THERE is no doubt that if Lady Grant could have found the smallest pretext for blaming her niece, she would have held her responsible for the scarlet fever which had attacked her daughters. As it was, she had to be content with dwelling upon the inconvenience of Jasmine's succumbing to the malady.
"You so easily might catch it," she pointed out, "that I do hope you'll bear in mind what a nuisance it would be for us all if you did catch it. Of course, those who understand about these things may decide it would be more prudent if you did not expose yourself to any risk by going to visit the poor girls." Lady Grant could never miss an opportunity to emphasize the mysterious and sacerdotal omniscience that belonged to the profession of medicine. "Those who understand about these things will tell us what we must do. But meanwhile, although I am only speaking as an ignoramus in these matters, I should say that if you always remembered to disinfect your clothes and all that sort of thing and were very careful to follow the doctor's directions, there would be no danger of your catching scarlet fever yourself. I need not tell you what a terrible blow it was to me when I had to give my consent to their being taken away from Harley Street to a nursing home. A terrible blow! But your uncle felt that it would not be fair to his patients if they stayed in the house. That's the worst of being a doctor. He has to think of everybody. Poor dear children, and there's so little one can do! In fact there's really nothing one can do except take the darlings grapes every day."
The rules of the nursing home were more strict than Lady Grant had expected, and, much to her indignation, permission to visit the patients was denied to Jasmine, who thereupon suggested that, since she could not be of any use in nursing her cousins, she ought to go and help Aunt Cuckoo with the illness of her adopted son.
"And what about me?" demanded her aunt. "You seem to forget, my dear child, and your Aunt Cuckoo seems to forget, that I have a slight claim to consideration. As if the girls' illness was not enough, Cousin Edith must needs go and carelessly visit some friend of hers at Enfield and bring back with her a violent cold, so that what with her sniffling and sneezing and snuffling it's quite impossible to stay in the same room with her. So, at this moment of all others, I am left entirely at the mercy of the servants, who after all have quite enough work of their own to run the house properly, and really I'm afraid I cannot see why you should go to Aunt Cuckoo."
It was thus that Jasmine found herself after what Aunt May now called her adventures of the last eighteen months in that very position which Aunt May had no doubt arranged in her mind when she first wrote and insisted on her niece's leaving Sirene and coming to England. Cousin Edith's cold, which Jasmine had to admit was one of the most aggressive, the most persistent, the most maddening colds she had ever listened to, was ascribed by Aunt May to the London climate in winter, and as soon as Jasmine was fairly at work on her aunt's correspondence, Cousin Edith was sent away to recuperate in Bognor, where it was generally understood at 317, Harley Street she would remain for the rest of her life. If anything more than the cold had been needed to confirmAunt May in her resolve to get rid of Cousin Edith, it was the death of Spot.
"So long as poor old Spot was alive," she said to Jasmine, "I never liked to send poor Edith away. The poor old dog was very devoted to her, and I'm bound to say that poor Edith with all her faults was very devoted to dear old Spot. But Spot has gone now, and I don't feel inclined to form fresh ties by getting a puppy. Puppies have to be trained, and I very much doubt if Cousin Edith is capable of training a puppy nowadays. She seems to have gone all to pieces since she caught this cold. I told her at the time that I could not understand why she wanted to make that long journey to Enfield. She came back on the outside of the tram, you know. It's all so unnecessary."
Spot had died when the famous cold was at its worst, and the grief Cousin Edith had tried to express was not more effective than a puddle in a deluge. The body was sent to the Dogs' Cemetery, and through having to represent Cousin Edith at the funeral Jasmine nearly caught a cold herself. She did sneeze once or twice when she got home; but Aunt May talked at such length about colds that Jasmine made up her mind that she simply would not have a cold, and she actually succeeded in driving it away, for which her aunt took all the credit.
The night before Cousin Edith left to recuperate at Bognor she invited Jasmine up to her room, when Jasmine realized that the poor relation was perfectly aware what a long convalescence hers was going to be, and perfectly aware that her visit to the seaside would only be terminated by her death.
"In many ways, of course," she said, "I shall enjoy Bognor, and in many ways I shall probably be happier at Bognor thanI have ever been here. I quite understand that Cousin May requires somebody more active than myself. She is a woman of immense energy, and when I look at her nose I sometimes think that there may after all be something in character reading by the face. I often meant to take it up seriously. I once bought a book on physiognomy when I was a girl and gave readings at a bazaar. I made quite a lot of money, I remember—sixteen shillings. It was for a new set of bells for my uncle's church at Market Addleby. As his curate said to me, very beautifully and poetically, I thought, when I handed him the sixteen shillings: 'You will always be able to think, Miss Crossfield'—my uncle never encouraged him to call us by our Christian names on account of the parish—'always able to think every time the new bells ring out for one of our great Church festivals, that your little labour of love this afternoon and this evening has contributed a melodious note to one of the most joyful chimes.' I remember my uncle, who was a very jocular man for a clergyman, observed when this was repeated to him that if I had only made a little more money it might have been called Edith's five-pound note. I remember we all laughed very much at this at the time. But as I was saying to you, my dear ... let me see, what was I saying to you?... oh yes, I remember now, I wanted to give you this little brooch which contains some of my grandmother's hair when she was a baby. I've often noticed that you've very few little mementoes; I noticed it because I haven't very many myself. Now with regard to this room, which you will probably occupy when I've gone, it really is a delightful room, in fact the only little fault it has is that the bell doesn't ring. In some respects that is not a bad fault, because no doubt the servants do not like answering bells all the time,and I think I have been rather tactful in never once suggesting that it should be mended. I'm only telling you this so that you shall not go on ringing and ringing and ringing and ringing under the impression that the bell is making the least sound. I remember it was quite a long time before I found out that it was broken, and I derived an impression at first that the servants were deliberately not answering this particular bell. I shall miss poor old Spot very much, but Hargreaves has a married sister whose cat has a very nice kitten which she wants to give away, and her little boy is meeting me with it in a basket at Victoria to-morrow. If you are ever down at Bognor at any time, of course I shall be very glad to see you and give you a cup of tea. My address will be 88, Seaview Terrace. You can see the sea from the corner of the road, so you won't forget the name of the road. But how will you remember the number? Of course, it's eleven times eight, but you might forget that too."
"I'll write it down," said Jasmine brightly.
Cousin Edith looked dubious. "Of course, yes, to be sure you can do that. But supposing you mislay the address?"
"Well, I don't think I shall ever forget eighty-eight," Jasmine affirmed with conviction.
Cousin Edith had worn black ever since it was settled that she was to leave Harley Street, or perhaps it was a tribute to the late Spot. Jasmine, looking at her, thought that she resembled a daddy-longlegs less nowadays and more one of those wintry flies that survive the first frosts of autumn and spend their time walking up and down window panes in an attempt to suggest that if the window were open they would be out and about, delighting in the brisk wintry weather.
"Well, good-bye," Cousin Edith was saying. "I shall bein such confusion to-morrow morning that I may not have time then to say good-bye to you properly. I won't kiss you on the mouth because of my cold. I wonder if you will be as sorry to leave 317, Harley Street as I am, whenyouhave been here fifteen years."
