Smart women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in
the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn't got either of her own, so she is
always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom
asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age--too near.
That's what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene
about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the
thing, I don't care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly's motor is
always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We
run into something live--or else the kerb--most times we are out, and
it's extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though
once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get
into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is
just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way.
I read an interview with her in _The Bittern_ the other day (she had to
start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it
said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was
the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how
could she be? There isn't room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy,
unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely.
Lord Scilly is very well born too, he's the eldest son of the Earl of
Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with
expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes
he would, but Lord Scilly doesn't, because he's not quite a beast. He is
very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding
her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have
heard that he doesn't think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering
herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn't understand
why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write
novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds.
George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every
morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn't mind in the least her
collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief;
but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to
collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different.
I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who
tells me everything, doesn't think so much collaborating is quite what
is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, "blessed if she'd
let herself be put upon by a countess."
Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy--that's what her name means,
Paquerette. That's what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a
grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it
makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down.
Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she
is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all
times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won't. If she
gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may
say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and
listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am
always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish.
The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve--Lady Scilly had
sent a messenger for me--she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue
tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was
writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a
few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly
all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers
with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and _La Femme
Polype_ was the name of one, and _Madame Belle-et-m'aime_ another. Lady
Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French
if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also
on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that
made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and
the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors
hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush
things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw
so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with "To darling,
from Kitty London," and as many more with "Best love, yours cordially,
Gladys Margate," and I have given up trying to count the ones of
actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy
forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote _The Sorrows of the Amethyst_,
and one of the K.C. who wrote _Duchesses in the Divorce Court_--the
Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play
called _The Up-and-Down Girl_, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces
once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his
volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I
think he's put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him,
which isn't often. He never comes into her room where I principally am.
There's a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes--I don't
suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so
big it would burst the post-bag--and there are two sorts of racks on it,
one to hold her bills that she hasn't paid, and that's got printed on it
in gold "_Oh Horrors!_" and another with those she has paid with "_Thank
Heaven!_" on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays
bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends
something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however
broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker
would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances
are you'll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that,
being dead, you can't be expected to pay!
I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and
also, if they are writing, I can't help seeing what it is, and then if
it is "_Dearests_" and "_Darlings_" I do feel awkward. But to-day when
she had said "How do you do?" she handed me the writing-board.
"Write for me, dear," she said, "to the most odious woman in London. And
the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she
dared to play Lady Ildegonde in _The Devey Devastator_ at a _matinée_ at
Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses--stood by the
management of course--and nails like a coal-heaver's. Now don't you
think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round
my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene
Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not
forgive her. Now you write. '_Dear thing!_' Don't be surprised, I can't
afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! '_You were wonderful
yesterday! I know what's what, and believe me that's it!_' I mean the
dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call
diplomacy. Don't say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will
see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything
for me, and _The Bittern_ will do anything for her. We will go and see
her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller,
dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!"
She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it
didn't matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and
then she seemed to feel better.
"I wish I could do without Miller!" she said. "Old Miller hates me, and
I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good 'perks' for that.
She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her
one day. So they will! I can't afford to quarrel with a woman who can do
my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear
to-day, Miller?"
"Well," said Mrs. Miller (she's Scotch, and she is rather stingy of
"ladyships"), "there's your blue that come home last week. It seems a
pity to leave it aside just yet."
"You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can't
put that on, it's too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it."
"Then there is the grey _panne_."
"Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own
maid. No offence to you, Miller."
"I don't intend to take any, my lady," said Miller, pursing up her
lips. "What about your black with sequins?"
"Yes, let's have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child's hair.
You see, I dress to you, my dear."
But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just
as she chooses her horses to be a pair.
Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only
thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her
nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once
had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I
shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it--the
best paints--and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year.
Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in
Paris--rather purplish--it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is
just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and
looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked
away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out,
and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if
her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little
tendrils of hair down on her forehead.
"Child, child," she said to me. "Do you know what makes me sigh?"
"Indigestion?" I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn't,
that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so
diabolically, so preternaturally ugly.
"Oh no, you look sweet!" I said. I really thought so, but Miller
grinned.
"You are delightful!" Lady Scilly said. "And you can have that boa you
are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me
meretricious; and, child, when your times comes, don't ever--ever--have
anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can't leave it off,
and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to
subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the
time. Oh, _la, la_!"
I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we
read of in a book. I've seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her
black and blue, and she kept saying, "Go on! Harder! Harder!" but as it
didn't seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn't do it again. But I
took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself.
When Lady Scilly was ready she said--"We won't lunch in, we will go to
Prince's and have a _filet_. Scilly's in a bad temper because of bills.
Well, bills must come,--and I may go, I suppose. There's no reason one
shouldn't keep out of their way."
She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she
told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us
at three o'clock.
The butler said, "Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party
of ten!" all in the same voice.
