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CHAPTER XVIII
LADY SCILLY has had three nervous chills this autumn, and one motor spill and a half, so I think that the sixpence was well spent on beeswax. Christina in her letter to us said that she had stuck the figure so full of pins that it had fallen apart, whereupon she had consumed the bits before a slow fire, muttering incantations the while. I asked her what she did say, afterwards, and she said that “Devil! Devil! Devil!” repeated quite steadily till it melted, seemed all that was necessary, and that the simplest, strongest incantations were the best.
Simon Hermyre comes here very often to call on Mother, whom he likes, if possible, better than Ariadne. He says that she is like Cigarette in a novel of Ouida’s. I believe Cigarette was a Vivandière. I suppose it is Mother’s neat figure makes him think of her as Cigarette. Simon adores Ouida, and Doré is his favourite artist. He has “that beautiful Pilate’s wife’s Dream” hung over his bed at home, he says. I always think it looks like a woman going down into her own coal-cellar and awfully afraid of beetles!
Christina came on to us for a few days after staying with her mother-in-law, and brought her sewing-machine, The Little Wanzer, and taught Ariadne and me to manage that wretched tension of which one hears so much. She nearly lockstitched one of my ears to the table, as I was learning with all my might, but it was worth it, and to Ariadne it was an advent.
Up to now, she has always thought she looked very nice in her bags with holes in them for the arms, and her twenty necklaces on at once, and her undescribable colours. Beautiful colours never seem to look quite clean, do you know? It is all very well for George, he is an author and not young, but young men like you to look fresh, and well-groomed, and above all to have a waist. Now a waist is not even allowed to be mentioned in our house. Mother left off hers, and her ear-rings too, at George’s request, when she married him, and as she never goes anywhere, she does not feel the want of them, but even when Ariadne was seventeen, Elizabeth Cawthorne said that it was time that she began to see about making herself a waist, and although George laughed Ariadne to death about it when she told him what the cook had said, yet it sank in, and I used to wake up in the grey winter mornings and find Ariadne sitting up in bed like a new sort of Penelope taking tucks in her stays, which Mother made her take out again in the daytime, knowing how George would disapprove of it.
Ariadne managed to “sneak” a waist, and George never noticed. That is the odd part of it; we all think that that inch more or less makes such a difference, and we may be panting with uncomfortableness all the time, and to the outward eye look as thick as ever!
Ariadne’s figure is not her best point. Her hair is. It is well to find out one’s best points early in life and stick to them, as they say of friends. Ariadne trains hers day and night in the way it should go, but doesn’t want. I wonder it stands it, and doesn’t come out in self-defence! It is what they call Burne-Jones hair, like cocoanut fibre, I think, but Papa’s friends admire it, and she gets the reputation of being a beauty on it in our set.
But in Lady Scilly’s set, that is Simon’s set more or less, they think her a pretty girl, badly turned out!
“Ah, you are your father’s daughter, I see!” Christina said at once to her, when she caught her sewing a black boot-button on to her nightgown, because she couldn’t find a white one. I did not mention that I myself had begun to sew one of Ariadne’s iron pills on to my shoe, and only stopped because it didn’t seem to have any shank. But I was saying, we have all the trouble in the world to tidy up Ariadne before she goes down to the drawing-room to receive Simon when he calls. Ariadne comes out of her room half-dressed, and somebody catches her on the landing and buttons her frock, and perhaps the housemaid on the next floor points out to her that she hasn’t got on any waistband, and another in the hall sticks a pin in somewhere, that shines in the sun, when she gets into the drawing-room, and Simon puts his head on one side and looks at it fixedly.
“Dégagée, as usual!” he says in his bad French accent, and yet he was two years at a crammer’s to get him into the Foreign Office, and one in Germany to get polish, all before we knew him. He has got something better than polish, I think, and that is breeding. He is not the least shop-walkerish, and yet they have the best manners in the world. Simon says the most awful things, rude things, natural things, but how can one be angry with him, when he says them with his head on one side? Not Ariadne, certainly, and yet she can’t stand chaff as a general thing. Peter Ball could make her cry by crooking his little finger at her.
