Alice Lauder/Part 2/Chapter 1
CHAPTER I.
(Alice Lauder, New Arcadia, to Helen Macgregor, Skye.)
“Dear old Helen,—
I ONCE tried to keep a diary long ago, but in the end I found, like most people, that writing to oneself is the most tiresome thing in the world. One needs to be a very perfect Christian to hold the mirror up to nature in that way with complacency; yet now you want me to take to journalism for your own private benefit, and to tell you what I am doing and thinking, and seeing and reading and wearing, and, above all, talking about, here in this little green corner of the world nursed by the South Pacific surges.
“Could we but have foreseen, as they say in novels—it always makes me so angry that they never will foresee anything—that you and I would be parted for so long without a word, or even benefit of postman, for more than ten years, how terrible it would have seemed in those dear old Australian days! We did not know then that the Fates were spinning a silk thread which was to lead you far away from our great sun-bleached solitary summer plains to the grey crags and heather-lined valleys of your Highland castle; and, as far as I am concerned, though I don't quite accuse the three weird sisters of keeping
To break it to the heart,’
still I must say that they have strangely equivocated, to say the least of it. Don’t you remember that in our day-dreams I was always to be a great singer? You, I think, wanted to marry a missionary—not that even then you looked quite suited to the part in your fashionable black silk with a long train, and with a gold locket as large as a warming-pan tied round your neck with two long ends of blue ribbon. In those days a really good black silk, with two bodices, was the height of woman’s ambition. But we change with the times. Other manners, other tea-gowns. You used to sing ‘What are the wild waves saying?’ and ‘When the swallows homeward fly,’ which always made me cry; and you were beautiful and high-toned, and I admired you with a girl’s first burning enthusiasm, which I am afraid you never reciprocated, for I must have been a very wild, untidy little savage in those days, and it was your encouragement which first made me believe in myself and in my future career. Alas! alas! . . . .
“You must not ask me for my first experiences in England—they would bore you to death if taken en masse; but on the whole the first five or six years were fairly happy ones. My good old aunt had some friends in high musical places, and the experts whom she consulted took an encouraging view of my voice. I had but little to unlearn; my poor old father had grounded me fairly well, and ‘my upper register was excellent,’ as Professor Piper used to say. The professor was our teacher, tyrant, guide, philosopher, and friend in the Academy. He seemed to take a fancy to me from the first, and pushed me on at a great rate. I loved the work, hoped for success, and was strong enough to burn the candle at both ends, trusting to make a jump on to the stage before this little illumination gave out. The stage training was a nuisance, but I learned by degrees to ‘make an appearance,’ and to walk and move and speak as to the manner born, in the quaint life of the theatre. The trouble was that our financial supplies were irregular, to say the least of it. My father sent me all the money he could scrape up by hook or by crook. Aunt Selina did all she could out of her little savings; still I was obliged to take to teaching, choir-singing, or any other scraps of paying work which turned up—generally turned up by the helping hand either of the professor, or of Mrs. Damon, my other good genius. But the double work was too much, and the London smoke and nocturnal atmosphere depressed me beyond measure; thus the usual hackneyed story of overwork in two volumes, and break down in the third, claimed me for its author. I had arrived at the point of departure: a great potentate in the musical world had agreed to let me sing at a concert of some note. The potentate had heard my voice ‘on approval’ in private, and though not wildly enthusiastic in praise, he was understood to mumble that ‘he had heard a worse C in alt’—a modified word of approval which moved the dear old professor to ecstasy, and caused me to be regarded as a marked personage by the other pupils. But the day before the concert I heard of my poor father’s death—thrown from his horse when just going from one house to another—and the news came upon me with such a shock that I broke down completely. Not only did my voice disappear, like a spring that sinks underground in a day; but I managed to get a kind of low fever, from which I relapsed into a miserable, nervous state of existence that seemed to last, in my dim recollection, for indefinite ages of twilight. How on earth I ever escaped from those dark days without either dying, or marrying the professor—there never seemed to be any middle course open to me then—is more than I can understand even to this day. He was so good to me, never giving me up, always encouraging and setting me on my feet, and bringing me violets, and books, and sympathy, day after day, and week after week. The kindness he showed to a poor, nervous, broken-down singer (who was also as cross as two sticks most of the time), really deserved the Legion of Honour. You probably live too far out of the musical world to understand the honour it was considered, in our little artistic world, to be noticed, or even scolded by Piper; but even in the wilds of Skye you must have heard of Mrs. Damon and her musical afternoons in Grosvenor Square. She took me by the hand the first time I was sent for to sing at one of her ‘At Homes’ five years ago, and she never let go till she pulled me up on dry land from the sofa and the medicine bottles, and from that terrible time of failure and disappointment.
