Original RESENTLY, when we were not in the least expecting it, there came a little sudden jolt that made us look at each other precipitately. Lady Torquilin was quite as nervous as I at this point. 'What has become of Oddie?' she exclaimed, and descried a red coat in a cab rolling up beside us with intense relief. As we passed through the Palace gates the cab disappeared, and chaos came again.
'Naughty boy!' said Lady Torquilin, in bitterness of spirit. 'Why, in the name of fortune, couldn't he have come with us in the carriage? Men have no nerves, my dear, none whatever; and they can't understand our having them!' But at that moment we alighted, in a maze of directions, upon the wide, red-carpeted steps, and whisked as rapidly as possible through great corridors with knots of gentlemen in uniform in them to the cloak-room. 'Hurry, child!' whispered Lady Torquilin, handing our wraps to the white-capped maid. 'Don't let these people get ahead of us, and keep close to me!'--and I observed the same spasmodic haste in everybody else. With our trains over our arms we fled after the others, as rapidly as decorum would permit, through spacious halls and rooms that lapse into a red confusion in my recollection, leaving one of my presentation cards somewhere on the way, and reaching the limit of permitted progress at last with a strong sense of security and comfort. We found it in a large pillared room full of regularly-curving lines of chairs, occupied by the ladies of the forty carriages that were before us. Every head wore its three white feathers and its tulle extension, and the aggregation of plumes and lappets and gentle movements made one in the rear think of a flock of tame pigeons nodding and pecking--it was very 'quaint,' as Lady Torquilin said when I pointed it out. The dresses of these ladies immediately became a source of the liveliest interest to us, as ours were apparently to those who sat near us. In fact, I had never seen such undisguised curiosity of a polite kind before. But then I do not know that I had ever been in the same room with so many jewels, and brocades, and rare orchids, and drooping feathers, and patrician features before, so perhaps this is not surprising. A few gentlemen were standing about the room, holding fans and bouquets, leaning over the backs of the ladies' chairs, and looking rather distraught, in very becoming costumes of black velvet and silk stockings and shoe-buckles, and officers in uniform were scattered through the room, looking as if they felt rather more important than the men in black; as I dare say they did, representing that most glorious and impressive British institution, the Army, while the others were only private gentlemen, their own property, and not connected with her Majesty in any personal way whatever.
'Here you are,' said somebody close behind us. 'How d'ye do, Auntie? How
d'ye do, Miss Wick? 'Pon my word, I'm awfully sorry I missed you before;
but you're all right, aren't you? The brute of a policeman at the gates
wouldn't pass a hansom.' It was Mr. Oddie Pratte, of course, looking
particularly handsome in his red-and-plaid uniform, holding his helmet
in front of him in the way that people acquire in the Army, and pleased,
as usual, with the world at large.
'Then may I ask how you came here, sir?' said Lady Torquilin, making a
pretence of severity.
'Private entree!' responded Mr. Pratte, with an assumption of grandeur.
'Fellow drove me up as a matter of course--no apologies! They suspected
I was somebody, I guess, coming that way, and I gave the man his exact
fare, to deepen the impression. Walked in. Nobody said anything! It's
what you call a game o' bluff, Auntie dear!'
'A piece of downright impertinence!' said Lady Torquilin? pleasantly.
'It was your red coat, boy. Now, what do you think of our gowns?'
Mr. Pratte told us what he thought of them with great amiability and
candour. I had seen quite enough of him since the day at Aldershot to
permit and enjoy his opinion, which even its frequent use of 'chic' and
'rico' did not make in any way irreverent. This young gentleman was a
connoisseur in gowns; he understood them very well, and we were both
pleased that he liked ours. As we criticised and chaffed and chatted
a door opened at the farther end of the room, and all the ladies rose
precipitately and swept forward.
It was like a great, shimmering wave, radiant in colour, breaking in a
hundred places into the foam of those dimpling feathers and streaming
lappets, and it rushed with unanimity to the open door, stopping there,
chafing, on this side of a silk rope and a Gentleman of the Court. We
hurried on with the wave--Lady Torquilin and Mr. Oddie Pratte and I--and
presently we were inextricably massed about half-way from its despairing
outer edge, in an encounter of elbows which was only a little less than
furious. Everybody gathered her train over her left arm--it made one
think of the ladies of Nepaul, who wear theirs in front, it is said--and
clung with one hand to her prodigious bouquet, protecting her pendent
head-dress with the other. 'For pity's sake, child, take care of your
lappets,' exclaimed Lady Torquilin. 'Look at that!' I looked at 'that';
it was a ragged fragment of tulle about a quarter of a yard long,
dependent from the graceful head of a young lady immediately in front of
us. She did not know of her misfortune, poor thing, but she had a vague
and undetermined sense of woe, and she turned to us with speaking eyes.
'I've lost mamma,' she said, unhappily.
'Where is mamma? I must go to mamma.' And she was not such a very young
lady either. But Lady Torquilin, in her kindness of heart, said, 'So you
shall, my dear, so you shall!' and Mr. Pratte took his aunt's bouquet
and mine, and held them, one in each hand, above the heads of the mob of
fine-ladyhood, rather enjoying the situation, I think, so that we could
crowd together and allow the young lady who wanted her mamma to go and
find her. Mr. Oddie Pratte took excellent care of the bouquets, holding
them aloft in that manner, and looked so gallantly handsome doing
it that other gentlemen immediately followed his example, and turned
themselves into flowery candelabra, with great effect upon the
brilliancy of the scene.