Jasmine thought for a moment that Cousin Edith was being malicious and sarcastic; but apparently she meant exactly what she had said.
The next day Jasmine moved into the vacant room, and if Cousin Edith's mourning brooch had contained a lock of her own hair instead of a grandmother's she would not have thought it inappropriate, for the departure of the poor relation had impressed her mind like a death more than a visit to the seaside.
It is hardly possible to picture anybody who lives between Baker Street and Portland Road, however happy he may be, however much in love with life he may feel, as able to maintain an attitude toward life more vital than the exhibition of waxworks in the galleries of Madame Tussaud. There were moments when Jasmine felt that the waxworks were the real population of this district, and sometimes when in the late dusk or at night she was walking down Harley Street or any of the neighbouring streets she would receive a strong impression that all the houses were serving like stage scenery to give nothing but an illusion of reality. This morbid fancy might be justified by the fact that so many of the houses actually were unoccupied at night, and that in the daytime they were haunted not inhabited by figures in the world of medicine who by the uniformity and convention of their gestures and observations had no more life than waxworks. Moreover, passers-by in Harley Street and the neighbourhoodhad among them such a large proportion of sick men and women that even if one ignored the successive brass plates of the doctors, their presence alone would be enough to cast a gloom on any observer that happened to come into daily contact with such a procession of afflicted individuals.
Jasmine's window, high up in the front of the house, never contributed anything to the gaiety of her private meditations, and she used to think that if a famous prisoner, he of Chillon or any other, had been invited to change his outlook with her own, he would soon have begged to be put back in his dungeon. Many human beings, ailing, miserable, poverty-stricken, victims of misfortune or suppliants of fate, have found in a window their salvation. Jasmine was not one of these. She never seemed able to look out of her window without seeing some hunched-up man or wrapped-up woman who was being helped up a flight of steps, at the head of which the conventionally neat parlourmaid would admit them to their doom; and she used to picture these patients when the sleek doors closed behind them being greeted by the various doctors in attitudes like those of the poisoners in the Chamber of Horrors. There was one figure, that of Neil Cream, a gigantic man with a ragged beard and glasses, who stood for her behind every door in Harley Street. In fact, Jasmine was suffering now when she was twenty the kind of nervous distortions of imagination and apprehension through which most London children pass at about eight. And really, considering her experiences in England since she arrived from Italy, so many of them had to do with disease and death and madness that her morbid condition was excusable. When she was staying with Uncle Alec and Aunt Mildred she had been amused by Prince Adalbert, but now, looking back at that experience, shebegan to feel frightened, just as when one sees a ghost, one is more frightened when the ghost has vanished than when it is actually present. Looking back now on Uncle Matthew's illness she was again seized by a fear and repulsion which at the time had been merged in indignation. Looking back on her visit to Aunt Cuckoo and Uncle Eneas, the whole of it was now shrouded in an atmosphere of unhealthiness; and looking back further still to her last memory of Sirene, even that was blackened by the sorrow of her father's sudden death. As for the house she was living in at the moment, her sensitive mind could not fail to be affected by the thought that so many of the people who passed along that spacious hall and waited round that sombre table littered with oldPunchesandTatlersand odd numbers of unusual magazines were either mad or moving in the direction of madness. Sir Hector Grant's waiting-room was probably one of the most oppressive in Harley Street, because it had no window, but was lighted from above by a green dome of glass, to Jasmine curiously symbolical of the kind of imprisonment to which madness subjects the human soul. The absence of Lettice and Pamela at the nursing home, although Jasmine had not the slightest desire to see them or hear them ever again, added in its own way to the general air of depression. When Lettice and Pamela were in the house the sense of contact with the ordinary frivolities of the world was never absent; but without them the house became nothing but a cul-de-sac, a kind of condemned cell, so deep did it lie under the spell of dreadful verdicts.
In addition to these influences that spoilt her leisure time, Jasmine's work with her aunt did not encourage her to look upon the brighter side of life. Those numerous charities wereno doubt a pleasure and a pride to their originator, but Jasmine, who lacked the sustenance of the egotism that inspired them, was only impressed by the continuous reminder they gave her of the world's misery. The Club for Tired Sandwichmen was for Aunt May something upon which to congratulate herself, an idea that had occurred to no other prominent philanthropist. It was Jasmine's duty to harrow subscribers' feelings with details of the private lives of sandwichmen in order to extract from them as much as would help to maintain the three bleak rooms in a small street off Leicester Square, where these wrecks and ruins of human endeavour could take refuge from the rain and cold outside. Upon Lady Grant herself the individual made not the least impression unless he came into the Club drunk and broke one of the chairs, in which case she interested herself sufficiently in his future to banish him from the paradise she had created.
When Jasmine first again took up secretarial work for her aunt, she wrote all the letters.
"But really I think I shall have to find you another typewriter," said Aunt May after a week of this. "I always understood that convent-educated girls were taught to write well; but your handwriting resembles the marks made by a fly that has fallen into the ink-pot."
"I think I feel rather like a fly that has fallen into the ink-pot," said Jasmine.
Her aunt did not pay any attention to this retort; but a few days later the new typewriter arrived, and it was conferred upon her as if it was a motor-car for her own use.
"I really do think that with this beautiful new machine you might do some of Sir Hector's work too," suggested Aunt May. "That is, if he can be persuaded to send a typewritten letter."
Luckily for Jasmine Sir Hector's ideas of the courtesy owing from a medical baronet did not allow him to do this. He continued to employ a clerk with a copper-plate hand to send in his bills, so Jasmine was not called upon to help him in any way.
"You will have a lot of time on your hands," Aunt May regretfully sighed after her husband had declined the use of the typewriter for himself. "Don't I remember your once saying that you sewed very well? That, surely, they must have taught you at the convent. Cousin Edith used sometimes to sew for me, and there is always her machine standing idle."
Perhaps Cousin Edith's ingratiating touch had spoilt that machine for another. When Jasmine tried her hand on it, it behaved like an angry dog, gathering up the piece of work, the hem of which it was being invited to stitch, worrying it and pleating it and tearing pieces off it and chewing up these pieces, until first the needle snapped and then some of the mechanism made a noise like a half empty box of bricks. It was plain that nothing more could be done with it.
"Ruined," declared Aunt May when she came upstairs to see how Jasmine was getting on. "Well, I hope you'll take a little more trouble over the flowers for the dinner-table to-night."
The only mechanical device that Jasmine could think of in connection with flowers was a lawn-mower, so she felt safe in promising that the dinner-table should present an appearance of a little more trouble having been taken with it than with the piece of work in the sewing-machine. These dinner parties were by no means the least irritating products of her cousins' illness, which had struck Lady Grant as an excellent opportunity for inviting all their most ineligible acquaintanceswhile her daughters were away; and Jasmine, who did not enjoy even the pleasure of being able to choose between more than two evening frocks, felt bored by these dreary men and women, for whose existence she could not imagine any possible reason, let alone discover a reason for asking them out to dinner. Two or three days before one of these occasions Aunt May's invariable formula was that Jasmine was going to be put next to a most interesting man, and always half an hour before the gong sounded she would decide that she must take Mrs. So-and-so's or Miss What's-her-name's place next to somebody who was not interesting at all. She was used, in fact, by her aunt very much as umbrellas are used to reserve seats in a train.
