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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
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THREE small daughters of Eve were discussing fig-leaves on their way home from school. Or, rather, two talked while the third listened with all the bitterness of our First Parents as they looked back at the Garden. Like them, she was barred out.
The little girl who held the conversation made stabs and imaginary diagrams in the air, while her face lit up with eagerness. She was the daughter of a famous barrister, and, like her father, knew how to make the best of a thin case.
"Dear, ducky little bows here, that sweet shade of faded rose—it's got a French name you know—and a lace panel down the front—so!"
The other child sniffed. She had fat, golden curls and looked very opulent but she was conscious that her account of her costume for the breaking-up party had been eclipsed by this vivid description.
"H'm! It sounds just like your summer dress done up, Alys," she said, suspiciously. "Now, mine is a new four-guinea dress from Long's."
Alys swiftly shifted her ground.
"What are you going to wear, Juliet?" she asked, swooping down on the silent child in her father's best manner. Juliet's thin cheeks grew scarlet. "I—I don't know!" she stammered. She saw her companions exchange glance of meaning.
"I must hurry home," she continued desperately. "It is nearly four."
As she ran down the avenue she heard a burst of childish laughter behind. Instantly her finger-nails made dints in the palms of her hands. That gurgle of mirth was the thing she dreaded more than lightning or ghosts.
She could not remember the time when she was not a laughing-stock. Grown-ups always had smiled when they saw her, but they did it in a sneaky, half-veiled manner that she had learned to endure. It was the open, brutal derision of her school-fellows that made her daily martyrdom. She had had seven years of it. Seven years of pure, undiluted misery! All because her mother had the spirit of a pioneer, and instead of experimenting on insensate puddings, muddled in dress, and then lacerated her daughter's soul by forcing her to wear unholy mixtures.
Mrs. Arum-Lake said that her child was just like a wall-flower, because she was so brown, and quaint, and sweet. Everybody else thought she was going to be a wallflower— sure enough!—when she grew up, but meantime only considered her odd.
Juliet's depression did not last long. She had run away instinctively at the first smell of powder like some oft-hunted quarry. In reality, her fortunes seemed on the mend. It was some time since her mother had broken out badly, and her clothes had been fairly normal. Moreover other children in the school now wore djibbahs, although the articles in question were severely edited edition of her weird sack.
But, best of all, she was going away next term to a convent school where all the pupils were forced to dress alike. How Juliet gloated over the hideous serge uniforms that would be her daily wear for years and years! Marguerite, enthusing over her jewels, was a bad second to her! No one would pick her out among that crowd of girls as an ear-marked child of a cross between a High Arter and a Simple Lifer. She would be merely one bead on a necklace; one pebble on a beach. The glory of it! The world was painted rose-color, and the stars shook hands with the daisies at the mere thought of it.
As Juliet entered the house, she heard her mother's high-pitched voice.
"At least, no one can say my child has been made a martyr to dress!"
Mrs. Arum-Lake was entertaining a crony in the drawing-room, but her conversation could be enjoyed equally well on the front door-mat.
Juliet stopped to listen with apprehension.
"The folly and cruelty of some parents! I could weep when I think how they cram their children's sweet, tender little toes into stiff boots and bury their poor little heads under hot, heavy hats. I, myself—in person—was present at the toilet of a modern baby yesterday. My dear, it wore a corset. A corset! To support its back and protect it from cold, the foolish mother said. I asked her how she dared to usurp the functions of Nature—the universal Mother. Ah, well! I, at least have considered her demand in this dress for Juliet."
Juliet gasped at the words. Her party-dress! A tremendous lump of the repressed and devitalised Nature in her small frame heaved and expanded at the thought. In an agony of suspense she tore up the stairs and burst into the drawing-room. Her mother—an amber-haired lady in a peacock-blue dress and countless chains looked up and smiled.
"What ah outburst of physical energy!" she exclaimed. "I could sing when a child bursts open a door. Shut it again, Juliet. There's a draught. Don't slam it!" The one breath of spring air was barred out of the stuffy, lily-scented room.
"Would you like to see your new dress, precious?" asked Mrs. Arum-Lake, groping among layers of white tissue-paper.
At first Juliet thought she was only looking at a portion of the costume that her mother displayed. When she grasped the stunning fact that she was viewing the whole, her heart seemed to contract. This time, her mother had done her very worst. It was mere morsel of clothing—a thin, white silk tunic braided with silver, in a key pattern. Pulled out to its utmost, it did not reach the knee.
