Diana to the Rescue
Next morning the postman arrived quite laden with parcels and letters
addressed to "Miss Diana Hewlitt". As Mrs. Fleming had prophesied,
everything came at once, and her young guest spent a busy and ecstatic
half-hour opening her various packages. Scent, French chocolates,
Parisian embroideries, gloves, ribbons, and other dainty vanities such
as girls love were raved over and spread forth on the table, while Diana
devoured the contents of her letters. From one large envelope she drew
forth a photograph of a lovely lady in evening-dress.
"It's Mother! Oh, how perfectly sweet! And the very image of her, too!"
she cried, handing the photo to Meg for admiration.
Her fit of the blues had utterly vanished, and she was in a
rose-coloured mood to-day. Meg, leaning over the table, deeply
interested in the parcels, looked critically at the picture of the
bright-eyed lady with the soft coils of fair hair.
"She's not like you, Diana."
"No. A thousand times better looking than I am!"
"I suppose you're like your father?"
"Yes, so people say, though I can't see it myself."
"How pretty she is--and how young! She might almost be your sister. And
yet I suppose she must be middle-aged."
"What do you mean by 'middle-aged'?" demanded Diana sharply.
"Why, anything over thirty! I call _my_ mother middle-aged."
"Do you?"
"Of course!" (Meg was still examining the photo.) "What a perfectly
glorious dress to be taken in! And I adore her necklace. She's like the
pictures one sees in _The Queen_. It must be lovely to have a pretty
mother."
Diana was looking at Meg with an unfathomable expression in her grey
eyes.
"Don't you call your mother pretty, then?" she asked.
"Oh, yes! she's a darling; but she's had her day. She's not a society
beauty, is she?"
"N-n-n-o, I suppose not," said Diana thoughtfully.
The boys came into the room just then; the conversation was interrupted,
and Meg probably forgot all about it. Diana, however, did not. At
lunch-time she critically studied her hostess's features, and mentally
compared them with those of the photo which had arrived that morning
from Paris.
"I don't believe Mrs. Fleming is really any older than Mother," she
decided. "She's been very pretty some time, but she's let herself go.
It's a pity. All the same, I could shake Meg!"
An impression that had been gathering in Diana's mind ever since she
arrived at the Vicarage now shaped itself into definite form. She did
not like the attitude of her friends towards their mother. They were
devoted to her, but their love lacked all element of admiration. Mrs.
Fleming had made the common mistake of effacing herself utterly for the
sake of her children. She had dropped her former accomplishments, even
the music in which she had once excelled, and made herself an absolute
slave to her household. So long as Meg and Elsie wore pretty frocks she
cared nothing for her own dress; she never bought a new book or took a
holiday; her interests were centred in the young people's achievements,
and she had become merely the theatre of their actions. Going away
seldom, and reading little, had narrowed her horizon. She often felt her
ideas were out of date, and that she was not keeping up with the modern
notions her children were imbibing at school. They always spoke with
more respect of their teachers' opinions than of hers, and would allude
to subjects they were learning as if they did not expect her to
understand them. Sometimes they assumed little airs of patronage towards
her. Among themselves they occasionally referred to her as "Only
Mother!"
Diana, thinking it all carefully over, raged mentally. "I guess I've got
to make those Flemings admire their mother!" she said to herself. "Just
how to do it beats me at present, but I don't give up. I'd like to fix
her hair for her if I dared. She strains it back till she looks like a
skinned rabbit, and her dresses were made in the year one, I should say.
She's a dear, all the same, though. If she could only be cured of
feeling on the shelf, she'd grow ten years younger."
Having set herself the surprising undertaking of rejuvenating Mrs.