A month or five weeks passed thus, after which Lettice and Pamela emerged from hospital, unable to talk of anything for several days except the details of their peeling. It was now decided that they required change of air, and the question of Jasmine's ability to look after her uncle while his wife and daughters went to Mentone was debated at some length.
"It would be such an opportunity for you to learn housekeeping," said Aunt May. "And if you were a success, who knows, I might even let you take entire charge of the house when I come back. I wonder...." She hesitated, awe-struck by her vision of the future. "I don't want to move Cousin Edith from Bognor. Her cold is quite well now, and it would be such a pity to start her off with it again. And she's apt to irritate your uncle in little things. Of course, he likes people to be attentive to him; but he hates them to make a show of being attentive. And Cousin Edith was always rather apt to make a show of being attentive. You won't do that, will you, dear?"
Jasmine promised that she would not do that, and in the end she was left with her uncle in charge of the house. She decided at once that the only way to manage Hargreaves and Hopkins and the rest of the servants was to make friends of them and become as it were one of themselves. On the whole she rather liked this, and she found that down in the kitchen below the level of Harley Street even Cook became a human figure. As for Hopkins and Hargreaves, they were like butterflies emerging from those two pupæ that waited on the other side of the baize door separating the world below stairs from the world above.
Jasmine found that this communion with the servants was the only natural way in which she could still associate with humanity, and in consequence of it she found herself being more and more completely cut off every day from the family with which she was living. Lady Grant would unquestionably have condemned such society as degrading; but since nothing was offered her in its place, Jasmine continued to frequent the servants' company, and before many weeks had elapsed she had almost come to regard her cousins, her aunt, and her uncle from the point of view of the servants' hall, as eccentric beings living in a queer inaccessible world. She used to think that she might just as well have been left quietly in Sirene. Looking back on the motives for bringing her to England, it was now clear to Jasmine that no real consideration for her future had actuated any of her relatives. She did not mean to suggest to herself that they had consciously or deliberately thought out a plan by which she could be made useful to each in turn; but they all of them had tried to make her useful, and she supposed that such an attempt was like the instinct that leads a person to accept a useless ornament for a bad debt ratherthan be left with nothing. They had probably all been afraid that if she stayed in Sirene by herself, sooner or later some scandal would supervene which would necessitate more trouble in the future than they felt bound to exert in the present. Really, she thought to herself, she should be happier if she quite definitely ceased to be Miss Jasmine Grant, and became Jasmine, a parlourmaid. But, of course, Jasmine would be considered too flowery a name for service, and she should be known as Grant. Grant! A not unimpressive name for a parlourmaid. She once actually discussed the project with Hargreaves, Hopkins, and Cook; but they evidently thought she was mad to suggest such a thing; they evidently thought it would be better to go on serving in Heaven than begin to reign in Hell; not one of them had a trace of Lucifer in her temperament.
And so a dreary year passed away, a long dreary year during which Jasmine's most breathless and most daring ambition was to be a parlourmaid, her most poignant regret that she had not stayed long enough at Curtain Wells to have rehearsed the part.
"I cannot say how greatly I think you have improved, Jasmine," said Aunt May one day just a year after Jasmine had gone to Harley Street. "You were so wild at first, so heedless and impulsive. But I notice with pleasure that you are quite changed. I was speaking about it to your uncle to-day, and I suggested to him that as a token of our appreciation of the effort you have made to recognize what we have already done for you we should allow you an extra ten pounds a year. You are at present getting ten pounds a quarter, and we discussed for quite half an hour whether it would be better to allow you twelve pounds ten shillings a quarter or to presentyou with the extra ten pounds all at once, say on your birthday or at Christmas or on some such occasion. Of course, we did not want you to suppose that you are to regard this in any way as a substitute for a Christmas present. It is not. No, you are to regard it as an expression of our approval."
Ever since she had been in England, Jasmine had ceased to believe in the reality of anything talked about beforehand, so she thought no more about that extra ten pounds. But sure enough at Christmas she received it, and not only the ten pounds, but also a parrot-headed umbrella from Aunt May, a sachet of handkerchiefs from Lettice, the particular monstrosity in porcelain that was in vogue at the time from Pamela, and a kiss from Sir Hector.
Although Lettice and Pamela were not yet even engaged to be married, social life at 317, Harley Street was conducted on the principle that at any moment they might be. There could have been few young men about town who had escaped having tea there at least once. None of them interested Jasmine in the least, and it was perhaps just as well that she was not interested, because if she had been interested she would certainly have had no opportunity of displaying her interest owing to the fact that she always had to pour out tea. A woman pouring out tea for one man can make of the gesture a most alluring business; but a woman pouring out tea for twenty young men cannot escape disenchantment, however charming she may be at leisure. The fumes of the teapot, the steam from the kettle, the wrinkles provoked by her attempt to remember who said he did and who said he did not take sugar, all these combine to ravage the sweetest face. As for the dinner parties, although they belonged to another order of dinner parties compared with those given when Lettice andPamela were away, there always seemed to be one person at least for whose presence of a dinner party, nay more, for whose very existence in the world no excuse could be found. This person invariably took in Jasmine. No doubt her relatives individually never intended to be positively unkind. Whatever unkindness came to the surface was inherent in her position as a poor relation. Besides, nowadays she seldom offered any occasion for people to be unkind to her. She sometimes would ask herself with a show of indignation how she had allowed herself to surrender to this extent; but she had to admit that from the moment she entered Strathspey House she had foreseen the possibility of such a life's being in store for herself, and looking back at her behaviour during the first eighteen months of her stay, she could not see that at any point she had made a really determined stand against this kind of life. To be sure, she had had a few quarrels and arguments; she had delivered a few retorts. But what ineffective self-assertion it had all been! She had had at any rate one opportunity of striking out for herself during Uncle Matthew's illness, and what a muddle she had made of it, because she had been too proud to force herself upon Uncle Matthew, and because with a foolish dignity that was in reality nothing but humility she had given way to his unwillingness to confess an obligation.
And another year passed; a year of writing letters for her aunt in the morning, of going downstairs to see Cook about this, and of going upstairs to talk to Hargreaves about that, of running round the corner to Debenham and Freebody's to see if they could match this for the girls, or of spending the whole morning at Marshall and Snelgrove's with her aunt to see if they could match that for her.
On Christmas morning Lady Grant took her niece aside andconfided to her that, so heavy had been her own expenses and so heavy had been Sir Hector's expenses, she was sure Jasmine would understand if she did not receive the extra ten pounds as usual. To hear Aunt May, one might have supposed that the donation had been customary since her niece's birth.
"Our expenses are going to be even heavier this year," she announced. "There is so much entertaining to do nowadays."
When she first came to England Jasmine might have commented at this point on the fact that Lettice would be thirty next birthday and that Pamela was well in sight of being twenty-nine. But two complete years in Harley Street had taken away her desire to score visibly, and she was content nowadays with a faint smile to herself.
