 CHAPTER X I'm surprised now that you English ladies don't come often or on our side. I should surmise that young ladies have a better time in America than anywhere else on this earth. The deference paid to women in the United States is one of the most remarkable of our national characteristics. I tell you, you find it in every relation of life. There's this divorce act now. A man, in America, will allow his wife to get a divorce from him if they find that they can't agree. He would not think of letting his wife take the blame. I should say now that that sort of thing was unheard of in this country. Your men now, I should judge, would not be apt to take the blame on themselves. I have been much struck, though, with the splendid physical appearance of your young men. Why, in rotten row, I have seen more remarkable-looking men in one morning's walk than I should be apt to see in a week on Fifth Avenue or Broadway. Your tailors now, they are one of the most remarkable of your institutions, if one may say so. You English ladies, too, are just perfectly lovely. Your hybrid repose is perfectly fascinating, and you are, I should judge, more affectionate than American woman. I should say now that you had more heart. The trouble is that our society girls don't begin to have any. Why, there was an English nobleman, Sir John Lacklands, in New York last winter. That man was over seventy-two years of age. Well, he is about to be married to one of the youngest buds of this season, the daughter of one of our most prominent railroad kings. Why, the night before I sailed from New York, I went to see a girl in Madison Avenue, and there was a handsome young fellow of three and twenty who had been calling every evening at that house for some weeks. When he left, I thought I should congratulate her on her engagement. Why, said she, what queer old-fashioned ideas do you do have? Well, I don't know but what I'm thinking of marrying, but I guess it's his grandfather, the millionaire who's to be the happy man. Christina and I gasped as Mr. Alicia van Schuyler at last paused, though apparently more to point his story than to take breath. In appearance he was tall but not so broad-shouldered as an Englishman of his height would have been. He had a dapper little pointed beard and a mustache and keen intelligent eyes. His coat was made by a tailor in Savile Roll. We had never seen an American gentleman. Transatlantic women we had met by the score, admired their gowns, laughed at their stories, and secretly envied their unfailing But none of the New Yorkers and Philadelphians that we had known in London had ever appeared to have or seemed to have wasted a thought on any male belongings. Therefore, when Mr. Alicia van Schuyler presented himself with a letter of introduction from her grace of Birmingham, who had known him in her early days in America, it was with a feeling of keen curiosity that we undertook to show him the studio and its contents. Our studio is one of the show ones of London and if Mr. van Schuyler's face fell a little when confronted with Papa's portraits he was lavished in his admiration of the beautiful room. We don't begin to have anything like this in New York, he said giving a comprehensive look round. Our artists either can't afford to furnish a studio, nobody buys American pictures on our side, or else they sort of overdo the thing. Too much tapestry, too many suits of mail, too many mandolins, and too many ivory crucifixes. There was a man who studied in Paris and thought he'd go home and do the Society Act as well as paint portraits of the 400. Well, that man was as much fun as a goat. He just got as thin as a rail and as bald as a coot trying to work the society racket. I tell you, he had a rocky time. He took a huge studio in one of the most fashionable parts of New York, furnished it perfectly elegantly, and began by painting one of our Society Bells, for nothing. Then he used to lend his studio to Polish pianists and Spanish dancing girls just to get the 400 inside his house, and they used to crowd right in and drink his tea and his punch, and go right away and get their portraits painted by a third-rate Frenchman who had fixed up an atelier next door. Why, I tell you that, Frenchman. And here Mr. van Schuyler was fairly launched on another stream of talks which lasted without intermission until he rose rather abruptly to go. First he made us a low bow, a bow so deep that I have only seen it equaled by that of a Russian attaché, and then he reconsidered the question and shook hands with us one after the other, very high up in the air. He was evidently under the impression that this was the latest mode of salutation. When the heavy tapestry curtains had finally swung back behind him, Christina called my attention to the fact that, both