MATILDA--BALL DRESSES AND THE BALL--GORES--MISS LINING--THE
'PARISHIONER'S PENNYWORTH.'
The Bullers came home again. Colonel St. Quentin had retired, and when
Major Buller got the regiment, he also left the army and settled in a
pleasant neighbourhood in the south of England. As soon as Aunt Theresa
was fairly established in her new house she sent for Eleanor and me.
There was no idea of my remaining permanently. It was only a visit.
The Major (but he was a colonel now) and his wife were very little
changed. The girls, of course, had altered greatly, and so had I.
Matilda was a fashionably-dressed young lady, with a slightly frail
appearance at times, as if Nature were still revenging the old
mismanagement and neglect.
It did not need Aunt Theresa to tell us that she was her father's
favourite daughter. But it was no capricious favouritism, I am sure. I
believe Colonel Buller to have been one of those people whose hearts
have depths of tenderness that are never sounded. The Bush House
catastrophe had long ago been swept into the lumber-room of Aunt
Theresa's memory, but the tender self-reproach of Matilda's father was
still to be seen in all his care and indulgence of her.
"He'll take me anywhere," said Matilda, with affectionate pride. "He
even goes shopping with me."
We liked Matilda by far the best of the girls. Partly, no doubt, because
she was our old friend, but partly, I think, because intimacy with her
father had developed the qualities she inherited from him, and softened
others.
To our great satisfaction we discovered that gores were no enigma to
Matilda, and she and Aunt Theresa good-naturedly undertook to initiate
us into the mysteries of dressmaking.
There was an excellent opportunity. Eleanor was now eighteen, and
Matilda seventeen years old. Matilda was to "come out" at a county ball
that was to take place whilst we were with the Bullers, and Mrs.
Arkwright consented to let Eleanor go also. Hence ball dresses, and
hence also our opportunity for learning how to make them. For they were
to be made by a dressmaker in the house, and she did not reject our
assistance.
The Bullers' drawing-room was divided by folding-doors, and both
divisions now overflowed with tarlatan and trimmings; but at every fresh
inroad of callers (and they were hardly less frequent than of old) we
young ones, and yards of flounces and finery with us, were swept by Aunt
Theresa into the back drawing-room, like autumn leaves before a breeze.
The dresses were very successful, and so was the ball. I was so anxious
to hear how Eleanor had sped, that I felt quite sure that I could not go
to sleep, and that it was a farce to go to bed just when she was
beginning to dance. I went, however, at last, and had had half a
night's sound sleep before rustling, and chattering, and the light from
bed-candles woke me to hear the news.
Matilda was looking pale, and somewhat dishevelled, and a great deal of
the costume at which we had laboured was reduced to rags. Eleanor's
dress was intact, and she herself looked perfectly fresh, partly because
she had resisted, with great difficulty, the extreme length of train
then fashionable, and partly from a sort of general compactness which
seems a natural gift with some people. Poor Matilda had nearly fainted
after one of the dances, and had brought away a violent headache; but
she declared that she had enjoyed herself, and would have stayed to
relate her adventures, but Colonel Buller would not allow it, and sent
her to bed. Eleanor slept with me, so our gossip was unopposed, except
by warnings.
I set fire to my hair in the effort to decipher the well-filled ball
card, but we put it out, and the candle also, and chatted in bed.
"You must have danced every dance," I said, admiringly.
"We sat out one or two that are down," said Eleanor; "and No. 21 was
supper, but I danced all the rest."
"There was one man you danced several times with," I said, "but I
couldn't make out his name. It looks as if it began with a G."
"Oh, it's not his real name," said Eleanor. "It's the one he says you
used to call him by. One reason why I liked him, Margery dear, was
because he said he had been so fond of you. You were such a dear little
thing, he said. I told him the locket and chain were in good
preservation."
"Was it Mr. George?" I cried, with so much energy that Aunt Theresa (who
slept next door) heard us, and knocked on the wall to bid us go to
sleep.
"We're just going to," Eleanor shouted, and added in lower tones, to me,
"Yes, it was Captain Abercrombie. Colonel Buller introduced him to me.
He is so nice, and so delightfully fond of dogs and of you, Margery."
"Shall I see him?" I asked. "I should like to see him again. He was very
good to me when I was little."
"Oh yes," said Eleanor. "It was curious his being in the neighbourhood;
for the 202nd is in Dublin, you know. And, Margery, he says he has an
uncle in Yorkshire. He----"
"Girls! girls!" cried Aunt Theresa; and we went to sleep.
Soon after we returned from our visit to the Bullers, Eleanor and I
resolved to prove the benefit we had reaped from Aunt Theresa's
instructions by making ourselves some dresses of an inexpensive stuff
that we bought for the purpose.
How well I remember the pattern! A flowering creeper, which followed a
light stem upwards through yard after yard of the material. We had
picked to pieces certain old bodies which fitted us fairly, and our
first work was to lay these patterns upon the new stuff, with weights on
them, and so to cut out our new bodies as easily as Matilda (whose
directions we were following) had prophesied that we should. When these
and the sleeves were accomplished (and they looked most business-like),
we began upon the skirts. We cut the back and the front breadths, and
duly "sloped" the latter. Then came the gores. We folded the breadths
into three parts; we took a third at one end, and two-thirds at the
other, and folded the slope accordingly. It became quite exciting.
"Who would have thought it was so easy?" said I.