"What are you laughing at?" her aunt asked. "It is one of the few rather irritating little tricks you still have, that habit of smiling to yourself suddenly when I am talking to you. Some people might think you were laughing at me."
"Oh no, Aunt May," Jasmine protested.
"No, of course I know you are not laughing at me," her aunt allowed. "But I think it's a habit you should try to cure yourself of. It's apt to make you seem a little vapid sometimes."
"Yes, I often feel rather vapid," Jasmine admitted.
"Then all the more reason why you should not let other people notice it," said her aunt; and Jasmine did not argue the point further.
The loss of the ten pounds meant that Jasmine would not be able to have a new evening frock that winter. She was not yet sufficiently dulled by Harley Street not to feel disappointed at this. It has to be a very beautiful evening frock which does not look dowdy after being worn twice a week throughoutthe year, and the better of Jasmine's two evening frocks was nothing more than pretty and simple on the evening she put it on for the first time.
"Another long miserable year," she thought. "Nothing new till the twenty-fifth of March. All this quarter's allowance has gone in Christmas presents."
Jasmine's most conspicuous present that year was a sunshade that Aunt May had bought at the July sales.
"As if one wanted a sunshade in England," Jasmine said to herself.
THE new year opened with such a blaze of entertaining that even Hargreaves, who was much more reticent than Hopkins, allowed herself to observe to Jasmine that it really seemed as if her ladyship was determined to find husbands for Miss Lettice and Miss Pamela at last. The atmosphere of the house was charged with that kind of accumulated energy which is the external characteristic of all great charitable efforts. If Lettice had been a new church tower that had to be paid for or if Pamela had been a new wing for a hospital, it would have been impossible to promote a fiercer intensity of desire to accomplish something at all costs no matter what or how. January twinkled like a Christmas tree with minor festivals; but on February 14th—the date was appropriate, although it was not chosen deliberately—Lady Grant was to give a large dance in the Empress Rooms.
"And if it's successful," she told Jasmine, "I daresay I shall give another dance in May."
Jasmine refrained from saying "If it's unsuccessful, you mean," and merely indulged in one of those irritating little smiles.
"Oh, and by the way," her aunt added, "did you see that your old friend Harry Vibart has succeeded to the title?"
She looked at her niece keenly when she made this announcement; but Jasmine was determined not to give her the gratification of a self-conscious blush. Nor was it very difficult to appear indifferent to the news, because, as she assured herself, Harry Vibart, by his readiness to acquiesce in herdecree of banishment and by his complete silence for over two and a half years, was no longer of any emotional importance. At the same time, no girl who had been compelled to spend such an empty or rather such a drearily full two years as she had just spent could have helped letting her mind wander back for a moment, could have helped wondering whether if she had behaved differently, everything might not have been different.
"Of course, one does not want to say too much," said Lady Grant, "but one cannot help remembering what great friends he and the girls were some years ago, and really I think ... yes, really I think, Jasmine, it would be only polite if we sent him an invitation."
Jasmine's heart began to beat faster; not on account of the prospect of meeting Harry Vibart again, but with the effort of preventing herself from saying what she really thought of her aunt's impudent distortion of the true facts of the case.
The re-entry of one person from the past into her life was followed by the re-entry of another; for that very afternoon, a bleak January afternoon of brown fog, Hopkins came up to tell Jasmine that Miss Butt had called to see her and to ask where should she be shown? The only people who ever came to see Jasmine were dressmakers with whom she had been negotiating on behalf of her aunt and her cousins, and for whose misfits Jasmine was to be held responsible. These dressmakers were usually interviewed in the dining-room; but Hopkins informed Jasmine that Miss Butt had emphatically declined to be shown upstairs and had expressed a wish to interview her in the servants' hall. Such a request had affronted Hopkins' conception of etiquette, and she wasanxious to know what Jasmine intended to do about it. Jasmine was on sufficiently intimate terms with the servants by now to explain at once that Miss Butt and her ladyship were never on any account to be allowed to meet face to face, and she asked Hopkins if she thought that Cook would mind if in the circumstances she made use of the servants' hall.
"No, Miss Jasmine, I don't think she would at all," said Hopkins. "In fact from what I could see of it when I come upstairs, they was getting on very well together. But I didn't think it right to say you'd come down and see her there, until I had found out from you whether you would."
"All right, Amanda, I'll come down at once." Nowadays Jasmine was allowed in her own room to call Hopkins Amanda.
Mrs. Curtis, the cook of 317, Harley Street, was a woman of some majesty, and when she was seated in her arm-chair on the right of the hearth in the servants' hall, she conveyed as much as anyone Jasmine had ever seen the aroma of a regal hospitality mingled with a regal condescension. When Jasmine beheld the scene in the servants' hall she could easily have imagined that she was watching a meeting between two queens. Selina, in a crimson blanket coat, wearing a ruby coloured hat much befurred, with a musquash stole thrown back from her shoulders, was evidently informing Mrs. Curtis of the state of her kingdom; Mrs. Curtis was nodding in august approval, and from time to time turning her head to invite a comment from Hargreaves, who like a lady-in-waiting, stood at the head of her chair, whispering from time to time: "Quite so, Mrs. Curtis." Grouped on the other side of the table and not venturing to sit down, the junior servants listened to the conversation like respectful and attentive courtiers.
As soon as Selina saw Jasmine, she jumped up from her chair and embraced her warmly.
"An old friend come to see you," said Cook with immense benignity.
"Dear Selina!" Jasmine exclaimed. "How nice to see you again!"
"The pleasure's on both sides," said Selina. "Mrs. Vokins is dead."
Jasmine looked at Selina in astonishment. Nothing in the style of her attire suggested such an announcement; in fact, she could not remember ever having seen Selina wear colours before, and that she should have chosen to break out into crimson on the occasion of her friend's death was incomprehensible.
"When did she die?"
"Six months ago," said Selina. "And I went into strict mourning for six months. Last night she appeared to me, as I've just been telling Mrs. Curtis here. She said she was very happy in heaven; told me to stop mourning for her, and pop round to see you."
"Wonderful, isn't it?" Mrs. Curtis demanded from her juniors, who murmured an unanimous and discreet echo of assent.
"Then Mrs. Vokins was saved after all?" said Jasmine. "I remember you used to think that she couldn't be saved."
"Some of us think wrong sometimes," said Selina.
"That's true, Miss Butt," put in Cook.
"Some of us think very wrong sometimes," Selina continued. "And it's perfectly clear Mrs. Vokins was sent down to me to say as I'd been thinking wrong."
"Wonderful, isn't it?" Cook demanded once more.
"'I'm very happy in heaven, Miss Butt,' was her words,and though I hadn't time to ask exackly which of my friends and relations was up there with her, I put it to myself it was unlikely Mrs. Vokins would call and tell me she was very happy unless she shortly expected me to join her. She was never a woman who cared to disappoint anybody. So I'm looking forward to seeing a lot of people I never expected to see again. In fact I've given up the Children of Zion and turned Church of England, which my poor mother always was, until a clergyman spoke to her in a way no clergyman ought to speak, telling her what to do and what not to do, until she turned round in his face and became a Primitive Methodist, where she always poured out the tea at the New Year's gathering. Yes, Mrs. Vokins has been a good friend to me, and she's been a good friend to you, because she put it into my head to come down here and ask you if you'd like to come and live in my rooms at Catford where she used to live, with the use of the kitchen three times a week as per arrangement."