together, we had only been allowed to put in three sentences, so entirely had our transatlantic guest monopolize the conversation. I thought they always said that American women did all the talking, said Christina dryly, but this young man seems to have a fancy for monologues. I timed one of his stories, that about General Horace Porter, and what's the other man's name? Chauncey Depew, and it lasted exactly seventeen minutes by the clock. Never mind that, I retorted, this American is going to be amusing. And in truth he turned out to be charming. After a while when he took to coming pretty often, even Christina did not mind the length of Mr. Van Skyler's anecdotes. He had, as I took occasion to point out to Christina more than once, that desirable thing in man or woman, a twinkling eye, and he had also a pretty taste in flowers and bonbonnaires, and a perfect mania for giving theater parties with dainty little suppers afterwards. And later on, when we knew him better, he had an inexhaustible fund of excellent if slightly irreverent stories. He had his little peculiarities to be sure. He was never tired of asking questions about the royal family and the House of Lords, and once, one night when we were all dining with him at the Savoy, he made us write out a list of English duchesses to see how many there were. But I don't know any, I objected, except the duchess of Birmingham and she's an American. Mercy, we don't count her, said Mr. Alicia Van Skyler. He was fond of asking tiresome questions, too, about the birthplaces of famous people in London. And he never looked at me I am convinced without seeing me against a fancy background of the Tower, Windsor Castle, and Stratford on Avon. I sometimes feel that he expected me to live up to a famous past. But Mr. Van Skyler's stay in London was not without its distractions. He wanted to know everybody and everybody seemed pleased to know him. He wished all his friends to have a good time at his expense. He was generosity itself. One could not express the vaguest wish without its being immediately carried out. His generosity even took the form of inviting his rivals to dinner and what astonished me even more, sending one in with them. There was nothing mean or narrow-minded about our new American friend. And yet, though expansive and valuable, we seem to know him no more intimately at the end of three months than at the end of his first call. Was there, under all, his gregariousness a deep-seated reserve? Christina thought that on the whole she preferred people who talked less and who said more. He had, to be sure, an enormous admiration for English women, especially the sort of young woman who writes down, scalls a boat and bags her own grouse. He constantly assured us that if we would cross the herring pond and spend a winter in New York or Washington, we should at once attain the rank of raging bells, though we as constantly disclaimed all intention of competing with a homegrown article on the other side of the Atlantic. But every day as July verged on August and everyone was thinking of the Morris and Homburg and X, Mr. Van Skyler grew more and more civil. He looked unutterable things. Hardly a day passed without a gorgeous bunch of roses being sent. I began to wonder what life was like in New York, if it was all roses and devotion and boxes at the play. My family began to regard me with unwanted tenderness and consideration, and it was obvious that they have expected Mr. Alicia Van Skyler might carry me off by the next ocean grayhound. Qualms of conscience, an unwanted experience with me, began to assail me and, more than once, I asked myself whether I liked this young man chiefly for himself or for his daughters when that little dinner put an unexpected end to my doubts. It was at Hurlingham that the last act of the comedy was played. The polo ground was thick with wide-sleeved, slim-looking women and with broad-shouldered military men whose necks were bronzed by Indian suns. Here one caught the profile of some country-bred girl with neat, fair plates tucked away under a straw hat, and there a radiant vision of dainty laces and a delicate rose-pink visage half hidden under a vast parasol. Carefully made up old men walked mincingly along, ogling the prettiest faces as they passed and mentally comparing the beauties of 1892 with those more fascinating young creatures of thirty years ago. It was a mild, gray-skied afternoon of mid-July and the sound of the Goldstream Guards Band came softly over the lime-scented air. On the lawn in front of the clubhouse the white-jacketed waiters ran quickly to and fro with trays of tea and strawberries and the checkered light of the huge Chinese umbrellas over the tables threw curious little shadows on the faces of the tea-drinkers. All around pretty