GETTING INTO SOCIETY AND OUT
At last the day of Estella's coming-out--the day Elizabeth was to meet
her fairy god-mother once more--arrived. When the Vision was finally
tucked away into his crib for his afternoon nap, and the leisurely
young lady warned again and again to watch him carefully, Elizabeth
dressed in the required white gown with the blue ribbons, and, with
Annie looking very sweet and youthful in John Coulson's favorite shade
of dove-gray, set off down the shady streets towards the Raymond home.
It was a hot, still afternoon, one of those days that seem left over
from August which so often descend upon the coolness of October. The
long rows of maples that bordered the street hung their scarlet banners
motionless in the sultry air. The sky, a hazy warm blue, seemed much
nearer the earth than usual. Away down at the end of each leafy avenue
Lake Cheemaun lay like a silver mirror. As they crossed a dusty street
on the hilltop, Elizabeth could see a little crimson and golden island
reflected perfectly in the glassy depths. Another street gave a
picture of a yellow elm, with an oriole's empty nest depending from a
drooping branch. It hung over the roadway, making a golden curtain
through which gleamed the blue and silver.
Elizabeth sighed happily, and, as was her habit, fell into the mood of
the day, listless, languorous. She strolled along, all unmindful of
the dust on her new slippers, and of Estella's reception, until her
sister recalled her to the business of the afternoon by declaring that
they must hurry, for they were already late.
"It's fortunate I wasn't asked to play cards, or we'd have to be there
sharp at four."
"I suppose Stella 'll turn it into a garden-party, won't she?" murmured
Elizabeth, gazing far down the street at a motionless sail on the
silver mirror--standing like a painted ship on a painted lake. "It's
so lovely out of doors."
"A garden-party, oh, no! That's dreadfully old-fashioned," said Annie
solemnly. "No one in Cheemaun would dare to give one now. This is to
be a Bridge--partially, but Mrs. Raymond is asking a great many other
people who are old-fashioned like me, and won't play, so they are to
come late and remain in the drawing-room while the players sit in the
library."
"It's like dividing the sheep from the goats," said Elizabeth
frivolously. "Aren't you sorry just to be a sheep, Ann? It's so
old-fashioned." Annie laughed uncertainly. She never quite understood
Elizabeth, and felt she ought to rebuke her frivolity. "No, I'm not.
What would become of Baby if his mother----"
"Turned goat? But say, I'd love to learn just to see what it was like
to go out every day and be a--what is it?--a social success. I believe
that is what Aunt Margaret would like."
Annie rebuked her gently. She was always just a little afraid of
Lizzie. The wild streak seemed to be in abeyance lately, but it might
break out in a new form any day.
Their arrival at the Raymond home forbade her admonishing her at any
length. It was a beautiful house--a fine red brick with white porch
pillars, of course, and surrounded by a spacious lawn dotted with
shrubbery and flower-beds. Its only drawback was its position, it
being placed on the wrong side of Elm Crescent, the street bordering
Sunset Hill. In consequence the Raymonds had suffered somewhat from
social obscurity, and this At Home was partially to serve the purpose
of raising them nearer the level of the proud homes on the hilltop.
Elizabeth became suddenly shy and nervous as she followed her sister up
the broad steps and saw the rooms crowded with fashionably dressed
people. She was not generally conscious of her clothes, but she could
not help feeling, as she glanced over the sea of bonnets and hats and
white kid gloves, that her muslin dress and blue ribbons must look very
shabby indeed. And somehow Annie had become transformed. Upon
starting out she had appeared to be the very pattern of fashionable
elegance. Now she looked like a demure little gray nun. Elizabeth
felt that neither of them was likely to make any impression upon Mrs.
Jarvis, and began to hope devoutly that she would not meet the lady.
There seemed little fear of it. The rooms were crowded and stifling
hot. The Raymond house had plenty of doors and windows, but good form
in Cheemaun society demanded that all light and air be excluded from a
fashionable function. So the blinds were drawn close, and Estella and
her mother stood broiling beneath the gas-lamps, for though the former
was half-suffocated with the heat, she would have entirely suffocated
with mortification had she received her guests in the vulgar light of
day.
