A DINNER PARTY.
“Oh, would I were dead now,
Or up in my bed now.
To cover my head now
And have a good cry!”
Trafalgar House, if you please. Time, about eight o’clock. Dramatis
personæ some fifteen brilliantly-dressed ladies, and as many gentlemen
in regulation evening attire.
A great long table, magnificently set, and ablaze with tiny electric
lamps cunningly hidden among foliage and splendid flowers. At one end
Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne in rich black satin, a truly astonishing cap, and
twice as many glittering rings as she had fingers.
Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne, with a large fixed smile that only her fork or
spoon ever disturbed—Mrs. Fitzroy-Browne, with one anxious eye on the
waiting servants, one half frightened on her son and daughters, and
only the large smile for the guests.
At the head Mr. Fitzroy-Browne, a small, neat man, with little eyes and
a half-apologetic, half-assertive manner, as if he were begging your
pardon for the great wealth that made you mere nobodies, and at the
same time hugging himself mightily.
[Illustration: “AWAY DOWN NEAR ONE END SAT NELLIE.”]
At intervals down the sides the Misses Fitzroy-Browne, in _decolleté_
dresses of latest style.
Sandwiched with them and other females with large bare arms and rough,
fashionably-coiffeured hair, net-covered, men of various sorts and
conditions,—self-made men like their host, who came to approve the
show money could make; a few of better position, who enjoyed the
wines and good dinner and despised the vulgarity of the givers; a
good-looking adventurer or two of higher society, remittance men,
who, having almost outrun the constable, as a last resource came
heiress-hunting.
In the middle of one side Mr. Adolphus Fitzroy-Browne, with a large
expanse of white shirt front, a pink-edged tie, great diamond studs,
and a red silk sash tied at one side instead of a waistcoat.
And away down near one end, a stout American Hebrew, dinner intent,
on one side, a young man of the puppy order on the other, sat
Nellie,—Nellie, looking like a little lonely field flower sprung up in
a bed of gaudy dahlias,—Nellie, in a white, simple dress of home make,
high-necked, long-sleeved, with the dying pink roses at her breast, and
a silver “wish” bangle that cost half-a-crown for her only jewellery.
Poor little Nell! Never perhaps in all her fifteen years had she been
so immeasurably miserable and uncomfortable.
In the drawing-room the women had stared her up and down in scorn,
and rustled about in voluminous silken and velvet skirts; the thought
of her own plain, high-necked dress made her cheeks burn. The Misses
Browne had been too busy with entertaining to do more than give her a
nod and a word or two as they introduced several of the men to her.
“Daughter of Captain John Woolcot,” she overheard one of them whisper
once,—“poor, but of very good family, related to a title; great friend
of dear Isabel’s; pretty little thing, yes; quite a charity to show her
some life.”
Nellie had blushed hotly, and shrunk back into a corner. Oh, if only
there had been a door near and she could have slipped out and flown
through the night back to dear, despised Misrule. If only the floor
would open and mercifully swallow her out of sight! If only there was
a window near, through which she could make her exit from Trafalgar
House for ever! But alas! the drawing-room was upstairs here, and there
were no convenient tanks and thickly-wooded creepers such as had made
her descent from her own bedroom almost easy. There was a little patch
of green on her skirt, and a pin held together a ripped flounce, but,
certainly, no one in that gay assemblage suspected her of leaving her
own home by any more unusual mode of exit than the front door. It was
even worse when a move was made towards the dining-room, and she was
assigned to a youth in a chokingly high collar, a youth who said ya-as
and haw, and left out his r’s and g’s because he had been told it was
“as done in London.”
She was in a hot state of nervous distress even when no one was
speaking to her; it was increased tenfold when she found this man
evidently expected her to talk and be talked to all the time.
He asked her whose dancing she liked best, Sylvia Grey’s or Marion
Hood’s.
“I—I don’t know either of them,” she answered, wondering distressfully
if she ought to use her silver knife and fork or an ordinary fork only
for the pâté-de-something that the footman had just given her.
“Haw,” said the youth, “at the theatre,—don’t-cher-know,—haw—haw, very
good.”
Nellie’s cheeks burned. He looked at her with impertinent admiration.
“Like to see a garl blush myself, don’t-cher-know,” he drawled, “shows
they’re young. Lord! what wouldn’t the old ones give to do it—our
friend Miss Isabel, for instance?”
Nell’s pink deepened to scarlet under the cool audacity of his stare.
This was the first experience of the kind she had had in her life;
all the men she had hitherto met on equal terms had been gentlemen
unmistakably.
But she did not speak; her long eyelashes lay almost tremblingly on
her cheek, and she took a mouthful or two of the pâté; she had decided
to use the fork, and then crimsoned afresh to see most of the others
employing knife as well. The pastry broke up into little flaky pieces;
in vain her one implement chased them round her plate, she could only
get a crumb to stay on the prongs each time.