women were nodding and smiling at their bachelor friends. Over yonder the new beauty was obviously being made love to by somebody else's husband while inside the cool, carpetless clubhouse could be seen the profiles of an elderly painted personage in a muslin gown with pink ribbons and of a bored, handsome young man who was endeavouring to make peace with the irate lady. At the next table two smart citymen were lighting their cigarettes after tea. Mr. Van Schuyler was more than usually confidential that afternoon. He told me how he was just perfectly fascinated with London and with London girls, how he should like to live here with a sigh and how if he couldn't do that he meant to come just all the time. He had had thanks to us a perfectly beautiful time. He should never forget it. Somebody had given a dinner after the polo and now we were sitting on the terrace drinking our coffee listening to the metallic music of the Hungarian band and watching the stars appear one by one above the fat bronze colored elms. Mr. Alicia Van Schuyler drew his chair a little closer to mine. I wonder now if you would like tuxedo. Like most American things it's on a larger scale than anything you have on this side. Larger or not, I said hastily, I shall never see it. You know I am always seasick. I shall never cross the Atlantic. Well now I call that rough on us. I had just made up my mind that when we were married. Married, Mr. Van Schuyler? Why yes, I guess. Now and again when he forgot he was in London Mr. Van Schuyler would let drop an occasional guess. Mamie and I must fix it up soon if we are ever going to. Mamie's a society girl in Buffalo and although I'm willing she should have a good time as long as ever she wants to, still I think three years is long enough for a fellow to be kept waiting. Don't you agree with me, Miss Peggy? For a minute I was too astonished to speak. Yes, I hasten to say, three years is rather a long time, but then you've managed, haven't you, to have a fairly good time yourself? Well, I should smile. I imagine Mamie would allow that I had better keep my hand in all the time. And when we settle down in New York I've been sending cable-grams about a house on Fifth Avenue all this week, I hope you'll come over and make us quite a long visit. Why, you would be just a raging, tearing bell! I smiled and said I should have to make Mrs. Van Schuyler's acquaintance over here, and so we talked it over and I preferred my congratulations while Mr. Van Schuyler took my hand and held it very hard as he informed me that he meant to settle down in double harness and be a model husband. Next year he brought his wife to see us. At first sight she revealed herself as a restless, talkative, flirtatious little person who had, like her husband, a passion for having a good time. She had brought a cousin, a young man along, as she explained, so her husband shouldn't have to go around shopping with her. He always got mad when she went shopping. She expected it was pokey anyhow going around all the time with your own wife. If he didn't like the young man she didn't care anyway. He was just perfectly sweet. Mr. Van Schuyler, she always alluded to her husband as Mr. Van Schuyler, was just perfectly devoted to Miss Peggy. He had never allowed anything to interfere with his affection for Miss Peggy. And English young ladies were perfectly lovely anyway. Mrs. Van Schuyler did not believe in trying to make one's husband domestic. If he didn't care for domesticity, neither did she. She just despised it and meant to live in a hotel. While Mrs. Van Schuyler was there her husband was strangely silent, but it turned out on investigation that he did not appear to find the bond of wedlock calling. She allowed him plenty of rope and he was always to be found straying about at the very end of the tether. So far I have not heard of either of the Van Schuylers having applied for a divorce. End of Chapter 10 Chapter 11 of My Flirtations by Ella Hepworth-Dixon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 11 After breakfast there was nothing pleasanter one could do than to sit out in the graveled garden of the hotel under the palm trees and unfurling a green-lined umbrella to bask like a cat in the warmth. And it was here, generally with an offering of flowers that M. Anilla Vassar used to join us with his English sailor hat, his gauzy Parisian tie, and a shepherd's plaid shawl gracefully disposed round his shoulders. Skirmishing and giggling heralded his approach. He was on intimate terms with everybody in the hotel. He had confidences for the landlady, bonbons for the children, and if I am not mistaken a special greeting for the boots. In appearance he was hardly a typical Frenchman. Blonde, thin, and pale, he had only the beginnings of a beard while his slightly