IN GOOD SOCIETY.
THE next week was for Faith a crowded week of infinite preparations. There was the question of a substitute first to be settled, and the price of the substitute’s honorarium to be fixed (as the head-mistress magniloquently phrased it), and then there were three dresses to be made forthwith, two for morning and one for evening — a greater number than Faith had ever before dreamed of ordering in her life all at one fell swoop, for her own personal adornment. Little Miss Perkins, the dressmaker at Number Five, two pair back, in the Court, was in and out of the Gascoynes’ all day long, especially at lunchtime, measuring and fitting and receiving instructions; for Faith wouldn’t trust herself to make with her own hands those precious dresses, the neatest and prettiest she had ever possessed. But sympathetic little Miss Perkins made them as cheaply as she could possibly afford, being a friend of the family; and the stuffs, though new and graceful, were simple and inexpensive; so that when the bill itself at last came in, even Faith wasn’t overshocked at the joint price of the three, and felt easier in her conscience about her hat and flowers. On the Tuesday night when she tried them all on, before an admiring committee of the whole house, they were unanimously voted to be without exception perfect successes; and a British baronet who chanced to stand by, his hat in his hand, remarked approvingly in a fervor of paternal admiration that he’d driven “more’n one young lady to a ball in his time, an’ at great houses about, too, who didn’t look one ‘arf as much the lady as our Faith, God bless ‘er! in that pretty evenin’ dress of ‘ers. Why, she looked so fine he was ‘arf afeard it was takin’ a liberty to think o’ kissin’ ‘er.”
Next afternoon, in a flutter of excitement, Faith took the train to London and thence to Oxford, traveling in her old Sunday gown and hat, so as not to spoil her new Oxford dresses.
On the way one thought alone poisoned Faith’s enjoyment, and that was her fixed expectation and belief that Nea Blair would be “awfully nasty” to her. Nea was one of those “grand girls,” she knew. Her father was a rector down in Cornwall or somewhere — rich, no doubt, for he’d sent his daughter abroad for the winter with a lady-companion, but, at any rate, a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, and, therefore, as Faith read the world she lived in, almost to a certainty proud and haughty. Nea would have no end of fine new dresses, of course, which would throw poor Faith’s three cheap gowns entirely into the shade; and as Mrs. Douglas would, no doubt, have told her that her fellow-guest was a national schoolmistress, she would foolishly try to suggest between them, as far as possible, that “dim specter of the salt “that Faith had read about in “Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,” and whose meaning Paul had succinctly explained to her.
From London to Oxford Faith traveled second class, permitting herself that hitherto unknown extravagance partly from a vague sense that the occasion demanded it, but partly also lest Nea should happen to be in the same train, and, traveling first herself, should set down Faith as an outer barbarian if she saw her descend from a parliamentary carriage. At Oxford station Mrs. Douglas met her — Archie was engaged that afternoon on one of those horrid boards, she said, delegates of lodging houses, or something equally dull and uninteresting — so she’d come down instead in her proper person to hunt up their luggage. What a pity they two hadn’t traveled together.
“Is Miss Blair in the same train, then?” Faith asked as she descended.
“Oh, yes,” Mrs. Douglas answered. “I see her just back there. Come along, Faith. Nea, this is Mr. Gascoyne’s sister. Now, my dears, what have you done with your luggage?”
“Mine’s in the van there,” Faith said, pointing vaguely forward.
“And mine’s partly under the seat,” Nea said, directing a porter at the same time to get out a small portmanteau from — wonder of wonders! — a third-class carriage.
Three hot, disagreeable feelings or ideas rose at once in Faith’s mind. The first was that Nea Blair had traveled third on purpose, because she thought she might meet her. The second was that she herself had wasted the difference in the fares all for nothing. And the third was that she hoped Mrs. Douglas wouldn’t betray to Nea the fact that the national schoolmistress had come down second. It was just like these nasty grand girls’ condescension to travel third on purpose to put one out of countenance.
Mrs. Douglas, however, didn’t play her false, and the three went off to fetch Nea’s other box, which was so big that Faith fairly trembled to think how many evening dresses might not be in it. They drove up together to the creeper-clad villa, and Faith, for the very first time in her life, found herself actually in good society.
She went to her room very nervous indeed, and began to get ready for dinner hastily. She put on her one evening frock with many doubts as to what Nea would wear, and went down at last, a few minutes before the bell rang, into the drawing room.
