The Celebrity at Home

“Not the slightest!” said Mother, laughing too. “She will have her eyes opened, that’s all, to the seamy side of artistic life.”

“My daughter is so absurdly curious about that wretched seamy side. After all, it’s only the side that the workers leave the knots on, they must be somewhere, just as plates must be washed up in a scullery. But we don’t need to go in and gloat on the horrid sight!”

“I quite agree with you,” said Mother. “Only if one happens to be the scullery-maid–”

Aunt Gerty came in just then and took her part in the conversation. I was glad to see she was dressed more quietly than usual.

“And,” said Mrs. Mander, “she buys everything that comes out, especially badly-executed magazines that talk about the fore-front of progress and look just as if they were produced in the dark ages. I know that she came to your husband entirely because she wanted to help to edit his magazine—Wild Oats. Is not that its name? From what Chris says, it sounds so very advanced!”

“Oh, very,” said Aunt Gerty. “But it won’t live!”

“You don’t say so?” Mrs. Mander put up her pince-nez and looked at Aunt Gerty, whom she already didn’t like.

“None of my brother-in-law’s things do!” Aunt Gerty went on calmly. “He is a prize wrecker—of women and magazines!”

Mrs. Mander looked startled, and Mother tried to change the conversation.

“Oh, he’s a law unto himself, my brother-in-law is,” went on Aunt Gerty. “But I don’t think he’ll convert Miss Mander to his views.”

“I hope not,” said Mrs. Mander, “for I notice that if you make a law unto yourself, you generally have to make a society unto yourself too! At least as far as women are concerned.”

“People will always let you go your own way,” said Mother; “but the point is, will they come with you—join with you in a pleasant walk?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Mander, “my daughter is the most headstrong of young women. I can’t control her, or you may be sure I should not have allowed her to undertake this post of secretary to Mr. Vero-Taylor.”

“I gathered as much,” said Mother, not offended a bit. “But I will look after her well!” She does; she gives her cod-liver oil every day to make her fat, and breakfast in bed once a week.

Christina says Lady Scilly is a female Mecænas! Ben says she a minx. Ben hates her, because she makes a fool of George, and he says Ariadne is a cad to accept her old dresses and wear them, and go out with her, but then, what is Ariadne to do? She likes to go to parties, and Mother won’t go anywhere, she is quite obstinate about that. I must say that George doesn’t try to persuade her much. You see, he isn’t used to having a wife, socially speaking, after going about as a bachelor all those years!

George agreed to have a party here, to please Lady Scilly, but Christina is quite sure that the idea had occurred to him already, for why should he build a house for purposes of advertisement, and then hide it under a bushel? A successful party is more good than fifty interviews, so she says, and sells an edition. She knows a great deal about geniuses. She says the hermit-plan would not suit George. I asked her what the hermit-plan was. She said she had known an artist, who took a lovely old house in the suburbs of London, and lived there, and never went out; anybody who cared must come out to see him, and then it was not so easy, for his Sundays were only for a select few—very selected. He only gave tea and bread-and-butter—very little butter—and no table-cloth—plain living, and high prices, for his pictures cost a lot, though he pretended he did not care if he sold them or not; in fact, it cut him to the heart to see any of them go out into the great cold brutal world, and he never exhibited in exhibitions, but in an empty room in his own house. He said, in fun, I suppose, that if the Academy were to elect him to be an R.A., he should put the matter into the hands of his solicitors. The end of that man was, she said, that he did become a Royal Academician, quite against his will, and princes and princesses of the blood used to come and have tea with him, without a table-cloth. But that would not do for George, for he isn’t at all hermit-like, and he can make epigrams! They say that is his forte. I hate them myself, I think they are rude, and only a clever way of hurting people’s feelings so that they can’t complain, but then, of course, the family gets them in the rough; epigrams, like charity, begin at home.

George began to talk a great deal about the duty of entertaining. He said a man owed it to his century. And his party must be something out of the common run; it must be individual and exceptional. He thought he would give a party like the ones they gave in the Middle Ages. Judging from what he said, I think that it must have been very uncomfortable, and very expensive, for to be really grand you had to have cygnets and peacocks to eat. People stood about round the sides of the room, or sat on the floor or on coffers, and before the evening was half over the smoke from the flambeaux made it impossible for them to see each other’s faces! That didn’t suit Ariadne at all, and she snubbed the idea as much as she could.

