensive fabrics, and was very chary with diamonds and the
like; and being clever, soon acquired a stock of evasive phrases and
satirical retorts for the most direct questions, she might have long
escaped detection.
The first error which she committed was the very common one for all
her kind, of ingratitude. For as regarded Flaxius, the very fact of
her success irritated her, when she reflected that he had entirely
established all his assertions, and completely got the better of
her--after all her assumption of superior intelligence--and as she
recalled him, every time she donned a dress, with renewed vexation,
the feeling grew in time to tormenting hatred, there being no
vindictiveness like that for benefits received. Nor was she any better
disposed towards the fairy, since every time she was teased by
questioners she said to herself: ‘Pest take the creature! why couldn’t
she just as well have given me the clothes without any condition. ’Tis
ever the way with these mysterious snobs, they always do everything by
halves in a petty way, so as to render gratitude impossible. I believe
that vulgar teasing is a part of their low nature.’
Now when the moral obligation to keep a secret is gone, and the
buttresses are, so to speak, knocked away, it generally requires but
a little push to overthrow the whole building. And this push came ere
long from an unexpected quarter.
Miss Jesabelle Rockhard was born, and lived, in undeniably good
society, but had never had more than very scanty sniffs of ‘the purer
atmosphere of _Dukedom_.’ As the melancholy Jacques, with refined wit,
remarks, even the word is ‘a spell to call fools together,’ albeit
printers have spoiled his spelling. Now it befell that a duchess of
twenty-four carats, a dame of irrepressible power, stronger at every
point than poor Miss Jesabelle, and one whose _flamberg_ or six-feet
two-handed sword was not to be lightly turned by the latter’s fencing
foil--fenced she never so wisely--had set her whole soul on learning
the secret of the exquisite toilets. Hitherto Miss Rockhard had only
gentler breezes to resist, but now there was a cyclone brewing, before
which, had she been wise, she would have fled unto the uttermost parts
of the earth.
The duchess soon learned--indeed ’twas common talk--that the now famous
Miss Rockhard guarded with great care the secret of her dresses.
She made adroit, special, long-continued inquiry--who would not be
detective for a duchess?--and the more she was confirmed in the report,
the more obstinately was she determined to penetrate the mystery.
‘O thou poor Jesabelle,’ writes Flaxius, ‘whom I did greatly love with
all thy faults--since devil a one was there of them thine own--all
being drawn from good society--how gladly would I have averted from
thee the fate which I saw gathering over thy graceful head; how gladly
would I have clucked unto thee, as the cock clucketh unto the hen to
come to him when he has found a grain, albeit he often swallows it ere
she gets there!--or done anything in reason, to _paratonnerre_ away the
crash and flash in the dark gathering cloud--it could not be! All that
we _could_ do was to await the explosion, pick up the pieces, glue them
together as well as possible and so, _en avant_!
‘It is written in the Babylonian chronicle of the great Rabbi Ganef Ben
Nofgur, that “even as a monkey will, in doing mischief, manifest as
much mind as would make him the equal of man, so a woman, to find out
a secret which is none of her business, will show the genius of seven
devils. For ten measures of intermeddling were sent down by Aschmodai
upon earth, and the daughters of Israel got nine of them.”’
From which ye may understand that the duchess, finding that the
treasure was deeply buried, and craftily enchanted, took great
precaution and pains to disinter it. Firstly, she was merely affable
to Miss Rockhard in the winsome way which shows that any one has
taken a special, an _unconscious_ liking--which is a particular form
of humbug treated more fully by Patrick Mac Iavel in his Treatise
on the Art of Blarneying. She set on to Jesabelle an artless niece
who Jesabelle thought was a fool, and who ended by fooling her--Miss
Rockhard--completely. Then the duchess began a series of fondlings,
pettings, little intimacies, and careful confidences, invitations
to dinner and the opera--sending her carriage freely for her on all
occasions. In a word, she wound round the victim such an insidious
mesh of obligations that at last she judged that the roast was done to
a turn, and ready to be served, carved and eaten.
So one night at a reception at the ducal palace, to which Jesabelle had
come in consequence of most ingenious and urgent desire--in the utmost
magnificence which she dared--her jewellery on this occasion being
rather seriously splendid and dangerous--the hostess struck her _coup_
by displaying the most passionate admiration of her guest’s attire.
Then with great adroitness she led the conversation to the fondness she
had for Jesabelle, which subtly trained towards the obligations and
kindnesses, which had by this time run up to an alarming sum. And then,
suddenly recurring to the dress, she said:
‘If you are, indeed, as you say, deeply grateful to me for anything,
and are sincere as I am in friendship, my dear, then acquit it all by a
mere trifle, and tell me truly, without any equivocation, the secret of
your marvellous dresses....’
Miss Rockhard would very much have preferred seeing an insane anarchist
flourishing a bomb, and a carving-knife come dancing into her
drawing-room, to this simple question from her dearest friend. And the
agitation of her features showed it--almost fearfully. The duchess was
delighted. ‘Now for an adroit _coup_,’ she thought, ‘and I have it.’
‘I dare say, my dear,’ she added with sweet persuasion, ‘that there
is really no great mystery in it after all. You girls are so fond of
making up romances. Perhaps I can even aid you with it, if perfect
secrecy, experience, and love can aid. But it will not be confiding a
secret, you know, for we two are one, and ’twill be as if you told it
to yourself.’