The Tree of Knowledge Part 55

_Amours de Voyage._

"Sally, Sally, what are you doing? For pity's sake come here and lace me! I shall never be ready. What a time you are with Wyn!"

Jacqueline, in all the daintiness of white embroidered petticoat, satin-smooth shoulders, and deftly-arranged hair with a spray of lilies of the valley somewhere among its coils, hung over the bal.u.s.trade in an agony of impatience.

"Wyn, Wyn, what are you keeping Sal for? She has been twenty minutes over your bodice."

A voice of agony from below responded.

"Tag has come off my lace."

"Oh!" A pause of consternation; then, encouragingly, "try a hair-pin."

"It's all right now. I have actually found my bodkin. I shan't be five minutes."

"Five minutes! My dear child, _Osmond has actually gone for the cab_!"

cried Jac, in tones tragic enough to suit the most lamentable occasion.

"Jac, come here, and don't make such a fuss," said the calm voice of Hilda, as she emerged from her room, ready down to the minutest detail, fan, gloves, and wrap over her arm.

With a scream of joy at such unlooked-for relief, Jac darted into her room again, and her slender form was soon encased by her sister's deft fingers in its neatly-fitting fresh and captivating bodice.

"What a wonder _your_ tags are not both off! They generally are," was Hilda's withering comment, as she performed her task.

"Yes, it is a wonder, isn't it?" returned Jacqueline, complacently. "Oh, there you are, Sal. I'm ready now, so you can go back to your beloved Wyn."

"You can't think 'ow nice Miss Wyn looks to-night," observed Sally, as she busied herself in collecting some of the scattered articles of wearing apparel which strewed the floor of Jacqueline's small chamber.

"I am so glad. I thought that dress would become her," said Hilda, in a pleased voice. "Oh, Jac, stand still, my beloved, one moment: there is Osmond back again."

"Very good; I am ready. Sally, where are my gloves? And my bracelet, and my fan, and my small brooch, and--oh, dear! Run and tell Wyn she must lend me a lace handkerchief and some elastic for my shoes. Do hurry, Sally, please, I quite forgot the elastic. Why didn't you remind me, Hilda? Oh, did you get it for me? You darling, what a blessing you are!

There have I got everything? Oh, Sally, do I look as nice as Hilda?"

"You ain't so neat," observed Sally, with grim humor; "but neither of you looks bad, though I don't want to make you conceited."

"Are you girls coming?" shouted Osmond.

"Oh, yes; wait just a second, my dear boy. _Is_ my front hair right, Hilda? Yours does go so beautifully to-night. You don't look like a governess, somehow." She threw a daring, tempting glance and laugh over her shoulder at the brilliant reflection in the mirror. "I wonder if I do," she said.

At the foot of the stairs stood Wyn, in her new white silk, with a little crescent of diamonds, which had belonged to their mother, in her hair.

"My dear girls, I am at peace," she remarked, gravely. "I stand at last inside a gown which _hangs_ to perfection!"

"Oh, isn't it nice?" said Jac, with a deep sigh of longing. "Really, Wyn, you do look well; you pay for dressing. Why don't you give more attention to your clothes?"

"There's Osmond fidgetting downstairs, run!" cried Hilda, and the three flew off, pursued by Sally's warning cries.

"Miss Jac, Miss Jac, don't let that fresh skirt sweep the stair carpets!

Miss 'Ilda, cover your 'ead over, you've got a cold, you know you 'ave!

Miss Wyn, see that Mr. Osmond crosses his comforter over his chest, there's a dear!"

"Innisfallen. The Avenue," said Osmond to the cabman; and the four were really off at last.

"For how many dances are you engaged, Jac?" asked the brother, teazingly.

"Little boys," was the frigid rejoinder, "should ask no questions, and then they would hear no stories;" after which, silence reigned in the fourwheeler.

Every Londoner knows, or has heard of, the celebrated house of Mr.

Miles, R.A. It is one of the show-houses of London, and views of its interior appear from time to time in the art magazines, with an accompanying article full of praise for and wonder at the wealth and taste which devised such an abode. With our nineteenth-century habit of writing biographies in the life-time of their subject, of forming societies to interpret the work of living poets, and publis.h.i.+ng pamphlets to explain the method of living painters, why not also extol the upholstery of living academicians? It is surely more satisfactory that people should admire your taste and wonder at your income in your lifetime than after you have gone the way of all flesh. Nowadays one is nothing if not in print. What! Furnish at untold cost; have your carpets imported from the East, and your wall papers specially designed, merely that these facts should go about as a tradition, a varying statement bandied from mouth to mouth and credited at will?

The age is sceptical; it will not believe what it hears, it will not even believe doc.u.ments of more than a certain age--the Gospels, for instance. But it will believe anything which it sees printed in a society journal, or a fas.h.i.+onable magazine. If your name be blazoned there, it is equivalent to having it graven with an iron pen, and lead in rock forever; on which account Mr. Miles did not object in the least to the appearance of delicately-executed engravings representing "Hall, and portion of staircase at Innisfallen, residence of H. Miles, Esq., R.A." "Interior of studio, looking west." "Drawing-room, and music-gallery, showing the great organ, &c., &c." He was wise in his generation, and thoroughly enjoyed the caressing and honors which accrued to him from this form of advertis.e.m.e.nt. Moreover, he was a kindly man, and much given to hospitality. Nothing pleased him better than to throw open his magnificent rooms to large a.s.semblies of very various people on an occasion like the present.

