The Celebrity at Home

“He will never speak to me again. I know he won’t. He is very proud, and I have disgraced him—disgraced him before his order!”

“You can’t disgrace that until you are married to him, I suppose, and now you never will be.”

“No,” Ariadne said, meekly, “I am unworthy of him.”

“You are very weak!” said I, “but on the whole I consider it was Aunt Gerty’s fault. Brewing away like that and not attending to her charges!”

Ariadne cried and hocketed, as the cook used to say, all night, and I tried to comfort her and tell her that Simon would probably come to call next day to show that noblesse oblige, and that he didn’t think anything of it. Of course when I remembered his face, I didn’t suppose he would ever care to see a girl who had been pummelled, first by Bowser and then by Dapping, again.

All next day Ariadne would not go out. She said she could not meet the eye of Whitby. It rained luckily. Next day she still wouldn’t, and as it was one of the best days we have had, I began to think that she was going too far with her remorse, and was quite cross with her.

“No one ever remembers anything that happened to some one else,” I said; “and they can’t see that your shoulder is black and blue under your gown.”

“I feel as if I had been publicly flogged, and I had on my white muslin too,” she moaned, though I don’t know what she meant, that it had made a more conspicuous object, or was bad for the dress, or what.

“I know one thing,” she gulped. “Aunt Gerty or no Aunt Gerty, I shall cut Mr. Bowser next time I see him—cut him dead.”

“Why not? He murdered you.”

I think this was Ariadne’s first sorrow, and lasted quite a week. She would only go out after dark, to hide her shame from every eye. Mother encouraged her, and said she knew how she must feel. To Aunt Gerty she said several times, “Never again!” which is the most awful thing to say to any one. It meant that Aunt Gerty wasn’t to be trusted with girls, and especially George’s girls. Mother gave it her well.

“You should have prevented Ariadne from letting herself down like that! I shall never hear the end of it from George.”

“George indeed! Why wasn’t George looking after his own precious kids then? I don’t think he’s got any need to talk! My Lord Scilly will be having a word with him some of these days, or I shall be very much surprised!”

“You hold your wicked, lying tongue!” was all Mother said to her. Mother, somehow, hasn’t the heart to be hard on Aunt Gerty.

I could have told Aunt Gerty that Lord Scilly was keeping quite calm. He can manage Lady Scilly well enough. I have heard him say so. “Paquerette knows the side her bread is buttered as well as any woman living! She is a right good sort, is Paquerette, only she likes to kick her heels a bit! She and I understand each other!”

He talks like this, as if they were like Darby and Joan, but Lady Scilly doesn’t agree with him, or says she doesn’t. “Scilly and I,” she once said to Ariadne, “are an astigmatic couple.” She meant, she explained, that they are like two eyes whose sight is different. I fancy his is the long-sighted eye.

Well, this little row was soon over as far as Mother and Aunt Gerty were concerned. George’s scolding was short and sweet, Aunt Gerty said, and she couldn’t possibly dislike him more than she did already. But Ariadne could not get over her disgrace for ages. She still wouldn’t stir out of the house, but I went out regularly and policed Lady Scilly and Simon. Of course this contretemps to Ariadne has had the effect of throwing them into each other’s arms worse than ever. They became inseparable. If Lady Scilly had only known it, Simon’s being near her made her look quite old and anxious, whereas she made him look young and bored.

One morning I stood and watched them leaning over the wooden rail of the quay. Everybody leans there in the mornings, it’s fashionable, and if you lean a little forward or backward you can either see or not be seen by the person who is hanging over it a few yards further on. The boats were as usual unloading their big haul of herrings, and the sleepy-eyed sailors (they have been up all night!) were sitting smoking lazily on the edges of the boats. Lady Scilly was in white linen, so awfully pure and angelic-looking that the little boys dabbed her with fish-scales as they passed her. She was talking to Simon about money earnestly, and took no notice. She was telling him that Lord Scilly likes money so much that he didn’t ever like to let it out of his hands. What business of Simon Hermyre’s is it, I should like to know, what Lord Scilly chooses to do with his money? Everybody seems to think Simon is going to be rich, because he is the son of Sir Frederick Hermyre, but that is no criterion. He always seems to have plenty of pocket-money, but I still think it mean of a full-grown woman to borrow money of a boy.

“Do let me have the pleasure,” he kept saying, and “Do let me!” and goodness knows why, for she seemed to be in no hurry to prevent him! I suppose it is why people like Simon so much, that he always seems to be trying to do what they want in spite of themselves.

“Then that is settled, thank the Lord!” I heard him say at last. (My sailor buffer between me and her had begun to talk to a man below, and rather drowned their conversation.) “Just look at that sheet of silver on the floor of the boat—all one night’s haul! Suppose it was shillings and half-crowns?”

“Yes, only suppose! And the sailors treading carelessly about in it, as you might in the train of one of my silver-embroidered dresses! It is very like a full court-train, isn’t it, the one you are going to have the privilege of paying for?”

Simon said yes it was, but he didn’t seem to like her quite so much as he did since she gave in and let him pay her bill. He seemed to have grown a little bit older all of a sudden, he had a sort of aged, pinched look come over his face.

Then I saw, I positively saw, the thought of my sister Ariadne come there and make him handsome and boyish again, and I wriggled past my sailor and came round behind her and said, “How do you do?”

Lady Scilly having done with Simon for the moment, left him and went to speak to Mr. Sidney Robinson and George, who had just come up from their bathe.

“How is your sister?” Simon asked me.

“Very well, thank you—at least I mean not very well–”

“I don’t wonder. I was so sorry for her the other night.”

“Did you loathe her? Your face looked as if you did.”