“Haw—what lovely long lashes you’ve got, Miss—haw—Woolcot, wasn’t it? I
suppose that’s why you keep persistin’ in lookin’ down, isn’t it now?”
said the voice at her elbow.
She looked up in desperation, her cheeks aflame again.
“Haw, that’s better,” he said; “now I can see your eyes. I couldn’t
when you kept them so cruelly hidden, don’t cher see.”
Then the Hebrew neighbour claimed her attention.
“Grand finisht dot vash at Randwick, Sat’day,” he said. The servants
were bringing him fresh supplies, so he could spare time for a minute
to speak to the pretty little girl beside him.
“Yes,” assented Nellie in a hurry. She had not caught what he said, but
thought it would be easier to assent than tell him so.
“And vich horse vos it you vos backing?” he pursued.
Then she had to explain she had not heard what he said; and
afterwards, that she had never been to the races in her life.
The Hebrew had no other conversation at command just then, so he
returned to his fresh plateful, and left her to her other neighbours,
who smiled openly, but made no movement to help her when a servant
brought champagne, and she was perplexed to know whether she ought to
offer one of the many glasses beside her or remain passive. She had
never thought it possible for a meal to last the interminably long time
this one did.
The others seemed to be enjoying themselves exceedingly. There was loud
talking and laughing on both sides, wine was flowing freely, and there
was an exhaustless supply of good things to eat.
Nellie wondered miserably if Meg had found her out, as she dipped her
finger tips into the Venetian glass finger bowl. There was a tiny
William Alan Richardson rosebud floating there; Meg had had a cluster
stuck in her waistband when she had been entreating her to give up this
dinner. Dear, dear Meg! and to think she had vexed and worried and
grieved her like this, just for the sake of these horrible people and
their thrice horrible dinner-party!
Her eyes ached with tears, there was a lump in her throat, a tightness
at her heart; the young man at her elbow was talking, but she neither
heard his words nor turned her head. Then he laughed out, and the
Hebrew gentleman touched her arm. All the ladies had risen and were
on their way to the door; she only was sitting still, her gloves yet
off, her young, unhappy face downcast. A wave of colour rushed into her
cheeks, and as she jumped up hurriedly, every one was looking at her,
half amusedly, half admiringly. Isabel at the door waited for her, a
little vexed.
“What _were_ you dreaming of?” she said. “Why, you haven’t even got
your gloves on.”
“Dear Miss Isabel,” Nellie said, entreaty almost tearful in her voice,
“do let me go home now. Indeed I must,—oh do, do, do!”
But “What nonsense, child!” Isabel answered, and bore her along with
the others into the brilliantly lighted drawing-room.
Here it was not quite so bad. Nell saw a chair half hidden behind a
window-curtain, and felt she had indeed come into a haven of peace
when she gained it. No one disturbed her for a time; some of the girls
yawned openly, and kept their speech for the arrival of the gentlemen;
one or two frankly closed their eyes to show the small appreciation
they had for their own sex; the others discussed the men, their
moustaches, money, eyes, figures, in a way that made the one violet in
the room want to shrivel up or turn rosy for the shame of her girlhood.
They all ignored Mamma Browne, who had a spacious velvet sofa all to
herself; she would have liked to knit or do something with her fingers,
but the girls had told her it wasn’t “good form,” so she only twisted
them in and out of each other, and wondered if the people would go at
eleven or twelve, and whether they had noticed that only three servants
waited instead of the five they always had for the parties.
Then she noticed the little lonely figure in white by the great window.
There was a droop about the little sweet mouth and a misty look in
the sweet eyes that quite touched her kind old heart. She got up and
waddled slowly across the floor. “Come and sit on the sofy with me,
dearie,” she said; and all Nellie’s heart went out to her.
The sofa was in a deep window at the end of the room, quite away from
the loud-voiced, finely-dressed girls who so overpowered her.
“Oh, do let me stay with you all the time, please!” she said, as she
nestled down close to the motherly, capacious-looking old lady. “Oh, it
is much nicer here—may I?”
“Why, of course,” said Mrs. Browne; “why, I’ll be glad to ’ave you;
you ain’t been enjoyin’ yourself, I’m thinkin’?”
“Oh,” said Nellie, who was a polite little soul, even in distress, “oh,
it has been very nice, I’m sure, only I don’t go to dinner parties yet,
and so I am a little shy, I suppose.”
“Well, I ain’t enjoyed it,” said Mrs. Browne, with a sigh; “they worrit
my life out, these parties, and unsettle the servints, and make all the
house rumpled up, and then no one says thank you or likes you a bit
better for it all.”
She felt she might ease her poor old heart a little to this young girl,
whose dress was not fine enough to make her haughty, and whose face was
sweetly sympathetic.
