The Celebrity at Home

“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.

CHAPTER XIX

DEAR Simon let his hair grow comparatively long to be married to Ariadne in, to please me. I was chief bridesmaid, and stood next Almeria; Jane Emerson Tree was third bridesmaid, and behaved fairly well, though I am told she did bite off and eat the heads of the best flowers in her bouquet while the service was going on, and Jessie Hitchings, who stood next her, couldn’t prevent it, for she hadn’t a single pin on her she could get at. I expect Jane Emerson was very ill after all that stephanotis! I treated her with studied contempt, and only asked her what she thought of Ariadne’s “waist” this time, and didn’t she wish she could have one as above reproach when she was married, if she ever found time to get married between her great actings? Why, Ariadne’s dress was made by Camille! I was as intimate as possible with Jessie Hitchings, the coal-agent’s daughter from Isleworth. That did Jane Emerson good. Ariadne asked her to be one of her bridesmaids just to please Ben, who adores her, and doesn’t see that she is a bit common. Men in love never do. Still, she is our only childhood’s friend, so Simon and even Almeria didn’t make the least objection to have her included in the procession. They are not snobs, and if they were, are high up enough to be able to afford to stoop, and know everybody. As for Almeria, she came out wonderfully, and I really don’t mind her at all. As the bridesmaids’ hat wouldn’t set without a bank of hair or something on the forehead for it to rest on, she was sensible enough to buy a pin-curl at the Stores and stick it on under the brim for the occasion. Ariadne was very much softened towards her by that, and I promised to go and stay with her at Highsam later on and learn to ride.

George gave Ariadne his usual present, only more so—a set of his own works beautifully bound, and some of the old jewellery she has always had given out to her to wear, to take away for her very own. Mother gave her all her household linen, marked and embroidered by herself. Peter Ball gave her a gramophone, Christina a type-writer. The Squire gave her his mother’s best salad-bowl. Lord Scilly gave her a great gold cup or beaker. I believe he was trying to atone for the low joke he had practised on her at the picnic. It was awfully good and valuable, Simon said. Lady Scilly gave her a Shakespeare bound in calf. I believe she meant a hint about calf love, just the kind of thing she would call a joke, and that Punch wouldn’t put in; but Ariadne never noticed and was grateful, for she happens to like Shakespeare for himself. To Simon, I heard, Lady Scilly gave a queer sort of scarf or thumb ring, with the Latin word Donec engraved on it. I did not know what that meant, and Simon said he was blest if he did, and he hung it on his dog’s collar afterwards.

Simon and Ariadne went to Venice for their honeymoon. She took note-books, etc., but could not write any poetry in Venice somehow, so shopped all the time, especially bead necklaces. She didn’t care for her own hair any more when she came back, she said every other girl in Venice had it. She had put back her fringe, and wets it every morning to make it keep flat, to please Sir Frederick Hermyre and Simon, who owned, after marriage, to a weakness for smooth hair.

They are to live in Yorkshire at one of his father’s six places. He has given it to Simon, and Simon is now the youngest J.P. on the bench, and is going to breed shorthorns. I am to go and stay there after Christmas.

George detests Christmas so much that he ignores it, and forces us all to do the same. We may not put up holly or mistletoe, or make a plum-pudding or mince-pies. We have mince-pies always at Midsummer, and plum-pudding on May Day, so one does not miss them altogether, but all the same, I have a sort of Christmas feeling come over me at the right time, and could enjoy a Christmas stocking or Santa Claus as much as any ordinary Philistine child. So could Mother. Elizabeth says it is all she can do not to give warning than stay in such a God-forgotten house over the time, and she makes a small plum-pudding for the kitchen and gets us all down, except George, to stir it on the sly. Up-stairs no one dares to mention Christmas. If we do, we are fined sixpence. We have all of us to pay a whole shilling if a pipe bursts? I don’t know if George would insist on money down, if it happened, but it is an odd circumstance, that though of course if they do burst, it is nobody’s fault but the plumber’s, who came to put them right last time and carefully left something wrong ready for the next, now that this rule has been made the pipes contain themselves, and don’t burst at all.

When Ariadne was here, she always contrived to send away a few parcels, and we received some, of course. We cannot help people, who respect Christmas, being kind to us then. George came in once while we were undoing a few, and damned “this whirling season of string and brown paper!”

“I resent the maddening appeals of an over-wrought post-office to post early. Why should I post early? Why should I post at all? I forbid all mention of the egregious subject!”

And he went out, and we asked Elizabeth to bring our parcels up to our bedrooms in future.