By the time Elizabeth and her sister arrived, the sheep had been
thoroughly divided from the goats. From the drawing-room on the left
side of the spacious hall a babel and scream of voices mingled with the
noisy notes of a piano poured forth, but in the library on the right
there was a deathly silence, except for the click, click of the cards
on the polished tables.
The guests were met at the door by an exceedingly haughty young woman
with a discontented face beneath a huge pompadour of hair. "Will you
come upstairs and lay off your wraps?" she demanded frigidly.
"Why, Katie!" cried Elizabeth, recognizing her old schoolmate, even in
her unaccustomed garb of a black silk gown and white cap, "I'm so glad
to see you."
But Miss Price was not going to forgive Lizzie Gordon for being a guest
at a house where she was a servant. Had their positions been reversed
Katie would have been quite as haughty and forbidding as she was now.
"How d'ye-do," she said, with an air her young mistress, now setting
her foot upon the social ladder, might well have envied. "You're to go
upstairs," she commanded further.
"But we haven't anything to take off," protested Mrs. John Coulson,
nervously, afraid she was omitting some requisite part of the ceremony.
"We'd better not if Mrs. Raymond doesn't mind."
The young woman relaxed none of her haughtiness. "She said to take
everybody up," she remarked disdainfully.
They were interrupted by a very large Hat coming violently out of the
library door.
"Goodness, it's not her!" gasped the occupant of the hat, a tiny woman
with a brisk, sharp manner. She turned to the room again. "No luck!
It's Mrs. Coulson." She spoke as if Mrs. Coulson had made a mistake in
coming. "You didn't see that Mrs. Oliver on your way down, did you?"
she demanded of the unwelcome one.
No, they had not seen her. Mrs. Coulson answered apologetically, and
the big Hat flounced back into the library and sat down heavily in its
chair. The Hat was bitterly disappointed, and no wonder. She had come
to the Function sure of the prize, being one of Cheemaun star players,
but had met with a succession of incompetent partners. At present Mrs.
Oliver, a fine old Bridge warrior, should have been sitting opposite
her, but Mrs. Oliver was late, which was criminal, and the Hat's
partner was a nervous young matron who had left two sick babies and her
wits at home. Consequently the aspirant for the prize had lost game
after game and was now losing her temper. One of her opponents, a
frivolous lady whose score-card was decorated with green stars, giggled
and whispered to the hapless partner not to mind, the Hat was only an
old crank anyway; old maids always got like that. She would have
continued in the same strain but for a look of deep rebuke from her own
partner. The partner was a stately, middle-aged lady, a president of
the Cheemaun Whist Club, and a second Sarah Battle. She had suffered
much from the silly inattention of the winner of the green stars, she
frowned majestically, not because she objected to the young woman's
condemnation of the Hat, but because she considered it much worse form
to talk during a game of cards than during prayers in church.
Again deep silence fell, and they all went furiously to work once more
in the breathless heat.
Elizabeth was very much interested, but Mrs. John Coulson drew her away
towards the palm and fern-embowered door of the drawing-room. She was
somewhat disappointed at the news of Mrs. Oliver's non-appearance, for
that meant that neither was Mrs. Jarvis present. The fates did seem to
be against Lizzie certainly.
They were once more delayed. A couple of ladies who had just entered
were about to make their way to the drawing-room door, but had been
encountered by Miss Price, and a rather heated argument was in
progress. The ladies belonged to the old school, and were not
acquainted with the intricacies of a fashionable function. The
foremost was a fine, stately matron who had been Sarah Raymond's stanch
friend ever since the days when they had run barefoot to school
together. And while under her sensible black Sabbath bonnet there
still remained much warm affection and sympathy with all Sarah's
doings, at the same time there was developing not a little impatience
with what she termed Sarah's norms. She had just caught sight of the
card-players in the library, too, and was righteously indignant that
she, an elder's wife, should have been bidden to such a questionable
affair. So she had not much patience left to waste on Miss Price when
that haughty young lady insisted upon her going upstairs. "We've
nothing to take off, young woman," she declared at last; "can't you see
that? Do you want us to undress and go to bed?" And with that she
brushed Katie aside and proceeded on her way. A dapper little man in a
dress-suit, the only man anywhere in sight, popped out from behind a
great palm and demanded, "Name, please, madam?" Elizabeth regarded him
with awe. He represented the zenith point of Estella's ambition. They
always had such a functionary at swell receptions in the city, she had
explained to Elizabeth, a man who announced the names of the guests to
the hostess. No one had ever had anything so magnificent in Cheemaun.