“But there was a great surprise in store for me. One day I woke up from a long healing draught of sleep, and found my poor old aunt half sobbing, half laughing, over the letter which had just come from Australia. Her other brother, my uncle Richard, whom I had never seen, was dead, and we were half expecting to hear of some little legacy from him. He had gone far away into the ‘Back Blocks’ years before, and had toiled and struggled and fought with dry summers and bad seasons, bush fires and low prices, and all the trials of a pioneer's business, until just as he was beginning to make the place pay he was carried off by a sudden illness. It turned out that he left me all his property, a third share of Blue Hills station, and the money value of this share came to a sum which made me shut my eyes and open them again wildly two or three times in succession, just to make sure I was not enduring the tyrannical caprice of a dream. Even now I can hardly realize that I may indulge in unlimited gloves, and music, and subscriptions to all Aunt Selina’s pet charities, and I often feel I must apologize to some one for taking a hansom when it is raining, or for buying a novel, or a bonnet, and then throwing them away as soon as I get tired of either. If only my poor old father could have lived to enjoy this turn of the wheel! but the gods willed otherwise.
“Money is certainly the best patent medicine for a case like mine, and under its prescription I began to get stronger by degrees, and even to see a prospect of getting fat in some remote future; but it was a long weary time before I could call back the natural spring and enjoyment of life. Clare insisted on taking me through a London season, but I can’t say it was a great success. I had neither spirits nor energy for the hard work of society, and I soon got tired of its endless vain repetitions. Music was a sealed book; since my illness I could not bear even to listen to it. I seemed to get tired even of the beautiful dim repose of the English scenery. Its vivid green did not harmonize with my native associations of summer. Our summer is not green, but white; as the Bible truly says, ‘white unto the harvest,’ and I longed for her dry, stimulating air and aromatic breath, even ‘with fire and fierce heat on her tresses,’ as of old.
“Mrs. Damon’s husband is in the Navy. Last year he was ordered to the South Pacific station, and it occurred to Clare that she would come out to this place for a year or so, to be near him. She took it for granted that I was coming too, and when she takes a thing so, it generally is granted; and here I am.
“Aunt Selina is comfortably established in a little house of her own in Hampstead, and I don’t mind telling you in confidence that I feel myself at least ten years younger since we crossed the Line. This is not quite my own, my native land, but it’s under the same stars, anyhow; and this funny old-young village by the sea, and this pretty rambling wooden house, which Clare has made homelike and comfortable already, is quite dear to me even now. Perhaps , even, I may be able to sing again! Ah! then you shall come and buy tickets, even all the way from Skye, at tremendous prices.
“But to return to the present. It is very hot, just the time of year when summer takes the first downward step and the days begin imperceptibly to shorten. In England you say, ‘As the day lengthens the cold strengthens.’ Well, here, below the Line, as the day shortens the heat increases. There is a thick haze of smoke from the bush fires in the ranges, and a curious burnt smell in the air. I like it! it is so native, and so truly colonial! The smoke hangs over the wide clover-carpeted plains that lie between our village and the great dividing ranges, and I can see nothing of their purple pedestals or snow-covered peaks; nor can I see the glitter of the sea that lies under our windows, though I hear the waves playing and racing among the rocks below, and sometimes catch sight of a white feather of spray dashing over the low terrace wall next the shore. The west wind feels as soft as silk on one’s face, and it carries past an endless stream of thistle seed, floating argosies of eider-down, blown from inland pastures, and now drifting in endless procession out to sea.