A sudden movement among the ladies nearest the silken barrier--a sudden
concentration of energy that came with the knowledge that there was
progress to be made, progress to Royalty! A quick, heaving rush through
and beyond into another apartment full of emptiness and marble
pillars, and we were once more at a standstill, having conquered a few
places--brought to, a masterly inactivity by another silken cord and
another Gentleman of the Court, polite but firm. In the room beyond we
could see certain figures moving about at their ease, with no crush and
no struggle--the ladies and gentlemen of the Private Entrée. With what
lofty superiority we invested them! They seemed, for the time, to
belong to some other planet, where Royal beings grew and smiled at every
street-corner, and to be, on the other side of that silken barrier, an
immeasurable distance off. It was a distinct shock to hear an elderly
lady beside us, done up mainly in amethysts, recognise a cousin among
them. It seemed to be self-evident that she had no right to have a
cousin there.
'I'll see you through the barrier,' said Mr. Oddie Pratte, 'and then
I'll have to leave you. I'll bolt round the other way, and be waiting
for you at the off-door, Auntie. I'd come through, only Her Maj. does
hate it so. Not at all nice of her, I call it, but she can't bear the
most charming of us about on these occasions. We're not good enough.' A
large-boned lady in front--red velvet and cream--with a diminutive major
in attendance, turned to him at this, and said with unction, 'I am sure,
Edwin, that is not the case. I have it on excellent authority that the
Queen is pleased when gentlemen come through. Remember, Edwin, I will
not face it alone.'
'I think you will do very well, my dear!' Edwin responded. 'Brace up!
'Pon my word, I don't think I ought to go. I'll join you at----'
'If you desert me, Edwin, I shall die!' said the bony lady, in a strong
undertone; and at that moment the crowd broke again. Oddie slipped
away, and we went on exultantly two places, for the major had basely and
swiftly followed Mr. Pratte, and his timid spouse, in a last clutching
expostulation, had fallen hopelessly to the rear.
About twenty of us, this time, were let in at once. The last of the
preceding twenty were slowly and singly pacing after one another's
trains round two sides of this third big room towards a door at the
farther corner. There was a most impressive silence. As we got into file
I felt that the supreme moment was at hand, and it was not a comfortable
feeling. Lady Torquilin, in front of me, put a question to a gentleman
in a uniform she ought to have been afraid of--only that nothing ever
terrified Lady Torquilin, which made it less comfortable still. 'Oh,
Lord Mafferton,' said she--I hadn't recognised him in my nervousness and
his gold lace--'How many curtseys are there to make?'
'Nine, dear lady,' replied this peer, with evident enjoyment. 'It's
the most brilliant Drawing-Room of the season. Every Royalty who could
possibly attend is here. Nine, at the least!'
Lady Torquilin's reply utterly terrified me. It was confidential, and
delivered in an undertone, but it was full of severe meaning. 'I'm full
of rheumatism,' said she, 'and I shan't do it.'
The question as to what Lady Torquilin would do, if not what was
required of her, rose vividly before me, and kept me company at every
step of that interminable round. 'Am I all right?' she whispered
over her shoulder from the other end of that trailing length of
pansy-coloured velvet. 'Perfectly,' I said. But there was nobody to
tell me that I was all right--I might have been a thing of shreds and
patches. Somebody's roses had dropped; I was walking on pink petals.
What a pity! And I had forgotten to take off my glove; would it ever
come unbuttoned? How deliberately we were nearing that door at the
farther end! And how could I possibly have supposed that my heart
would beat like this! It was all very well to allow one's self a little
excitement in preparation; but when it came to the actual event I
reminded myself that I had not had the slightest intention of being
nervous. I called all my democratic principles to my assistance--none
of them would come. 'Remember, Mamie Wick,' said I to myself, 'you don't
believe in queens.' But at that moment I saw three Gentlemen of the
Household bending over, and stretching out Lady Torquilin's train into
an illimitable expanse. I looked beyond, and there, in the midst of all
her dazzling Court, stood Queen Victoria. And Lady Torquilin was bending
over her hand! And in another moment it would be--it was my turn!
I felt the touches on my own train, I heard somebody call a name I had
a vague familiarity with--'Miss Mamie Wick.' I was launched at last
towards that little black figure of Royalty with the Blue Ribbon
crossing her breast and the Koh-i-nor sparkling there! Didn't you
believe in queens, Miss Mamie Wick, at that moment? I'm very much afraid
you did.
And all that I remember after was going down very unsteadily before her,
and just daring the lightest touch of my lips upon the gracious little
hand she laid on mine. And then not getting nearly time enough to make
all of those nine curtseys to the beautiful sparkling people that
stood at the Queen's left hand, before two more Gentlemen of the Court
gathered up my draperies from behind my feet and threw them mercifully
over my arm for me. And one awful moment when I couldn't quite tell
whether I had backed out of all the Royal presences or not, made up
my mind that I had, then unmade it, and in agony of spirit turned and
backed again!
It was over at last. I had kissed the hand of the Queen of Great Britain
and Ireland, and--there's no use in trying to believe anything to the
contrary--I was proud of it. Lady Torquilin and I regarded each other in
the next room with pale and breathless congratulation, and then turned
with one accord to Oddie Pratte.
'On the whole,' said that young gentleman, blandly, 'you did me credit!'