Fleming, Diana went warily to work. It would certainly not do to
reproach Meg, Elsie, and the boys for lack of appreciation of their
mother; they would simply have stared in utter amazement. Somehow, by
hook or by crook, she must be made to shine, so as to command their
honest admiration. Diana catalogued her personal attractions:
1. A really quite classical nose.
2. A nice, neat mouth.
3. Good teeth.
4. A pretty colour when she gets hot or excited.
5. Quite fascinating brown eyes.
6. Hair that would be lovely if it were only decently done, instead
of scooped away and screwed into a tight knob at the back.
Anybody with these points might make so much of them, if they only knew
how to use them properly. Diana wondered if it would be possible to buy
a book on the secrets of fascination. It was just the element that was
lacking. Putting personality aside, she began probing into the extent of
her friend's mental equipment. She induced her to bring out the
water-colour sketches of former years, and even wrung from her a half
promise that some day--when the weather was nice, and if she had
time--she would paint a picture of the church.
"The boys would each like a sketch of their mother's to take to school
with them," decreed Diana. "Monty would have his framed and hang it in
his study, and show it to all his friends as _your_ work."
"Why, so he might," said Mrs. Fleming, looking much surprised. The idea
had evidently never occurred to her before.
From painting, Diana passed to other accomplishments. Mrs. Fleming
rendered the accompaniments to Elsie's violin pieces and Meg's songs
with a delicacy of touch that revealed the true musician.
"I wish you'd play something to me," begged Diana one day when the
girls' practising was over and their mother was rising from the piano.
"_I_, my dear child! I never play now."
"Why not?"
"I gave up my music long ago, when I got married."
"You haven't forgotten it, though."
"Well, not altogether, of course. I'm a good reader still."
"Please!" urged Diana.
And, to content her impetuous visitor, Mrs. Fleming gave in. She pulled
a volume of Chopin from the stand, and began the twelfth nocturne. It
was years since she had played it, but as she touched the keys the old
spirit crept back into her fingers, and the notes came rippling out
delicately and easily. Diana, sunk back in the recesses of the long
basket-chair, listened fascinated. She loved music when it was of a
superior quality, and she did not often get the chance of hearing
playing such as this.
"More! More!" she begged, when the nocturne came to an end.
The ice once broken, Mrs. Fleming, as much to her own astonishment as to
that of the family, actually revived her interest in the piano. She
hunted out her old pieces and began to practise them. She said it was to
amuse Diana, but it was evident that enjoyment was mixed with her
philanthropy. As a girl she had studied under a good master, and she had
much natural talent. She would improvise sometimes, and even compose
little things of her own.
"Why, my dear," said her husband, peeping into the drawing-room one
evening just at the conclusion of the "Moonlight Sonata", "this takes me
back to the time when we were engaged! I've been sitting listening in my
study."
Diana, squatting on one foot in the corner of the sofa, clapped her
hands softly. She liked the Vicar, but she thought his antiquarian
researches monopolized the conversation at meal-times. It was quite nice
to hear him express appreciation for some other line than his own. Diana
had a scheme in her mind, and, when she judged the time was ripe, she
proposed it suddenly and boldly in the face of the whole united family
of Flemings. It was nothing more or less than that Mrs. Fleming should
play a solo at the concert which was to be held at the schools on the
10th of January. In vulgar parlance, she "shot her bird sitting",
plumped the idea upon her, and dragged forth an acceptance before--as
the poor lady afterwards protested--she had time to realize what she was
undertaking.
"Certainly. Why not?" confirmed her husband. "We badly want some more
items on the programme. I shall put you down for two solos."
"But what _can_ I play?" remonstrated Mrs. Fleming.
"Oh, Mother, you know heaps of things! Don't be absurd!" reproved Meg.
"I guess we'll have a rehearsal to-night, and choose your star pieces,"
said Diana, with shining eyes.
So far, so good. Her plot had answered admirably. The family took it
almost as a matter of course that "Mother" was to perform at the
concert, though it had never occurred to any of them to ask her to do
so.
"She's a very good pianist," said Meg airily to Diana.