“It is so hot that I have discarded my much-travelled grey tweed, and now disport myself in a last year’s tea-gown of blue China crêpe; that is, an unthinking world might call it blue; a brunette would denounce it as green, and a dressmaker would talk of eau-de-nil—but it is none of these, and yet it is all of them by turns and nothing long, like the great Rochester. I can’t tell you how it is made, for it is so lightly, beautifully built by Julie Bond, that no one but an expert or the man-milliner of a fin-de-siècle novel could possibly analyze its character. You just get a general effect of long flowing sleeves and curiously involved draperies, and a slight scintilla of steel embroidery here and there; and a decided impression of something original and expensive,—yes, expensive at all risks, there is no doubt about that. What a fight I had with Julie before she would put in those steel beads! She plainly told me that I knew nothing about her art, and had better not interfere.
“‘But, Julie,’ I observed, ‘I know you allow those American ladies to arrange their own costumes, and why won't you take my little ideas?’
“‘Oh, those young American ladies are très sérieuses. They understand, they have the technique. Yes, ma’mselle, I take their advice; but, ah! I charge them for it in the bills—n’est ce pas! They have the ideas, but also the dollars, c’est ça. English ladies are différent.
“‘But I am not English, Julie, and I know all about your work.’
“‘Ah! Non, non, ma’mselle. You are not artiste. That is my affair. Leave it to me, and you will have une robe de fée—you will not repent. I know you have des autres affaires, but you have not the education for the toilette.’
“Julie is an impressionist!—but perhaps she is right. I know my own attempts at dress-making are failures of the deepest dye—even the housemaid refuses to wear them out; and when I attempt to trim an evening dress the flowers always look as if they were put on with a hammer and nails. The blue crêpe is very sweet, but perhaps I ought not to have appeared in it, without warning, to our first visitors. The good people of Green Street had never seen such a garment before, even in their wildest dreams, and they were somewhat taken aback. The first detachment of callers were much perplexed, evidently, as to its nature and history. They looked me up and looked me down, and over the Watteau plait and under the lace Steinkirk, and inside the angel sleeves, till I thought they must take me for a Nihilist in disguise, or perhaps a female Jesuit in search of prey; but I dare say all the time they were mere trying to take the pattern. Poor things! that would puzzle wiser heads than theirs. They took no notice of Clare, although she always looks so much more of a swell than I do, even in her old black serge and blue spectacles. In vain I appealed to Mrs. Damon, and asked her opinion, and tried to efface myself, as in duty bound. They were not to be drawn off from Julie’s chefs-d’œuvre, and if imitation is the sincerest form of flattery I shall no doubt be sincerely flattered by the appearance of three blue tea-gowns in Green Street before we are many days older. As our visitors took their departure, I heard some of their criticisms, wafted from the veranda steps:
“‘Rather queer, isn’t it? but it suits her figure.’ ‘It isn’t the dress; it’s the way they put it on.’ While from the fattest, reddest, and most good-natured of the three ladies came a murmur, ‘Well, she is rather nice-looking, but I do think she looks as if she had a history.’
“There is a certain amount of probability about this latter suggestion, isn’t there?
“Clare, as I said, refused to be interested in the Green Street ambassadors. She sat in the stony mood she puts on sometimes, meeting all my imploring glances with a Medusa-like glare from her spectacles, and her only contribution to the conversation—when in my despair I passed the hat round to her, as it were—consisted of a peculiarly cold-drawn trisyllabic, aristocratic ‘Really!’ I don’t think any single word in the English language contains such an amount of cold water as this little exclamation. It holds quite a gallon; but it must be pronounced by an Englishwoman of pure descent; no mere outsider, even after three generations in the same parish, can possibly attain to its linked sweetness long drawn out, and no simple colonial speaker need attempt even a far-off imitation. I never do, for one, but confine myself closely to the far inferior, but sympathetic ‘Fancy!’ with an occasional lapse—in moments of excitement—into ‘Just fancy!’ But then I am obliged to be sympathetic; I haven’t the spirit to be anything else. Now Clare is one of nature’s aristocrats. In spite of her stumpy figure and more than tendency to embonpoint—as the old novels used to put it—for in fact she has passed the tendency point, and arrived there long ago; in spite of her brusque manner and habit of saying just what comes into her head (or it may be, perhaps, in virtue of these qualities); howsoever such things be by sea or land, you can never mistake Mrs. Damon for anyone but a personage. She is never a ‘nice person,’ never ‘a dear little woman,’ never ‘so amiable,’ or even ‘well-informed.’ All these insulting endearments may be, and I dare say often are, applied to me, but Clare is always spoken of with respect, if not veneration. It was rather amusing to see her meet our new neighbours with this specimen of her Vere-de-Vere manner on, for in ordinary life she is not only fond of calling a spade a spade, but even a rake a rake; and when she gets on the subject of her own or her children’s ailments, her tendency towards the realistic school becomes too strongly marked for my comfort.