Simon has curly hair—not at all neat—which he can neither help nor disguise, though he forces Truefitt to shingle it like a convict’s so as to get rid of the curly ends, which are his greatest beauty, in mine and Ariadne’s estimation. “Can’t help it. Couldn’t bear to look like one of those chaps.”
He means the short-cuffed, long-haired, weepy-eyed men he meets here sometimes; not so often as before though, for George is revising his visiting-list. Ariadne hates them too, she hates everything artistic now. She can’t bear our ridiculous house, all entrances and vestibules, and no bedrooms and boudoirs to speak of. She laughs at the people who come to describe it and photograph it for the Art papers, and wonders if they have any idea how uncomfortable it is inside, and how different from Highsam that Simon is always telling her about. As for Simon, he seems to think it rather a disgraceful thing to get into the papers at all, as bad as getting summoned in the police court. His father won’t let Highsam be done for Rural Life, or lend Mary Queen of Scots’ cradle to the New Gallery. Mr. Frederick Cook offered to put Almeria’s portrait in The Bittern with her prize bull-dog, Caspar, but Almeria wrote him such a letter, almost rude, giving him her mind about interviewing. She has a mind on most subjects and never drifts. Simon has the greatest respect for her views. On stable matters certainly, I grant her that, but what can a country mouse, however high-toned, know of the troubles of town? Her father trusts her to go to Wrexham and buy the carriage horses, for he is no judge of the “festive gee” now, he says. Almeria likes art, too, and buys up all the Christmas numbers, and frames the pictures out of them and hangs them on the walls of Highsam Hall. Simon has borrowed her opinions on art, and dress too, and they aren’t the same as Ariadne’s.
“Great Scott!” he said to Ariadne, when she came down to see him one afternoon when he called, wearing her best new Medicean dress that George had specially designed for her. “If Almeria saw you in that frock, with your sleeves tied up with bootlaces! I do hope you won’t wear that absurd sort of fakement at my Aunt Meg’s on the twenty-fourth! If you do, I swear I won’t dance with you in it!”
Of course he didn’t mean it really, he would have danced with Ariadne in her chemise, out of chivalry and cheek, but still Ariadne took it seriously, and set to work to quite alter her style of dressing to please Simon. The invitations to Lady Islington’s dance had been sent out a whole month in advance, so you had to accept D.V. Ariadne had time to take a few lessons in scientific dressmaking, and then start on a ball-dress. Christina and I both helped her, for we are as keen on her marrying Simon as she is, and that is saying a good deal. We want her in a county family, not a Bohemian one.
Ariadne bought some grey and scarlet Japanese stuff that only cost ninepence-halfpenny a yard to make her ball-frock without consulting either of us. Christina said Quem Deus vult—and that though you might look Japanese for ninepence-halfpenny a yard, you never could look smart. And it was quite true. Ariadne’s body was all over the place, with scientific seams meandering where they shouldn’t. When it was basted and tried on, she looked exactly like a bagpipe in it. We were working in the little entresol half-way up-stairs, and though there are three Empire mirrors in that room, you can’t see yourself in any one of them, so we had to tell her it didn’t do, and never would do.
“Take the beastly thing off then!” said Ariadne, almost crying, and pitching the body across the room till it lighted on Amelia’s head. (Amelia is the dummy, and the only good figure in the house.) “I won’t wear anything at all!”
“And I daresay you will look just as nice like that!” I said to tease and console her, but she wouldn’t be, and she left the body clinging to Amelia, and began to put on her old blue bodice again, and it was a good thing she did, for the door opened and George and Lady Scilly came in.
“Dear me!” Lady Scilly said, in her little drawly voice, that comes of lying in bed late. “You look like Burne-Jones’ Laus Veneris—‘all the maidens, sewing, lily-like a-row.’ I persuaded your father to bring me up to have a look at you. He says you are so clever, Ariadne, and make all your own dresses.”
So George had taken in that fact! I always thought he thought dresses grew, for he has certainly never been plagued with dressmakers’ bills.
“The eternal feminine, making the garment that expresses her,” said George.