Luckily, George changed his mind, and then it was to be a supper, still Mediæval, at six o’clock. We should have had to eat with our fingers, because only the carver has a fork, and he sometimes lends it, but it can’t go all round. That’s the reason we have finger-bowls now, and little bits of bread beside our plates instead of big bits of brown to eat off. And when you were done, did you eat the plate? As far as I can see, everybody handed everybody they loved nice pieces off their own trenchers and drank out of the same glasses, so the fewer persons that loved one the better I should have liked it. You should have seen Mother’s face when the middle-aged menu was explained to her! She said she would do what she could, but how was she going to put the grocers’ and the butchers’ shops back a century?

The first course, George explained, was quite easy—it was little bits of toast with honey and hypocras.

“Perhaps they will know what that is at the Stores?” Mother said, meaning to be funny. “There’s a very civil young man there might help me?”

“Next course, smoked eels,” went on George. “Any soup you like, only it must be flavoured with verjuice. That is the third course. Then you have venison, rabbits, pigeons, fricasseed beans, river crabs, sorrel, oranges, capers in vinegar–”

“It will relieve us for ever of the burden of entertaining for ever and ever, that’s one good thing!” Mother said, “for nobody will care to try that menu twice!”

“It would look well in the papers, though,” George said. “What do you say to barbecued pig?”

But Mother would have nothing to say to barbecued pig, and George and Lady Scilly finally settled that it was to be a masked ball, costume not obligatory, but masks and dominos imperative, with a cold collation at twelve o’clock, and all the guests to unmask then.

The date was chosen to please her, and it was changed three times, but at last it was fixed, and George got some cards printed that he had designed himself. They were quite white and plain, but with a knowing red splotch in one corner, which signified George’s passionate Italian nature. I was in the study when the first dozens of packets came, with Miss Mander, and she undid them. Secretaries always take the right to open everything!

“My Goodness!” she said.

“Isn’t it right?” I asked, getting hold of it, but when I had looked at it I was no wiser, for I couldn’t see what was wrong. There it was, written out very nicely, “Mr. Vero-Taylor At Home. Wednesday the twenty-first,” and the address in the corner, and all those rules about the dominos, and that was all.

“Oh, dear darling Christina,” I begged, deadly curious, “do tell me what is wrong with that? I cannot guess.”

“It’s just as well, perhaps,” she said. “Preserve your sublime ignorance, my dear child, as long as you can.”

And not another word could I get out of her! I suppose she calls that being loyal to her employer.

I told Ben, and he said he knew, and what was more, he would go one better. He got hold of one of the cards, and altered it. And then it was Mr. Vero-Taylor and Lady Scilly At Home! I think that was absurd, for though Lady Scilly meddles in all our affairs, she doesn’t quite live here yet! and Mother does, and what’s more, Mother never goes out at all except to take a servant’s character, or scold the butcher, or something of the sort, so she is really the one at home! Christina took it from him, and looked at it, and I’ll swear I saw her smile before she tore it up. So Ben had me there, for he still wouldn’t tell me what was wrong with the first card.

We began to write in the names of the people. It took us a whole morning, Ben, Ariadne, Miss Mander and I. I offered to help, and really, though I write rather badly, I can spell better than any of them, but I don’t believe they valued my help very much, and only gave me a card now and then to keep me quiet. There were six young men that Ariadne wanted asked—six, no less, if you please—and she’s only been out six months! And she kept trying to force them on George, same as you do cards in a card trick! But he didn’t take any notice, and kept walking up and down the room mentioning the names of all sorts of absurd people that nobody wanted, except himself. It was really going to be a very smart party; there were to be detectives and reporters, and what more can you have than that? All the countesses and dukes and so on were to come, of course, but I must say I had thought that George knew a great many more of them; he managed to scratch up so few, considering all the talk there had been about it. I kept saying, “Oh, do give me a Countess to ask. You give me all the plain people to do.”

Somehow or other, George did not seem to be pleased, and he sent us all away after fifty had been written.

Next day, he told us that he had thought it all out, and he was going to do an original thing, and instead of sending out cards for his party, he was going to announce it in the pages of The Bittern, and that all his friends, reading it, must consider themselves bidden. Mother said how should she know how many to prepare for? I suppose the answer to that depends on the number of friends George has got, and whether they know that he considers them his friends. For think how awkward to assume that you were a friend and had a place laid for you, and then to come and find that you were only an acquaintance. I suggested that the real friends should have a hot sit-down supper, with wine, while the acquaintances should only go to a buffet and have cold pressed beef and lemonade. There should be a password, Hot with, and cold without, and they roared when I told them this, but I didn’t see why. Then the party would really be of some use, for after it people would know where they were! But how about the newspaper people? They couldn’t call themselves friends, or even acquaintances, so they wouldn’t be able to come at all, and what would George do then? I said all this, which seems to me very sensible, but no one noticed it. And the detectives! They have to be paid for coming, surely, and I’d rather see them than any of the others. “If they don’t come the party will be spoilt for me,” I said to Christina.