"Mother!" Juliet's voice was husky. "I shall show all my legs!"
"The most beautiful part of a child."
Mrs. Arum-Lake looked affectionately at her daughter's knobby knees.
"You will have to, wear silken tights under it as a concession to your schoolmistress's indecent susceptibilities. Now kiss me, and thank me my little Grecian maid!"
"Mother!" Juliet turned white, and when a dark, skinned child throws pale, the result is rather awful. Her mother shrieked at the bilious hue.
"The child's ill!" she cried, ringing the bell. "Nature is speaking her mind as to what she thinks of our modern diet. Perkins, rhubarb, and magnesia for Miss Juliet!"
There was very little Nature left in Juliet by the end of the week. Mental agony and lowering medicines had reduced her to the least state of resistance. At her best, the child was no fighter. Seedy from her birth, she had been moulded like putty by her parent. Her faint protests were never even heard; they were drowned at utterance in her mother's unceasing flow of language.
"I can't wear it! I can't wear it!" Over and over, she sobbed the plaint, to herself. "Can't!" Not "Won't" like a normal naughty child, with healthy notions of rebellion.
Two days before the party, Mrs. Arum-Lake watched her child as she sat in a red pool of setting sunlight. A paper lay on the carpet. Juliet had let it slip from her limp hand and was staring at the flaming sky. Mrs. Arum-Lake glanced at the heavens also, divided it into shades, giving each a name from her paint-box, and then sucked in her breath at the brooding mystery in her child's eyes.
"Something has slipped from the sunset into my darling!" she whispered. "A wonderful gift for me to give my child. The Soul! Hush, the angels are whispering to her!"
She did riot know that even at that moment her child was planning to open the door and set free that soul. Juliet had found the solution to her trouble" in one word. Suicide!
In the paper she had just read was a paragraph, headed "Suicide at Eleven." It related how another morbid miserable child before her, after eating out her heart with jealousy of her baby-brother, had swallowed rat-poison, and for the sum of a few pence attained the dignity of death. Juliet gloated over the details with envious yet sad feelings. She wallowed gloomily in the stricken parents' sorrow and the flowers brought by the child's school mates. She went to bed with sulphur in her milk, brimstone from the Pit in her heart, and under her pillow the death story of one Grace Kemp—suicide, aged eleven.
THE following day a certain Lady Eleanor Jamaica—the
daughter of a Duke, and a very great lady in every
respect—was driving among the dykes. Suddenly she pulled up
short, apparently to admire the scenery.
There was a touch of Holland about its flat grey washes. A brown swollen stream was rolling heavily along its willow-fringed bed. The sole touch of color was given in a sheet of daffodils. But, as the indignant mare knew perfectly well, Lady Jamaica saw none of these things. Her worst enemy could not call her artistic, even as her best friend could not call her beautiful. She was big and weather-beaten, with tomato tints in her complexion and a faint moustache on her upper lip.
She screwed up her eyes in the direction of the river, as if she were doing perspective drawing. Kneeling down on the marshy ground was a small, brown-clad child. As Lady Jamaica watched she scrambled to her feet, crossed herself, and then deliberately waded into the stream. Lady Jamaica threw the reins to the groom, jumped from the cart, cut over the ground, cleared the ditch, grabbed the child, and swung her back on the bank, with the swiftness of a cinematograph film. The child felt horribly light and limp, and seemed to cower in her ladyship's number eight doeskin gloves
"What are you doing, you little idiot?" asked Lady Jamaica angrily, giving her a slight shake. "There's a deep hole just there. You'd have been drowned."
"I know!" answered the child. "Why did you stop me? I was only committing suet-side."
"Good Lord!"
It was a genuine appeal. Lady Jamaica stared at the child with open, startled eyes. One would like to say she saw a pale, pure face like a snowdrop, with great black-ringed eyes—which, by the way, no snowdrop ever had. As a matter of fact, she saw a thin, miserable, brown child, with red-rimmed eyes—crying favors that, color—and knuckle-stained face. She locked so starved and bullied that Lady Jamaica's thoughts flew to the N.S.P.C.C. of which she was president.
"Tell me, little girl," she said gently, "has your mother done anything to you? Yes. What is it?"
