Aunt May. "And if you were a success, who knows, I might even let you
take entire charge of the house when I come back. I wonder...." She
hesitated, awe-struck by her vision of the future. "I don't want to move
Cousin Edith from Bognor. Her cold is quite well now, and it would be
such a pity to start her off with it again. And she's apt to irritate
your uncle in little things. Of course, he likes people to be attentive
to him; but he hates them to make a show of being attentive. And Cousin
Edith was always rather apt to make a show of being attentive. You won't
do that, will you, dear?"
Jasmine promised that she would not do that, and in the end she was left
with her uncle in charge of the house. She decided at once that the only
way to manage Hargreaves and Hopkins and the rest of the servants was to
make friends of them and become as it were one of themselves. On the
whole she rather liked this, and she found that down in the kitchen
below the level of Harley Street even Cook became a human figure. As for
Hopkins and Hargreaves, they were like butterflies emerging from those
two pupae that waited on the other side of the baize door separating the
world below stairs from the world above.
Jasmine found that this communion with the servants was the only natural
way in which she could still associate with humanity, and in consequence
of it she found herself being more and more completely cut off every day
from the family with which she was living. Lady Grant would
unquestionably have condemned such society as degrading; but since
nothing was offered her in its place, Jasmine continued to frequent the
servants' company, and before many weeks had elapsed she had almost come
to regard her cousins, her aunt, and her uncle from the point of view of
the servants' hall, as eccentric beings living in a queer inaccessible
world. She used to think that she might just as well have been left
quietly in Sirene. Looking back on the motives for bringing her to
England, it was now clear to Jasmine that no real consideration for her
future had actuated any of her relatives. She did not mean to suggest to
herself that they had consciously or deliberately thought out a plan by
which she could be made useful to each in turn; but they all of them had
tried to make her useful, and she supposed that such an attempt was like
the instinct that leads a person to accept a useless ornament for a bad
debt rather than be left with nothing. They had probably all been
afraid that if she stayed in Sirene by herself, sooner or later some
scandal would supervene which would necessitate more trouble in the
future than they felt bound to exert in the present. Really, she thought
to herself, she should be happier if she quite definitely ceased to be
Miss Jasmine Grant, and became Jasmine, a parlourmaid. But, of course,
Jasmine would be considered too flowery a name for service, and she
should be known as Grant. Grant! A not unimpressive name for a
parlourmaid. She once actually discussed the project with Hargreaves,
Hopkins, and Cook; but they evidently thought she was mad to suggest
such a thing; they evidently thought it would be better to go on serving
in Heaven than begin to reign in Hell; not one of them had a trace of
Lucifer in her temperament.
And so a dreary year passed away, a long dreary year during which
Jasmine's most breathless and most daring ambition was to be a
parlourmaid, her most poignant regret that she had not stayed long
enough at Curtain Wells to have rehearsed the part.
"I cannot say how greatly I think you have improved, Jasmine," said Aunt
May one day just a year after Jasmine had gone to Harley Street. "You
were so wild at first, so heedless and impulsive. But I notice with
pleasure that you are quite changed. I was speaking about it to your
uncle to-day, and I suggested to him that as a token of our appreciation
of the effort you have made to recognize what we have already done for
you we should allow you an extra ten pounds a year. You are at present
getting ten pounds a quarter, and we discussed for quite half an hour
whether it would be better to allow you twelve pounds ten shillings a
quarter or to present you with the extra ten pounds all at once, say on
your birthday or at Christmas or on some such occasion. Of course, we
did not want you to suppose that you are to regard this in any way as a
substitute for a Christmas present. It is not. No, you are to regard it
as an expression of our approval."
Ever since she had been in England, Jasmine had ceased to believe in the
reality of anything talked about beforehand, so she thought no more
about that extra ten pounds. But sure enough at Christmas she received
it, and not only the ten pounds, but also a parrot-headed umbrella from
Aunt May, a sachet of handkerchiefs from Lettice, the particular
monstrosity in porcelain that was in vogue at the time from Pamela, and
a kiss from Sir Hector.