"Glad you think so!" rapped out Diana, with an emphasis that made Meg
stare and whisper afterwards to Elsie that she couldn't quite somehow
get at the back of "Stars and Stripes".
It was a mighty matter to select the two solos. Mrs. Fleming, flustered
and bewildered at this unexpected dive into publicity, hesitated among
many pieces. As she could not make up her own mind, Diana made it up for
her.
"We want the 'Moonlight Sonata' for one, and Chopin's 'Ballade in A
flat' for the other," she decided. "They're classical, but they're so
exquisite that I guess even the old women will enjoy them. Then for the
encores you could play----"
"Encores!" gasped Mrs. Fleming feebly.
"Why, of course there'll be encores! Schubert's 'Hedge Roses' for one,
and that nocturne of your own for the other. It'll just about take the
house!"
So Mrs. Fleming, with an extraordinary feeling that she had somehow been
whisked back to her school-days, sat practising in the drawing-room,
with Diana, curled up in the corner of the sofa for audience. It was a
dream-world for them both. Diana had been reading _Stories of the Great
Composers_, and now she knew the hearts of the musicians she could enter
more fully into the meaning of their music. She had fallen, utterly and
entirely, under the magic spell of Chopin; the lovely, liquid melodies
thrilled her like the echo of something beyond her earthly experience,
and seemed to go soaring away into regions she had not yet explored,
regions of breathless beauty, though only entered by the gates of
sorrow. She would read Alfred Noyes's poem on Chopin as she sat
listening to the haunting, bewitching rhythm of the "Ballade in A", and
the ring of the poetry merged itself into the glamour of the music, so
that ever afterwards she connected the two.
"'Do roses in the moonlight glow
Like this and this?' I could not see
His eyes, and yet--they were quite wet,
Blinded, I think! What should I be
If in that hour I did not know
My own diviner debt?"
or
"Wrapped in incense gloom,
In drifting clouds and golden light;
Once I was shod with fire, and trod
Beethoven's path through storm and night:
It is too late now to resume
My monologue with God."
"I don't wonder Chopin had his piano carried out into the fields!" she
commented. "I don't believe he could have composed in the house. You
hear the wind blowing through his pieces, and see the tassels of the
laburnum-tree he was sitting under swaying about in it."
The concert was an annual gaiety which most of the people in the
neighbourhood attended, and was generally much above the average of
village performances. North-country folk are musical, and this district
of the Pennines had produced many voices that passed on to cathedral
choirs. Instrumental music, also, was appreciated and understood, and
before the war there had been quite a good little orchestra in the
parish. When Mr. Fleming drew up his programme, he knew the audience for
whom he was catering, and did not fill it entirely with coon songs and
ragtimes. Diana, to whom the affair loomed as the main event of the
holidays, discussed at the Vicarage the eternally feminine question of
dress.
"No one ever comes very smart," Mrs. Fleming assured her.
"But one likes to see the performers in something pretty," pleaded
Diana. "It makes it so much more festive, doesn't it?"
"Mother, you intend to go in evening-dress, don't you?" said Meg.
Mrs. Fleming had intended nothing of the sort, but urged on by the
girls, she took a review of her wardrobe. She shook her head over the
result.
"I haven't anything at all except that grey silk, and it's as old as the
hills. Why, I got it for my sister's wedding, when Roger was a baby!"
"But fashions come round again," said Diana, who, with Meg and Elsie,
had been allowed to watch what came out of the big ottoman in the spare
bedroom. "Why, this dress is the very image of the picture of one in
that magazine Mother sent me from Paris! It only wants the sleeves
shortened and some lace put in, and the neck turned down to make it
lower, and then a fichu put round. Here's the very thing! I'd fix it
for you if you'd let me. I'd adore to do it."
No one knew exactly how Diana managed to work matters, but for this
occasion she took over Mrs. Fleming's toilet, and that astonished lady
resigned herself into her hands. She was a natty little person, with
exquisite taste, and by the aid of some really good lace, which the
ottoman yielded, she managed to transform the grey silk dress into a
very creditable imitation of the Parisian fashion-plate. She even dared
to venture a step further without offending.