“Ninepence-halfpenny isn’t going to express me!” Ariadne said, under her breath. “It covers me, and that’s all!”
“I always think,” George maundered, “that the symbolic note struck in the toilette is in the nature of a signal, a storm-signal if you will, of the prevailing wind of a woman’s mood. Her moods should be variable. She should be a violet wail one day, a peace-offering in blue the next, some mad scarlet incoherent thing another–”
“I don’t see how you are going to do all that on ninepence-halfpenny,” Ariadne said again, for George was too busy listening to himself to listen to her impertinence. “Why you can’t even get the colour!”
“It is every woman’s duty to set an example of beautiful dressing without extravagance!” and he looked at Lady Scilly’s pretty pink fluffiness. Paris, of course. I hate Paris, where we never go.
“Oh, this,” she said very contemptuously, looking down at it as if it was dirt, as all well-dressed women do. “This! This cost nothing at all! I have a clever maid, you know?”
“If all the women had clever maids that say they have,” Christina whispered to me. “What would become of Camille, I wonder?”
George continued, inventing a hobby as he went on, “You must never quit an old dress merely because it has become unfashionable.”
“My dresses quit me,” said Ariadne, dipping her elbow in the ink-pot, so that the hole in it didn’t show. “I’m jealous of the sofa! It’s better covered than me.”
I believe Lady Scilly noticed her do this, and though she is lazy, she is kind, and she asked Ariadne when she intended to wear “this creation.”
“At Lady Islington’s,” Ariadne answered rather sulkily.
“Oh yes, I know. A Cinderella. It is far too good for that sort of romp, my dear child. I have a little thing at home I could lend you just to dance in—it is too débutantish for me, and I do wish some one would wear it for me. If I send it round, will you try it on? And if it will do, keep it, and wear it for my sake. When is the dance?”
“The day after to-morrow!” I answered for Ariadne, who was overcome with gratitude, for she knew what Lady Scilly’s little dresses were like. Camille’s “little” would beat Ariadne’s biggest.
“Then you shall have it to-morrow, and if you can wear it, do; I shall be so much obliged.”
Ariadne said “thank you,” a little ashamed to think that Simon was coming to tea, and that the only reason she cared about the dress was to dance with Simon in it; but I thought the settling of Ariadne in life, and marrying into a county family, was far more important than Lady Scilly’s little jealousies, and wanting to keep Simon to herself, when she got so many, including George, so I told Lady Scilly she was a brick and no mistake, and I really thought so.
But Christina thought Ariadne had better try to pull the first dress into some sort of shape, so that she could wear it if the other dress didn’t come. “Put not thy trust in smart women!” she said, and as it happened, she was right, for the dress never did!
At five o’clock on the very day of the dance, there wasn’t a sign of it, and Ariadne hadn’t let herself worry over it, by my and Christina’s advice. We told her that she had better keep all the looks she had to carry off the home-made dress, for it would require them. She didn’t worry, but she was very angry with Lady Scilly, and anger made her eyes so bright, and gave her such a pretty colour, that I felt sure it would be all right. The dress wasn’t so very bad either; we had given up all attempt at getting it to fit, and that was better, for you could tell that Ariadne had a very nice, simple girlish figure underneath. Elizabeth Cawthorne came up to see her “girl” when she was dressed, she nearly always does, and she thought the dress sweet.
“That’ll get him, that’ll get him, Miss Ariadne, you’ll see!” she kept saying; it was very vulgar, but then, poor Ariadne was so much in love that she couldn’t help liking it. She had taken particular care of her hair, and when she lay down to rest in the afternoon, she had put ten curlers in to make sure of it’s looking nice. And it did, like Moses in the burning bush.
At nine she dressed and went, and Christina gave her a kiss for luck, and I went to bed, for it was quite ten o’clock. I was just jumping in (I always take a header off the chest of drawers to stop me getting stiff!) when I heard a great puffing and panting at the bedroom door. Elizabeth Cawthorne is getting fat. It goes with good-nature and beer. And she is learning to drop her h’s in the south.