“Clare, however, is really a delightful companion but for her one foible—her health. Perhaps I ought to say her two foibles, for she is just as much concerned about the health of Toto and Dulcie as she is as to the vicissitudes of her own. Toto is now a handsome brown little sailor of about seven years old. He is a true son of the soil, and generally has a good deal of it on his nose. He walks about with his hands in his pockets, in close imitation of the big boys of the place, and has a really wonderful command of the fashionable school slang of the day, perfectly up to date. At present the adjective ‘jolly’ is in the ascendant. ‘No jolly fear’ is his invariable reply to his anxious mother’s questions as to the risk of the various nautical excursions he proposes every morning. Toto’s only real fault is a misplaced contempt for domestic ablutions, other than rubbing his mother’s best cambric handkerchief over his face with a circular movement, on occasions, and restoring it in a damp ball to his trousers pocket along with a pocket-knive, a few shell-fish—preparing for his museum—and a piece of tarry string used in voyages. Ordinary water baths he looks upon as useful in case of illness, or as a precautionary measure before going to church, but quite unadapted to young persons in robust health and activity. Dulcie is one of those angelic hazel-tinted, brown-haired little beings, with great solemn eyes, and an expression of being-in-this-world-but-not-of-it, who you may feel perfectly certain will upset your teacup, pull your hairpins out to see how your hair is made up, and kiss you violently immediately after eating strawberry jam; not to speak of leaving saucers of milk for her kitten on all the chairs in the drawing-room, or jumping up and down on the springs of the sofa for an hour together. One forgives her these little foibles because her hair and eyes just match the colour of a sealskin jacket, and because her cheeks are so pink and dimpled that one longs to eat them; but it is impossible to feel the slightest anxiety as to the exuberant health of two such brilliant little creatures; and even with dear Clare—her amplitude of figure and activity of movement, whenever she feels inclined to go to any entertainment, forbid more than a passing tremor to her friends. Yet her own forebodings are of the gloomiest. For instance, this afternoon it occurred to me that we ought to return some of our calls, and I suggested the Granbys to start with. They are the leading family here, and the village belongs to them body and soul. Whatever treasure you may have (in your own estimation), be it a piano or a peacock, a bonnet or a beanstalk, the Granbys are sure to have a much finer specimen. They live in a big white house—at the opposite end of the village, fortunately—and everything belonging to them is on the largest scale. The ladies of the family are large, tall, monumental almost in feature, and their manners are full of a calm serenity; you know exactly what they are going to say long before they speak. Their carriages and horses are immensely large, their roses are as big as cabbages, their cabbages are a morning’s walk to get round—everything is palatial about them. I know they always dress for dinner, though nobody has told me so. They all do their hair tremendously in the fashion, and their conversation almost drives you to disbelieve that two and two make four, they insist upon it so. The neighbours all bow down before them, and they are the glass of fashion and the mould of form in Green Street. So I thought we had better call there first, and this afternoon I said to Clare, ‘Let’s go and see the Granbys.’
“‘Well, dear, I dare say you had better return their call, but I don‘t feel well enough to go out just now. My head has just been splitting ever since lunch. I saw you didn’t notice it, so I said nothing. I do hate to give in always.’
“‘Won’t you go and lie down then, Clare, just for half an hour?’
“‘I only wish I could lie down, even for half an hour. I always envy people who can do that. But with me it’s out of the question. I must keep up to the last minute.’