“It will be all right,” she said, and Ariadne was quite pleased, for of course, this way, her six young men can come, a dozen if they like.

Ariadne and I had costumes. I was the little Duke of Gandia, that brother of Cæsar Borgia that he killed, and Ariadne had the dress of Beatrice Cenci with a sort of bath-towel wound round her head. The funny thing is that she looks far younger than me in it, quite a little girl, while I look like a big boy. My legs are very long. George has a monk’s costume, one of the Fratelli dei Morti, and it is much the same sort of looking thing as a domino. Nobody would ever know him, and he looks very nice.

I am told that at masques you have to speak a squeaky voice or alter it somehow. George will have to, because he has a very peculiar voice, that anybody would know a mile off; people call it resonant, nervous, bell-like—I call it cracked. It is one of his chief fascinations, but he will have to do without it for once, and rely on the others.

The study was to be the ball-room, only George preferred to leave signs of literary occupation in the shape of his desk, which he just shoved away on one side, with the proofs of his new novel left negligently lying on it. We sprinkled copies of his last but one about the house, in moderation; it was rather fun—I felt as if I were planting bulbs. George likes these sort of little attentions, and I knew I was not to be put off by his finding one, as he did, and scolding me and telling me to put it on the fire.

CHAPTER VIII

ABOUT nine they all began to arrive, and by ten o’clock the house was overflowing. Ben was a capital commissionaire in a District Messenger’s costume he had borrowed, with George’s consent, and I do believe he enjoyed himself most of anybody. Of course at first all he had to do was to stand at the door and show people in, but he hoped that later in the evening he should have to chuck somebody out. It was likely, he thought, for all the literary world of London would be sure to be at our party. I’m sorry to say that Ben was wrong there, or else the literary people didn’t come, for those that did come were as quiet as lambs. There were detectives, several of them, and although I looked very particularly at their boots, which I have always been told is the way to spot a detective, I saw nothing at all out of the common. There was a man with a cloven hoof, but then he was meant for the devil. He was masked of course, but the devil needs no domino. And I knew all the time that it was the little man who interviewed me once instead of George for The Bittern, and got me into such a row, and very devilish of him it was, and I had no butter to my bread for a week because of him. How I was supposed to know that George hated the truth instead of loving it, I can’t see, only The Bittern man knew well enough, I expect! Never, never again will I interfere between a man and his interviewer!

There were hosts of newspaper people there; I heard two of them discussing us, sitting in the high-backed Medici seat. I managed to get jammed in behind, “powerless to move,” as they say in the novels, even if I had wanted to. People are careless. I heard heaps of conversations, anyhow, people even said things to each other across me, without stopping to think whether or no I wasn’t one of the family. I suppose because they were masked, they felt anonymous, as if it didn’t matter what they said, and it needn’t count afterwards.

The man I listened to was The Bittern man, dressed as the devil. The woman’s domino was all shot with queer faint colours, and, if any colour, sulphur colour. She was scented too, a nice odd scent. The Bittern man seemed to know her.

“I cannot be mistaken; am I not talking to the most dangerous woman in London?”

The woman seemed quite complimented, and smiled under her mask.

“Not quite, but very nearly,” she said. “I am a gas. Give me a name!”

“I will call you Mrs. Sulphuretta Hydrogen. How does that suit you?”

“Is it a noxious gas?” she said, “for, honestly, I never am spiteful! I only speak of things as I find them, and one must send up bright copy, or one wouldn’t be taken on. I tell the truth–”

“Nothing extenuate, everything set down in malice!” said he. “The devil and The Bittern are much obliged to you. It is the honest truth that makes his work so easy for him. We are of a trade in more senses than one. Now tell me, can’t we exchange celebrities? I’ll give you my names, and you shall give me yours. I suppose all the world is here to-night?”

“All the world—and somebody else’s wife!” she said quickly, and the devil rubbed his hands. “But that is the rub—we can’t know who they all are till twelve o’clock, and my idea is that a good many of them will decamp before they are forced to reveal themselves. Least seen, soonest mended.”

“Then we shall have to invent them!” he said. “The very form of invitation must lead to a good deal of promiscuity. Can you tell me which is Lady Scilly? She at least is sure to be here.”