“’Ere!” she said. “’Ere!” and shoved a great card-board box under my nose. “With Lady Scilly’s love and compliments.”
I was out of bed again in two twos, and Elizabeth and I unfastened the string, and there was a ball-dress—the ball-dress!
I felt inclined to burst out crying, to think of poor Ariadne—so near and yet so far—dancing away, perhaps, and losing Simon Hermyre’s affection at every step, because her dress hung badly, and looked home-made, and here was a perfect dream of a dress, lying quite useless on the bed in my room at home. Elizabeth would have it out to look at; I indulged her, keeping her rather dark fingers off it as well as I could. It was all white, and fluffy, and like clotted cream, and I do believe it was made on purpose for Ariadne. There was a note with it, addressed to my sister, which Elizabeth opened in her excitement. I forgave her. It said—
“DEAR CHILD,
“My frock, I found, was not quite suitable, your young waist must be larger than mine. So I have ordered one to be made for you, and I do hope it will fit and that you will look very nice in it, with my love. I hope, too, that your father will approve of my taste.
“Ever yours,“PAQUERETTE SCILLY.”
“That’s all she cares about—that George should think her generous! But if she had wanted me or Ariadne to be grateful she should have managed to get it here in time. I don’t care for misplaced generosity.”
“Suppose, Miss,” said Elizabeth, “that you was to take a cab and go to where Miss Ariadne is, and make her change! Better late than never, I say.”
“My sister isn’t a music-hall artist,” I regret to say was what I answered, and Elizabeth agreed, and added too, that she hadn’t altogether lost her faith in the other dress, and that it might get Ariadne an offer as well as a smarter. So then she went, and I laid the dress out on Ariadne’s bed, and lay down, and tried to go to sleep with my eyes fixed on it, and I did and even dreamed.
I was woke by feeling a heavy weight on my chest. At first I thought it was indigestion, but as I began to get more awake, I found it was Ariadne, who was sitting there quite still in the dark. I joggled her off, and then I began to remember about the dress, but thought I would tease her a little first.
“Well, did you have a good time?” I asked her.
“Fairly,” answered Ariadne.
“Did you have any offers—in that home-made dress? Elizabeth was sure you would.”
“I believe I am all torn to bits?” said Ariadne, walking round and round her own train like a kitten round its tail, and not intending to take any notice of my question.
“Now don’t expect me to help you to mend it. It will take days!”
Ariadne said, “I shall not touch it. I don’t mean to wear it again, but hang it in a glass case and sit and look at it. It is a wonderful dress!”
“Don’t drivel!” I said, “unless there is really something particular about the dress that I don’t know.”
She didn’t even rise to that, so I said, “I wonder you don’t light up, and have a good look at it.”
“There is no hurry, is there, about lighting the candle?” Ariadne said, sitting plump down on a bureau, and looking as if she didn’t mean to go to bed at all. I believe she smelt Lady Scilly’s dress on her bed, and was keeping calm just to tease me.
“Did any one see you home?” I asked.
“Yes, some one did,” she answered, still in a sort of dream.
“Did he kiss you in the cab?” I at last asked her, thinking that if anything would rouse her, that would. She was sitting, as far as I could tell, in the cold moonlight, looking fixedly at her hand as if she wanted it to come out in spots like Saint Catherine Emmerich. I was riled to extinction.
“Oh, for Goodness’ sake, get to bed!” I cried. “And if you are going to undress in the dark, to hide your blushes, I should advise you to get into your bed very very carefully!”
That did it.
“You naughty girl,” she said quite quickly. “Have you been putting Lady Castlewood there with her new lot of kittens? It’s too bad of you!”
She lit the candle, and then I noticed that her ears were quite red. She saw the dress at the same instant and went across and fingered it.
“So you have come?” she said, talking to it as if it were a person. “You are rather pretty, I must say, but I have done very well without you.”
“Well,” said I, “you are condescending. Who tore your skirt, if one might ask?”
“Mr. Hermyre.”
“Mister now! How intimate you have become to be afraid of his name! Ha! I believe she’s shy? How often did you dance with Mister Hermyre?”