stooping shoulders betrayed the habit of bending at an easel. For M. Anilla was a painter, one of the new school of Vibrist. He did the most extraordinary little landscapes, all in pink and mauve and arsenic green stripes, which looked well enough about ten yards off, but which were bewildering enough to our British eyes when inspected at close quarters. Other French painters, however, were enthusiastic over his work. Tiens, très fort, ce garçon, they would say, gazing at a mountain put in with mauve and rose-colored lines. Beaucoup d'oeuvres lents, très amusants. Il est dans le mouvement celui-là. Il tient de monnaie. Accustomed to the trickly sunset landscape as depicted annually on the walls of Burlington House, we were not a little amazed at M. Anilla's vibrations, notes of dazzling sunlight and white open air. Like most of his painter compatriots, he was very amusing. For the French artist, unlike his English brother, has a number of theories which he can usually express in a more or less attractive way. To be sure, he is generally a pessimist, but to mention this is only to say that the French artist is eminently modern. And if M. Anilla was a pessimist, he was an infinitely diverting one. He was one of the very few young men of our acquaintance who amused Cristina. First we were civil to him because we thought he was rather clever and impecunious, but we learnt later on that he was rich and that the cheap sailor had and faded shawl were part of his pose. Frenchmen, whatever you may say against them, are never snobbish. I announced one day to Cristina. When do you ever hear them talk about their money? No, just as in England it is bad taste to talk of one's religion. Money is there, religion, you know? It was our first winter in the south. The spell of the Riviera was over us. The lazy days crept by, filled with the scent of violets, the warmth of the sunshine, the magnificent panorama of the literal. Our nights were devoted to Catilians, but I never could remember afterwards what we did during those sunny days. Our painter who had claimed our acquaintance from having seen father's pictures in the great, the unique, the epic making exposition of 1889 was always turning up. Even before the midday breakfast he would run down to the harbour to see the English yachts come in or out or stroll with us to the flower market and come back with his arms full of mimosa, anemones and violets. Or he would take us both off for a day's painting in the mountains. At least he and Cristina used to paint and I used to lie on my back and look on and eat the sweet-meats which he thoughtfully provided. One day Monsieur René painted me. He did me in a scarlet gown with a scarlet parasol in full sunlight against the blue Mediterranean and I remember he painted my face in scarlet and purple zig-zags. Even my worst enemy has never accused me of vanity, but I must say I was annoyed. Do not be afraid, mademoiselle. I shall send it to New York. You will never see it again? Those good Americans only speak of our school. Every millionaire of New York desires a Claude Monet or failing him one of his disciples, said Monsieur René soothingly, and to be sure on reflection it did not matter much if my face appeared like a gaily-colored zebra on the other side of the Atlantic. But it was at night when we went to dance at one of the villas or one of the hotels that Monsieur René was in his element. Even your most pessimistic Frenchman will valse if you give him the chance. He danced madly, breathlessly, abominably, but as a leader of Catilians our painter was quite unapproachable. His tact, his finesse, his gaiety were admirable. How easily we amused ourselves during those winter nights. The drive is back after the ball along the bay packed into the small hotel omnibus with our hands full of toys and ribbons and flowers, the spoils of the evening, while a large white moon lit up the coast and the pink and yellow villas were hushed for the night among the orange trees and palms. How pleased Monsieur René looked when I brought home a lap full of tinsel ribbons and tea roses. He had begun to assume little heirs of semi-proprietorship which were amusing. I think he already suspected me of cherishing a hopeless passion for him. Tenez, je vous aime bien, mademoiselle Marguerite, c'est Monsieur René one day. Vous savez bien que je suis fou de vous. Mais je ne voudrais pas vous épouser. Mais non, mais non. Much obliged to you, but I'm sure I don't want you to do so. I replied with some assertivity. I always answered him in English. The French tongue is not my strong point, but when I speak my native language to a foreigner I invariably shout. Without being indiscreet, Monsieur Lavasseur, may I ask why? We were climbing through some orange groves up a hill and the glistening