THE very air of Gwen’s two rooms, the bedroom and the dressing-room off
it, shimmered with excitement. It glowed in the soft light of the
innumerable wax candles with which Mary had studded the tables, it hung
in the rose-pink curtains, it shone in the leaping blue flame of the
fire, it was everywhere and most inconveniently so in the fingers of the
new lady’s maid, a creature of sentiment, who was putting the finishing
touches to her young mistress’s bodice, while Mary was trotting round
restlessly, disturbed in every individual hair of her head, casting rapt
glances at Gwen and furtive ones at the door.
At the sound of a footstep on the stairs she gave a sudden start and her
face lighted, but it shaded as suddenly.
“Only Mrs. Fellowes!” she murmured, and she showed her in with some
grimness.
Mrs. Fellowes stopped on the threshold and took in Gwen leisurely with a
half-choked gasp of wonder, then she went over and kissed her.
“Gwen, love, you _are_ beautiful, I never knew it before!”
Gwen looked up at her then turned to the glass and laughed. “I am,” she
said, “I am beautiful and _I_ never knew it before!”
Then she stood up and shook down the soft gleaming folds of her
tulle-shrouded silk and straightened herself.
It was her first long dress, and added two inches to her height.
“Look, I am changed, I am a new creature, I am afraid of nothing! I feel
like a knight-errant setting forth on his quest, his was glory, mine—”
she paused.
“What’s yours?” said Mrs. Fellowes smiling on her.
“Mine? Mine’s glory too.”
She paused again, and a sudden trouble leaped into her face.
“But it’s due to me, see. Why not?” And her great eyes flashed
triumphantly into the glass. “‘_I will attain_’ like Paracelsus.”
She laughed again but her mirth had a jar in it.
“He went the wrong way about it,” remarked Mrs. Fellowes placidly, “take
care you don’t do the same!”
“He was a fraud to begin with, I’m not, neither in brain nor body.”
Mrs. Fellowes looked at her critically, “the outside of you is flawless
enough, and, goodness knows! you are all there as far as brain goes. But
I’m not so sure as to the inside of you; there, an inch or so to the
left of that diamond star, I believe you are perfectly empty!”
“Ugh! That’s empty of course, except for the bits of you and the rector
it holds, there’s been nothing to fill it.”
“A thing must have a capacity for holding before it can hold, my good
child, and original capacity dwindles from disuse, as your father’s
daughter must know. Atrophy is the word in your jargon, isn’t it?”
“Oh, all glory doesn’t come through that mawkish muscle! I have lived
for nineteen years without anything to try the holding capacity of mine,
and I can go on for a while yet and get my glory through other
channels.”
“No, you can’t, a woman’s crown of glory comes through her heart or it
isn’t worth the wearing, her heart leads her reason, and is often the
surer guide into the bargain.”
“Why do you speak like this,” said the girl, flushing, and flashing out
a white arm towards her, “on my coming-out night? It isn’t fair of you!”
“You brought it on yourself, my Gwen, you’re setting out on a wrong
tack. Let yourself go, child, be natural and strive after—nothing. All
good will come to you by Divine right.”
A sudden chill ran down Mrs. Fellowes’ back, and a horrid little song
began to croon in her ears, “Through much tribulation” were the words of
it, and it kept on by fits all that evening.
“Turn round again and let me look at you, dear. Ah, I feel as if it were
the coming-out night of my own child!”
There was a quick short catch in her voice. “Kiss me, Gwen, and,
darling, don’t think of victory, there’s blood in the very thought! The
head and front of a woman’s life is love, God’s, and mother’s, and
man’s!”
“You’ve forgotten your audience,” said Gwen sarcastically, “I know
nothing of the two first, the third will come, I suppose, in time—by all
accounts, it comes always to the beautiful—but I shall not know what on
earth to do with it when it arrives, and oh! I don’t want it! I want to
‘live at full pitch’, I couldn’t manage that with my feet clogged with
honey!”
