Lady Scilly came to Whitby and took a big house in St. Hilda's Terrace.
"They can't be parted long, poor things!" Aunt Gerty said, and Mother
hushed her. She brought her great friend Miss Irene Lauderdale with her,
for a good blow, before she went to America.
Then all the shops came out with portraits of Irene, in "smalls" as Dick
Turpin, and Irene as "The Pumpeydore," and Irene as Greek Slave, and
Irene in Venus. They had her on picture postcards too in all the
principal stationers' windows. I should have thought she would have been
ashamed to walk down the street, hung with her own likeness like a row
of looking-glasses that reflected her. But these very languid--what Aunt
Gerty calls "la-di-dah" sort of people--can stand anything, so long as
it's public.
When she wasn't dressed up as Turpin or Pompadour or Venus, she was just
a tall, thin, and ragged-looking woman. She had red lips that stuck out
a long, long way, and crinkly red hair, and large eyes like two
gig-lamps coming at you down the street. She generally had a dog with
her, and its lead kept getting twisted round the wheels of carts, and
round my father's legs as he walked along Skinner Street beside her. He
wouldn't have stood that from any one but a popular favourite.
I was walking along behind them a few days after she came, with Aunt
Gerty. They stopped at Truelove's and looked at the picture-postcards.
She became very serious all at once.
"I must go in and procure Myself!" she said to George, sniggling. In
they went, and Aunt Gerty and I walked in after them. Mrs. Truelove's
shop and library are very dark. As for the morality of it, we had as
good a right to buy picture-postcards as they, and, as I had ascertained
from other rencounters of this kind, George knows very well how to
ignore his family when needful for his policy. I do not resent it, for
one never knows how a daughter's presence may interfere with a father's
plans and arrangements, and I am sure I don't want to injure his sales!
Irene turned over all the cards, including the Venus set, and did not
approve of them, especially of the ones where she is turning away her
face altogether.
"The blighted idiot!" she said, meaning I suppose the photographer, "has
completely missed my beautiful Botticelli back! The effect is decidedly
meretricious. I am a very good woman. Ah, these are better!"
She had got hold of some of herself in a spoon bonnet and long jacket,
and she sang out loud, while Aunt Gerty's open mouth betrayed her shock
at her audacity--
"Oh, I'm Contrition Eliza,
And she's Salvation Jane.
We once were wrong, we now are right,
We'll never go wrong again."
"I can't quite promise that, alas! My friends won't let me. I will send
Salvation Jane to Lord R----y, a very dear old friend of mine. A dozen
dozen, please; isn't that a gross? Oh, what a naughty word! Will you
pay, Mr. Vero-Taylor?"
"Good business!" said my Aunt. "Let me see? How much has she rooked
him?"
"Please don't ask me to do sums," said I. "Besides, George has a perfect
right to do as he pleases with his own money!"
George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them.
"Whatever do you want them for?" asked Irene. (He never lets me say
whatever.)
"To send to my children."
"Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?" she asked.
"In the nursery," was George's answer, as if he cared whether we were in
the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby,
however.
"And now," she said, "do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great
book."
"There ought to be some of my work here," George replied gravely, and
made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove
sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would
bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb.
George asked her for _Dewlaps_ (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow),
and _The Pretty Lady_, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and _The
Light that was on Land and Sea_, and _Simple Simon_, of which the hero
really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked
blank.
"I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order----"
George interrupted her. "Such is Fame! I have no doubt, _Belle Irene_,
that if you were to ask for any one of Aix's books--_The Dustman_, or
_The Laundress_, or _Slackbaked!_ you would be offered a plethora of
them."
Irene took her cue. "But," she drawled, "it is extraordinary!