"Dear Selina, it's very kind of you to invite me," said Jasmine, "but ..." she broke off with a sigh.
"Which means you won't come," said Selina. "That I expected; and if Mrs. Vokins hadn't of been in such a hurry, I should have told her as much before she went. She vanished in a moment before I even had time to say how well she was looking. 'Radiant as an angel,' they say; and Mrs. Vokins was looking radiant. 'You certainly are looking celestial,' was what I should like to have said."
"Why haven't you been to see me all these two years?" asked Jasmine.
At this point, Mrs. Curtis, realizing that Jasmine and her friend might have matters to discuss which it would be undignified for them to discuss before the servants, asked thescullery-maid sharply if she intended to get those greens ready, or if she expected herself, Mrs. Curtis, to get them ready. The reproof administered to the scullery-maid was accepted by her fellow-servants as a hint for them to leave Jasmine and her visitor together, and when they were gone Mrs. Curtis, rising from her arm-chair like Leviathan from the deep, supposed that after all she should have to go and look after that girl.
"For girls, Miss Butt, nowadays.... Well, I needn't tell you what girls are. You know."
"Yes, I know," said Selina. "A lot of rabbits."
"That's very true, Miss Butt; a lot of rabbits," echoed Cook solemnly as she sailed from the room.
"Well, why haven't you been to see me, Selina?" Jasmine persisted when they were alone.
"Why haven't you been to seeme?"
"How could I? Uncle Matthew never invited me. Surely, Selina, you can understand I didn't want to force myself where I wasn't wanted. The last thing I wanted to do was to give him the impression that I wanted anything from him. He's had plenty of opportunities to ask for me if he wished to see me. My cousins have been over to see him lots of times."
"They have," agreed Selina, grimly.
"And they never brought me back any message."
"That doesn't say no message was sent," said Selina. "You know as well as I know Mr. Rouncivell never sends a letter of his own accord. He can't bring himself to it. I've seen him sit by the hour holding a stamp in his hand the same as I've seen boys holding butterflies between their fingers."
"Well, you could have written to me," Jasmine pointed out.
"I could have," Selina asserted. "And I ought to have; but I didn't. It's not a bit of good you going on talking about what people ought to have done. If we once get on that subject we shall go on talking here for ever. And it's no good being offended with me, even if you won't show a Christian spirit and go and live at Catford. I think you ought to have learnt to forgive by now. I've been forgiving people by the dozen these last two days. And although I don't think I shall, still you never know, and I may go so far as to forgiveher," Selina declared pointing with her forefinger at the ceiling to indicate whom she meant.
Jasmine tried to explain that she no longer felt herself capable of taking such a drastic step as going to live in Catford. She found it hard to convince Selina how impossible it was to accept her charity, and she was quite sure that her relatives would not dream of continuing her allowance should she go to Catford.
"In fact, my dear Selina, I think you'd better let me alone. I think that some people in this world are meant to occupy the kind of position I occupy, and I've got hardened to it. I don't really care a bit any more. I have enjoyed seeing you very much, and I hope you will come and see me again. It really isn't worth while for me to make any effort to get away from this. It really isn't."
Selina lectured Jasmine for a while on her lack of Christian spirit—evidently Christian spirit to her mind conveyed something between willingness to forgive and courage to defy—and then rising abruptly she said she must be off. Jasmine heard nothing more from her for some time after this.
Ten days before the dance at the Empress Rooms Sir Hector, for what he insisted was the first time in his life,was taken ill. He was apparently not suffering from anything more serious than a slight bronchial cold, but he made such a fuss about it that Jasmine was ready to believe it really was the first time in his life he had ever been ill. In addition to his apprehensions about his own condition and the various maladies that might supervene, he seemed to think that his illness was something in the nature of a national disaster, like a coal strike or a great war.
"Dear me," said his wife. "I'm afraid it looks as if you won't be at the dance."
"Dance!" shouted Sir Hector as loudly as his cold would let him. "Of course I shan't be at the dance. Even if I'm well enough to be out of bed, which is very improbable, I certainly shan't be well enough to go out. And if I were well enough to go out, which is practically impossible, I certainly shouldn't be well enough to stand about in draughts. No, I shall stay at home. It's a fearful nuisance being ill like this. I can't think why I should get ill. I neveramill."
"It's dreadfully disappointing," said Aunt May soothingly. "We had such a particularly nice lot of young men coming. All dancing men, too, so you wouldn't have had to talk to them for more than a minute. I don't like to put it off. I never think things go so well after they've been put off."
"Oh, no, for goodness' sake don't put it off," said Sir Hector. "Quite enough things have been put off on account of my illness as it is. The Duchess of Shropshire is in despair because I can't go and see her. She can't stand Williamson." Dr. Williamson was Sir Hector's assistant. "Nothing serious, of course, but it creates such a bad impression if a man like me is ill. It shakes my confidence in myself. I can't think where I got this cold."
"People do get colds very often in January," said his wife.
"Other people get colds. I never do. Now what is that horrible mess that Jasmine is holding in her hand? It's no good just feeding me up on these messes and thinking that that is going to cure me: because it isn't."
Jasmine was expecting every minute to hear her aunt regretfully inform her that owing to Sir Hector's condition it would be impossible for her to go to the ball, because somebody would be required to stay at home and look after the invalid. To her surprise nothing was said about this, and she began to turn her attention to a new evening frock. This was a moment when the extra ten pounds she failed to get at Christmas would have been useful. Notwithstanding the surrender of her pride, Jasmine still had a little vanity; and when she took out of her wardrobe the two evening dresses that had served her during the last year, and saw how worn and faded they were, she began to wonder if after all she should not be glad if her aunt settled things over her head by telling her that she could not go.
She was vexed, when she opened her aunt's correspondence that morning and read that Sir Harry Vibart accepted with pleasure Lady Grant's kind invitation for Wednesday, February 14th, to detect herself the prey of a sudden impulse to go to this dance at all costs. She debated with herself whether she should not ask Miss Hemmings, the little dressmaker in Marylebone High Street who made most of her things, to make her an evening frock on the understanding that she should be paid for it next quarter. At first Jasmine was rather timid about embarking upon such an adventure into extravagance; but she decided to do so, and when she had a moment to herself she slipped out of the house and hurriedround to Miss Hemmings' little shop. Alas, Miss Hemmings; like Sir Hector, was also in bed with a bronchial cold; she was dreadfully sorry, but quite unable to oblige Miss Grant by the 14th.
"Oh, well, it's evidently not to be," Jasmine decided.
She got home in time to meet Selina coming up the area steps, dressed this time in a brilliant peacock blue blanket coat and an emerald green hat.
"Selina!" exclaimed Jasmine. "You seem to go in for nothing but clothes nowadays."