An interesting theme for observation was presented by the extraordinary variety of toilettes worn by the guests of both s.e.xes.

First there was the artistic section of the community, drawn from all cla.s.ses of society. By an odd paradox, these were they whose costumes were the most aggressively inartistic of any. Dirt and slovenliness are neither of them picturesque, yet it would seem that this singular clique held that to cultivate both was the first duty of man. They seemed to be one and all anxious to impress upon the observer the fact that they had taken no trouble at all to prepare for this party. A few had washed their faces. None had gone to the length of arranging their hair.

Another feature which all possessed in common was their inability to dance, though some of them tried. Perhaps their large boots and ill-fitting garments incapacitated them for the display of grace in motion. They leaped, shuffled and floundered, but they did not waltz.

These were, of course, only the younger section. Nearly everyone of them had distinguished him or herself in their own particular line; which fact seems to argue that to give especial attention to one sort of observation is to destroy the faculty for observing anything else: a saddening theory, and one which makes one tremble for the value of Professor Huxley's judgment on all matters outside his own province. Be that as it may, the fact remains that this concourse of young people, who could all admire beauty, grace, and refinement in the canva.s.ses of the old masters, yet were themselves so many living violations of every law of beauty, and kept their refinement strictly for internal use.

The moneyed clique was also much _en evidence_. These were blazing with diamonds as to the women, commonplace and vacant as to the men. The latter seemed, in fact, to still further ill.u.s.trate the theory of the evil of giving too close an attention to one thing. They were only faintly interested in what was going forward; they had no conversation unless they met a kindred spirit, who was willing to discuss the state of affairs east of Temple Bar. Their wives were for the most part handsome, and were all over-dressed, but this extreme was not so painful as that of the artists, because these clothes were as a rule well-made and composed of beautiful materials.

Then there was a large sprinkling of professional people--barristers, journalists, critics, _savants_, lady-doctors, strong-minded females, singers, reciters, actors. Also there were the great gems of the art world: academicians, who, having made their name, had promptly turned Philistine, with their wives and families, dressed like the rest of the world, built big houses, went into society, and painted pot-boilers; and, lastly, there was a fair sprinkling of the aristocracy: well-born people, not so handsome as the millionaires' wives, but with that subtle air of breeding which diamonds cannot give. All these were simply dressed, and un.o.btrusive in manner; and a stranger watching the Allonbys enter the room would have fearlessly cla.s.sed them with these latter.

They all four looked what the Germans call "born." A certain way of carrying their heads distinguished them, and as they followed the announcement of their names, and shook hands with their hostess, more than one eager voice a.s.sailed the young men of the house with clamors for an introduction.

Mr. and Mrs. Miles were fond of the four orphans. They had known them for years, and watched with kindly interest the development of their fortunes. Wynifred's success had made her quite a small celebrity in the neighborhood, and she owed many introductions to the benevolent zeal of the academician's plain, homely wife.

"My dear," said Mrs. Miles, in a whisper, "I don't know when I've seen you look so nice."

This was a charming beginning. It raised Wynifred's spirits, which were already high. She had come that evening determined to enjoy herself. She intended to cast every remembrance of last summer to the winds. Claud Cranmer was to be forgotten--the one weakness in her life. She would wrench back her liberty by main force, and be free once more--free as on the hot June day when she had journeyed down to Devons.h.i.+re, and found the slight trim figure waiting for her on the platform.

She knew plenty of people here to-night--people who were only too ready and anxious for her notice. When Wynifred had been working at the Woodstead Art School, before her novels began to pay, it had been said of her that she might have had the whole studio at her feet had she so chosen. She was an influence--a power. She had not been two minutes in the room before her ball-programme began to fill rapidly--too rapidly.

She was too experienced a dancer not to make a point of reserving several dances "for contingencies."

"Don't introduce me to anyone else--please," she said to Arthur Miles, who was standing by her, inscribing his name on her card. "I shall have too many strangers on my hands, and I get so tired of strangers."

"There's North, the dramatic author, imploring me to introduce him--he wants to dramatise 'Cicely Montfort.' How that book has taken! I hope you are reaping substantial benefits, Miss Allonby?"

"Yes, pretty well, as times go, thank you," she answered, laughing a little as she remembered that her pretty gown had been earned by the industrious and popular "Cicely."

"I don't think it's much use my talking to him," she went on. "I have as good as promised to help Mr. Hollis dramatize it for the Corinthian."

"Then you and Mr. Hollis had better make haste, or North will have the start of you. He's the fastest writer I know, and I believe he has it already arranged in a prologue and three acts."

"Yes, there must be a prologue--that is the drawback," said Wyn, slowly.

"But," with a sudden bright look, "you are making me talk 'shop,' Mr.

Miles!"