Gilbert

Clemence Dane

I am the aunt of Annabel. Annabel is coming next Friday to the birthday party she ought to have had a month ago; but she had measles instead. I am anxious for Annabel to enjoy herself. Whom shall I ask to meet her?

Annabel is five—a gracious-mannered five, with a smooth bobbed head of red hair, eyes like lilacs, and a generously curved mouth. She is a darling. She is also a devil. She never allows me or anyone else a quiet moment with her mother when she is in the room: indeed, she owns her parents and regards all visitors as her perquisites. She owns also, and can use with disastrous effect on my borders, a scooter and a tricycle. She can adjust the wireless set and listen in at her pleasure to Bournemouth, Cardiff or London. She swears at the dog in broad Devon, and has her ideas about her frocks. But she cannot read or tie her own shoes or tell the time.

Annabel is coming to tea on Friday. How am I to keep her amused? Shall I invite Philip Collins, that hard-working child, proprietor of stickle-backs, my particular friend? Will there be anything left of Philip if I do—or of Annabel? Philip is seven. With only a year or so between them they ought to get on. And yet, how did I feel towards seven when I was five? Across the white magic-lantern circle of my memory a shadow flits, a leggy, olive-green shadow, with fur at its neck and wrists, and I recognise Gilbert, and pause.

Annabel is so much more sophisticated and so much more of a baby than we were ever allowed to be, that the Gilbert adventure could hardly happen to her. She would say she didn’t like him and be done with it. And yet—suppose she didn’t! Suppose she suffered him in silence like her aunt before her! I do want Annabel to enjoy herself.

“SHE OWNS ALSO, AND CAN USE WITH DISASTROUS EFFECT ON MY BORDERS, A SCOOTER AND A TRICYCLE.”

You must not think that there was any harm in Gilbert. He was, I see now, a nice, polite little boy. My Aunt Angela said so. He was as nice a boy, I daresay, as Philip, who is—perhaps—to make Annabel’s acquaintance next Friday. But he was long and, as it was a fancy-dress ball, his mother had dressed him ingreenery-yallery tights, and a doublet with moleskin at the neck and wrists. Now, when you are no older than Annabel and own a live mole which you keep in the ring-dove’s cage, you do not feel friendly to people who wear moleskin. (No, I don’t know what happened to the ring-dove, though I remember that she lived for some time in the kitchen in a straw-coloured wicker-work cage, and was incessantly laying eggs that wouldn’t hatch and croo-rooing over them in a lamentable voice which made the nursery feel that the whole bitter business was the nursery’s fault.)

It is not too much to say that from the moment I set eyes upon Gilbert I felt for him that unreasoning sick dislike of which only a child is capable, and which it never attempts to explain. I never said a word to my Aunt Angela about Gilbert, though I noted him with a prophetic shudder as I followed her across the shining, slippery floor. Indeed, nobody could help noticing Gilbert. It was not only that he was so much longer than anybody else, so prominent among the Joan of Arcs and Pierrots and Geishas, but that he was such a pervasive dancer: he seemed to be behaving beautifully with everybody at once. There was a horrible fascination in his smiling efficiency: he wasn’t shy like everyone else: he didn’t mind what he did: and he did it well. He was a handsome boy too, for my Aunt Angela said so. Indeed, I can best fix him for you by recalling the fact that when I saw Lewis Waller come upon the stage as Robin Hood I instantly, and for the first time in fifteen years, remembered Gilbert.

Before I could pull on my white silk mittens, my aunt (I knew she would) had caught Gilbert and introduced him to me, and he wrote his name on my programme and his own, and his moleskin wrist—his mole must have been an older and oilier mole than mine—rubbed against my bare hand. In the frantic subsequent attempts to scrub off the feel, I spilled water down my new frock, my fancy-dress of yellow satin petals over a green satinskirt, with three green satin leaves dangling from the neck; for I, in that hour, was a primrose.

But washing my hands and drying my frock only took up a dance and a half: Gilbert and his Berlin Polka were still to be faced.

I had an idea. I would anticipate Gilbert: I would have a partner of my own. I marked one down, a rosy, bewildered little girl in sparkles: a Snow-white—a Fairy queen—what did I care? I gave her her orders; for she was only four. She was to look out for me when number seven began. She was to refuse to dance with anyone else. She was dancing the Berlin polka with me—did she understand?—with me: and if a green boy with moleskin on his wrists asked her where I was, well—there I wasn’t! Did she quite understand?

