A Simpleton Part 33

"It was all that Mrs. Vivian's fault. She laughed at me so for not wearing them; and she has a waist you can span--the wretch!"

"Oh, then, you have been wearing stays clandestinely?"

"Why, you know I have. Oh, what a stupid! I have let it all out."

"How could you do it, when you knew, by experience, it is your death?"

"But it looks so beautiful, a tiny waist."

"It looks as hideous as a Chinese foot, and, to the eye of science, far more disgusting; it is the cause of so many unlovely diseases."

"Just tell me one thing; have you looked at Mrs. Vivian?"

"Minutely. I look at all your friends with great anxiety, knowing no animal more dangerous than a fool. Vivian--a skinny woman, with a pretty face, lovely hair, good teeth, dying eyes"--

"Yes, lovely!"

"A sure proof of a disordered stomach--and a waist pinched in so unnaturally, that I said to myself, 'Where on earth does this idiot put her liver?' Did you ever read of the frog who burst, trying to swell to an ox? Well, here is the rivalry reversed; Mrs. Vivian is a bag of bones in a balloon; she can machine herself into a wasp; but a fine young woman like you, with flesh and muscle, must kill yourself three or four times before you can make your body as meagre, hideous, angular, and unnatural as Vivian's. But all you ladies are mono-maniacs; one might as well talk sense to a gorilla. It brought you to the edge of the grave.

I saved you. Yet you could go and--G.o.d grant me patience. So I suppose these unprincipled women lent you their stays to deceive your husband?"

"No. But they laughed at me so that--Oh, Christie, I'm a wretch; I kept a pair at the Lucases, and a pair at Madame Cie's, and I put them on now and then."

"But you never appeared here in them?"

"What, before my tyrant? Oh no, I dared not."

"So you took them off before you came home?"

Rosa hung her head, and said "Yes" in a reluctant whisper.

"You spent your daylight dressing. You dressed to go out; dressed again in stays; dressed again without them; and all to deceive your husband, and kill yourself, at the bidding of two shallow, heartless women, who would dance over your grave without a pang of remorse, or sentiment of any kind, since they live, like midges, ONLY TO DANCE IN THE SUN, AND SUCK SOME WORKER'S BLOOD."

"Oh, Christie! I'm so easily led. I am too great a fool to live. Kill me!"

And she kneeled down, and renewed the request, looking up in his face with an expression that might have disarmed Cain ipsum.

He smiled superior. "The question is, are you sorry you have been so thoughtless?"

"Yes, dear. Oh! oh!"

"Will you be very good to make up?"

"Oh, yes. Only tell me how; for it does not come natural to poor me."

"Keep out of those women's way for the rest of the season."

"I will."

"Bring your stays home, and allow me to do what I like with them."

"Of course. Cut them in a million pieces."

"Till you are recovered, you must be my patient, and go nowhere without me."

"That is no punishment, I am sure."

"Punishment! Am I the man to punish you? I only want to save you."

"Well, darling, it won't be the first time."

"No; but I do hope it will be the last."

CHAPTER XI.

"Sublata causa tollitur effectus." The stays being gone, and dissipation moderated, Mrs. Staines bloomed again, and they gave one or two unpretending little dinners at the Bijou. Dr. Staines admitted no false friends to these. They never went beyond eight; five gentlemen, three ladies. By this arrangement the terrible discursiveness of the fair, and man's cruel disposition to work a subject threadbare, were controlled and modified, and a happy balance of conversation established. Lady Cicely Treherne was always invited, and always managed to come; for she said, "They were the most agweeable little paaties in London, and the host and hostess both so intewesting." In the autumn, Staines worked double tides with the pen, and found a vehicle for medical narratives in a weekly magazine that did not profess medicine.

This new vein put him in heart. His fees, towards the end of the year, were less than last year, because there was no hundred-guinea fee; but there was a marked increase in the small fees, and the unflagging pen had actually earned him two hundred pounds, or nearly. So he was in good spirits.

Not so Mrs. Staines; for some time she had been uneasy, fretful, and like a person with a weight on her mind.

One Sunday she said to him, "Oh, dear, I do feel so dull. n.o.body to go to church with, nor yet to the Zoo."

"I'll go with you," said Staines.

"You will! To which?"

"To both; in for a penny, in for a pound."

So to church they went; and Staines, whose motto was "Hoc age," minded his book. Rosa had intervals of attention to the words, but found plenty of time to study the costumes.

During the Litany in bustled Clara, the housemaid, with a white jacket on so like her mistress's, that Rosa clutched her own convulsively, to see whether she had not been skinned of it by some devilish sleight-of-hand.

No, it was on her back; but Clara's was identical.

In her excitement, Rosa pinched Staines, and with her nose, that went like a water-wagtail, pointed out the malefactor. Then she whispered, "Look! How dare she? My very jacket! Earrings too, and brooches, and dresses her hair like mine."

"Well, never mind," whispered Staines. "Sunday is her day. We have got all the week to s.h.i.+ne. There, don't look at her--'From all evil speaking, lying, and slandering'"--

"I can't keep my eyes off her."

"Attend to the Litany. Do you know, this is really a beautiful composition?"

"I'd rather do the work fifty times over myself."

"Hus.h.!.+ people will hear you."