The Celebrity at Home

“Better not,” said George hastily, “for you would have to give him your name,—your name which I know. For my sake—won’t you slip back into the ball-room and submit to the ordeal, as I know it is, of unmasking like the rest? Believe me it is best.”

“It is my host commands, is it not?” she said slyly, to show him that she had known it was he all the time, and ran past him, in a skittish way. As if he hadn’t known all the time that she knew that he knew that she knew who he was! Grown-up people do waste so much time in pretending.

Well, I thought if masks were going to be removed, I had better take up a respectable-looking position at once, say, beside Miss Mander, which seemed suitable, and I went in. Then I saw Lady Scilly again, and wanted so to know what she was up to. She was stealing out of the room, and the devil was going with her. He was The Bittern man, of course, only I didn’t know she knew him. They were talking very earnestly.

“You know the way?” she was asking him.

“I know the house, like the inside of a glove,” he said, and indeed he did, for hadn’t I taken him all over it, the day he interviewed me instead of George, and there was a row? I think he is mischievous, rather like Puck was, in Midsummer Night’s Dream, so I thought I would stick to them. Lady Scilly wanted to go into an empty room to take off her mask and domino. That I could quite understand, as she had behaved so badly in both. The Bittern man offered to show her the way to George’s sanctum.

“You see, you can go where you like in a show-house—or ought to be able to. It is public property, the property of the press, at any rate.”

“The press is too much with us, soon and late,” said she, laughing.

“Ah, but confess, my lady, you can’t do without us!” said this awful young man—though I suppose he has to be cheeky, so as to get his nose in everywhere in the interest of his paper. “You suffer us gladly.”

“I don’t suffer at all—I shouldn’t allow you to make me suffer,” said she, not understanding him. Smart women never do understand things out of the Bible.

I followed them; my excuse was, that I wanted to see they didn’t steal the spoons. They made the coolest remarks as they went up-stairs.

“I have never been beyond the First Floor in this House of Awe,” said The Bittern man.

“Haven’t you? It seems to get more and more comfortable and less eccentric as one goes up,” said Lady Scilly.

“Art is only skin-deep,” said The Bittern man. “Just look at that bed, which seems to me to have come from nothing more dangerously subversive or artistic than Staple’s.... Come, lay down your mask and domino, and let us go down again, and wait about in the back precincts till we hear our host give the word for unmasking.”

So they marched out of George’s bedroom, for that was where they had got to—and as no one ever need see that, he has it quite comfortable, and modern—and sneaked down-stairs by a different way. I followed them. Soon they got quite lost and were heading straight for the kitchen. I wondered if Elizabeth had taken off her domino, and gone back to her work, for though the supper was all sent in from a shop, there would be sure to be something for her to do.

These two marched straight in, and I after them, and found themselves in a blaze of light and an empty kitchen—for the moment only, for one heard all the men stumping along from the dining-room on the other side, and the scullery-maid rinsing something in the scullery. Just as Lady Scilly and The Bittern man burst in, Mother was standing alone, in a checked apron, before the kitchen-dresser, and turned right round and looked at them. She looked dignified and cold, in spite of the kitchen fire, which had caught her face on one side.

Lady Scilly and The Bittern man took no notice of her, but walked about looking at things.

“And so this is the Poet’s kitchen!” Lady Scilly said, rather scornfully. “How his pots shine!”

“Very comfortable indeed!” said Mr. Frederick Cook. He seemed to despise George. Then he continued, laughing under his mask—“It’s no end of a privilege to see the humble objects that minister to the Poet’s use. This is his soup-ladle, and–”

Mother made a little step forward and finished Mr. Cook’s sentence for him.

“And this is his dresser, and this is his boiler, that is his cat—and I’m his wife!”

Lady Scilly skooted, Mr. Cook stayed behind and did a little bit of polite. He isn’t a bad sort, and Mother rather liked him after that, and he began to come here.

CHAPTER IX

SMART women like having a fluffy dog or a child to drive with them in the afternoons. Lady Scilly hasn’t got either of her own, so she is always borrowing me, and sending for me to lunch and drive. She seldom asks Ariadne, because Ariadne is out and nearer her own age—too near. That’s what I tell Ariadne, when she is jealous, and makes me a scene about it, and it is true. If it were not for the honour and glory of the thing, I don’t care so very much about it myself, Lady Scilly’s motor is always getting into trouble, because it is so highly bred, I suppose. We run into something live—or else the kerb—most times we are out, and it’s extremely agitating, though I must say she never screams, though once she fainted after it was all over. It is a mark of breeding to get into scrapes, but not make a fuss. We have all heard about it, she is just as much before the public as my father, though in a different way. I read an interview with her in The Bittern the other day (she had to start some Cottage Homes at Ealing to get herself into that!), and it said that hers was one of the oldest names in England, and that she was the daughter of a hundred Earls. Now I call that nonsense, for how could she be? There isn’t room for a hundred Earls since the Heptarchy, unless they were all at the same time, and that is not likely.

Lord Scilly is very well born too, he’s the eldest son of the Earl of Fowey. The Earl keeps him very tight. So they have to get along with expectations and a title, till the old man dies, and Lady Scilly wishes he would, but Lord Scilly doesn’t, because he’s not quite a beast. He is very nice, and rather fond of Lady Scilly, though he is always scolding her. That is the expectations, they spoil the temper, I fancy. I have heard that he doesn’t think it dignified, the way she goes on, lowering herself and turning his house into a menagerie. He doesn’t understand why she pets authors and publishers. The authors help her to write novels, and the publishers publish them for love and ninety pounds. George is writing one for her now, and he goes to her place nearly every morning to see about it. Lord Scilly doesn’t mind in the least her collaborating with George and the others, it keeps her out of mischief; but I expect he would be down upon her at once if she were to collaborate with one of her own class, that would be different.