I was still passionately explaining the situation when the music of number six struck up, and her partner, a Father Christmas smaller than herself, jogged her away. I can still see so clearly the bunchy little figure—we were not so particular about the cut of our clothes as is Annabel’s generation—and the alarmed dark eyes and hot cheeks as she looked back at me over her winged shoulder. As for me, I had to put in the perilous time somehow. I hid.

I found a beautiful place to hide in, a room with cane chairs and palms, and one or two screened recesses with two chairs and a table in each. I sat me down in the only empty recess and listened to the music, and wondered whether Gilbert had begun to look for me yet. Soon a young lady with bare shoulders and a young gentleman with an eye-glass arrived, looked in, departed, and shortly returned again. It was quite evident that they wanted my refuge. I wasn’t going to let them have it. I was terrified of them both, but I was still more terrified of Gilbert.

Said the young gentleman:

“What are you doing here?” and he called me “little girl!”

Said I, firmly, but I was on the edge of tears:

“I am waiting for my partner,” and felt that I lied, for I was not exactly waiting for Gilbert.

“HE STARED AT ME REPROACHFULLY”

“Oh, indeed!” said the young gentleman, and stared again, and whispered to the young lady with the white shoulders, and the young lady whispered back. You cannot think how miserable I felt. They went away at last; but they, and my lie—a lie was a lie in those days—had ruined my haven. I slipped out as the music stopped, and instantly the young gentleman and the young lady got up from two chairs under a palm and sat down behind my screen, while—oh horror!—Gilbert’s green and questing length crossed and re-crossed the lighted swirling spaceon the other side of the draped doorway. I knew—who better?—whom he sought. I backed into the dark corner formed by the wall and the other side of the screen, too much occupied with Gilbert’s next move to attend to the murmurs on the other side of it. But the sitters-out were sensitive; or I, effacing myself as much as possible, must have pushed against the screen. Slowly, over the top, rose the head of the young gentleman. He stared down at me reproachfully and I, in a paralysis of embarrassment, stared up at him. You cannot think how tall the screen seemed, and how terrible the face of the young gentleman to the eyes of five. Nothing was said. How long he was prepared to stare at me I do not know, for his eye-glass was more than I could bear: at that moment even Gilbert was easier to face. I sidled back into the ballroom, worming my way as self-effacingly as possible in and out between mothers and empty chairs, till a familiar glitter caught my eye. It was my partner, my illegal partner, so soft, so rosy, so cosy, so blessedly harmless, so very much smaller than I. She was not pleased to see me (I realise now that I must have been as awful to her as Gilbert to me) but what did that matter? I grasped her hurriedly by a hand and a wing:

“One, two, three,” I prompted: and we put our feet into the second position. But fate was looking after the little girl in sparkles, not after me.

“My dance, I think.” Gilbert, cool, easy, adequate, even remembered to bow. “I’ve been looking for you everywhere!” he said and he put out mole-skinny hands.

“I’m dancing withher,” I muttered. It was my last throw. But at that a new voice interposed:

“Oh, Mary, you mustn’t take the little girl away from her partner!” And the fairy queen, inexpressible relief in her eyes, pulled her hand out of mine and retired upon her mother.

I danced with Gilbert.

The last straw was hearing my Aunt Angela telling my mother, in the cab coming home, that it was pretty to see how the child had enjoyed herself.

Now I wonder how Annabel would have dealt with Gilbert? Her childhood is not my childhood. I readPickwickat five, while Annabel is satisfied withTeddy Tail: that fancy-dress ball was my first party, while Annabel goes to dances twice a week. Annabel’s emotions could never have been in the least like mine. And yet, five years old in the eighteen-nineties is nearer five years old in the nineteen-twenties than five years old will ever be to a contemporary aunt. If I ask my nice Philip Collins to tea—such a handsome boy!—such good manners!—how am I to be certain that I am not inflicting a Gilbert upon Annabel? On the other hand, Annabel might have liked Gilbert. He was a popular person that evening: and Annabel has never kept moles.

Annabel does not think me young. She asked me yesterday if I had ever spoken to Queen Elizabeth; but she likes to hear what I did in that Palæolithic age when I was little. I will tell her about Gilbert when I tuck her up to-night, and see what she says.

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