"You must dress a bit if you belong to the Church of England," said Selina sharply. "It's as different from the chapel as the stalls are from the pit. Don't forget that."
"Well, I've just been trying to get a frock for a dance on Wednesday, but my dressmaker's ill and...." Jasmine broke off; she did not wish to make Selina think that she was in need of money, for she felt that if she did, Selina would immediately offer to lend her some. And if she accepted Selina's charity it would be more than ever difficult to refuse to occupy those three rooms at Catford.
"Well, that's awkward," said Selina. "But I'll lend you anything you want."
"Oh, thank you very much, but it's an evening frock."
"Ah! That I don't go in for, and never shall. Low necks I shall never come to. Do you want to go to this party very much?"
"I do rather," Jasmine admitted.
"There's my bus," said Selina suddenly; and without a word of farewell she vanished round the corner shouting and waving her umbrella.
The next morning, which was Tuesday and the day before thedance, Jasmine received a postcard on which was printed the current price of coal. She thought at first that it had been put in her place by mistake; but looking at it again she saw written in a fine small hand between the Wallsends and the SilkstonesCome to Rouncivell Lodge to-morrow at eleven o'clock; and between the Silkstones and the Cobbles the initials M. R.
Aunt May failed to understand how Uncle Matthew could be so inconsiderate as to invite Jasmine to Muswell Hill on the very day before she was giving a dance, and particularly when it would have been advisable in any case that Jasmine should be at home that morning in case her uncle wanted something.
"You must write and tell him you will go later on in the week."
Jasmine agreed to do so, but she added that she should have to give Uncle Matthew a reason for refusing to go and see him, and Aunt May, realizing that such a reason would involve herself with the old gentleman, gave a grudging assent to Jasmine's going that day. Jasmine had difficulty in escaping from Harley Street early enough to be punctual to her appointment with Uncle Matthew, but she managed it somehow, although at one time it seemed as if Sir Hector was wanting so many things which only Jasmine could provide that she should never get away. In the end when Lady Grant was calling 'Jasmine!' from the first landing, Hopkins replied 'Yes, my lady,' and before Lady Grant had time to explain that she did not want Hopkins, her niece was hurrying on her way north.
Jasmine wondered in what gay colours she should find Selina when she reached Rouncivell Lodge; but Selina met her atthe gate in her customary black, and advised her sharply to make no allusions to her clothes in front of the old gentleman.
"Why haven't you been to see me before?" Uncle Matthew demanded as the clocks all over the house chimed eleven o'clock.
"I never go anywhere unless I'm asked."
"Well, don't put on your hoity-toity manners with me, miss. Do you expect me, at my age, to come trotting after you? I told your aunt several times I should like to see you."
"She never gave me your message."
"No, I suppose she didn't," said the old gentleman with a grim chuckle. "Now what's all this about wanting a dress for a ball? Do you expect me to provide you with dresses for balls?"
"Of course I don't," said Jasmine, looking angrily round to where Selina had been standing a moment ago. But the yellow-faced housekeeper had gone.
"Well, I've borrowed Eneas' carriage for the day, and I'll take you for a drive. I don't know how that fellow can afford to keep a carriage. I can't. At least, I can't afford to keep a carriage for other people to use, and that's what always happens. Oh, yes, they'd like me to have a carriage, I've no doubt. But I'm not going to have one."
"It's at the door, Mr. Rouncivell," said Selina, putting her head into the room.
Uncle Matthew was so voluminously wrapped up for this expedition that it seemed at first as if he would never be able to squeeze through the door of the brougham; but by unwinding himself from a plaid shawl he managed it.
"Where am I to drive to?" asked Uncle Eneas' gardener in an injured voice. He evidently disapproved of being lent to other people.
"Drive to London," said the old gentleman.
"Where?" the coachman repeated.
"To London, you idiot! Don't you know where London is?"
"London's a large place," said the coachman.
"I don't need you to tell me that. Drive to Regent Street."
The drive was spent in trying to accommodate Uncle Matthew's wraps to the temperature of the inside of the brougham, and in an attempt to calculate how much it cost Eneas to keep a horse, carriage, and coachman. This was a complicated calculation, because it involved deducting from the cost per week not merely the amount saved in artificial manures, but also the amount saved by growing bigger vegetables than would otherwise have been grown.
"But whatever way you look at it," said Uncle Matthew finally, "it's a dead loss!"
When they reached Regent Street, Uncle Matthew told Jasmine to stop the carriage at the first shop where women's clothes were sold.
"Women's clothes?" repeated Jasmine.
"Yes, women's clothes. I'm told you want a gown for a ball to-morrow. Well, I'm going to buy you one."
Jasmine could scarcely believe that it was Uncle Matthew who was talking, and her expression of amazement roused the old gentleman to ask her what she was staring at.
"Think I've never bought gowns for women before?" he asked. "I used to come shopping every day with my poor wife, fifty years ago."
The brougham had stopped at a famous and fashionable dressmaker's, and Jasmine wonderingly followed the old gentleman into the shop.
"I want a gown," said the old gentleman fiercely to the first lady who wriggled up to him and asked what he required.
They were accommodated with chairs in the showroom, and presently a young woman emerged from a glass grated door and walked past them in an Anglo-Saxon attitude.
"You needn't be shy of me," said Uncle Matthew. "I'm old enough to be your grandfather." The show-woman tittered politely at what she supposed was Uncle Matthew's joke.
"Do you like that model?" she said.
"Model?" echoed the old gentleman.
"That gown?" the show-woman enquired.
"Gown?" echoed Uncle Matthew. "What gown?"
"Miss Abels," the show-woman called, "would you mind walking past once more?"
"You don't mean to tell me that what she's wearing is an evening gown you propose to sell me?" asked Uncle Matthew, on whom an explanation of the young woman's behaviour was beginning to dawn. "Why, I never thought she was dressed at all."
The show-woman again tittered politely.
"We consider that one of our most becoming gowns," she said. "So simple, isn't it? Don't you like the lines? And it's quite a new shade. Angel's blush."
"It's very pretty," said Jasmine.
"Well," said Uncle Matthew, "I suppose you know what you want, and I daresay you're right to choose something simple. It's no good wasting money on a lot of frills. How much is that?"
"That gown," said the show-woman. "Let me see. That's a Paris model. Quite exclusive. Thirty-five guineas."
"What?" the old gentleman yelled. "Come out of the shop, come out of the shop!" he commanded Jasmine.
"I never heard of anything so monstrous in my life," he said indignantly to Jasmine on the pavement outside. "Thirty-five guineas! For a piece of stuff the size of three pocket-handkerchiefs! No wonder you can't afford to go to parties! Well, I made a mistake."
"But, Uncle Matthew," Jasmine explained, "I didn't want to go to a fashionable shop like this. There are lots of other shops where evening frocks don't cost so much."
"You can't have a dress made of less than that," he said.
"It isn't a question of amount. It's a question of cut and material."
But the old gentleman could not bring himself to go to another shop. He had suffered a severe shock, and he wished to be alone.