Nea was there before her, in a dress still simpler and more unstudied than her own; and as Faith entered she drew her over instinctively somehow to the sofa with a friendly gesture.
“Oh, what a sweet gown!” she cried in unaffected admiration, as Faith seated herself by her side; and, indeed, Faith did look very beautiful, with her lustrous black hair knotted neatly in a roll at the back of her head, and her dark eyes and olive complexion thrown up by the delicate color of her dainty foulard.
“You’ll be tired enough of it before you go, I expect,” Faith answered defiantly “for it’s the only evening frock I’ve got, and I shall have to wear it every night while I stop here.” Her very pride compelled her to fling her poverty unprovoked thus point-blank at the unoffending faces of others.
“Oh, of course; one doesn’t bring a whole stock of dresses with one for a short visit like this,” Nea answered, smiling; “and this one’s so pretty one could never get tired of it. I think that’s the best of simple gowns — they always look well if you wear them forever; and nobody ever notices they’ve seen them before, because they’re so unobtrusive. Whereas, if one has a showy, striking dress, and wears it often, it attracts attention, and then everybody says, ‘Oh, that’s the same old thing she wore last season, don’t you know, at the So-and-so’s?’”
“That’s just what I thought,” Faith answered, trying to look unconcerned, “when I ordered this one.” —
“And I always say,” Nea went on, glancing down at her own little quiet cashmere, “if one’s poor, one should buy the simplest possible things, which never look out of place, and never go out of fashion.”
She said it in the sense good society always says such things in — the purely relative sense which regards the country parson’s endowment as polite poverty; and she was thinking really of her own wardrobe, not of Faith Gascoyne’s. But Faith, like all the rest of us, chose to accept the remark from her own standpoint, according to which Nea Blair was a “nasty grand girl,” a representative of wealth, rank, class, and fashion. “If one’s poor,” she answered, flaring up internally, “one must buy what one can afford; but that’s no reason why one should be dictated to in that, or in anything else, by others.” For in the phrase, “one should buy the simplest possible things,” Faith thought she detected the hateful didactic leaven of the District Visitor.
By a rare flash of intuition — due, perhaps, to her profoundly sympathetic and affectionate nature — Nea divined with an instinctive insight the nature of the error into which Faith had fallen, and hastened to remove it as delicately as possible. “Oh, I don’t mean that I do it to please other people,” she answered, with her winning smile; “I do it to please myself. Papa never dreams for a minute of dictating to me about dress. I get my allowance four times a year, and I spend it as it seems best to me.”
Faith colored up with regret for her foolish mistake, which she couldn’t fail now to recognize. “But you’re not poor?” she said, with a marked emphasis.
“We’re certainly not rich,” Nea replied, looking down so as not to meet those half-angry eyes. “Of course these things are all comparative. But I have to be very careful of my expenses.”
“Well, but you went abroad for the whole winter with a companion,” Faith objected sternly.
“Oh, that was a very special thing, because I’d been ill.
Papa did that, not because he was rich, but because he was so anxious to make me well again.”
“I see,” Faith answered, and wished to herself people wouldn’t use words in such unnatural senses. Talk about being poor when you’re a beneficed clergyman of the Church of England, and can send your daughter to a good hotel on the Riviera, with a hired companion to be her guardian and chaperon.
Presently the Douglases themselves came down, and the four went in to dinner together. “We haven’t asked anybody to meet you this evening, Nea,” Mrs. Douglas said, “because we thought you’d be tired after your long journey; but your brother’s coming in for a chat after dinner, Faith; as he and Nea are old friends, you know, we thought he wouldn’t matter. And lie’s going to bring young Thistleton of Christ Church with him.”
Faith almost shook in her chair at the terrible prospect. How ever would she get on, she wondered, with all these fine people thrust at once upon her. Good society began positively to appall her.
Dinner, however, passed off very well. With Mrs. Douglas herself Faith felt quite at home now; and the professor, though prodigiously learned, was a very pleasant man, Faith thought, with lots of fun in him. Nea didn’t always understand what he said, apparently; and it struck Faith with some little surprise that Nea seemed on the whole to know less about the subjects Mr. Douglas discussed than she herself did. And yet Nea had had the very best education! Strange, then, that she thought the Prometheus was written by Sophocles, when Faith, who had read it through in Paul’s Bohn, couldn’t imagine how anyone could mistake the Æschylean touch in it. And then she had never even heard of Shelley’s “Prometheus Unbound!” Faith began to consider her quite a little ignoramus?