“‘Do you think it’s indigestion, perhaps? We had macaroni, you know, for lunch, and I always think Mrs. Mead does make it rather rich, though I never can resist it.’
“‘Indigestion? Oh, dear no! It’s entirely nervous with me. I can feel it coming on exactly the same time as last Tuesday, and I expect it will be worse every attack. But you can’t do anything for me. I must just bear it.’
“‘But perhaps it’s caused by liver or something. They say the liver is the root of all evil.’
“‘Now, my dear Alice, you are quite wrong there. You are just like Henry. Whenever I feel a little depressed he wants me to go for a walk or play tennis, or something violent. All the doctors tell me that repose, complete repose, and freedom from worry is the only thing to restore the system. So just go out, my child, yourself, and call on the good Granbys. It will do you good. I know your constitution requires exercise.’
“‘And what shall I say about you?’
“‘Oh, take my cards—take oceans of cards, and scatter them over the face of the earth. People in these little country places do like to be visited. And take notes of their house and furniture, for I like to hear your description when you come back. I fancy they are very rich and very orthodox, and you will have tea there. By the bye,’ continued Clare, with sudden interest, ‘I wonder if they will give you Christian tea? I have half a mind to go with you on the chance. But no! I don’t suppose there are three women in this place who know how to make tea, and one of them is here. They will give you milk and water, slops or wish-wash, but certainly not tea.’
“‘Don’t you want to see the beauty, “My niece, Mrs. Austin”? We have heard enough of her praises lately. Do come along and help me through with it.’
“‘Oh no, not to-day. My head is worse again. I ought not to talk even. But I think I will strum a little on the piano when you are gone and the house is quiet. I have a tune in my head that would go with poor Heine’s words—
The faithful one wearied me out and out.’
There you have a whole French novel, fin de siècle and all, without the bother of reading it.’
“‘The rhyme isn’t quite right. How would “wealthier lout” do?’
“‘No, no, run away and leave me. Neuralgia knows no law, and our chattering makes it worse. Adieu, and make my compliments to our friends in Green Street. I hope to see them some day soon, when I am strong enough. A bien-tôt!’
“It was a mild cloudy afternoon when I set out. The wind had fallen, after blowing hard all the morning, and following that loud battle of wind and forest there was something very soothing in the calm repose, almost lassitude, of nature. The stillness was perfect; you could hear a pin drop in the woods. My path led up a slope of hill, and below I could see a stretch of growing corn, all in moving shades of green, shot with silver, for it is just on the turn of ripening. Sometimes a tremor seizes the whole field, and the silvery surface crinkles up in thick solid ripples, as when one draws a skimmer round a pan of scalded cream. Half-way up the hill there is a sort of natural terrace, caused by a landslip long ago, and in the middle of this shelf there is a strong young English oak of perhaps thirty, or even forty years of age, just rising into his sunshiny half century. He is a fine young tree, with thick foliage- clusters round his outstretching limbs, and I can put my arm in a friendly way almost round his waist. I often stop when I come to this point and have a talk. I tell him of his forefathers’ home, where—
Stand dressed in living green,’
and I whisper in his ear those stately lines written on his dynasty—
Supreme in state; and in three more decays.’
My young friend has nearly learned the verse by heart now, and he repeats it over and over to himself in prophetic murmurings. By-and-by I shall teach him—
“‘O muffle to thy knees in fern.’
And perhaps in years to come he will repeat the delicious words to some weary wayfarer who may take refuge under his shadow. And if my oak, too, should live a thousand years, and see all the chances and changes of this mortal life passing like the cloud and sunlight over this dim-storied island, what will that history be? Will the sun be grown a little paler by that time? And will the lark still pour forth his jubilant notes from the high altar as an almsgiving to the troubled world below? And shall we be anything nearer that ‘far-off divine event to which the whole creation moves’ before his brown acorn-wreath is laid low in the dust? To all these questionings my oak friend listened in silence, or not exactly in silence, but in soft wave-like reverberations, and I went on my way while he wafted me a friendly farewell.