"I'll drive home by myself," he said. "You can get back to Harley Street quite easily from here. Thirty-five guineas! Why, poor Clara's bridal dress didn't cost that."
They were all very curious at Harley Street to know why Uncle Matthew had sent for Jasmine. She did not feel inclined to tell them the real reason, and she merely said that he wanted to see her. Aunt May, however, was feeling bitterly on the subject, and she was suspicious of Jasmine's reticence.
"It's a pity he should have fetched you all that way for nothing," she said. "You had better have done as I suggested and gone the day after the dance. We have all been so busy this morning that poor Uncle Hector has been rather neglected, and I've had to leave a great deal undone which will have to be done this afternoon, and I'm afraid he'll still feel a littleneglected, so really, Jasmine, I don't know.... I suppose you'd be very disappointed if you didn't come to the dance, but really I don't know but that it may be necessary for you to stay at home to-morrow and look after Uncle Hector."
"I'll stay at home with pleasure," said Jasmine.
Her aunt looked at her. "Oh, you don't object to staying at home?"
"Why should I? I haven't got a frock fit to wear."
"Not got a frock fit to wear? Really, my dear, how you do exaggerate sometimes! That's a very becoming little yellow frock you wear. A very becoming little frock. You must be very anxious to impress somebody if you are not content to wear that."
Jasmine turned away without answering. She would not give her aunt the pleasure of seeing that the malicious allusion had touched her.
The following afternoon it was definitely decided that Sir Hector was too ill to be left in the hands of servants, and, very regretfully as she assured her, Lady Grant told her niece that she must ask her to stay at home.
"You mustn't be too disappointed, because perhaps I shall give another dance in April or May, and perhaps out of my own little private savings bank I may be able to add something to your March allowance that will enable you to get a frock which you do consider good enough to wear."
Jasmine thought that it would probably annoy her aunt if she looked as if she did not mind staying at home; so she very cheerfully announced her complete indifference to the prospect of going to the dance, and her intention of reading Sir Hector to sleep. Dinner was eaten in the feverish way in which dinners before balls are always eaten. Before startingPamela called Jasmine into her room to admire her frock, and Jasmine took a good deal of pleasure in telling her that she was not sure, but she thought she liked Lettice's frock better; and to Lettice, whom she presently visited, she said after a suitable pause that she was afraid Pamela's frock suitedherbetter than her own did. Hargreaves and Hopkins, who were both indignant at Jasmine's being left behind, took the cue from her and they both praised so enthusiastically the other's dress to each sister, that the two girls went off to the dance feeling thoroughly ill-tempered.
"What would you like me to read you, Uncle Hector?" asked Jasmine when the house was silent.
"Well, really, I don't know," he said. "I don't think there's anything nowadays worth reading. I don't care about these modern writers. I don't understand them. But if they came to me as patients, I should know how to prescribe for them."
"Shall I read you some Dickens?" Jasmine suggested.
"It's hardly worth while beginning a long novel at this time of the evening."
"I might read youThe Christmas Carol."
"Oh, I know that by heart," said Sir Hector.
"Well, what shall I read you? Shall I read you something from Thackeray'sBook of Snobs?"
"No, I know that by heart, too," said Sir Hector.
"If you don't like modern writers, and you know all the other writers by heart...."
"Well, if you want to read something," said Sir Hector at last, as if he were gratifying a spoilt child, "you had better read me Mr. Balfour's speech in the House last night."
It was lucky for Mr. Balfour that Sir Hector had not beenpresent when he made the speech, for at every other line he ejaculated: "Rot! Unmitigated rot! Rubbish! The man doesn't know what he's talking about! What an absurd statement! Read that again, will you, my dear? I never heard such piffle!"
In spite of Sir Hector's interruptions, Jasmine stumbled through Mr. Balfour's speech, and she was just going to begin Mr. Asquith's reply when the door of the bedroom opened and Uncle Matthew walked in.
Sir Hector's first instinct when this apparition presented itself was to grab the thermometer and take his temperature; but perceiving that Jasmine was as much surprised as himself and that it was certainly not a feverish delusion, he stammered out a greeting.
"I don't advise you to come into the room, though," he said. "I've got a dreadful cold."
"I thought you were never ill," said Uncle Matthew.
"Well, I'm not. It's a most extraordinary thing. Where I got this cold I cannot imagine," Sir Hector was declaiming when Uncle Matthew cut him short. Jasmine always felt like giggling when Sir Hector was talking to his uncle, because she could not get used to the idea that both Sir Hector and herself should address him as Uncle Matthew. She was still young enough to conceive all people over fifty merged in contemporary senility.
"I thought you were going to a dance," said Uncle Matthew to Jasmine.
"Oh, Jasmine very kindly offered to stay behind and look after me," Sir Hector explained.
"Well, I'll look after you," said Uncle Matthew.
His nephew stared at him.
"Yes, I'll look after you," the old gentleman repeated. "What time do you take your medicine?Youhad better get along to the dance," he said to Jasmine.
"But Jasmine can't go off to a dance by herself," Sir Hector protested.
"Can't she?" said Uncle Matthew. "Well, then I'll go with her, and Selina shall look after you."
He went to the door and called downstairs to his housekeeper.
"I never heard anything so ridiculous," Sir Hector objected.
"Didn't you?" said the old gentleman sardonically. "I'm surprised to hear that. You've been listening to the sound of your own voice for a good many years now, haven't you?"
Perhaps Sir Hector's cold was worse than one was inclined to think, from his grumbling, for if he had not been feeling very ill the prospect of being left in charge of Selina must have cured him instantly.
"When do you take your medicine?" asked Uncle Matthew.
The old gentleman was evidently determined that whatever else was left undone for his nephew's comfort, he should have his full dose of medicine at the hands of the housekeeper. Selina came into the room and settled herself down by the bed with an air of determination that plainly showed the patient what he was in for. Selina's new and more optimistic creed would probably not tend so far as to include Sir Hector Grant among the saved, and what between the patient's pessimism about his state in this world and Selina's pessimism about his state in the world to come, Jasmine felt that if she was ever going to be appreciated by Uncle Hector sheshould be appreciated by him that night. Meanwhile Uncle Matthew, after settling his nephew, was hurrying her downstairs.
"I have found you a gown after all," he announced, "and a much prettier gown than anything you could find in London nowadays. If that gown yesterday cost thirty-five guineas, the one I have got for you would have cost a hundred and thirty-five guineas."
"Where is it?"
"Where is it?" her uncle repeated. "Why waiting upstairs in your bedroom, of course, for you to put it on. Now be quick, because I don't want to be kept up all night by this ball. I have not been out as late as this for thirty-one years. I'll give you a quarter of an hour to get ready."
Jasmine ran upstairs to her room, where she found Hargreaves and Hopkins standing in astonishment before the dress which Uncle Matthew had brought her. The fragrance of rosemary and lavender pervaded the air, and Jasmine realized that it came from the frock. Uncle Matthew was right when he said that it was unlike any frock that could be found nowadays.
"Wherever did he get it?" wondered Hargreaves.
"It's beautiful material," said Hopkins.
