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.