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.