green leaves overhead were powdered with bloom and heavy with fruit. He tore a spray of orange blossom down and stuck it gingerly through my plates. Très jolie la mariée, he said laughing. Mais très difficile à amuser. Oh, mais bien difficile. There was a patuity about this little scene which made me thoughtful for a week. Not that I alone was suspected of inclining my eyes in our painter's direction. No one, however unlikely, was safe in this regard, no one from the stout elderly landlady to the youngest girl in the hotel. We were one and all supposed to take a tender interest in his proceedings. But I never realized this quite until the night of the tableau vivant from which moment I fancy Monsieur René was convinced of my hopeless attachment. He was invaluable in our tableau vivant. We did it all between us, he and I, and it involved the sending of dozens of notes on Monsieur René's part, weird little missives written half in French half in English which were sufficiently bewildering at first. Merci, dear friend, de votre amabilité. C'est donc convenu. Vous me prêtez une queue et je serai une baie tout à fait convenable. On répète aujourd'hui à quatre heures. Il y aura du thé. Ensuriez-vous de la petite fête? Wery faithful et yours. René, le vaceur. Wery was nice enough as an example of English as she spoke, but Monsieur René's devotion was expressed in other extraordinary English phrases which he had just missed catching from English ladies in pensions and hotels. Nothing would remove the impression that my dearling was a proper and ordinary way of addressing a woman. Like most Frenchmen he had no self-consciousness. The absence of this defect was made up for, I suppose, by exaggerated personal vanity. He had therefore no more objection to making himself a false stomach with two or three soft cushions than he had to putting on a cardboard nose or running about on all fours. As the beast, indeed he was delightful wearing my new sable boa as a tail and wooing a beauty in the person of our schoolgirl with quite irrepressible ardor. In our Piero scenes, too, he was charming, taking my infidelities as Pierreette with the prettiest grace in the world. The whole thing was quite artistic, delightful. Monsieur René was the hero of the ball that followed. We were to leave the next day. The morning broke gray and stormy and great waves tipped with white were lashing the pebbles on the beach as I sat in the hotel garden tired after our late night. Christina had insisted on remaining upstairs to superintend the packing. Presently something dark fell in my lap. It was a bouquet of votive violets, while Monsieur René's quizzical face at an open window above announced to me my assailant. Comment, toute seule? In a moment a leg appeared over the balcony, something bounded out, and Monsieur René was bowing low in front of me. Pauvre mise margherite, he murmured. Why, poor Miss Margherite? I asked in a high voice as to make sure he understood. Vous vous en allez, comme ça, en Angleterre? Ceci triste, là-bas. Oh, no, it isn't. We are going back to the London season, you know. We managed to amuse ourselves over there, although you can't imagine it, immersed as we are in the outer darkness. And then Monsieur René told me of his hopes of a visit to London some day, when the stormy waters of the channel would have subsided enough for him to adventure on the wild and desperate journey. He told me of the experiences of a friend of his in London, of a fortnight spent at a French hotel near Leicester Square, of the idiosities of the English Sunday, of the flat-sold boots of Se-Dame, of the equally unexciting conversational efforts of Se-Messu, all the prejudices and preconceptions which the Parisian packs up in his portmanteau on leaving Paris and retains intact on his return to his beloved capital. Ah, but London is charming all the same, I objected. The wind had dropped and the sun was already turning the sea-pines to a delicate greenish silver. The day, our final day, was to be fine after all. But it was time to go. We were not, however, to leave in the ordinary and conventional way, in a hotel omnibus and an express train, but a large party of people were to drive us in breaks and carriages to the Italian frontier, and we were all to dine together at Ventimiglia before we took the train for Genoa. Monsieur René sat close behind me in the break and whispered reassuringly into my ear as we dashed along the mountain road with the Mediterranean spread out below us and the rocky heights to the left. At the vine-covered trattoria where we stopped to drink Chianti and to rest the horses, it was Monsieur René who was so anxious we should all dance a farewell vass in the dusty and deserted salon while someone strummed a tune on the jingling worn piano which