Of course he had to come up from Toronto to do the catering anyway,
because Madeline had had him at her reception, and Estella was going to
go just a little farther, and didn't Beth think it was a perfectly
splendid idea--so grand and stylish?
Beth supposed it was. But of what use would he be. "I thought a man
like that was to tell the hostess the names because she wouldn't know
them," she had ventured very practically. "But you know every cat and
dog in Cheemaun, Stella."
Stella was disgusted with Beth's obtuseness. "Style was the thing
after all," she explained. "People who gave social functions never
bothered about whether things were any use or not. That wasn't the
point at all."
Elizabeth had not attempted further to see the point, as the Vision had
claimed her attention, and she now looked at the young man with some
pride. Evidently Estella was doing things up magnificently. But the
ladies whom he addressed were differently impressed. Mrs. Colin
McTavish's patience was exhausted. The idea of anyone in Sarah
Raymond's house asking her her name! She looked down at the dapper
little man with disdain. He was a forward young piece, she decided,
some uppish bit thing that was dangling after Stella, most likely.
"Young man," she said severely, "where's your manners? Can ye no wait
to be introduced to a body?"
The young man looked alarmed. He glanced appealingly at Mrs. John
Coulson, and Annie, with her more perfect knowledge of Estella's ways,
whispered tactfully:
"He wants to call out your names, Mrs. McTavish; he's doing it for
everybody."
Mrs. McTavish stared. "And what for would he be shouting out my name?"
she demanded. "If Sarah Raymond doesn't know my name by this time she
never will. Come away, Margit," she added to her companion, and the
two passed in unheralded.
"Mrs. Coulson! Miss Gordon!" piped the little man, and Elizabeth found
herself shaking hands with Mrs. Raymond and Estella. Or was it Estella?
The young debutante, in a heavy elaborate satin gown, stood with a
fixed and anguished smile upon her face, squeezing the fingers of each
guest in a highly elevated position, and saying in a tone and accent
entirely unlike her old girlish hoydenish manner:
"How do you do, Mrs. McTavish, it was so good of you to come. How do
you do, Mrs. Cameron, it was so good of you to come. How do you do,
Mrs. Coulson, etc., etc."
A wild desire for laughter with which Elizabeth was struggling was
quenched by a feeling of pity. She wondered how many hundred times
poor Estella had said those words during that long hot afternoon, and
wondered how long she herself could stand there in that awful heat and
repeat them in that parrot-fashion, ere the wild streak would assert
itself and send her flying out of doors. Estella was made of wonderful
stuff, she reflected, admiringly. Mrs. Raymond had succumbed long ago
and stood drooping and perspiring, scarcely able to speak, and quite
unable to smile.
Elizabeth felt queer and strange when Estella shook her two fingers
just as she shook everyone else's and with the same smile made the same
remark to her. She tried to say something to bring back her old
schoolmate, but Estella turned to the next person and she found herself
shoved on. And shoved on she was from that time forth, conscious only
of heat and noise and fag and a desire to get away.
She found herself at last, after having been shoved into the
dining-room for ice-cream, and shoved out again, packed into a corner
behind Annie. The latter had been pinioned by a fat lady who, for the
last quarter of an hour, had been shouting above the din a minutely
detailed account of a surgical operation through which she had lately
come, omitting not one jot of her sufferings. Elizabeth felt faint.
The rich sweetmeats of the tea-table, the heat, the noise, and the
lady's harrowing tale, were rendering her almost ill. She looked about
her desperately. Just behind her was a French window. It was open,
but the heavy lace-bordered blind was drawn down to within a couple of
feet from the floor. All unmindful of the conventionalities, Elizabeth
stooped and peeped out. The breath of fresh air revived her. The
sight of the garden, and beyond, the free stretch of the out-door world
went to her head like wine. She jumped up, her eyes sparkling with a
sudden glorious thought. One more glance around the buzzing hot sea of
flowery hats and white gloves made the thought a resolution.