"She makes me wear funny clothes, and the other children laugh at me all day—and I want to die!"
"Heavens!" Lady Jamaica appealed again. "I thought only Russian children talked like that," she added, with splendid patriotism. "Tell me all about it!"
Juliet sobbed out the whole story from her poisoned babyhood down to her last mutilated hope. These are big words, but it seemed like that to her. Poor innocent! If she could have heard Lady Jamaica's laughter when anyone came a cropper in the hunting-field, she would have known the folly of making such a confidence.
"I see!" she said, at the end. "Well, you mustn't die. It's very wicked to want to. We'll find a way out."
"You can't," was the hopeless reply. "Only a miracle could save me from wearing that dress, and I'm old enough to know miracles don't happen."
"Then you must be older than the Saints and Apostles," answered Lady. Jamaica.
She was genuinely surprised at herself. She—who smacked her own children at the first hint of insurrection, to be found arguing with a child!
"But I've proved it," went on Juliet. "I turned Catholic, like our washer-lady. I stole nine candles from the larder, and said a Paternoster for each one I burned. A Paternoster is an "Our Father." It's Latting. "Pater" means "our", and "noster" means "father," you see; But—nothing happened. And I'll kill myself before I wear that dress," and my soul will be lost for ever and ever'"
"Well—I'm—" Although Lady Jamaica stopped in time, it was clear that Juliet would be in aristocratic company. "Miracles do happen, child!" she said stoutly. "Fairies make them happen. Now, look at me! Don't you think I look just like a fairy?"
Juliet looked intently at the jolly red face and the driving coat, and answered firmly, "No."
"You ungrateful monkey! Well—I'll tell you my secret, I'm a saint. But I've more magic than Ariel and. Puck, and all that gang, combined. Now, tell me exactly what your party dress is like. Into the cart with you! Suicide is off for to-day."
As they bowled along, Juliet gave a vivid description of the Greek tunic, every harrowing detail of which was nailed to her memory. It brought back her sorrow so vividly that she shivered, and clung to her companion, when they reached her mother's house.
Lady Jamaica gently disengaged herself, feeling choky at the pressure of the feeble, clawing little fingers. "Now be a good kiddie! It's coming right. I'm really a saint, and saints work miracles, you know. You must wear whatever your mother tells you to-morrow night, and trust me to help you. Your mother won't be able to scold or keep you from going to that convent. And the children won't laugh at you. You'll be the happiest little girl at the party. Trust me!"
Lady Jamaica rattled off, feeling very blank. It was one thing to make splendid promises to cheer up a child's heart, and another to make them good. She bit her nails thoughtfully— a trick for which she daily smacked her children. Fortunately, however, she was a lady of strong common sense, and by immediately discounting all improbable schemes arrived the sooner at a possible solution.
She barred all fantastic notions that might entail consequences on herself or the child. To forcibly kidnap the youngster for the date of the party or to appeal to the generosity of the other children was ridiculous. To argue with Mrs. Arum. Lake was merely to court a snub. To ask the schoolmistress to postpone the party until the next term was to lay that good lady open to criticism.
It was a hard nut to crack, but Lady Jamaica had excellent teeth. Before she reached the stables her mind was made up. She climbed the stairs to the nursery. A fight was in progress, so she sat down like a good sportsman,, and watched with interest, until the better man won.
There were three children—all healthy and rough, and without a nerve in their bodies. They were called Tom, Dick, and Harry. Dick, by the way, was a girl, and the roughest and noisiest of the batch.
When the noise had subsided, Lady Jamaica put the question to her offspring. It was anything but a proper suggestion, but it was received with loud acclamations. She left the room, feeling that she had conquered the Opposition, and that the path was clear for instant operations.
"Fair, play!"she said. "I couldn't let down my own, even for the sake of that poor mite."
THE whole of the next day, Juliet lived in a fevered dream.
She looked forward to the hour of dressing with mingled feelings
of apprehension and excitement. Yet, in spite of her doubtful
moments, on the whole she trusted in the powers of the red-faced
lady in the dog-cart, who called herself a saint. Her heart was
entirely full of confidence when the washing was over, and in
scanty petticoats and with cold, mottled arms she ran into her
mother's room at the maternal call.
Upon the bed lay something in tissue paper.
Her dress.