The fact was, Faith’s whole days had been spent at home (or with the Infants) and among Paul’s books, and her one native longing and desire in life was for more culture. Hence, like many self-educated people, she had a wide though not a deep knowledge of books and things, exactly suited to make a brilliant show in general society; while Nea, whose tastes were by no means learned, had only acquired the ordinary English schoolgirl’s stock of knowledge, and was far behind Faith in everything that pertains to general education.
The professor, for his part, being an easy-going man, soon found out that Faith and he had most in common, and addressed his conversation mainly to her throughout the dinner. This flattered Faith and gave her confidence. She began to suspect that, after all, she might be able to hold her own fairly in Oxford, if one of the very heads of that learned society thought her not wholly unworthy of wasting his time upon. Appreciation brought out her best points, as opposition did her worst; and before the end of the dinner she was positively brilliant.
Once, too, in the course of it, she discovered to her surprise another little point of superiority to Nea. The Cornish girl had been talking of her experiences at Mentone, and had been particularly kind in her remarks about Paul, which made Faith’s face flush once more, but this time with pleasure. There was nothing she loved like having Paul appreciated.
“You weren’t at the same hotel, though,” she said after a while. “I suppose yours was a much bigger and a more expensive one?”
“Oh, dear, no,” Nea answered simply; “your brother and Mr. Thistleton were at the swell place; but Mme. Ceriolo took me to quite a foreign house, that she liked much better, partly because it was cheap, and partly because her tastes are awfully cosmopolitan. I never was in such polyglot society in my life before. We had Poles, Hungarians, Greeks, Germans, Swedes, and Russians at table d’hôte beside us.”
“Dear me,” Faith exclaimed, “how awkward that must have been! You must have felt every time you opened your mouth that the eyes of Europe were upon you.”
“I did,” Nea answered, with an amused smile. “But, as they didn’t understand me, it didn’t much matter.”
“The conversation was all in French, of course,” Faith went on innocently.
“With the foreigners, oh, yes. But I don’t speak French myself at all fluently — not anything like as well as Mr. Gascoyne, for example. He speaks just beautifully.”
“Oh, I don’t consider Paul’s a very good accent,” Faith answered with easy confidence. “We learnt together when we were quite little things, he and I, and I know he could never pronounce his ‘r’s’ with the right amount of rolling, or distinguish between words like ‘tremper’ and ‘tromper.’ This is how Paul speaks,” and she repeated a few lines of one of Victor Hugo’s odes that they had read together, in perfect mimicry of the few English faults in her brother’s pronunciation. They were merely the minor tricks of intonation which must almost inevitably persist in any foreigner’s mouth, however profound his acquaintance with the language; but Faith’s quick feminine ear detected them at once, compared with Mlle. Clarice’s Parisian flow, and her ready tongue imitated them absolutely to perfection.
Nea listened, lost in amazement. “I shouldn’t know that wasn’t the purest Paris accent,” she answered, half jealous on Paul’s account. “I thought myself Mr. Gascoyne spoke admirably.”
“Oh, no; this is how it ought to be,” Faith answered, now quite at home. And she delivered the lines in excellent French as Mlle. Clarice herself might have said them, only with infinitely more appreciation of their literary vigor.
Nea was astonished. “You speak splendidly,” she said. “I’d give anything myself to be able to speak that way.”
“Oh, I’ve spoken ever since I was two years old,” Faith answered offhand — for, to her, it seemed the most commonplace accomplishment on earth to be able to talk like the French lady’s maid. But to Nea it was proof of a consummate education.
After dinner they rose and went into the drawing room, Faith feeling rather awkward once more, now, as to how to proceed, and keeping her eyes firmly fixed on everything Nea did for guidance.
Presently Paul and his friend came in. Faith walked toward the door with what self-possession she could, most conscious of her gait as she crossed the room and kissed her brother. Then she turned and was introduced to the blond young man. Why, what a curious thing Paul should never have told her! The blond young man was extremely handsome.
Paul had always described Thistleton as a very good fellow and all that sort of thing, but had never enlarged in the least upon his personal appearance; and Faith had somehow imbibed the idea that the blond young man was stumpy and unpleasant. Perhaps it was because she had heard he was rich, and had therefore vaguely mixed him up in her own mind with the Gorgius Midas junior of M. Du Maurier’s sketches in Punch. But certainly, when she saw a fine, well-built young fellow of six feet one, with intelligent eyes, and a pleasing, ingenuous, frank countenance, she failed to recognize in him altogether the Thistleton of whom her brother had told her. The blond young man took her fancy at once; so much so that she felt shy at the idea of talking to him.