“Oh, don’t tease me, Tempe dear. As often as there was, I am afraid.”
“Afraid? Yes, you will be talked about, and he will have to marry you, there!”
“He is going to,” said Ariadne, quietly letting down her hair. I didn’t know my own Ariadne. She had turned cheeky in a single night!
I looked about for something to take her down with, and I found it.
“Did you—did you put your head on his shoulder when he had asked you, as we have always agreed you would?”
“I may have—I don’t know—I hope not!”
“You hope you didn’t, but you know you did! Well, I wonder it did not run into him, or put his eye out or something?”
“Beast, what do you mean?”
“Only that you have got a haircurler in your hair, near the left side, and I presume it has been there all the evening!”
Ariadne put out the light and came and sat on my bed after that, and told me all about it quite nicely.
As far as I could make out, Pique had begun it. There had been a slight difficulty with another man who was not a gentleman although he was a Count—fancy, at Lady Islington’s?—and he had been rude to Ariadne about a dance, and Ariadne had appealed to Simon although he wasn’t so near her as some other men, and Simon had at once insulted the other man, and had danced with Ariadne all the rest of the evening to spite him and Lady Scilly, who had brought him, and whose new “mash” he was. I believe he’s the German chauffeur I saw in her car.
But Ariadne would have it that it was the fan business that had brought it on—that fan he gave her at Whitby he had broken at Whitby, and he had never bought her a new one. We had often talked about it, but of course never mentioned it to Simon.
Lady Islington is Simon’s Aunt Meg, and he is awfully afraid of her. After the row with the chauffeur Count, Ariadne had felt quite strange and frightened—he made nasty speeches, as not gentlemen do when they are riled—and Simon had taken her to a window-seat in a long gallery sort of staircase. She sat beside him for a long while feeling as if she could not breathe, long after all fear of the other man had passed away. She thought it could hardly be that still, and yet she felt as if a cold hand or a key, like when your nose is bleeding, was being put down her spine, though of course there was none. Simon didn’t say anything, he seemed to be thinking, but she dared not look at him for some reason or other. But she said she wished, as she sat there, more than anything else she had ever wished in the world, more than she had wished I would get better of the scarlet fever when I was a baby—that he would take hold of her hand that was lying in her lap. She kept on staring at it, imagining his taking hold of it, “willing” him to do it. She wanted him to do this so badly that she nearly screamed and asked him right out; but no, it would have been no good unless he had done it of his own free-will. The music had not begun, and she seemed to fancy it would not begin until Simon had done that silly little thing. She felt somehow that he was thinking of this too, or something like it—something to do with her, at any rate.
She hated explaining all this to me, but I made her, for she had always solemnly promised to me she would tell me exactly how her first offer took place.
Then the music began and the people on the stairs got up, and some of them were sure to come past where they were. She says she felt Simon take a resolution of some kind, and yet all he said was, “Have you got a fan?”
Ariadne didn’t know in the least what he meant, but she knew it was all part of the thing that had to happen now, and at once answered quite truly—
“I haven’t got one. You broke it.”
“And didn’t I give you a new one? What an objectionable brute I am! Well, then we must do without. I only hope my Aunt Meg doesn’t see me?”
And he kissed her.
This was the strangest way for it to happen, as Ariadne and I agreed, quite different from all our plans and expectations. For of course he then told her he loved her, and wanted to marry her. It was very nearly all at the same time, but yet he kissed her first. Nothing can alter that fact, and it was in the wrong order, and so I shall always say, except that Ariadne has made me promise never to allude to it again. And of course, as she kept her promise, I shall keep mine.
Simon Nevill Hermyre and Ariadne Florentina Vero-Taylor are to be married in three months at latest, they settled it that very night, subject to parents. Sir Frederick may raise objections, but Ariadne was able to assure Simon that George won’t, he doesn’t care about keeping Ariadne a day longer than he needs to. As Mr. Simon Hermyre’s fiancée she is only an encumbrance now, not an advertisement, for of course Simon won’t let her do Bohemian things or dress queerly any more. And she is and will be as dull as ditch-water for at least a year, like all engaged girls. She bores me.