only woke up once a week when the peasants danced on Sundays. At Ventimiglia, where we all walked out to see the view, our painter grew sentimental and at dinner at the hotel, I think he managed to shed a tear. But everything comes to an end. Dinner was over and now we were already in the railway carriage with our friends crowding round the open door. And what a charming leave taking it was. Everybody brought a farewell gift, a bunch of roses, a basket of peaches, a Spanish fan, a china frog, every kind of trifle that one can give and take without being compromised. The engine was snorting, mother was snugly ensconced and Cristina was getting out her favorite books. The guards had three times announced the imminent departure of the train and still Monsieur René climbing once more into the carriage knelt and mocked tragedy at our feet. A horrible suspicion came over us that he meant to come too. But a final whistle sounded. Monsieur René rose to his feet and crushing my fingers bent over me as he whispered tenderly, soothingly, reassuringly the words. Needless to say, my Parisian admirer has not yet braved the terrors of the channel passage for my sake. Now and again he sends a figaro or a goulois containing a fervent article about his pictures for Monsieur René it would seem is on the way to fame. And once or twice he has written to say that he intends to come and make serious studies of ses étonnants brouillards de Londres. But he never comes nor does he I surely suspect intend to. Paris has swallowed him up. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of My Flirtations by Ella Hepworth-Dixon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 12 Duncan Clive's Hamlet had taken the town. Cristina roundly declared it was a revolting exhibition, but I don't know good acting from bad so this last reading of the great part was good enough for me. True it was a smug, sentimental South Kensingtonian Hamlet, but I in common with the rest of the public became enthusiastic over Mr. Duncan Clive. We are only human and my ardour was possibly not unconnected with the fact that the manager of the proscenium theatre was the fashion. Fashions in art are eminently contagious. He had the look of a Roman emperor. His large round head, his square clean shaven jaw, and his broad shoulders made him an effective stage figure, though in private life he often looked depressed and bilious and affected a humble and slightly apologetic manner. If you can picture Nero or Caligula in a sublime frock coat sitting down meekly over the teacups and talking of elevating the drama and improving the public taste you have a vision of Mr. Duncan Clive as he used to appear in our drawing room. He was an actor manager, so he had to talk about improving the public taste and yet keep one eye on the box office. He spent fabulous sums on the production of his pieces and all the town would flock to see his real empire furniture and his genuine obis on carpets. Whether he is a great actor or not, I argued one day with Christina, at any rate you must admit he has done a great deal for the stage. My dear, you mean for the stage carpenter, replied my sister in an aggravatingly conclusive tone of voice. Hours was the sort of house to which everybody goes. From ambassadors to interviewers there was hardly anybody we didn't know, and Christina and I were told to be civil to all and sundry, but there was no need to admonish me to be civil to the new hamlet. I was in the studio squeezing out colors onto Father's Palette, one day when Mr. Duncan Clive was announced. There he stood in the flesh, my favorite stage lover, looking very blue about the jaw and very dazzling about the necktie, and he waited a second or two holding back the heavy portiere, just as he always did when he wished to make an effective entrance on the stage. Then he stepped forward rapidly with a brilliant smile, shaking hands with Father and making me a low and deferential bow. Father was to paint him as Hamlet for the next academy, and he had chosen to be done not with Yorick's skull or in the famous soliloquy, but in the scene with Guildenstern, where he snaps the pipe in two. Do you think I am easier to be played on than a pipe? Was the line to be depicted? And, to be sure, Duncan Clive made an imposing figure enough in his somber doublet, standing with his chin a little forward, and his eyes turned suspiciously towards the spectator. It was characteristic of the man to have chosen that particular episode, that is special pose, for he was above all things undecided and distrustful. He wanted to be in the movement, but he wished to be well with the British public. He would like to have mounted head a gobbler had there been a part big enough for him to play. He was capable of producing meadowlank, but for his