Eleanor was almost prone upon the table, cutting the gores with large
scissors which made a thoroughly sempstress-like squeak.
"The higher education fades from my view with every snip," she said,
laughing. "Upon my word, Margery, I begin to believe this sort of thing
_is_ our vocation. It is great fun, and there is absolutely no brain
wear and tear."
The gores were parted as she spoke, and (to do us justice) were exactly
the shape of the tarlatan ones Aunt Theresa had cut. But when we came to
put them together, they wouldn't fit without turning one of them the
wrong side out. Eleanor had boasted too soon. We got headaches and
backaches with stooping and puzzling. We cut up all our stuff, but the
gores remained obstinate. By no ingenuity could we combine them so as to
be at once in proper order, the right side out, and the right side (of
the pattern) up. I really think we cried over them with weariness and
disappointment.
"Algebra's a trifle to it," was poor Eleanor's conclusion.
I went out to clear my brain by a walk, and happening, as I returned, to
meet Jack, I confided our woes to him. One could tell Jack anything.
"You've got it wrong somehow," said Jack, "linking" me. "Come to Miss
Lining's."
Miss Lining was our village dressmaker. A very bad one certainly, but
still she could gore a skirt. She was not a native of the village, and
signified her superior gentility by a mincing pronunciation. She had
also a hiss with the sibilants peculiar to herself. Before I could
remonstrate, Jack was knocking at the door.
"Good-afternoon, Miss Lining. Miss Margery has been making a dress, and
she's got into a muddle with the gores. Now, how do you manage with
gores, Miss Lining?" Jack confidentially inquired, taking his hat off,
and accepting a well-dusted chair.
There was now nothing for it but to explain my difficulties, which I
did, Miss Lining saying, "Yisss, misss," at every two or three words.
When I had said my say, she sucked the top of her brass thimble
thoughtfully for some moments, and then spoke as an oracle.
"There's a hinside and a hout to the stuff? Yisss, misss. And a hup and
a down? Yisss, misss."
"And quite half the gores won't fit in anywhere," I desperately
interposed.
Miss Lining took another taste of the brass thimble, and then said:
"In course, misss, with a patterned thing there's as many gores to throw
hout as to huse. Yisss, misss."
"_Are there?_" said I. "But what a waste!"
"Ho no, misss! you cuts the body out of the gores you throws hout,
misss----"
"Well, if you get the body out of them, there must be a waist!" Jack
broke in, as he sat fondling Miss Lining's tom-cat.
"Ho no, sir!" said Miss Lining, who couldn't have seen a joke to save
her dignity. "They cuts to good add-vantage, sir."
The mystery was now clear to me, and Jack saw this by my face.
"You understand?" said he briefly, setting down the cat.
"Quite," said I. "Our mistake was beginning with the bodies. But we can
get some more stuff."
"An odd bit always comes in," said Miss Lining, speaking, I fear, from
an experience of bits saved from the dresses of village patrons. "Yisss,
misss."
"Well, good-afternoon, Miss Lining," said Jack, who never suffered, as
Eleanor and I sometimes did, from a difficulty in getting away from a
cottage. "Thank you very much. Have you heard from your sister at Buxton
lately?"
"Last week, sir," said Miss Lining.
"And how is she?" said Jack urbanely.
He never forgot any one, and he never grudged sympathy--two qualities
which made him beloved of the village.
"Quite well, thank you, sir, and the same to you," said Miss Lining,
beaming; "except that she do suffer a deal in her inside, sir."
"Chamomile tea is very good for the inside, I believe," said Jack,
putting on his hat with perfect gravity.
"So I've 'eerd--yisss, sir," said Miss Lining; "and there's something of
the same in them pills that's spoke so well of in your magazine, sir, I
think. I sent by the carrier for a box, sir, on Saturday last, and would
have done sooner, but for waiting for Mrs. Barker to pay for the
pelerine I made out of her uncle's funeral scarf. Yisss, misss."
Jack was very seldom at a loss, but on this occasion he seemed puzzled.
"Pills recommended in our magazine?" he said, as we strolled up towards
the Vicarage. "It's those medical tracts you and Eleanor have been
taking round lately."
"There's nothing about pills in them," said I. "They're about drains,
and fresh air, and cleanliness. Besides, she said our magazine."
"We don't give them any magazine but the _Parishioner's Pennyworth_ and
the missionary one," said Jack. "I'm stumped, Margery."
But in a few minutes I was startled by his seizing me by the shoulders
and leaning against me in a paroxysm of laughter.
"Oh, Margery, I've got it! It _is_ the _Parishioner's Pennyworth_.
There's been an advertisement at the end of it for months, like a
fly-leaf, of Norton's chamomile pills."
And as I unravelled to Eleanor the mystery of our dressmaking
difficulties, we could hear Jack convulsing Mrs. Arkwright with a
perfect reproduction of Miss Lining's accent--"Them pills that's spoke
so well of in your magazine. Yisss, m'm."
We got some more material, and finished the dresses triumphantly. By the
next summer we were skilful enough to use our taste with some freedom
and good success.
I was then fifteen, and in long dresses. I remember some most tasteful
costumes which we produced; and as we contemplated them as they hung,
flounced, furbelowed, and finished, upon pegs, Eleanor said:
"I wonder where we shall display these this year?"
How little we knew! We had made the dresses alike, to the nicety of a
bow, because we thought it ladylike that the costumes of sisters should
be so. How far we were from guessing that they would not be worn
together after all!