Although Lettice and Pamela were not yet even engaged to be married,
social life at 317, Harley Street was conducted on the principle that at
any moment they might be. There could have been few young men about town
who had escaped having tea there at least once. None of them interested
Jasmine in the least, and it was perhaps just as well that she was not
interested, because if she had been interested she would certainly have
had no opportunity of displaying her interest owing to the fact that she
always had to pour out tea. A woman pouring out tea for one man can make
of the gesture a most alluring business; but a woman pouring out tea for
twenty young men cannot escape disenchantment, however charming she may
be at leisure. The fumes of the teapot, the steam from the kettle, the
wrinkles provoked by her attempt to remember who said he did and who
said he did not take sugar, all these combine to ravage the sweetest
face. As for the dinner parties, although they belonged to another order
of dinner parties compared with those given when Lettice and Pamela
were away, there always seemed to be one person at least for whose
presence of a dinner party, nay more, for whose very existence in the
world no excuse could be found. This person invariably took in Jasmine.
No doubt her relatives individually never intended to be positively
unkind. Whatever unkindness came to the surface was inherent in her
position as a poor relation. Besides, nowadays she seldom offered any
occasion for people to be unkind to her. She sometimes would ask herself
with a show of indignation how she had allowed herself to surrender to
this extent; but she had to admit that from the moment she entered
Strathspey House she had foreseen the possibility of such a life's being
in store for herself, and looking back at her behaviour during the first
eighteen months of her stay, she could not see that at any point she had
made a really determined stand against this kind of life. To be sure,
she had had a few quarrels and arguments; she had delivered a few
retorts. But what ineffective self-assertion it had all been! She had
had at any rate one opportunity of striking out for herself during Uncle
Matthew's illness, and what a muddle she had made of it, because she had
been too proud to force herself upon Uncle Matthew, and because with a
foolish dignity that was in reality nothing but humility she had given
way to his unwillingness to confess an obligation.
And another year passed; a year of writing letters for her aunt in the
morning, of going downstairs to see Cook about this, and of going
upstairs to talk to Hargreaves about that, of running round the corner
to Debenham and Freebody's to see if they could match this for the
girls, or of spending the whole morning at Marshall and Snelgrove's with
her aunt to see if they could match that for her.
On Christmas morning Lady Grant took her niece aside and confided to
her that, so heavy had been her own expenses and so heavy had been Sir
Hector's expenses, she was sure Jasmine would understand if she did not
receive the extra ten pounds as usual. To hear Aunt May, one might have
supposed that the donation had been customary since her niece's birth.
"Our expenses are going to be even heavier this year," she announced.
"There is so much entertaining to do nowadays."
When she first came to England Jasmine might have commented at this
point on the fact that Lettice would be thirty next birthday and that
Pamela was well in sight of being twenty-nine. But two complete years in
Harley Street had taken away her desire to score visibly, and she was
content nowadays with a faint smile to herself.
"What are you laughing at?" her aunt asked. "It is one of the few rather
irritating little tricks you still have, that habit of smiling to
yourself suddenly when I am talking to you. Some people might think you
were laughing at me."
"Oh no, Aunt May," Jasmine protested.
"No, of course I know you are not laughing at me," her aunt allowed.
"But I think it's a habit you should try to cure yourself of. It's apt
to make you seem a little vapid sometimes."
"Yes, I often feel rather vapid," Jasmine admitted.
"Then all the more reason why you should not let other people notice
it," said her aunt; and Jasmine did not argue the point further.
The loss of the ten pounds meant that Jasmine would not be able to have
a new evening frock that winter. She was not yet sufficiently dulled by
Harley Street not to feel disappointed at this. It has to be a very
beautiful evening frock which does not look dowdy after being worn twice
a week throughout the year, and the better of Jasmine's two evening
frocks was nothing more than pretty and simple on the evening she put it
on for the first time.
"Another long miserable year," she thought. "Nothing new till the
twenty-fifth of March. All this quarter's allowance has gone in
Christmas presents."
Jasmine's most conspicuous present that year was a sunshade that Aunt
May had bought at the July sales.
"As if one wanted a sunshade in England," Jasmine said to herself.