"Ann!" she whispered recklessly, "I'm going to jump through this window
and run away! I am so!"
"Lizzie!" gasped Mrs. Coulson in dismay. The fat lady was still under
the surgeon's knife and talked on undisturbed. Annie's heart sank.
One glance at the gleam in Elizabeth's eyes showed her the wild streak
was uppermost. "What are you saying?" she faltered, but before she
could remonstrate further Elizabeth had acted. With a lightning-like
motion she dropped upon her knees, and, fortunately concealed by the
crowd and the heavy curtains, she darted cat-like beneath the
window-blind and disappeared.
She found herself upon a secluded side of a veranda, and still on all
fours; she gave a mad caper across the floor, and staggered to her
feet, her hat flopping rakishly over one ear.
Then she stood, motionless with dismay. Right in front of her,
half-reclining in a veranda chair, was a lady, a richly dressed lady of
very sedate appearance, who was gazing with startled eyes at the
tumultuous apparition.
"I--I beg your pardon," gasped Elizabeth. "But I couldn't stand it
another minute."
The two looked at each other for a moment, and then the stately woman
and the hoydenish girl, with one accord, burst out laughing.
Elizabeth flung herself upon a chair and rocked convulsively.
"It--it's the first time I've ever got into society," she said between
gasps; "and now I've gone and got out of it again."
"And a peculiar manner of exit you chose," said the lady, wiping her
eyes on a lace handkerchief. "But I must confess I ran away too."
"You?" cried Elizabeth, amazed.
"Yes. I came here with my niece, I am sure an [Transcriber's note:
line missing from source book?] hours ago. She disappeared into the
card-room, and I slipped out here. I didn't come in your original
manner, however." She laughed again.
"I should think not," said Elizabeth, sitting up and straightening her
hat. She was now quite at her ease, since the lady was proving so
delightfully sympathetic. "I am afraid I'm not truly genteel, or I
shouldn't have bolted at my first sight of high life."
"How will you feel when you have been to hundreds of such affairs, all
exactly alike, I wonder?" asked the lady wearily.
Elizabeth shook her head. "I couldn't stand it. My aunt thinks I need
the refining influence of good society, but it doesn't seem to have had
that effect upon me," she added rather mournfully.
The lady laughed again. "Well, as receptions go, it seemed to me a
very pretty one indeed, and Miss Raymond is a beautiful girl."
"Oh, Stella's lovely," cried Elizabeth enthusiastically, "and
everything is just grand, far more splendid than anything I ever saw
before. You see, I never was at anything but a High School tea or
something of that sort," she added artlessly. "But the refreshments
made me ill; really, I was quite sick."
The lady looked both amused and interested, and Elizabeth rattled on:
"You see, I got my ice-cream in a mould--a little chicken; what was
yours?"
"A rose, I think--some sort of flower."
"Oh, that would be lovely!--to eat a rose. But mine was a chicken, and
before I thought I cut his poor little pink head off with my spoon.
And it reminded me of the day when we were little and my brother John
made me hold our poor old red rooster while he chopped his head off
with the ax, and of course it made me sick, and I just had to run away."
"You mustn't let your imagination play tricks with your digestion that
way."
"It shows that the refined part of me must be just a thin veneer on the
outside," said Elizabeth, her eyes twinkling. "I don't believe my
insides are a bit genteel, or I'd never have thought of the rooster."
"Well, you are a treat," said the lady--"Miss--Miss--why, I don't even
know your name, child."
"It's Elizabeth Gordon," said the owner of the name, adding with some
dignity--"Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon."
"Elizabeth Jarvis Gordon!" repeated the lady, half-rising, an
expression of pleasure illuminating her face, "Why--surely, my little
namesake! Don't you remember me?"
"Oh," cried Elizabeth, overwhelmed by the memory of her indiscretions.
"It isn't--is it--Mrs. Jarvis?"
"It really is!" cried the lady very cordially. She drew the girl down
and kissed her. "And I'm delighted to meet you again, Elizabeth Jarvis
Gordon, you're the most refreshing thing I've seen in years!"