“The Granbys were at home, and the largest daughter poured out tea. My heart sank as I watched her. She seized a jug of milk and distributed it amongst all the cups before her, as you would for a school treat or children’s picnic. The milk-jug was very large and the cups were very small; the result may be easily anticipated. She then took up an immense silver teapot, which might have served Britannia for a helmet at a pinch, and poured out a libation of some weak straw-coloured liquid, to call it by no harsher name. Then a second dose of cream, and a lump of sugar, and the deed was done. I secretly thanked my stars that Clare was not present, and meekly drank the milky-grey syrup and prosed away to my hostess as pleasantly as I could under the circumstances.
“In spite of a superabundance of mirrors, yellow satin, and engravings of the royal family, the large drawing-room at the Granbys is rather a pleasant place on a hot afternoon. Its three big windows were wide open and showed us a piece of lawn, densely green and shaded by a thick cypress hedge, where a crimson rose flared out at intervals. A wandering breath of air wafted in armfuls of mignonette and clove-pink perfume every now and then. From the tennis lawn behind the hedge came also sounds, one might almost say shouts, of merriment; but there was no appearance of ‘our beautiful niece,’ and I did not feel much disappointed. Anyone can imagine what a colonial country belle, nearly related to the Granby family, would be like. A great deal of hair and complexion, beady black eyes, the figure of a fashion-plate, and the mind of a musical box—there you have the provincial idea of beauty all over the world. While thus musing (and carrying on the conversation suitably), I heard sounds as of two schoolboys quarrelling loudly, approaching us from the garden. There was a scuffle, a confusion of tongues, a barking of dogs, and suddenly a young lady in a white dress was precipitated into the room over the low window-sill, accompanied by a young man in tennis flannels, and by two excited black and white colley pups barking at the top of their voices.
“‘Great Scott!’ exclaimed the young lady, ‘I didn’t know that anyone was here.’
“‘Great Scott, indeed!’ I observed to myself. ‘Is this the way the model family bring up their nieces?’
“I looked at Mrs. Granby. She was calm and benign as usual, and with an indulgent smile merely said in a solemn tone of voice, as if she were reading the Church Service, with a majestic wave of her large white hand—
“‘Miss Lauder, allow me to introduce my niece to you—Mrs. Austin; and also, Miss Lauder—Captain Swan.’
“I half expected to hear some one say, ‘Who giveth this woman?’ but I collected my thoughts and looked attentively at the beauty, for I knew Clare would never rest till I had given her a catalogue raisonné of all the family. At the first glance I merely saw a large high-coloured young woman; at the second I clearly made out she was handsome; at the third I realized that it was a Greek goddess—Clytie, perhaps—worshipping Apollo in white cambric and a tennis racquet. I wish I could make a picture of her for you, but it is not easy to do justice to her faulty, over-coloured, yet fascinating individuality. She is of a good size, as I before observed, strongly and broadly made. Her figure is of stately proportions, but she waddles—yes, waddles—when she moves, and her hands and feet are large and stupid-looking. She has a picturesque fair head set on broad shoulders with that peculiarly graceful spring which one sees in classic marbles, or in a snake preparing to strike, or in a wave that bends backward for an instant before it falls on the shore. Her eyes are bright and full of laughter—nothing more; they have no language. Her colouring is not good—there is too much pink in it, and it reminds one somehow of aniline dyes; but the outline of her low Greek forehead, delicate nose, and above all the drawing of her upper lip and the round firmly-finished Pagan chin is really beautiful to a degree one seldom sees. Very few pretty faces (of the present day at least) could survive being copied in marble, but Mrs. Austin’s features would rather gain by the translation; they seem to require the delicate whiteness of alabaster to bring out their statuesque moulding to its full advantage. One feels in looking at her that she must have come out of some museum, ‘No. 314, Girl with Vase,’ or, ‘Figure from a Greek sarcophagus, supposed time of Phidias,’ and that she ought to wear a sketchy peplum studded with stars and a slim-necked urn supported on her shoulder by one rounded arm, instead of a tailor-made dress, a sailor hat, and a parasol.