The Christmas after Ariadne left us, we didn’t mind obeying him, we were so sad without her. I missed having some one to bully. George missed having two to bully instead of one. He has always sworn, but now he took to swearing as if he meant it, and saying bitter things to Mother, and poor Ben’s chances of school are farther off than ever. He got quite desperate, did poor Ben, and asked Mother to make some arrangement by which she could give him less to eat and put what she could save aside for his schooling. He said he was willing to live on skilly if only he might go to school, and from what he heard, he wouldn’t get much better there, so he might as well get used to it. Mother cried, and said no, she couldn’t save off his keep, that she must make a man of him at any rate, and would try to save money some other way, or even make it? She would think till she thought of a plan. Meantime she would buy him some books, and Mr. Aix would look over his exercises if Ben went regularly to his rooms in Pump Court. Ben tried, but it is so awkward for him, since he started valeting George at Whitby. George can’t do without him, and calls for him at all sorts of times, and Ben must be at call. George swears at his sulky expression while folding up coats, stretching trousers, etc., but I am afraid Ben will have the melancholia soon if he doesn’t get what he has set his heart on. If Mother could only raise the money, she says she would go straight to George with it, and tell him that she meant to pay the cost of Ben’s education, for it is money, she is sure, and nothing but money, which prevents his making up his mind which school? Gracious me! Schools are all alike, all beastly, and a necessary evil for the sons of men.

I often wonder if the people he goes among, and stays with—“he is the devil for country houses!” Mr. Aix says, “he has got them in the blood,”—I wonder if when they see him come smiling down to breakfast—he has to come down to breakfast in some houses, never at home—they realize that he has a wife and children and a secretary, and three cats depending on him? For I believe he is the kind of useful guest who has small talk for breakfast, which reminds me of those houses where the cook gets up early to bake the little hot cakes people like, and what it means to her, no one imagines! George stokes and talks at the same time, and that is one reason why they all love him and ask him madly for Saturdays to Mondays or longer.

George is not well just now, his voice is all in his throat, and husky. His hair is getting very grey, and suits him; his eyes are large, like a sad deer’s. He is still as graceful. Mr. Aix says he has taken to wearing stays. I don’t believe this. I am the only one in the house who sticks up for George. Ben hates him, so does Aunt Gerty. Ben will go on hating him till he is allowed to go to school. Mother never speaks of him, so I don’t know how she feels about him. In cold weather he is always much nicer to her. He feels the cold of England. He has written about Italy till he is half Italian. He has got a new secretary, a “singularly colourless personage,” whom Mother likes very much. She isn’t half so amusing as Christina, but Lady Scilly says she is far more suitable.

After Christmas was over, George left us and went to “The Hutch,” Lady Scilly’s place in Wiltshire. Her novel is nearly finished, and Ben says she has piped all hands on deck—I mean all the people who are helping her have to be ready with their help. There is a lawyer and a doctor among the crew, but George is master-skipper. I believe that she will drop them all when once the book is done? George too, perhaps. Though I am not sure she likes him only for the sake of the novel? He can be fascinating when he likes, and he does like with her. It’s such a good old title.

I think I am right, for he was away a long time, indeed he has never stayed so long at “The Hutch” before. He has his own suite there, and all the other rooms are called after the names of his novels or characters in them. Could any one pay an author a greater compliment?

Mrs. Ptomaine was not staying there—Never no more!—but she has a lady friend who was, and the friend says Lord Scilly is beginning to get “restive.”

Mrs. Ptomaine comes to see us, at least to see Aunt Gerty, a good deal; she is no longer all in all with Lady Scilly since the Mr. Pawky episode.

“And I didn’t make much of him, after all!” she told Mother and Aunt Gerty. “Lady Scilly had squeezed him nearly dry. He didn’t trust women any more, always imagined they wanted money. And then dangled an empty purse at them, metaphorically. Poor old man, it is a shame to destroy any one—even a millionaire’s—confidence in human nature. She borrows of every one, even the masseuse and the charwoman, my dear, it’s quite awful! That poor, pretty young Hermyre! I was quite pleased when your sweet innocent daughter rescued him from the wiles of Scilly, and perhaps Charybdis—who knows? He looked weak!”

“And so secured a weak child to look after him and strengthen his hands!” said Mother. It is no use minding Mrs. Tommy, she isn’t “quite eighteen carat,” Aunt Gerty says, or else she would surely not discuss a woman’s own son-in-law to her face. But, she is a journalist, and journalists know no laws of consanguinity or decency even. If one is to get any good whatever out of the press, one must accept it with all its inconveniences, and Aunt Gerty and Mother think everything of the press in these days. They ask Mrs. Ptomaine to dinner continually, and Mr. Freddy Cook to meet her. And Mr. Aix as a standing dish, and Aunt Gerty of course. Then they make a lot of noise and smoke all over the house except the study. Mother won’t let them go in there at all while George is away. I hear them talking between the puffs—

“You can engage to work so and so, eh?” or “Have you got thingumbob?”