Jasmine was not well enough versed in the history of feminine costume to know how exactly to describe the frock; but she saw at once that it belonged to a bygone generation, and she divined in the same instant that it was a frock belonging to Uncle Matthew's dead wife, one of the frocks that all these years had been kept embalmed in a trunk that was never opened except when he was alone. It was an affair of many flounces and furbelows, the colour nankeenand ivory, the material very fine silk with a profusion of Mechlin lace.
"Whoever saw the like of it?" demanded Hargreaves.
"Whoever did?" Hopkins echoed.
"It would be all right if it had been a fancy dress ball," said Hargreaves.
"Of course, it would have been lovely if it had been fancy dress," Hopkins agreed.
"Well, though it isn't a fancy dress ball," said Jasmine, "I am going to wear it."
The maids held up their hands in astonishment. But Jasmine knew that the crisis of her life had arrived. If she failed in this crisis she saw before her nothing but fifteen dreary years stretching in a vista that ended in the sea front at Bognor. She realized that, if she rejected this dress and failed to recognize what was probably the first disinterested and kindly action of Uncle Matthew since his wife's death, she should forfeit all claims to consideration in the future. Along with her sharp sense of what her behaviour meant to her in the future, there was another reason for wearing the dress, a reason that was dictated only by motives of consideration for Uncle Matthew himself. It seemed to her that it would be wicked to reject what must have cost him so much emotion to provide. What embarrassment or self-consciousness was not worth while if it was going to repay the sympathy of an old man so long unaccustomed to show sympathy? What if everyone in the ballroom did turn round and stare at her? What if her aunt raged and her cousins decided that she had disgraced them by her eccentric attire? What if Harry Vibart muttered his thanks to Heaven for having escaped from a mad girl like herself? Nothing really mattered exceptthat she should be brave, and that Uncle Matthew should be able to congratulate himself on his kindness.
While Jasmine was driving from Harley Street to the Empress Rooms, she felt like an actress before the first night that was to be the turning-point of her career. She was amused to find that Uncle Matthew had again borrowed the Eneas Grants' brougham, and she could almost have laughed aloud at the thought of Uncle Hector's being dosed by Selina; but presently the silent drive—Uncle Matthew was more voluminously muffled than ever—deprived her of any capacity for being amused, and the thought of her arrival at the dance now filled her with gloomy apprehension. The brougham was jogging along slowly enough, but to Jasmine it seemed to be moving like the fastest automobile, and the journey from Marylebone to Kensington seemed a hundred yards. When they pulled up outside the canopied entrance, Jasmine had a momentary impulse to run away; but the difficulty of extracting Uncle Matthew from the brougham and of unwrapping him sufficiently in the entrance hall to secure his admission as a human being occupied her attention; and almost before she knew what was happening, she had taken the old gentleman's arm and they were entering the ballroom, where the sound of music, the shuffle of dancing feet, the perfume and the heat, the brilliance and the motion, acted like a sedative drug.
And then the music stopped. The dancers turned from their dancing. A thousand eyes regarded her. Lady Grant's nose grew to monstrous size.
"Hullo!" cried a familiar voice. "I say, I've lost my programme, so you'll have to give me every dance to help me through the evening."
Jasmine had let go Uncle Matthew's arm and taken Harry Vibart's, and in a mist, while she was walking across the middle of the ballroom, she looked back a moment and saw Uncle Matthew, like some pachydermatous animal, moving slowly in the direction of her aunt's nose.
THE END
PRINTED BY W M. BRENDON AND SON, LTD., PLYMOUTH, ENGLAND
SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
POOR RELATIONS
ByCOMPTON MACKENZIE
SUNDAY TIMES:'Poor Relations' is a book that from cover to cover is informed with wit, humour and high spirits, and is yet in its own way a mordant criticism of life."
OBSERVER:The vitality that is Mr. Compton Mackenzie's tremendous gift makes the book as tonic as a spring day.... In vividness, in sheer colour and variety, Mr. Compton Mackenzie is unmatchable."
WORLD:One of the drollest books written for years."
DAILY NEWS:Here is an imagination almost Dickens-like in its abundance."
DAILY CHRONICLE:Nothing could be more effective, nothing more persistently and ineffably droll."
EVENING NEWS:It is all rich comedy; it exudes humours on every page."
LAND AND WATER:Three hundred pages of charming and farcical light-heartedness."
STAR:A book of high spirits without pause."
DAILY EXPRESS:Irresistibly funny."
MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
SYLVIA SCARLETT
ByCOMPTON MACKENZIE
PALL MALL GAZETTE:A vital and stimulating work, full of the joy of life and much of its sorrow; and Sylvia Scarlett herself is one of the few really great women in fiction—can indeed hold her own with Beatrix Esmond and Becky Sharp."
PUNCH:In several respects it is the best thing Mr. Mackenzie has yet done...."
SCOTSMAN:Amazing dexterity of workmanship—every figure is instinct with vitality."
MORNING POST:There is no question about the rightness and brightness and delightfulness of the adventures."
LIVERPOOL COURIER:Amazing inventiveness, Dickens-like prodigality and humour in characterization, youthful daring and clean candour."
LIVERPOOL POST:"His observation dissects humanity and entrances the student with its amazing cleverness and its astonishing penetration."
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:The inimitable exponent of joyous youth—a certain Cockney humour—as gaily witty as anything the world can show."
BIRMINGHAM POST:In sheer brilliance may well be thought to excel even its predecessor."
EveinTHE TATLER:"Such a riot and rush of adventures and contrasts, such a breathless scramble, such rainbow emotions...."
Mr. St. John AdcockinTHE SKETCH:"Nothing really happens."
Mr. Frank SwinnertoninTHE BOOKMAN:"An exhibition of talent perversely employed."
MARTIN SECKER NUMBER FIVE JOHN STREET ADELPHI
SOME PRESS OPINIONS OF
SYLVIA & MICHAEL
ByCOMPTON MACKENZIE
EVENING STANDARD:That originality and depth of thought which we associate with his name. Often startling as are his ideas, they have a way of melting very quickly into and taking their place in the scheme of things, the world of truth and reality."
THE SCOTSMAN:The book is one which holds the reader in thrall."
DAILY MAIL:A master story-teller."
GLASGOW HERALD:As fine as anything that even Mr. Mackenzie has accomplished."
PUNCH:An exhilarating, even intoxicating entertainment."
LIVERPOOL COURIER:"One may cheerfully and gratefully acknowledge the brilliancy ... its absorbing interest, its sustained intellectual strength, and the splendour of its moral implications."
ILLUSTRATED LONDON NEWS:The colour, the humour, the irony, and the philosophy that make up the compound of his amazing books."
CAMBRIDGE MAGAZINE:Besides achieving a performance in itself no less remarkable than its predecessors, Mr. Mackenzie does something new: he shows his teeth."
Mr. James DouglasinTHE STAR:"A literary fake."
Mr. Robert K. RiskinTHE SUNDAY TIMES."It will not permit itself to be read."
Mr. Hugh WalpoleinTHE NEW YORK SUN:"A new chunk from the erotic adventures of Sylvia Scarlett ... but this does not sound thrilling to everyone...."