“‘So you have come to live in our village,’ said the goddess in rather loud, cheerful tones, holding her head a little to one side, half in shyness, half affectation, as you see a baby putting on airs sometimes when it is being admired. ‘It’s a jolly little place in summer—lots of tennis and riding, and———’
“‘Flirtation and gossip,’ put in the young man, whose sleek curly head and boyish smile reminded me somehow of a black retriever dog very anxious to please, and dying to run and fetch a stick out of the water.
“‘Who asked for your opinion? Little boys should be seen and not heard,’ exclaimed the beauty, playfully tapping him on the head with her tennis-bat.
“I looked at our discreet, orthodox hostess; I looked at the calm married daughter. They both smiled benevolently, as if this sort of thing was only to be expected. I smiled too—there was nothing else for it. However, they may have marked some unspoken remonstrance in my eyes, for the elder lady observed with her deepest lay-reader expression of voice, ‘Really, Lizzie, you are very unkind to poor Captain Swan.’
“‘Oh no, aunt; I am only getting him into training. He was very uncivilized when first he came here; but now he is greatly improved. See how tame he is! He will eat out of my hand,’ and snatching some macaroons from the tea-table, she stretched out her vigorous sunbrowned palm towards his moustache. He looked rather more foolish than usual for an instant; then entering into the spirit of the thing, he bent his curly head over her hand and nibbled the biscuit devoutly. (The resemblance was complete; one could almost see him sit up and beg.)
“Mrs. Austin seemed cheered by this little jeu d'esprit. She flung herself down on a foot-stool near me (I heard it creak distinctly—she must be quite eleven stone), and began to look over me with the candid criticism of an enfant terrible. There is no need to break the ice with her; the difficulty is to discover any thick enough to skate over, socially speaking.
“‘What funny long gloves you wear! Are they very expensive? That’s a very pretty hat; but I think you want more feathers. I know a girl who always steals her sister’s feathers when she goes out. She went to a garden party the other day with nine white feathers in her hat, and all the other girls had to stop at home because they could not find one in the house. Did you buy yours in London?’
“‘No, Paris. Madame Silvain, Place Vendôme,’ I replied mechanically. And then—I don’t know what possibly possessed me, but in answer to the very obvious desire expressed in her eyes—‘Would you like to try it on?’
“Before the words were well pronounced the hat was wafted off my head, and was poised at an angle of forty-five degrees on Mrs. Austin’s fair coils of hair. She gazed at herself in one of the mirrors with serious interest, trying the effect in profile and full face and three-quarters, and finally in as much of a back view as could be managed without screwing her pretty head quite round in a circle. The hat suited her to perfection, and she perceived that fact. Mean while I felt rather embarrassed, not to say like an escaped lunatic, with my hairpins gradually stealing down the back of my neck, and a blank despair, which I tried in vain to disguise under a false air of merriment, gradually taking possession of my soul.
“However, the situation was soon relieved. The beauty turned round with a gracious smile and restored my property, deftly pinning it on my hair, and saying affectionately:
“‘Thanks so much! I see you are good-natured, and can put up with a scapegrace like me. Now, captain, are you ready? We must finish our set, and don’t be so lazy this time. Ah! I shall have a better partner soon! Wait till you see my globe-trotter! He won’t sit all day drinking tea, not when I am about.’
“‘Now, Mrs. Austin, you are too hard on a fellow. Haven’t I been working for you in the sweat of my brow all the morning, and now you turn me off for that other fellow. I’m sure he can’t play worth a cent.’
“‘Yes, he can! Mr. Campbell can do anything. He’s coming next week, so you had better make hay while the sun shines, I can tell you. Good-bye, Miss Lauder. I must fight this set out to-day; but I’ll come and see you very soon, and you must show me all your pretty things. Ta-ta!’
“This was the last of Mrs. Austin, except that a voice was heard in the dim distance as she disappeared down the garden walk, ‘Great Scott! I’ve torn my lace on that horrid nail, and it’s all your fault, Swanny!’
“If this is a specimen of society in Green Street, I don’t think we shall be at all dull, and it will take more than the whole of the Granbys’ associated deadweight to keep us down! The mail is waiting—good-bye!
“Yours ever,
“A. L.”