_Chapter Twelve_
The new year opened with such a blaze of entertaining that even
Hargreaves, who was much more reticent than Hopkins, allowed herself to
observe to Jasmine that it really seemed as if her ladyship was
determined to find husbands for Miss Lettice and Miss Pamela at last.
The atmosphere of the house was charged with that kind of accumulated
energy which is the external characteristic of all great charitable
efforts. If Lettice had been a new church tower that had to be paid for
or if Pamela had been a new wing for a hospital, it would have been
impossible to promote a fiercer intensity of desire to accomplish
something at all costs no matter what or how. January twinkled like a
Christmas tree with minor festivals; but on February 14th--the date was
appropriate, although it was not chosen deliberately--Lady Grant was to
give a large dance in the Empress Rooms.
"And if it's successful," she told Jasmine, "I daresay I shall give
another dance in May."
Jasmine refrained from saying "If it's unsuccessful, you mean," and
merely indulged in one of those irritating little smiles.
"Oh, and by the way," her aunt added, "did you see that your old friend
Harry Vibart has succeeded to the title?"
She looked at her niece keenly when she made this announcement; but
Jasmine was determined not to give her the gratification of a
self-conscious blush. Nor was it very difficult to appear indifferent to
the news, because, as she assured herself, Harry Vibart, by his
readiness to acquiesce in her decree of banishment and by his complete
silence for over two and a half years, was no longer of any emotional
importance. At the same time, no girl who had been compelled to spend
such an empty or rather such a drearily full two years as she had just
spent could have helped letting her mind wander back for a moment, could
have helped wondering whether if she had behaved differently, everything
might not have been different.
"Of course, one does not want to say too much," said Lady Grant, "but
one cannot help remembering what great friends he and the girls were
some years ago, and really I think ... yes, really I think, Jasmine, it
would be only polite if we sent him an invitation."
Jasmine's heart began to beat faster; not on account of the prospect of
meeting Harry Vibart again, but with the effort of preventing herself
from saying what she really thought of her aunt's impudent distortion of
the true facts of the case.
The re-entry of one person from the past into her life was followed by
the re-entry of another; for that very afternoon, a bleak January
afternoon of brown fog, Hopkins came up to tell Jasmine that Miss Butt
had called to see her and to ask where should she be shown? The only
people who ever came to see Jasmine were dressmakers with whom she had
been negotiating on behalf of her aunt and her cousins, and for whose
misfits Jasmine was to be held responsible. These dressmakers were
usually interviewed in the dining-room; but Hopkins informed Jasmine
that Miss Butt had emphatically declined to be shown upstairs and had
expressed a wish to interview her in the servants' hall. Such a request
had affronted Hopkins' conception of etiquette, and she was anxious to
know what Jasmine intended to do about it. Jasmine was on sufficiently
intimate terms with the servants by now to explain at once that Miss
Butt and her ladyship were never on any account to be allowed to meet
face to face, and she asked Hopkins if she thought that Cook would mind
if in the circumstances she made use of the servants' hall.
"No, Miss Jasmine, I don't think she would at all," said Hopkins. "In
fact from what I could see of it when I come upstairs, they was getting
on very well together. But I didn't think it right to say you'd come
down and see her there, until I had found out from you whether you
would."
"All right, Amanda, I'll come down at once." Nowadays Jasmine was
allowed in her own room to call Hopkins Amanda.
Mrs. Curtis, the cook of 317, Harley Street, was a woman of some
majesty, and when she was seated in her arm-chair on the right of the
hearth in the servants' hall, she conveyed as much as anyone Jasmine had
ever seen the aroma of a regal hospitality mingled with a regal
condescension. When Jasmine beheld the scene in the servants' hall she
could easily have imagined that she was watching a meeting between two
queens. Selina, in a crimson blanket coat, wearing a ruby coloured hat
much befurred, with a musquash stole thrown back from her shoulders, was
evidently informing Mrs. Curtis of the state of her kingdom; Mrs. Curtis
was nodding in august approval, and from time to time turning her head
to invite a comment from Hargreaves, who like a lady-in-waiting, stood
at the head of her chair, whispering from time to time: "Quite so, Mrs.