Impossible! Inconceivable! Books like yours, that rejoice the thirsty
soul, that refrigerate the arid body, that bring God's great gift of
sunshine down into our too gloomy grey homes! I always say this, dear,
dear Mr. Vero-Taylor, that you, of all men, have caught the secret of
imprisoning the jolly sunbeams. Every page of yours is instinct with
light----"
It sounded like an advertisement of some new kind of soap. Aunt Gerty
didn't like it at all, and in a rage with George she put out her hand
suddenly and spilt a vase of flowers in water.
"Brute!" she said, and the assistant who mopped up the water kept
saying, "Not at all!" not thinking Aunt Gerty meant the gentleman who
had just left the shop in haste, but as apologizing for her own
stupidity in upsetting the water.
"Who was that lady?" I asked Aunt Gerty as we went home, though I knew
well enough.
"Izzie Lawder, a lady! I remember her--well, perhaps I hadn't better say
what I remember her! She and I--she had got on a bit ahead of me even
then--played together at the 'Lane' in 'Devil Darling!' ten years ago.
She has got on since. Everybody to give her a leg up! You know the
sort--dyed hair and interest! She soon left nice honest me behind."
"Hadn't you the interest, Aunt Gerty?" I knew she had the other thing.
"Don't be impertinent, Miss. Let us get home and tell Lucy. Won't she be
electrified!"
But Mother wasn't a bit electrified.
"All in the way of business, my dear girl!" she said to Aunt Gerty, who
chattered about Irene all the rest of that day. "Do subside about my
wrongs, if you don't mind. I dare say he wants to get her to play lead
in the drama he is writing with Lady Scilly, and that is why he is so
civil to her."
"Another ill-bred amateur! What will they make of it?" snorted Aunt
Gerty.
"Irene Lauderdale is Lady Scilly's best friend."
"Best enemy, you mean. However, it is the same thing. These unnatural
friendships between Society women and actresses sicken me! Always in
each other's pockets! It is a bad advertisement for them both, and there
she was, plastering George up with compliments about his books, that I
don't believe she has ever read a single one of. Sunshine indeed! He may
well put sunshine into his novels; he has taken pretty good care to take
it all out of one poor woman's life!"
"I am perfectly happy, Gertrude. I look happy, I am sure."
"You sham it."
"That is the next best thing to being it."
"A wretched skim-milk substitute! You are a right good sort, Lucy, and
have got a husband that doesn't come within a hundred miles of
appreciating you."
"Yes, he does, and at my true value, I suspect. I am good for what I do;
I know my place and I fill it. I should only hamper George if I insisted
on sharing his life and knowing his friends. I am too low for some of
them, I admit; but I am too high for Irene Lauderdale. I wouldn't
condescend to have anything to do with her. I despise and scorn her!"
said Mother quite loudly for her, and suddenly too, as she began so
mild.
I thought what a good actress she would have made. I believe Aunt Gerty
thought so too, for she screamed out, "Bravo, Luce!" Mother burst into
tears. I don't think it is nice for a daughter to see a mother's tears,
so I left the room and went into the back room where Ben was messing at
something as boys will. I told him on no account whatever to go into
the front room to Mother till half-an-hour had elapsed. I thought that
was enough law to give her. Ben naturally asked why, and hit me over the
head, not hard--Ben is a gentleman and always tempers the blow to the
shy sister, but still I preferred taking a whack to giving Mother away.
A few days after that Mother went up to Fylingdales Crescent to see
George on business, and found him in bed with a bad cold. You see these
Society people, who are only getting their amusement cheap out of
George, don't understand the constitution of their toy, and he doesn't
like to let them see that he is only a mortal author, and that it is
death to him to be without his hat for a minute or his coat for
half-an-hour. He has got a very sensitive mucous membrane and catches
cold in no time. I sometimes think it is the opposite of Faith-healing
with him--George _believes_ himself into his colds. He says that the
sensitive mucous is the invariable concomitant of the artistic
temperament, which he has. Mr. Aix says he hasn't that, what he has is
the bilio-lymphatic one, and that makes George very angry. However this
may be, the tiniest bit of swagger costs him a cold in the head, and
that is what he has now. He had already altered his will and begun to
talk of flying to the South to be extinguished there gently, when Mother
came to him.