Mr. Aix is writing a play. He brings the acts over here as he writes them, and gets Mother to speak the woman’s part for him, so that he sees how it goes. He says Mother is a great dear, and he tells her continually how she helps him, how she puts the right interpretation on him at every turn. I never should have thought Mr. Aix difficult to understand, but then a man has to be very modest to realize that he takes no understanding and is as plain as a pike-staff. And as Mr. Aix always speaks the brutal truth—he can’t wrap anything up—he is as “crude as the day,” so George often says—I don’t see Mother’s cleverness.

They talk of The Play as if it was a baby. “Mustn’t christen it before it is brought into the world,” and “One thing you can confidently predict about it, it can’t be born prematurely!” and so on. They use the study in the mornings, and Mr. Aix sits in George’s swivel-chair, and Mother takes the floor in front of him. She reads the woman’s part out aloud and he criticises her. She must do it pretty well, for he often calls out, “Oh, you darling!” when she has said a particular piece. “What a divine accent you give it!” “That will knock them!” “Wicked to hide such a talent!” and praise like that. He never asks Aunt Gerty to read any, though she is a real actress and sits there and criticises Mother all the time.

“Pooh, pooh!” says Mr. Aix, “leave her to her intuitions! You battered professionals don’t know the value of a new note.”

So I see that Mother never was a Professional, even before George married her. And a good thing too!

Mr. Aix worked very hard at the play, and promised that it should be finished one day next week. When George came home, he would want his study of course, but we hadn’t the remotest idea of his arriving when he did, late one afternoon just before dinner-time.

We were all hard at it in the study. Aunt Gerty was making a pink surah blouse all over the study table and being prompter as well. Mr. Aix was in George’s swivel-chair, and Mother standing in front of him. George was on us in a moment, just as Mr. Aix had closed the manuscript with a slap.

“Our child comes on bravely!” he was just saying to Mother, as George appeared in the doorway with his cigarette in his mouth.

Aunt Gerty whispered to Mother, “I’ll bet you Lord Scilly has had him kicked out of the house. Go on that tack!” and bolted into the hall, forgetting her pink surah spread all over the desk.

“Welcome back, old fellow!” said Mr. Aix, turning round in the swivel-chair and putting a protecting paw over Aunt Gerty’s blouseries. They would be sure to irritate George, he knew; so they did. George turned quite white with temper and flung his coat off, and Mother caught it across her arm as if she had been a servant. There seemed to be a great noise in the hall, and Polly came in looking disgusted, as servants always do when it is a question of not paying one’s just debts.

She began “If you please, sir, the cabman–” but her voice was quite drowned between the cabman relieving his mind in the hall outside and George inside. He seemed bewildered, but able to swear all the time.

“Won’t you pay your cab, George?” said Mother gently, “and then you can abuse me at your leisure!”

Mr. Aix went to pay the man, and I thought I had better get out of the room with him. George was sitting bolt upright in his chair, and Mother like a little school-girl before him. I don’t know what they said to each other, but George wouldn’t come out to dinner, but had a plate sent in.

Mother didn’t alter her habits, but went to the theatre with Mr Aix.

George’s plate of dinner came out untouched. After all it was my own father, and he had come all the way from Wiltshire, and perhaps had been kicked out of “The Hutch” as Aunt Gerty said. I knew enough of Lady Scilly to know how changeable she is, and perhaps it was only her novel she cared for. I went to him, as bold as a lion.

He was sitting still where he had been before dinner, only his head was on his hands among Aunt Gerty’s blouse trimmings.

“Shall I take these away?” I asked. “Don’t they make you angry?”

“I haven’t noticed.”

I saw he was ill, not to mind all Aunt Gerty’s horrid pink shape all over his papers! I sat down on the edge of the table and he didn’t even scold me.

“Where is Lucy—my wife?” he asked me presently.

“My Mother?” said I. “She’s gone to the theatre.”

“Is that usual?”

“Quite usual. She generally goes with Mr. Aix, but to-night Aunt Gerty has gone with them.”

“Chaperons them, eh?”

I didn’t like to hear him call Mother and Mr. Aix them in that insulting bracketting way, so I said—

“Mother has stayed in all her life. She wanted a change.”

“Aix?” said he, “for a change! God!”

“She’s collaborating with Mr. Aix.”