PATTY IN UNDRESS.
When Paul Brion bade Mrs. Aarons good-night, he perceived that she was
a little cold to him, and rather wondered at himself that he did not
feel inclined either to resent or to grieve over that unprecedented
circumstance.
"I am going to steal away," he said in an airy whisper, coming across
her in the middle of the room as he made his way to the door. "I have a
good couple of hours' work to get through to-night."
He was accustomed to speak to her in this familiar and confidential
fashion, though she was but a recent acquaintance, and she had always
responded in a highly gratifying way. But now she looked at him
listlessly, with no change of face, and merely said, "Indeed."
"Yes," he repeated; "I have a lot to do before I can go to bed. It
is delightful to be here; but I must not indulge myself any longer.
Good-night."
"Good-night," she said, still unsmiling, as she gave him her hand. "I
am sorry you must go so soon." But she did not look as if she were
sorry; she looked as if she didn't care a straw whether he went or
stayed. However, he pressed her hand with the wonted friendly pressure,
and slipped out of the room, unabashed by her assumed indifference and
real change of manner, which he was at no great trouble to interpret;
and he took a cab to his office--now a humming hive of busy bees
improving the shining hours of the gaslit night--and walked back
from the city through the shadowy gardens to his lodgings, singing a
tuneless air to himself, which, if devoid of music, was a pleasant
expression of his frame of mind.
When he reached Myrtle Street the town clocks were striking twelve.
He looked up at his neighbours' windows as he passed the gate of No.
6, and saw no light, and supposed they had returned from their revels
and gone peaceably to bed. He opened his own door softly, as if afraid
of waking them, and went upstairs to his sitting-room, where Mrs.
M'Intyre, who loved to make him comfortable, had left him a bit of
supper, and a speck of gas about the size of a pea in the burner at the
head of his arm-chair; and he pulled off his dress coat, and kicked
away his boots, and got his slippers and his dressing-gown, and his
tobacco and his pipe, and took measures generally for making himself at
home. But before he had quite settled himself the idea occurred to him
that his neighbours might _not_ have returned from Mrs. Aarons's, but
might, indeed (for he knew their frugal and unconventional habits), be
even then out in the streets, alone and unprotected, walking home by
night as they walked home by day, unconscious of the perils and dangers
that beset them. He had not presumed to offer his escort--he had not
even spoken to them during the evening, lest he should seem to take
those liberties that Miss Patty resented so much; but now he angrily
reproached himself for not having stayed at Mrs. Aarons's until their
departure, so that he could, at least, have followed and watched over
them. He put down his pipe hastily, and, opening the window, stepped
out on the balcony. It was a dark night, and a cold wind was blowing,
and the quarter-hour after midnight was chiming from the tower of the
Post Office. He was about to go in for his boots and his overcoat, when
he was relieved to hear a cab approaching at a smart pace, and to see
it draw up at the gate of No. 6. Standing still in the shadow of the
partition that divided his enclosure from theirs, he watched the girls
descend upon the footpath, one by one, fitfully illuminated from the
interior of the vehicle. First Eleanor, then Elizabeth, then Patty--who
entered the gate and tapped softly at her street door. He expected to
see the driver dismissed, with probably double the fare to which he was
entitled; but to his surprise, the cab lingered, and Elizabeth stood at
the step and began to talk to someone inside. "Thank you so much for
your kindness," she said, in her gentle but clear tones, which were
perfectly audible on the balcony. A voice from the cab answered, "Don't
mention it, my dear. I am very glad to see as much of you as possible,
for I want to know you. May I come and have a little gossip to-morrow
afternoon?" It was the voice of Mrs. Duff-Scott, who, after keeping
them late at Mrs. Aarons's, talking to them, had frustrated their
intention of making their own way home. That powerful woman had "taken
them up," literally and figuratively, and she was not one to drop them
again--as fine ladies commonly drop interesting impecunious _protégées_
when the novelty of their acquaintance has worn off--save for causes in
their own conduct and circumstances that were never likely to arise.
Paul Brion, thoroughly realising that his little schemes had been
crowned with the most gratifying success, stole back to his rooms, shut
the window softly, and sat down to his pipe and his manuscripts. And he
wrote such a maliciously bitter article that, when he took it to the
office, his editor refused to print it without modifications, on the
ground that it would land the paper in an action for libel.