Curtis." Grouped on the other side of the table and not venturing to sit
down, the junior servants listened to the conversation like respectful
and attentive courtiers.
As soon as Selina saw Jasmine, she jumped up from her chair and embraced
her warmly.
"An old friend come to see you," said Cook with immense benignity.
"Dear Selina!" Jasmine exclaimed. "How nice to see you again!"
"The pleasure's on both sides," said Selina. "Mrs. Vokins is dead."
Jasmine looked at Selina in astonishment. Nothing in the style of her
attire suggested such an announcement; in fact, she could not remember
ever having seen Selina wear colours before, and that she should have
chosen to break out into crimson on the occasion of her friend's death
was incomprehensible.
"When did she die?"
"Six months ago," said Selina. "And I went into strict mourning for six
months. Last night she appeared to me, as I've just been telling Mrs.
Curtis here. She said she was very happy in heaven; told me to stop
mourning for her, and pop round to see you."
"Wonderful, isn't it?" Mrs. Curtis demanded from her juniors, who
murmured an unanimous and discreet echo of assent.
"Then Mrs. Vokins was saved after all?" said Jasmine. "I remember you
used to think that she couldn't be saved."
"Some of us think wrong sometimes," said Selina.
"That's true, Miss Butt," put in Cook.
"Some of us think very wrong sometimes," Selina continued. "And it's
perfectly clear Mrs. Vokins was sent down to me to say as I'd been
thinking wrong."
"Wonderful, isn't it?" Cook demanded once more.
"'I'm very happy in heaven, Miss Butt,' was her words, and though I
hadn't time to ask exackly which of my friends and relations was up
there with her, I put it to myself it was unlikely Mrs. Vokins would
call and tell me she was very happy unless she shortly expected me to
join her. She was never a woman who cared to disappoint anybody. So I'm
looking forward to seeing a lot of people I never expected to see again.
In fact I've given up the Children of Zion and turned Church of England,
which my poor mother always was, until a clergyman spoke to her in a way
no clergyman ought to speak, telling her what to do and what not to do,
until she turned round in his face and became a Primitive Methodist,
where she always poured out the tea at the New Year's gathering. Yes,
Mrs. Vokins has been a good friend to me, and she's been a good friend
to you, because she put it into my head to come down here and ask you if
you'd like to come and live in my rooms at Catford where she used to
live, with the use of the kitchen three times a week as per
arrangement."
"Dear Selina, it's very kind of you to invite me," said Jasmine, "but
..." she broke off with a sigh.
"Which means you won't come," said Selina. "That I expected; and if Mrs.
Vokins hadn't of been in such a hurry, I should have told her as much
before she went. She vanished in a moment before I even had time to say
how well she was looking. 'Radiant as an angel,' they say; and Mrs.
Vokins was looking radiant. 'You certainly are looking celestial,' was
what I should like to have said."
"Why haven't you been to see me all these two years?" asked Jasmine.
At this point, Mrs. Curtis, realizing that Jasmine and her friend might
have matters to discuss which it would be undignified for them to
discuss before the servants, asked the scullery-maid sharply if she
intended to get those greens ready, or if she expected herself, Mrs.
Curtis, to get them ready. The reproof administered to the scullery-maid
was accepted by her fellow-servants as a hint for them to leave Jasmine
and her visitor together, and when they were gone Mrs. Curtis, rising
from her arm-chair like Leviathan from the deep, supposed that after all
she should have to go and look after that girl.
"For girls, Miss Butt, nowadays.... Well, I needn't tell you what girls
are. You know."
"Yes, I know," said Selina. "A lot of rabbits."
"That's very true, Miss Butt; a lot of rabbits," echoed Cook solemnly as
she sailed from the room.
"Well, why haven't you been to see me, Selina?" Jasmine persisted when
they were alone.
"Why haven't you been to see _me_?"
"How could I? Uncle Matthew never invited me. Surely, Selina, you can
understand I didn't want to force myself where I wasn't wanted. The last
thing I wanted to do was to give him the impression that I wanted
anything from him. He's had plenty of opportunities to ask for me if he
wished to see me. My cousins have been over to see him lots of times."
"They have," agreed Selina, grimly.
"And they never brought me back any message."