"So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!" and she flopped into a hall
seat.
"Yes, my lady," Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door
again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude.
So we took off our hats, at least I did--she wears a hat every time she
can, except in bed--and went into the library where Lord Scilly was, and
her cousin, a young man from the Foreign Office, Simon Hermyre, that I
know.
Lord Scilly came up to her and said out loud, "You have got too much
on!"
She softly dabbed her face with her handkerchief to please him, but so
as not to disturb anything, and the young man from the Foreign Office
laughed. He is a fifth cousin. Lady Scilly says her cousins grow like
blackberries on every bush--one of the penalties of greatness.
"I've never really seen your face, Paquerette," he said, "and I do
believe it would justify my wildest expectations. Still, I think you are
right not to make it too cheap. Who's coming? Smart people, or one of
your Bohemian crowds?"
"You'll see," she said. "Mrs. Ptomaine, for one."
"Dear Tommy!" said he. "I love her.... Desist, O wasp!" he said to one
that had come in by the window and was bothering him. "This is a
precursor of Tommy."
"Tommy's all right, so long as she hasn't got her knife into you. She
favours you, Simon. You are to take her in, and distract her, and see
that she doesn't make eyes at my tame millionaire."
"Oh, Mr. Pawky!" said Simon. "Is he coming? You should put me opposite,
so that I could intercept the glances. And why mayn't Tommy have a bit
of him? She's terribly thin!"
"Because he isn't a very big millionaire--only half a one--and there's
only just enough for me. So you know what you have got to do. You may
flirt wildly with Tommy, if nothing else will do. Let me see, who else
is coming? Oh, Marston, the actor, a nice boy, gives me boxes, and
mortally afraid of Lauderdale--and some odd fill-ups. Just think, I
nearly went out to lunch with this child, and forgot you all. I should
like to have seen all your faces!"
Then all these people came, and Lady Scilly put me on one side of the
millionaire and herself on the other. He looked very mild and
indigestible, and as if millionairing didn't agree with him. He could
only drink hot water and eat dry toast. He made a little
"How-Are-You-My-Pretty-Dear" conversation with me, but he attended most
to Lady Scilly, of course. She was telling him all about Miss
Lauderdale, and _Lady Ildegonde_ and the dresses, and discussing
Society, as it is now.
"Titles! Why, my dear man, no one cares a fig for birth now-a-days. No,
the only thing we care for is culture, and the only thing we can't
forgive is for people to bore us!"
I wondered where the poor millionaire came in, for he can't culture,
while he certainly does bore, but I suppose Lady Scilly wouldn't waste
her time for nothing, and perhaps there is some other attraction Society
takes count of that she didn't mention?
"I'll go anywhere and everywhere to be amused," she went on. "I'd go to
Gatti's Music Hall under the Arches--only music halls are a bit stale
now! I'd go to a prize-fight in a sewer--anything to get some colour
into my life!"
"Paint the town red, wouldn't you!" muttered Lord Scilly.
"That is the way we all are," Lady Scilly went on. "Look at Kitty
London! She is going to marry a perfect darling of an acrobat, who can
play billiards on his own back!"
"Cheap culture that!" said Lord Scilly, and I don't know what he meant,
but I knew he meant to be nasty; but the millionaire went on sipping his
hot water, and enjoyed having a countess talk like that to him, and
stood her any amount of dinners at the Paxton for it, I dare say. They
say he runs it?
He was well protected, but still I could not help thinking that Mrs.
Ptomaine on the other side of the table, not even opposite, seemed to
have her eye on him, one of them at any rate, Simon couldn't manage to
distract both. I didn't like her. She came to our ball in a mask, and
flirted with Mr. Frederick Cook. I quite saw why Simon Hermyre compared
her to a wasp. She looked as if she sat up too late and drank too much
tea, and I was sure that though they were very smart, her petticoats
were all muddy at the bottom. She called Lady Scilly "Darling!" across
the table every now and then to show how intimate she was. Lady Scilly
never cares or notices. It is one of her charms. The actor was on her
other side. I saw Lord Scilly stare at his eighteen rings and his nice
painted face, as if he were a new arrival. But there is some excuse for
him, he was just up--he said so--and I dare say he was too tired to wash
the paint off when he got home this morning. Besides that, he is acting
Juliet to Miss Lauderdale's Romeo--that is the way they do it now. I
wish I had seen Shakespeare when men acted men's parts and women did
women, but I was born too late for that.
When we got up from lunch, Mrs. Ptomaine cleverly caught her dress in a
leg of her chair, and she wouldn't let the actor disengage it, but
waited till the millionaire came past her seat and had a feeble try at
it. She smiled at him very gratefully for tearing a large bit of the
flounce off in getting it out, but after all, it made an introduction,
and she can have a new piece of common lace put in. Afterwards in the
drawing-room she had quite a nice chat with him, before Lady Scilly sent
somebody to break it up, as she did, after five minutes.