Meanwhile our girls parted from their new friend with affectionate
good-nights, and were let into their house by the landlady, who had
herself been entertaining company to a late hour. They went upstairs
with light feet, too excited to feel tired, and all assembled in
Elizabeth's meagrely-appointed bedchamber to take off their finery
and to have a little happy gossip before they went to rest. Elizabeth
herself, who was not a gushing person, had the most to say at first,
pouring out her ingenuous heart in grateful reminiscences of the
unparalleled kindness of Mrs. Duff-Scott. "What a dear, dear woman!"
she murmured, with soft rapture, as she unwound the watch-chain and
locket from her neck and disembarrassed herself of her voluminous
fichu. "You can _see_ that what she does and says is real and
truthful--I am certain you can trust her. I do not trust Mrs. Aarons--I
do not understand her ways. She wanted us to go and see her, and when
we went she was unkind to us; at least, she was not polite. I was very
sorry we had gone to her house--until Mrs. Duff-Scott came to our sofa
to speak to us. But now I feel so glad! For it has given us _her_. And
she is just the kind of friend I have so often pictured to myself--so
often longed to know."
"I think it was Patty's playing that gave us Mrs. Duff-Scott,"
said Eleanor, who was sitting by the dressing table with her frock
unbuttoned. "She is fond of music, and really there was no one who
could play at all except Herr Wüllner--which was a very strange thing,
don't you think? And the singing was worse--such sickly, silly sort of
songs, with such eccentric accompaniments. I could not understand it,
unless the fashion has changed since mother was a girl. I suppose it
has. But when Patty and Herr Wüllner got together it was like another
atmosphere in the room. How did you come to play so well, Patty?--to be
so collected and quiet when there was so much to frighten you? I was so
nervous that my hands shook, and I had to squeeze them to keep myself
still."
"I was nervous, too, at first," said Patty, who, divested of her
dress and laces, was lying all along on Elizabeth's bed, with her
pretty bare arms flung up over the pillows, and her hands clasped
one over the other at the back of her head. "When we got there, that
impudent maid in the room where we took our things off upset me; she
looked at our old hats and water-proofs as if she had never seen such
things before--and they _did_ seem very shabby amongst all the pretty
cloaks and hoods that the other ladies were taking off. And then it
was so ignominious to have to find our way to the drawing-room by
following other people, and to have our names bawled out as if to call
everybody's attention to us, and then not to _have_ attentions. When we
trailed about the room, so lost and lonely, with all those fine people
watching us and staring at us, my knees were shaking under me, and I
felt hot and cold--I don't know how I felt. The only comfort I had was
seeing how calm Elizabeth was. She seemed to stand up for us all, and
to carry us through it. _I_ felt--I hate to think I could be such an
idiot--so nervous and so unhinged, and so miserable altogether, that
I should have liked to go away somewhere and have a good cry. But,"
added Patty, suddenly sitting up in the bed, and removing her hands
from the back of her head to her knees, "but after a little while it
got _too_ horrid. And then I got angry, and that made me feel much
better. And by-and-bye, when they began to play and sing, and I saw how
ridiculous they made themselves, I brightened up, and was not nervous
any more--for I saw that they were rather ignorant people, in spite
of their airs and their fine clothes. When the girl in that beautiful
creamy satin dress sang her whining little song about parting and dying
half a note flat, while she dashed her hands up and down the keyboard,
and they all hung round her when she had done and said how charming
it was, I felt that _really_--" Patty paused, and stared into the
obscurity of the room with brilliant, humorous, disdainful eyes, which
expressed her sentiments with a distinctness that made further words
unnecessary.
"But, you see, if people don't _know_ that you are superior to them--"
suggested Eleanor, folding up Elizabeth's best gloves, and wrapping
them in tissue paper, with a reflective air.
"Who would care about their knowing?" interposed Elizabeth. "We should
not be very much superior to anyone if we could indulge in a poor
ambition to seem so. That is not one of Patty's feelings, I think."
"But it is, then," Patty confessed, with honest promptness. "I found
it out to-night, Elizabeth. When I saw those conceited people sweeping
about in their splendid trains and looking as if all Melbourne belonged
to them--when I heard that girl singing that preposterous twaddle,
and herself and all her friends thinking she was a perfect genius--I
felt that I would give anything, _anything_, just to rise up and be
very grand and magnificent for a little while and crush them all into
vulgarity and insignificance."
"Patty!" murmured Elizabeth.
"Yes, my dear, it shocks you, I know. But you wouldn't have me disguise
the truth from you, would you? I wanted to pay them out. I saw they
were turning up their noses at us, and I longed--I _raged_--to be in
a position to turn up my nose at them, if only for five minutes. I
thought to myself, oh, if the door should suddenly open and that big
footman shout out, 'His Grace the Duke of So and So;' and they should
all be ready to drop on their knees before such a grand person--as
you know they would be, Elizabeth; they would _grovel_, simply--and he
should look with a sort of gracious, ducal haughtiness over their heads
and say to Mrs. Aarons, 'I am told that I shall find here the daughters
of my brother, who disappeared from home when he was young, along with
his wife, the Princess So and So.' You know, Elizabeth, our father, who
never would talk about his family to anybody, _might_ have been a duke
or an earl in disguise, for anything we know, and our mother was the
very image of what a princess _ought_ to be--"
"We should have been found out before this, if we had been such
illustrious persons," said Elizabeth, calmly.
