I am the aunt of Annabel. Annabel is coming next Friday to the birthday
party she ought to have had a month ago; but she had measles instead. I
am anxious for Annabel to enjoy herself. Whom shall I ask to meet her?
Annabel is five—a gracious-mannered five, with a smooth bobbed head of
red hair, eyes like lilacs, and a generously curved mouth. She is a
darling. She is also a devil. She never allows me or anyone else a quiet
moment with her mother when she is in the room: indeed, she owns her
parents and regards all visitors as her perquisites. She owns also, and
can use with disastrous effect on my borders, a scooter and a tricycle.
She can adjust the wireless set and listen in at her pleasure to
Bournemouth, Cardiff or London. She swears at the dog in broad Devon,
and has her ideas about her frocks. But she cannot read or tie her own
shoes or tell the time.
Annabel is coming to tea on Friday. How am I to keep her amused? Shall I
invite Philip Collins, that hard-working child, proprietor of
stickle-backs, my particular friend? Will there be anything left of
Philip if I do—or of Annabel? Philip is seven. With only a year or so
between them they ought to get on. And yet, how did I feel towards seven
when I was five? Across the white magic-lantern circle of my memory a
shadow flits, a leggy, olive-green shadow, with fur at its neck and
wrists, and I recognise Gilbert, and pause.
Annabel is so much more sophisticated and so much more of a baby than we
were ever allowed to be, that the Gilbert adventure could hardly happen
to her. She would say she didn’t like him and be done with it. And
yet—suppose she didn’t! Suppose she suffered him in silence like her
aunt before her! I do want Annabel to enjoy herself.
[Illustration: “SHE OWNS ALSO, AND CAN USE WITH DISASTROUS EFFECT ON MY
BORDERS, A SCOOTER AND A TRICYCLE.”]
You must not think that there was any harm in Gilbert. He was, I see
now, a nice, polite little boy. My Aunt Angela said so. He was as nice a
boy, I daresay, as Philip, who is—perhaps—to make Annabel’s acquaintance
next Friday. But he was long and, as it was a fancy-dress ball, his
mother had dressed him in greenery-yallery tights, and a doublet with
moleskin at the neck and wrists. Now, when you are no older than Annabel
and own a live mole which you keep in the ring-dove’s cage, you do not
feel friendly to people who wear moleskin. (No, I don’t know what
happened to the ring-dove, though I remember that she lived for some
time in the kitchen in a straw-coloured wicker-work cage, and was
incessantly laying eggs that wouldn’t hatch and croo-rooing over them in
a lamentable voice which made the nursery feel that the whole bitter
business was the nursery’s fault.)
It is not too much to say that from the moment I set eyes upon Gilbert I
felt for him that unreasoning sick dislike of which only a child is
capable, and which it never attempts to explain. I never said a word to
my Aunt Angela about Gilbert, though I noted him with a prophetic
shudder as I followed her across the shining, slippery floor. Indeed,
nobody could help noticing Gilbert. It was not only that he was so much
longer than anybody else, so prominent among the Joan of Arcs and
Pierrots and Geishas, but that he was such a pervasive dancer: he seemed
to be behaving beautifully with everybody at once. There was a horrible
fascination in his smiling efficiency: he wasn’t shy like everyone else:
he didn’t mind what he did: and he did it well. He was a handsome boy
too, for my Aunt Angela said so. Indeed, I can best fix him for you by
recalling the fact that when I saw Lewis Waller come upon the stage as
Robin Hood I instantly, and for the first time in fifteen years,
remembered Gilbert.
Before I could pull on my white silk mittens, my aunt (I knew she would)
had caught Gilbert and introduced him to me, and he wrote his name on my
programme and his own, and his moleskin wrist—his mole must have been an
older and oilier mole than mine—rubbed against my bare hand. In the
frantic subsequent attempts to scrub off the feel, I spilled water down
my new frock, my fancy-dress of yellow satin petals over a green satin
skirt, with three green satin leaves dangling from the neck; for I, in
that hour, was a primrose.