"That doesn't say no message was sent," said Selina. "You know as well
as I know Mr. Rouncivell never sends a letter of his own accord. He
can't bring himself to it. I've seen him sit by the hour holding a stamp
in his hand the same as I've seen boys holding butterflies between their
fingers."
"Well, you could have written to me," Jasmine pointed out.
"I could have," Selina asserted. "And I ought to have; but I didn't.
It's not a bit of good you going on talking about what people ought to
have done. If we once get on that subject we shall go on talking here
for ever. And it's no good being offended with me, even if you won't
show a Christian spirit and go and live at Catford. I think you ought to
have learnt to forgive by now. I've been forgiving people by the dozen
these last two days. And although I don't think I shall, still you never
know, and I may go so far as to forgive _her_," Selina declared pointing
with her forefinger at the ceiling to indicate whom she meant.
Jasmine tried to explain that she no longer felt herself capable of
taking such a drastic step as going to live in Catford. She found it
hard to convince Selina how impossible it was to accept her charity, and
she was quite sure that her relatives would not dream of continuing her
allowance should she go to Catford.
"In fact, my dear Selina, I think you'd better let me alone. I think
that some people in this world are meant to occupy the kind of position
I occupy, and I've got hardened to it. I don't really care a bit any
more. I have enjoyed seeing you very much, and I hope you will come and
see me again. It really isn't worth while for me to make any effort to
get away from this. It really isn't."
Selina lectured Jasmine for a while on her lack of Christian
spirit--evidently Christian spirit to her mind conveyed something
between willingness to forgive and courage to defy--and then rising
abruptly she said she must be off. Jasmine heard nothing more from her
for some time after this.
Ten days before the dance at the Empress Rooms Sir Hector, for what he
insisted was the first time in his life, was taken ill. He was
apparently not suffering from anything more serious than a slight
bronchial cold, but he made such a fuss about it that Jasmine was ready
to believe it really was the first time in his life he had ever been
ill. In addition to his apprehensions about his own condition and the
various maladies that might supervene, he seemed to think that his
illness was something in the nature of a national disaster, like a coal
strike or a great war.
"Dear me," said his wife. "I'm afraid it looks as if you won't be at the
dance."
"Dance!" shouted Sir Hector as loudly as his cold would let him. "Of
course I shan't be at the dance. Even if I'm well enough to be out of
bed, which is very improbable, I certainly shan't be well enough to go
out. And if I were well enough to go out, which is practically
impossible, I certainly shouldn't be well enough to stand about in
draughts. No, I shall stay at home. It's a fearful nuisance being ill
like this. I can't think why I should get ill. I never _am_ ill."
"It's dreadfully disappointing," said Aunt May soothingly. "We had such
a particularly nice lot of young men coming. All dancing men, too, so
you wouldn't have had to talk to them for more than a minute. I don't
like to put it off. I never think things go so well after they've been
put off."
"Oh, no, for goodness' sake don't put it off," said Sir Hector. "Quite
enough things have been put off on account of my illness as it is. The
Duchess of Shropshire is in despair because I can't go and see her. She
can't stand Williamson." Dr. Williamson was Sir Hector's assistant.
"Nothing serious, of course, but it creates such a bad impression if a
man like me is ill. It shakes my confidence in myself. I can't think
where I got this cold."
"People do get colds very often in January," said his wife.
"Other people get colds. I never do. Now what is that horrible mess that
Jasmine is holding in her hand? It's no good just feeding me up on these
messes and thinking that that is going to cure me: because it isn't."
Jasmine was expecting every minute to hear her aunt regretfully inform
her that owing to Sir Hector's condition it would be impossible for her
to go to the ball, because somebody would be required to stay at home
and look after the invalid. To her surprise nothing was said about this,
and she began to turn her attention to a new evening frock. This was a
moment when the extra ten pounds she failed to get at Christmas would
have been useful. Notwithstanding the surrender of her pride, Jasmine
still had a little vanity; and when she took out of her wardrobe the two
evening dresses that had served her during the last year, and saw how
worn and faded they were, she began to wonder if after all she should
not be glad if her aunt settled things over her head by telling her that
she could not go.