“You want to be loved, my dear, to be loved, loved, loved, and when you
are, you’ll find out what an arrant little goose you are making of
yourself.”
The girl turned suddenly upon her and gave her one of her most volcanic
hugs. When Mrs. Fellowes got out of it, panting, she set to putting
Gwen’s dress in order with sundry soft touches to neck and arms.
“I do love nice soft girlish flesh,” she said, with a little laugh. “Oh,
how I do wish to goodness that John wasn’t a parson this night of all
others! I want dreadfully to see you there, but he can’t come, it’s
impossible, you know Sam Tidd is dying and even for you I couldn’t go
without him!”
“Mrs. Fellowes!” she cried sweeping round, “are you not coming? This is,
oh, this is awful! I never looked at your dress, I was so taken up with
my own. Oh, to go alone with Lady Mary, and to my first ball!”
Her face was furious, and Mrs. Fellowes could have cried. “I did not
tell you at first, I was so astonished at your brilliant completeness, I
_am_ sorry.”
Gwen stamped.
“It is atrocious, abominable! To go alone with no one in the room to
care a rap how I look! You can’t help it, I know, but oh, you must see
the beastliness of the whole thing.”
“The carriage is coming, darling, come down to your mother.”
“I? Certainly not! Mary and Simpson!” she called.
“There, isn’t it lovely?” said Gwen as Simpson wrapped her in her cloak,
“I do love the sheeny changes in white plush! Mrs. Fellowes, you will
come down with me, won’t you? I hardly know Lady Mary.”
When they came to the foot of the stairs Mary came forward and said in a
quick frightened tone,
“Miss Gwen, God bless you, dear! They will be proud of you! The room is
well lighted, shall I open the door, Miss?”
“Did they ask for me?” demanded Gwen. She had let her cloak drop and was
turning slowly round, that the old woman might have a good view of her.
“Ask, Miss!”—She broke off.
“I know they did not, and they don’t want me either, and Mrs. Fellowes
isn’t coming—did you know that? I am glad you like me, Mary!”
She stooped suddenly seeing a tear on Mary’s cheek, and kissed it into a
wet smudge on the bed of wrinkles, then she turned and kissed Mrs.
Fellowes lightly, and walked down the great hall like a young queen
setting out on a triumphal progress.
When Gwen dropped her cloak and displayed herself for Mary’s admiration,
she had two spectators she certainly never bargained for.
A wave of the universal excitement had somehow reached Mr. and Mrs.
Waring in their learned retirement, probably carried there by Mary’s
frequent appearances for trivial causes,—she dared not make any definite
suggestion, for fear of Gwen’s most inexorable wrath.
“My love,” said Mr. Waring at last, “something unusual seems to be the
matter!”
Mrs. Waring’s brows knitted as usual, then gradually cleared.
“Yes, I really believe this is the occasion of Gwen’s first ball. I
remember now Lady Mary mentioning something about it, and—ah, yes, don’t
you remember you gave Mrs. Fellowes a cheque for some dresses and other
things to do with balls? Ah, nine o’clock, is it really? And I fancy I
hear a carriage—didn’t Lady Mary say she would come for her? I think,
dear,” she said, “I think, dear, I should like to see Gwen.”
“And I too,” said Mr. Waring, standing up with quiet eagerness, “shall
we go to her room? I suppose we might do so,” he added, half fearfully.
It certainly did seem rather a liberty on their part.
“Oh yes, I think that perhaps she might like it.”
So they opened the door and were just about to set forth when the sight
of her in shimmering soft waves of silk and tulle, her round column of a
neck poised like that of an empress, and her arms thrown out gracefully
that Mary might see the whole of her, arrested the two and held them in
a silent spell, standing hand in hand on the threshold. Then, hand in
hand still, they went back into the library as if in a dream, and over
to the deep embrasured window that opened on the carriage drive, and
listened to the very last sound of Lady Mary’s wheels. When they came
back to the fire there was a tear in Mrs. Waring’s eye, and her husband
felt horrid—just as if he had lost a good thought.