“Nothing of the kind! But if I ever get a chance of doing that brute Bowser some injury I’ll– And the people she was with–? I beg your pardon, but that young lady who was in charge of you both—wasn’t it her business to prevent Miss Vero-Taylor’s good-nature being imposed upon?”

He meant Aunt Gerty, of course. I made up my mind in a second what was best to do for the best of all.

“Oh, that person,” said I. “She wasn’t anything to do with us. Miss Gertrude Jenynge, playing at the Saloon Theatre, I believe?”

“I think that your sister should not be allowed to go to places like that alone.”

“Why, I was with her!”

“What earthly good are you, you small elf?” asked Simon seriously and kindly, smiling down at me. “I wish to goodness my sister–”

I know what he meant. That he wished he could persuade Almeria to take to Ariadne and boss her about. But he didn’t say it. He is so prim and reserved about his family. He simply asked to be remembered to Ariadne, and that he was going to stay with some people at a place called Henderland in Northumberland.

“Henderland,” said I, “that’s near where Christina lives.”

“Who is Christina?”

“Why, George’s old secretary. She is a Mrs. Ball now. You were her best man.”

“Peter Ball’s! Good old Ball! So I was. Bless me. ‘Have you forgotten, love, so soon—That church in June?’ Yes, of course I used to call her the Woman who Would—marry the good Ball, I mean. I shall be over there some time next month shooting. She gave me a general invitation.”

He wouldn’t say when he was likely to be at Rattenraw, it is a little way men have of defending themselves against girls like Ariadne. Now Ariadne and I had a particular invitation to go and stay with Christina for a fortnight, as it happened, and if Ariadne had been having this talk instead of me, she would have told him, and tried to pin him down to a time, but I was wiser. I said “Good-bye” quite shortly, as if I wasn’t at all interested in his movements, and went home. I was a little ashamed of one thing, I had told a lie about Aunt Gerty and denied her before men, as the Scripture says. But it was not for my own sake. Fifty Aunt Gertys can’t hurt me, but one can do Ariadne lots of harm and ruin her social prestige. On the way home I thought what I would do, and did it at lunch.

“Please, Aunt Gerty,” I said, “if you meet me on the quays or anywhere when I am talking to Mr. Simon Hermyre, I must beg of you not to be familiar with me, for I have told him that you were no relation, and I gave him your stage name when he asked me who you were.”

“Oh, did he ask?” said Aunt Gerty, jumping about. “He must have seen me somewhere. In Trixy’s Trust perhaps? I made a hit there. Well, child, you may as well bring us together. Use my professional name, of course.”

“All right,” said I. I did not tell her Simon was off to-morrow. Now don’t you call that eating your cake and having it!

CHAPTER XVI

WE all hoped that Mr. Bowser would find he liked Aunt Gerty well enough to wish to relieve us of her, but we evidently wished it so strongly that he did not see his way to obliging us. These things get into the air somehow, and put people off. Of course Aunt Gerty herself wished it more than anybody, and she was feeling considerably annoyed as she completed the arrangements for a rather seedy sort of autumn tour, which she would not have had to do if she could have pulled it off with the brewer. She wreaked her vexation on us, us and Mother, who was very patient, knowing what poor Aunt Gerty was feeling. But Ariadne, who was feeling very much the same way, and had to suffer in silence, resented it, and when Aunt Gerty hustled her, hustled back in spite of her broken heart.

George left for Scotland. He says he is going to shoot with the Scillys. I don’t know why, but I have a fancy he has gone to Ben Rhydding, all alone, to cure his gout. It didn’t matter. It was settled that we were to go to stay with Christina in Northumberland.

Ariadne didn’t like going straight on from Whitby, because she would have preferred to get her country outfit in London; but of course the difference on fares made that impossible. It is one of the curious things about Finance, that George should make so much money, and we should still have to think of a beggarly three hundred miles or so at a penny a mile. That is what it costs third-class, as of course we go. The all-the-year-round conservatory at Cinque Cento House costs George three hundred a year alone to keep up, and the Hall of Arms (as it is written up over the door) at the back of the house must be done up every few months. It is all white (five coats!) to set off George’s black velvet fencing costume and his neat legs.

George has so much taste. He simply lives at Christie’s. He cannot help buying cabinets and chairs at a few hundred pounds apiece. He says they are realizable property. Ariadne and I would like to realize them.

The great point with Ariadne was how to dress suitably for Christina’s. I said same as London, only shorter and plainer. Ariadne hankered after a proper bonâ fide shooting toilette. She had the sovereign George gave her for her birthday, and two pounds she had made by a poem, and another Mother gave her. She looks much best dressed quietly, nothing mannish or exact suits her, for it at once brings out the out-of-drawing-ness of her face, which is of the Burne-Jones type. She has grown to that, being trained up in it from her earliest years. All types can be acquired. In the face of this, she went out and bought a Miriam’s Home Journal, and selected a pattern of Stylish Dress for the Moors, and got a cheap tailor in the town to make it up for her. Ye Gods, as Aunt Gerty says! I used to go with her to be fitted. It was a heart-breaking business. They took her in and let her out, kneeling about her with their mouths full of pins so that you couldn’t scold them lest you gave them a shock and drove all the pins down their throat, and the little tailor kept saying, “A pleat here would be beneficial to it, Madam,” or to his assistant, “Remove that fulness there!” till there wasn’t a straight seam left in it, it was all bias and bulge.

Ariadne cried over the way that skirt hung for an hour when it came home. “Too much of bias hast thou, poor Ariadne,” I said to her, imitating the pompous tailor; but although I chaffed her I went to him and made him take ten shillings off the bill.