I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who tells me everything, doesn’t think so much collaborating is quite what is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, “blessed if she’d let herself be put upon by a countess.”

Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy—that’s what her name means, Paquerette. That’s what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won’t. If she gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish.

The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve—Lady Scilly had sent a messenger for me—she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and La Femme Polype was the name of one, and Madame Belle-et-m’aime another. Lady Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with “To darling, from Kitty London,” and as many more with “Best love, yours cordially, Gladys Margate,” and I have given up trying to count the ones of actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote The Sorrows of the Amethyst, and one of the K.C. who wrote Duchesses in the Divorce Court—the Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play called The Up-and-Down Girl, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I think he’s put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, which isn’t often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. There’s a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes—I don’t suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so big it would burst the post-bag—and there are two sorts of racks on it, one to hold her bills that she hasn’t paid, and that’s got printed on it in gold “Oh Horrors!” and another with those she has paid with “Thank Heaven!” on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances are you’ll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, being dead, you can’t be expected to pay!

I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and also, if they are writing, I can’t help seeing what it is, and then if it is “Dearests” and “Darlings” I do feel awkward. But to-day when she had said “How do you do?” she handed me the writing-board.

“Write for me, dear,” she said, “to the most odious woman in London. And the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she dared to play Lady Ildegonde in The Devey Devastator at a matinée at Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses—stood by the management of course—and nails like a coal-heaver’s. Now don’t you think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not forgive her. Now you write. ‘Dear thing!’ Don’t be surprised, I can’t afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! ‘You were wonderful yesterday! I know what’s what, and believe me that’s it!’ I mean the dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call diplomacy. Don’t say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything for me, and The Bittern will do anything for her. We will go and see her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!”

She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it didn’t matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and then she seemed to feel better.

“I wish I could do without Miller!” she said. “Old Miller hates me, and I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good ‘perks’ for that. She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her one day. So they will! I can’t afford to quarrel with a woman who can do my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear to-day, Miller?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Miller (she’s Scotch, and she is rather stingy of “ladyships”), “there’s your blue that come home last week. It seems a pity to leave it aside just yet.”

“You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can’t put that on, it’s too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it.”

“Then there is the grey panne.”

“Oh, that dam-panne, as I call it. No, it makes me look like my own maid. No offence to you, Miller.”

“I don’t intend to take any, my lady,” said Miller, pursing up her lips. “What about your black with sequins?”

“Yes, let’s have the vicious sequins. It will go with the child’s hair. You see, I dress to you, my dear.”

But I knew it was only that she likes things to go nicely together, just as she chooses her horses to be a pair.

Then she sat down and did her face, very neatly; it is about the only thing she does really well. She put red on her lips, and white on her nose, and black on her eyes, till she looked like a Siamese doll I once had before I licked the paint off. I paid particular attention, for I shall do it when I am grown-up, that is if I am able to afford it—the best paints—and I am told that stands you in about four hundred a year.

Her hair is the very newest gold shade, the one they have in Paris—rather purplish—it will be blue next season, I dare say! It is just a little bit dark down by the roots, which is pretty, I think, and looks so very natural. All the time Miller was dressing it, she worked away at the front with the stick of her comb, pulling little bits out, and putting them back, and staring into a hand-glass as anxiously as if her life depended on it, while Miller patiently gummed some little tendrils of hair down on her forehead.

“Child, child,” she said to me. “Do you know what makes me sigh?”

“Indigestion?” I asked, quite on the chance, but she said it wasn’t, that she never had had it, it was only because she felt so terribly, so diabolically, so preternaturally ugly.

“Oh no, you look sweet!” I said. I really thought so, but Miller grinned.

“You are delightful!” Lady Scilly said. “And you can have that boa you are fiddling with, if you like. Tulle is death to me! Makes me meretricious; and, child, when your time comes, don’t ever—ever—have anything to do with massage! It grows on one so! One can’t leave it off, and it has to be always with one, like the poor. I have actually to subsidize a masseuse to live round the corner, and she cheeks me all the time. Oh, la, la!”

I know about massage. I massed Ariadne once, according to a system we read of in a book. I’ve seldom had such a chance at her. I pinched her black and blue, and she kept saying, “Go on! Harder! Harder!” but as it didn’t seem to agree with her afterwards, I didn’t do it again. But I took the boa to give Ariadne, I have no use for such things myself.

When Lady Scilly was ready she said—“We won’t lunch in, we will go to Prince’s and have a filet. Scilly’s in a bad temper because of bills. Well, bills must come,—and I may go, I suppose. There’s no reason one shouldn’t keep out of their way.”

She stuck a hat on with twenty feathers in it, and we went down, and she told the butler to call a hansom now, and tell the carriage to fetch us at three o’clock.

The butler said, “Very well, my lady. Your ladyship has a lunch-party of ten!” all in the same voice.

“So I have! Oh, Parker, what a fool I am!” and she flopped into a hall seat.

“Yes, my lady,” Parker said, quite politely, closing the hall-door again. He has known her from a child, so he may be rude.