"Yes, of course--of course. But one needn't be so practical. You are
free to think what you like, however improbable it may be. And that is
what I thought of. Then I thought, suppose a telegram should be brought
in, saying that some enormously wealthy squatter, with several millions
of money and no children, had left us all his fortune--"
"I should think that kind of news would come by post," suggested
Eleanor.
"It might and it mightn't, Nelly. The old squatter might have been that
queer old man who comes to the Library sometimes, and seems to take
such interest in seeing us reading so hard. He might have thought that
girls who were so studious would have serious views of life and the
value of money. Or he might have overheard us castle-building about
Europe, and determined to help us to realise our dreams. Or he might
have fallen in love with Elizabeth--at a distance, you know, and in a
humble, old-fashioned, hopeless way."
"But that doesn't account for the telegram, Patty."
"And have felt himself dying, perhaps," continued Patty, quite
solemnly, with her bright eyes fixed on her invisible drama, "and have
thought he would like to see us--to speak to Elizabeth--to give some
directions and last wishes to us--before he went. No," she added,
checking herself with a laugh and shaking herself up, "I don't think it
was that. I think the lawyer came himself to tell us. The lawyer had
opened the will, and he was a friend of Mrs. Aarons's, and he came to
tell her of the wonderful thing that had happened. 'Everyone has been
wondering whom he would leave his money to,' he says to her, 'but no
one ever expected this. He has left it to three poor girls whom no one
has ever heard of, and whom he never spoke to in his life. I am now
going to find them out, for they are living somewhere in Melbourne.
Their name is King, and they are sisters, without father or mother, or
friends or fortune--mere nobodies, in fact. But now they will be the
richest women in Australia.' And Mrs. Aarons suddenly remembers us,
away there in the corner of the room, and it flashes across her that
_we_ are the great heiresses. And she tells the other ladies, and they
all flock round us, and--and--"
"And you find yourself in the position to turn up your nose at them,"
laughed Eleanor. "No one would have guessed your thoughts, Patty,
seeing you sitting on that sofa, looking so severe and dignified."
"But I had other thoughts," said Patty, quickly. "These were just
passing ideas, of course. What really _did_ take hold of me was an
intense desire to be asked to play, so that I might show them how much
better we could play than they could. Especially after I heard Herr
Wüllner. I knew he, at least, would appreciate the difference--and
I thought Mrs. Duff-Scott looked like a person who would, also. And
perhaps--perhaps--Paul Brion."
"Oh, Patty!" exclaimed Elizabeth, smiling, but reproachful. "Did
you really want to go to the piano for the sake of showing off your
skill--to mortify those poor women who had not been taught as well as
you had?"
"Yes," said Patty, hardily. "I really did. When Mrs. Duff-Scott came
and asked me to join Herr Wüllner in that duet, I felt that, failing
the duke and the lawyer, it was just the opportunity that I had been
looking and longing for. And it was because I felt that I was going to
do so much better than they could that I was in such good spirits, and
got on--as I flatter myself I did--so splendidly."
"Well, I don't believe you," said Elizabeth. "You could never
have rendered that beautiful music as you did simply from pure
vindictiveness. It is not in you."
"No," said Patty, throwing herself back on the bed and flinging up
her arms again, "no--when I come to think of it--I was not vindictive
all the time. At first I was _savage_--O yes, there is no doubt about
it. Then Herr Wüllner's fears and frights were so charming that I
got amused a little; I felt jocose and mischievous. Then I felt Mrs.
Duff-Scott looking at me--_studying_ me--and that made me serious
again, and also quieted me down and steadied me. Then I was a little
afraid that I _might_ blunder over the music--it was a long time since
I had played that thing, and the manuscript was pale and smudged--and
so I had to brace myself up and forget about the outside people. And
as soon as Herr Wüllner reached me, and I began safely and found that
we were making it, oh, so sweet! between us--then I lost sight of lots
of things. I mean I began to see and think of lots of other things. I
remembered playing it with mother--it was like the echo of her voice,
that violin!--and the sun shining through a bit of the red curtain
into our sitting-room at home, and flickering on the wall over the
piano, where it used to stand; and the sound of the sea under the
cliffs--_whish-sh-sh-sh_--in the still afternoon--" Patty broke off
abruptly, with a little laugh that was half a sob, and flung herself
from the bed with vehemence. "But it won't do to go on chattering like
this--we shall have daylight here directly," she said, gathering up her
frock and shoes.