But washing my hands and drying my frock only took up a dance and a
half: Gilbert and his Berlin Polka were still to be faced.
I had an idea. I would anticipate Gilbert: I would have a partner of my
own. I marked one down, a rosy, bewildered little girl in sparkles: a
Snow-white—a Fairy queen—what did I care? I gave her her orders; for she
was only four. She was to look out for me when number seven began. She
was to refuse to dance with anyone else. She was dancing the Berlin
polka with me—did she understand?—with me: and if a green boy with
moleskin on his wrists asked her where I was, well—there I wasn’t! Did
she quite understand?
I was still passionately explaining the situation when the music of
number six struck up, and her partner, a Father Christmas smaller than
herself, jogged her away. I can still see so clearly the bunchy little
figure—we were not so particular about the cut of our clothes as is
Annabel’s generation—and the alarmed dark eyes and hot cheeks as she
looked back at me over her winged shoulder. As for me, I had to put in
the perilous time somehow. I hid.
I found a beautiful place to hide in, a room with cane chairs and palms,
and one or two screened recesses with two chairs and a table in each. I
sat me down in the only empty recess and listened to the music, and
wondered whether Gilbert had begun to look for me yet. Soon a young lady
with bare shoulders and a young gentleman with an eye-glass arrived,
looked in, departed, and shortly returned again. It was quite evident
that they wanted my refuge. I wasn’t going to let them have it. I was
terrified of them both, but I was still more terrified of Gilbert.
Said the young gentleman:
“What are you doing here?” and he called me “little girl!”
Said I, firmly, but I was on the edge of tears:
“I am waiting for my partner,” and felt that I lied, for I was not
exactly waiting for Gilbert.
[Illustration: “HE STARED AT ME REPROACHFULLY”]
“Oh, indeed!” said the young gentleman, and stared again, and whispered
to the young lady with the white shoulders, and the young lady whispered
back. You cannot think how miserable I felt. They went away at last; but
they, and my lie—a lie was a lie in those days—had ruined my haven. I
slipped out as the music stopped, and instantly the young gentleman and
the young lady got up from two chairs under a palm and sat down behind
my screen, while—oh horror!—Gilbert’s green and questing length crossed
and re-crossed the lighted swirling space on the other side of the
draped doorway. I knew—who better?—whom he sought. I backed into the
dark corner formed by the wall and the other side of the screen, too
much occupied with Gilbert’s next move to attend to the murmurs on the
other side of it. But the sitters-out were sensitive; or I, effacing
myself as much as possible, must have pushed against the screen. Slowly,
over the top, rose the head of the young gentleman. He stared down at me
reproachfully and I, in a paralysis of embarrassment, stared up at him.
You cannot think how tall the screen seemed, and how terrible the face
of the young gentleman to the eyes of five. Nothing was said. How long
he was prepared to stare at me I do not know, for his eye-glass was more
than I could bear: at that moment even Gilbert was easier to face. I
sidled back into the ballroom, worming my way as self-effacingly as
possible in and out between mothers and empty chairs, till a familiar
glitter caught my eye. It was my partner, my illegal partner, so soft,
so rosy, so cosy, so blessedly harmless, so very much smaller than I.
She was not pleased to see me (I realise now that I must have been as
awful to her as Gilbert to me) but what did that matter? I grasped her
hurriedly by a hand and a wing:
“One, two, three,” I prompted: and we put our feet into the second
position. But fate was looking after the little girl in sparkles, not
after me.
“My dance, I think.” Gilbert, cool, easy, adequate, even remembered to
bow. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he said and he put out
mole-skinny hands.
“I’m dancing with _her_,” I muttered. It was my last throw. But at that
a new voice interposed:
“Oh, Mary, you mustn’t take the little girl away from her partner!” And
the fairy queen, inexpressible relief in her eyes, pulled her hand out
of mine and retired upon her mother.