For to Faith it was a very great ordeal indeed, this sudden introduction to a society into which, till this moment, she had never penetrated. The very size and roominess of the apartments — though the Douglases’ house was by no means a large one — the brilliancy of the gas, the lightness of the costume, the flowers and decorations, the fluffiness, and airiness, and bright color of everything, fairly took her breath away. She felt herself moving in a new world of gauze and glitter. And then to be seated in these novel surroundings, to undertake conversation of an unrehearsed kind with unknown strangers, it was almost more than Faith’s equanimity was proof against. But she bore up bravely, nevertheless, for very shame, and answered at first, almost as in a dream, all that the blond young man said to her.
Thistleton, however, had no such difficulties, for he was born rich; and he talked away so easily and pleasantly to the national schoolmistress about things she really took an interest in and understood that at the end of an hour she was hardly afraid of him, especially as he seemed so fond of Paul, and so proud and pleased about his Marlborough Essay.
“I wanted to bet him ten to one in fivers he’d get it,” Thistleton remarked, all radiant; “but he wouldn’t bet. He knew he was sure of it, and he wasn’t going to hedge. And all the House was awfully glad of it. Why, the dean himself called him up and congratulated him!”
As for Paul, he talked most of the time to Nea, with occasional judicious interventions on Mrs. Douglas’ part, who was never so pleased as when she could make young people happy.
When they took their departure that evening Faith said to her hostess, “What a very nice young man that Mr. Thistleton is!” As a matter of fact, it was the very first opportunity she had ever had of talking to any young man of decent education and gentlemanly manners on equal terms, except her own brother and she was naturally pleased with him.
Mrs. Douglas shrugged her shoulders a little bit — almost as naturally as Mme. Ceriolo.
“Do you think so?” she said. “Well, he’s nice enough, I suppose; but his manners haven’t that repose that stamps the caste of Vere de Vere, somehow. He’s a trifle too boisterous for my taste, you know. Good-hearted, of course, and all that sort of thing, but not with the stamp of blue blood about him.”
“Oh, nonsense, my dear Eleanor,” the professor ejaculated with a good round mouth. “The young fellow’s as well-behaved as most earls in England, and, if it comes to that, a great deal better.”
“I’m so glad you say so, Mr. Douglas,” Faith put in with a smile—” that it’s nonsense, I mean — for I should have been afraid to.”
“Well, but really, Faith,” Mrs. Douglas retorted, “he isn’t fit to hold a candle any day to your brother Paul.”
“I should think not, indeed!” Nea exclaimed immediately with profound conviction. “Why, Mr. Gascoyne’s just worth a thousand of him!”
Faith turned with a grateful look to Nea for that kindly sentence; and yet she would have liked the praise of Paul all the better if it hadn’t been contrasted with the dispraise of Mr. Thistleton, For her part, she thought him a most delightful young man, and was only sorry he was so dreadfully rich, and therefore, of course, if one got to know him better, no doubt nasty.
They parted in the passage outside Faith’s bedroom, and Nea, as she said “Good-night, dear,” to her new friend, leant forward to kiss her. Faith hesitated for a moment: she wasn’t accustomed to cheapen her embraces in the usual feline feminine manner, and as yet she didn’t feel sure of Nea; but next instant she yielded, and pressed her companion’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she said with tears in her eyes, and darted into her room. But Nea didn’t even so much as know for what she thanked her.
Faith meant for not having been “grand” and crushed her. To herself she was always the national schoolmistress.
But Nea saw in her only a graceful, handsome, well-bred girl, and Paul Gascoyne’s sister.
So ended Faith Gascoyne’s first equally dreaded and longed-for evening in good society.
Outside the Douglases’ door Thistleton paused and looked at his friend.
“Why, Gascoyne,” he said, “you never told me what a beautiful girl your sister was, and so awfully clever!”
Paul smiled. “As a rule,” he said, “men don’t blow the trumpet for their own female relations.”
Thistleton accepted the explanation in silence, and walked along mute for two or three minutes. Then he began again, almost as if to himself: “But this one,” he said, “is so exceptionally beautiful.”
Paul was aware of an uncomfortable sensation at the base of his throat, and diverted the conversation to the chances of a bump on the first night of the races.