"My dear boy, no!" Mother said, and George groaned as he always does
when she calls him boy, but invalids can't be choosers of phrases. "You
aren't going to die just yet." She went on, kindly banging his pillows
about--"I shall have to stay here with you a little, though, I fancy, to
look after you. I shouldn't wonder if they didn't make objections in the
house. There will be a bit of a fuss."
"Who will make a fuss, Mother?" I asked, "and why should they?"
"Don't ask questions about what you don't understand," Mother said
sharply, though what else really should I ask questions about? "Run home
and tell your Aunt that I am going to get a room here for a night or
two, and that she is to send my things, just what I'll want for a couple
of nights."
"Night-gown and toothbrush," said I. As I left George put out his hand
to Mother and said quite nicely--
"You are very good to me, dear. And can you really stay and soothe the
sick man's pillow?"
Mother sat down and put the blanket in its proper place, not grazing his
cheek, and gave him a drink, and read to him out of Anatole France. She
kept saying, "I _know_ they'll think I am not respectable."
The thought seemed to amuse her very much, and George too, and I left
them, and went home and gave Aunt Gerty her directions. Aunt Gerty
chuckled as Mother had said she would, and said--
"This will clear up George's ideas a little! Nothing like an ugly
illness for letting a man know who his true friends are! Looks lovely,
don't he? Is its blessed poet's nose a good deal swollen?"
I said no, George looked very nice in bed, a mixture of the Pope and
Napoleon combined. I left her and went back to Mother with her things.
George by that time was arranged. He had a silk handkerchief tied over
his forehead. He said he did that to keep his brain from being too
active, like the British workman girds his loins with a belt before he
begins to dig. He looked very happy and quite stupid. I took our cat
Robert the Devil up with me and put him on George's chest to soothe him.
It did, and he played with my hair.
"I am an angel when I am ill," he said; "don't you find me so? Strong
natures like mine----"
Mother then came in with a great bunch of roses,--seaside roses always
look coarse, I think--and a lot of cards.
"Lord and Lady Scilly and Lady Fylingdales and Mr. Sidney Robinson and
Lord John Daman have called to inquire, and Miss Irene Lauderdale has
left these flowers for you, George. Look at them and be done with it,
for I don't mean to have them left messing about in my sick-room,
exhausting the air. Tempe can take them home when you have smelt them,
though I don't suppose you can smell anything just now."
She put them to his nose and he smelt. Irene's card was on the top. It
had a monogram in one corner--a gold skull and crossbones. I never heard
of people having their monogram on their visiting-card before, but one
lives and learns.
"I don't, of course, expect you to admire The Lauderdale as a woman,"
George said. "But what, as a dramatic authority, do you think of her as
an actress?"
"I consider that dear old Ger could do quite as well if she had one half
her chances," Mother said eagerly.
"No doubt, no doubt! The cleverness lies in laying hold of the chances!
Irene has a genius for advertisement."
"Look after the 'ads,'" said my Mother, "and the acts will take care of
themselves."
"Good!" said George, "I should like to have said that myself."
"I dare say you will, George," said Mother quite nicely, "when once I
get you well again."
I do think Mother is rather fond of George: she got him cured in less
than a week, but she didn't let him out once during that time, and had
him all to herself. It was great fun, seeing all his friends wandering
about Whitby bored to death because Vero-Taylor was confined to the
house. They used to get hold of me and Ariadne, and ask us how long they
were going to be deprived of the pleasure of his society? They knew who
we were by this time and made pets of us, as much as we would let them.
I was too proud, but Ariadne's decision was complicated by a hopeless
attachment she had started. "Love is enough!" she used to say, "and I
_must_ go to Saltergate with the Scillys, for Simon is going!"