The Celebrity at Home

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.”