“Oh, I’m sure every one has enjoyed it very much, and thinks it is very
kind of you to give such a nice party,” Nellie said, touched by the
tired quaver in the speaker’s voice.
“Me!” the old lady replied, with a touch of bitterness. “I’m only their
mother, I don’t give it, bless your soul!—all the good mothers is
nowadays, is to mind the servints and take blame when things go wrong.
Me! All I ’ave to do is to order dinner and stay up till every one’s
gone.”
She rocked herself to and fro unhappily; her state of bondage was
beginning to tell upon her.
“Ha’ you got a mother?” she asked, turning sharply on her young guest.
And Nellie’s reply was very low and sad: “She died nine years ago.”
The poor child was in the mood to-night to long inexpressibly for the
soft arms and breast of a mother. There was silence for a few minutes.
“Ah!” said Mrs. Browne, and her voice also was very low, and a little
unsteady with tears, “she was fortunit, mothers had oughter die when
their childers is little and loves them. When childers is growed up
mothers is only in the way.”
Nellie stretched out her young hand and stroked the poor old fat one
that was tremblingly smoothing imaginary creases out of the sofa seat.
“Why, I would give all the world if my mother were alive,” she said,
with eager hurrying lips, “and Meg and Pip would,—all of us, dear
Mrs. Browne. I think it is just when we are grown up we love mothers
best, and want them most.”
“Not me,” was the slow, sad answer, accompanied by a furtively wiped
tear. “Not mothers as ain’t been learned grammar proper when they was
young. Them’s the kind of mothers as had oughter die afore their boys
and girls are growed up.”
Then the gentlemen came in, and there was a louder buzz of talk, a new
settlement of chairs, and presently some excessively noisy music.
“I’m just goin’ to get something for my ’ed, it aches so bad,”
Mrs. Browne whispered to Nellie after a time; “they won’t notice if I
slip out when Miss ’Udson goes to the pianee.”
Nellie lifted eager eyes. “Let me come with you,—oh, please!” she said
impulsively, and the next minute the two were stealing out of the
nearest door together.
In the dimly-lighted bedroom the old lady gave way altogether, and
sobbed for a long time in a heartbroken way, much to Nellie’s distress.
“Oh, I wish I was dead, I do—I wish I was dead!” she said, with a
little rocking movement to ease the sorrow of her poor old heart. She
mopped at her eyes occasionally with her lace-trimmed handkerchief;
in olden days she would have put her apron over her head and shed her
tears behind its screen; but even that solace was denied her now.
Nell found eau-de-Cologne on the dressing-table, and insisted on
bathing her head with it, and then fanning slowly with a palm leaf till
the poor thing’s agitation calmed and the burning head was a little
cooler.
“I think I’ve let things worrit me too much to-day,” was her faltering
excuse when, half an hour later, she awoke to the fact that Nellie was
still fanning her; “but no one knows what my poor ’ed ’as been lately.
Marthy the parlour-maid was sick last night, poor thing, and I sat
with her till near two; and James the other footman begged me to let
’im go off—they said ’is little girl was bad with scarlet-fever. I ’ad
to let ’im, of course, and you could see ’ow vexed Pa was when we was
short-’anded at table. It worrited me awful.”
There was a rustle of silken skirts along the corridor, and a patter of
high-heeled shoes. Isabel had suddenly missed her young guest, whose
eyes she had so wanted to dazzle; it struck her with infinite vexation
that it was more than probable she was with her mother, despising her
hugely for her ungrammatical language and many banalities.
“Well, really!” she said, sweeping into the bedroom, and looking
vexedly at the two on the sofa.
Mrs. Browne struggled instantly to her feet.
“I’m just comin’, my dear,—comin’ this minute,” she said, in a voice
whose nervousness struck Nellie as strangely pathetic. “I thought the
folk wouldn’t be missin’ me just for a bit.”
“Oh, I never expect _you_ to do things like other hostesses,” her
daughter answered rudely. Then she turned to Nellie.
“I don’t know what you want to run away like this for; I shall begin
to think you’re not enjoying yourself. Come, we’re going into the
ballroom to have a dance or two: can you do the cotillon?”
She swept her away to the lights and music again, to fresh vexation of
spirit that self-forgetfulness for a time had made less keen.
In the midst of a waltz with her odious dinner companion Nell caught
sight of her so-called hostess, who had followed her daughter back to
the room.
She was sitting, poor fat old creature, on a stiff chair near the wall,
blinking patiently at the dancers, the large set smile on her face
again, and a headache pucker on her forehead.
To Nellie the one bright spot in that dreadful evening was the thought
of her touching, surprised gratitude at the trifling service she had
done her.
“I just wish you was my little girl!” was her wistful speech at
parting, when twelve o’clock put an end to the revels,—“oh, ’ow I wish
you was my little girl!”