At four o'clock they all went and we took our drive after all. Lady
Scilly never pays calls--only the bourgeois do--but we went to see Mrs.
Ptomaine.
"I hadn't a word with Tommy to-day," Lady Scilly said, "and I had
several little things to arrange with her. I can't sleep till I have put
a spoke in Lauderdale's wheel. Poor Tommy! What a fright she looked
to-day! But she is not a bad sort, is Tommy, and devoted to me!"
"What does she do?" I asked.
"Oh, she works the press for me. She has command of half-a-dozen papers.
Goodness knows how, for I am sure no editor would ever care for her to
make love to him! She is useful, you see, she describes my dresses free.
I don't care for that myself, naturally, but the dressmakers do, if
their names are given, and then they don't worry so with their bills.
And she interviewed me once, and I gave Kitty London such a
lesson--things I wanted conveyed to her, you know, and could not quite
say myself! It is rather a good idea to conduct one's quarrels through
the press, isn't it? Here we are at Tommy's flat! Up at the very, very
top! The vulture in its eyrie--is it the vulture that has an eyrie? I
know it has a ragged neck with cheap fur round it! Up we go! No lift!
One oughtn't to visit with flats without a lift! You ring!"
I rang, and Mrs. Ptomaine herself opened the door.
"So soon, darling! Delightful!" she said. She didn't look very pleased
to see us, I thought, but she was "in to tea," I could see, for there
were three kinds of little tea-cakes and a yellow cake made with
egg-powder.
"I wanted to prime you about your critique of _Lady Ildegonde_, you
know. Now, Tommy, it is understood, Lauderdale is to be snubbed and
punished for her impertinence in daring to act _me_, in Camille's
dresses."
"Darling, quite so! Of course. I had it nearly written. Dearest, you
don't trust your Tommy."
"Not so much darling dear, now, if you don't mind," said Lady Scilly.
"We are alone, and this child doesn't need impressing. It fidgets me."
"All right, sweetheart--I beg your pardon," said Mrs. Ptomaine, quite
obligingly; but talk of fidgeting, she herself was in a terrible state.
"Is it too early for tea?"
"Too late you mean, Tommy. What is the matter with you? Have you got a
headache?"
"Three distinct headaches," said poor Tommy. "Did three first nights
last night, and got a separate headache for each."
"How interesting!" said Lady Scilly. "I mean I am very sorry. Is there
nothing I can do?"
"No, no, nothing. I have experience of these. Nothing but complete rest
will do any good. If I could just lie down and darken the room and think
of nothing for an hour."
Lady Scilly got up to go after such a plain hint as that, and we were
just opening the door when it opened itself and let in the millionaire!
Mrs. Ptomaine made the best of it. She got up to receive him with a very
pained smile on the side of her face next Lady Scilly, and said to her
in an undertone, "No chance for me, you see! This man will want his tea.
_Must_ you go?"
Lady Scilly hadn't even said she must go, but she did go, and p.d.q. as
my brother Ben says. What was more, she said "Good-bye, Mrs. Ptomaine,"
in a tone that must have peeled the skin off poor Tommy's nose. No more
"dears" and "darlings"! To the millionaire she said, "So we meet again?"
and from the way she said that polite thing, I should say he would have
serious doubts as to whether he would ever be invited to drink
toast-and-water in her house any more.
"There are as good millionaires in South Africa as ever came out of it,"
she said to me, going down-stairs. "Poor old Pawky! One woman after
another exploits the dear old thing. They are kind to him, _pour le bon
motif!_ He did say to me in a first introduction, 'Hev' you any bills?'
But I put it down to his South African manners and his idea of breaking
the ice and making conversation. Tommy will fleece him. I hope she'll
get him to give her a new carpet!"
I know that Mr. Pawky gave Lady Scilly her box at the Opera, but then it
was on consideration of her allowing him to sit in it with her now and
then. Thus she gives a _quid pro quo_, which poor Tommy can't do, having
nothing marketable about her, not even a title.
If he values Lady Scilly's kindness he is a fool to run after Tommy so
obviously. But that is what I have noticed about these rich people; they
seem to lose their heads, let themselves go cheap every now and then.
Tommy is so ugly--she never looked nice in her life except when she was
Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen, at our party, and wore a mask and flirted
with Mr. Frederick Cook--that he must be demented, or jealous of
Frederick Cook, perhaps?
She has an organ, I mean a paper she's on, and I suppose she can write
Mr. Pawky up. Still I think he has made a bad exchange, for Mrs.
Ptomaine won't last. They change the staffs of those papers in the
night, and any morning Mr. Frederick Cook may walk down to the office
and find a new man sitting at his desk, and the same with Mrs.
Ptomaine,--where there's a way (of making a little) there's a minx to
take it! so she often says. Lady Scilly can't lose her title except to
change it for another and a nicer.