Juliet's heart beat fast as the wrappings were laid aside. Now for a glorious transformation! Now for a mother's astonishment and defeat! Now for the rout of the material at the invasion of magic! Room for the miracle!
The dress was shaken out, and with it all the life died out of Juliet's face. She bit her tongue in her disappointment. It was the Greek tunic. No miracle had happened. Her saint was an impostor. She had played her false. She stood, mute and frozen, while her petticoats were drawn off and the tights coaxed on. She was almost dead to feeling when at last she saw herself in the long glass. A pathetic little figure-of-fun in the white tunic, silver bay leaves filleted round her head, and silver braids criss-crossed round her thin little shanks.
The numbness lasted all through the drive, but when she had reached the Assembly Rooms and had left her wrappings in the cloak-room, her casing of ice suddenly fell away at the sound of a two-step and the chatter of children's voices.
She clung to the maid's hand in an agony of shyness. How could she enter that big electric-lit room? How could she run the gauntlet of scornful eyes? How could she show her legs to the public?
The maid gave her a kindly push and shot her through the doorway. The room seemed full of smart people, for the party was a large one, including the outside children who attended the dancing classes with their parents and friends. Juliet stood still for a dreadful moment. She thought that a howl of laughter had greeted her appearance. She hardly dared raise her eyes as she bitterly reviled the saint who had cheated her out of that kindly brown stream and the glory of suicide.
Then she noticed that a school-fellow was standing near her. It was the child with the fat golden curls—Em Miller—and she looked more opulent than ever in a frilly blue silk dress. Juliet gave her a look of heart-felt envy, as she waited for the inevitable chuckle of derision. To her surprise, none came. Em looked at her sourly, and with something that seemed curiously like jealousy. As Juliet blinked with surprise, Alys—the barrister's daughter—ran up in all the glory of her done-up dress.
"Have this with me, Juliet," she said. "There aren't half enough boys."
With spinning head, Juliet pranced off with her partner. On such occasions she danced with the teachers only, as none of her schoolfellows had the courage to foot it with such a little guy. She jigged away merrily—a queer feeling in her mind. Something had happened. Was it a miracle? This was totally different from the reception she had expected.
Alys, who by virtue of her conversational skill was a power in the school, was most affable.
"So you've one of those sweet dresses," she observed, as they stopped, panting. "But Juliet, my dear," she added, with a remembrance of her mother when the famous barrister golfed, "Why don't you pad your calves?"
Juliet did not reply. She was studying the room.
Three white figures went rollicking by, bucking and plunging like young colts! Short, white Grecian tunics gave free play to their splendid rounded limbs as they jumped in the dance. They were Tom, Dick and Harry—the children of Lady Jamaica and the grand-children of the Duke of Peppercorn. Nor did the wonder end there. There were a few other white tunics to be seen in the room, all of which were worn by the pupils who were considered the cream of the dancing class.
Juliet forgot about the miracle. She only knew that she was no longer a; pariah and a butt. She was among the Elect. This was her last party and she was going to enjoy it. Now she knew what legs were for. They were made for dancing—not to be looked at. Splendid things, legs!
IS it tame to have to explain the stage-management of a modern
miracle? Why relate how Lady Jamaica disposed of her children's
healthy objections to making fools of themselves by that artful
suggestion, "Wouldn't you like to go to the party dressed in
bathing costumes?"
Why describe her mortified feelings as she saw the sailor suits; and Liberty smock deposed in favor of these circus trappings? Why touch on the diplomacy that caused the costumes to be hurriedly made by the gossipy dressmaker, whose clientele copied the great lady in every respect?
At all events, she was repaid with interest as she watched a happy-faced child footing it gaily among the dancers with wrinkled, white-silk legs. Once Juliet looked up, and saw the jolly red face beam at her with the benevolent pleasure of an old-world saint.
Her ladyship's satin gown was torn from musical chairs. She had barged one of the masters so hard that he had forgotten she was a woman, and had floored her, to her pure and simple joy.
As she smiled, her head was encircled by a rakish ring that had escaped from its moorings. It might have been the extra plait that her maid pinned on nightly.....
Or it might have been a halo.
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
Go to Home Page
This work is out of copyright in countries with a copyright
period of 70 years or less, after the year of the author's death.
If it is under copyright in your country of residence,
do not download or redistribute this file.
Original content added by RGL (e.g., introductions, notes,
RGL covers) is proprietary and protected by copyright.