"I often help Mother fix her hair when she's going out, and she calls me
her little _coiffeuse_. I'm crazy to try yours, if I may."
"'In for a penny, in for a pound,' I suppose, you young witch!"
acquiesced Mrs. Fleming, letting her enthusiastic guest have her way.
So on the evening of the concert Diana shut herself up in her hostess's
bedroom with a pair of crimping-irons and some curling-tongs. She
covered up the result with a light gauze veil.
"Don't let them see you till you get to the concert," she implored,
helping her friend to put on her cloak. "I want them to get a real
surprise. I guess it will make them sit up!"
The parish hall was quite full that evening, and the platform was
prettily and appropriately decorated with flags and plants in pots.
There was a sprinkling of local gentry on the front benches, and Miss
Todd, who had returned after the holidays, and was entertaining some
visitors at the Abbey, brought her whole house-party. The villagers had
turned up in full force, thoroughly prepared to enjoy themselves. The
Fleming family sat at the end of the second row, and watched as the
audience filed in.
"Where's Mother?" asked Elsie.
"She's in the performers' room, talking to Miss Watson," vouchsafed
Diana, chuckling softly to herself.
Then the concert began. There was a madrigal by the choir, and a glee
for four male voices, and a duet for soprano and mezzo, and then came
the item for which Diana was waiting:
The Moonlight Sonata, ....... _Beethoven_.
MRS. CARISBROOK FLEMING.
The curtain at the back of the platform was drawn aside, and a lady
entered--a lady who was palpably nervous, but oh, so pretty! Her brown
eyes shone like two stars, and her cheeks were the colour of the knot of
carnation ribbon that fastened the lace fichu of her dress. Her lovely
bronze hair was parted on one side, and rippled lightly over her
forehead; it looked the very perfection of glossy fluffiness. She wore a
moonstone pendant set in dull silver that matched the shimmering grey of
her dress. The piano had been drawn to the front of the platform, and
she took her place. Then the magic music began. Diana knew her friend
could play well, but she had never heard her reach this pitch before.
The audience listened as if spell-bound, and, when the last note died
away, broke into a storm of applause. There was no question about their
enthusiasm, and an encore was inevitable. They stamped heartily, indeed,
for a second encore, but Mrs. Fleming refused to return to the platform,
and sent on the next performer instead. The "Ballade in A flat", in the
second part of the programme, was an almost greater success, and
produced shouts of "Brava!" from the back of the hall. Pendlemere people
could appreciate good music, and showed their approval with
north-country heartiness.
The Fleming family sat during the performance gazing as if they could
scarcely believe the evidence of their own eyes and ears. Diana had
calculated upon giving them a surprise, and she had certainly done so.
Apparently it was a very pleasant one, to judge from the expression on
their faces.
As the crowd filed out from the benches at the close of the concert,
Diana found herself walking behind Meg, who was speaking to a friend.
"That 'Moonlight Sonata' was beautiful!" Ada Davis was saying. "And Mrs.
Fleming looked so charming to-night! How nice to have such a pretty,
clever mother!"
"I'm _awfully_ proud of her!" agreed Meg, with unction.
"Humph! High time you were!" sniffed Diana behind.
At the door the Vicar was helping his wife into her cloak. He put it
round her with quite a gallant little air, and offered her his arm as
they stepped out into the starlight together.
"I hardly know you to-night, Sylvia. You excelled yourself!" he
remarked.
"'Sylvia'!" Diana triumphed inwardly. "That's the first time I've ever
heard him call her anything except 'Mother'. If _I_ get married, I'll
want my husband to call me 'Diana', even if I've a dozen children to be
'Mother' to! I guess Mrs. Fleming has hopped off the shelf to-day, and I
just hope to goodness she'll never go back."