doubts about filling the stalls. To see him humbly asking the opinion of the critics at one of his first night suppers on the stage of the proscenium theater was a curious and instructive spectacle. He asked everybody's advice. That was one of his chief attractions in the eyes of women, and he even asked mine. Mr. Duncan Clive had beautiful suggestive hands which he used a good deal when he talked and a wandering shifty eye which traveled all round the room even when he bent towards you in one of his many confidences. He had interminable confidences to make. He liked to talk about his early life. Only as his imagination was vivid and his memory defective, his early life was apt to be colored by the mood of the moment. On dreary, dark November days, when the trees outside seemed to ooze grime and soot, he would tell you in thrilling tones that he began life barefoot selling newspapers in the streets or calling cabs at the theater doors. And how one gruesome night when he was shivering in the slush he had made a vow that he would produce Shakespearean plays at a London theater before he was thirty years of age. Other days when the sun shone and the wind rided out of doors he would recall a rose-shaded drying-room window giving on a blue sea and a gentle-voiced mother who read browning to him as he sat on soft cushions at her feet. No, certainly the accounts of Mr. Duncan Clive's early training did not, as his stage-carverter would have expressed it, join. But I am firmly convinced that while he was talking to you, while his deep-set, hungry gray eyes sought inspiration now in yours and now in the fairyland inside the fire, he believed for the moment what he was saying. Most women like to listen to Duncan Clive's confidences, especially as Mrs. Duncan Clive did not usually accompany him when he paid afternoon calls. He had married the walking lady of a traveling company some years ago, but this fact by no means interfered with his success with the sex. Who cares whether Orlando, Charles Surface, or young Mirabelle has a wife in Bayswater or a troupe of brats in Bedford Park? Not even the most romantic schoolgirl cares. Young Mirabelle carries the glamour of the footlights with him wherever he goes. But this glamour, to be sure, rather interferes with the new enjoyment of one's idol who is apt to be surrounded by admiring devotees. Does Orlando, in white gardenia and patent leather boots, but offer you his arm to go down to supper and you are pursued by a crowd of admiring ladies who hope to snatch him from you? You are permitted to have neither your cavalier nor your supper. You gaze wistfully at the salads and aspects while an elderly lady buttonholes Orlando, reminding him archly that they met six years ago in a railway carriage in Switzerland and proceeds on the strength of this acquaintanceship to introduce to him her three nieces from Huddersfield, who are so devoted to dear Mr. Clive's acting. Lady Susan takes him by the arm into a distant corner from whence he is presently dug out by the Duchess of Birmingham who is, just dying to present him, to Miss Van Hoyt. The successful actor-manager is always engulfed in a sea of petticoats. But all this I could have borne if it had not been for Layledge Lee. She was the last straw. I could have forgiven him his wife, she didn't seem to count, and I could have forgiven him Miss Montmorency, the leading lady for I suspected him of being jealous of her success with the dress circle, but for Miss Layledge Lee who played the pert chambermaids in comedy and who undertook the singing fairies in Shakespearean productions, for her I had no toleration. We had just had a card for a supper-party on the stage of the proscenium theatre and the matter was being discussed. In my young days, said Mother doubtfully, girls wouldn't have been taken to supper parties behind the scenes. They're tremendously good fun, said Lady Susan who was paying one of her seven minutes visits, and quite good form, you know, and all that sort of thing. Lady Rougemont never misses one of Duncan's parties and what's more she brings her daughter. So do Mrs. Stanley Goring and most of that lot. You won't meet any actresses there, my dear lady, I can tell you. We might as well go to a crush in Mayfair then, said Christina. Oh, it's not as bad as all that, replied Lady Susan. What I meant to say was that Miss Lee is the only actress who ever appears at Duncan's suppers and she is perfectly good form, you know. Her father was a dean. They always are, said Christina, but Lady Susan pretended not to hear. At half past eleven on the night in question we drove up to the proscenium just as the audience was streaming out. It was the hundredth night of a piece in three acts called hypocrisy which had drawn the town for some three months. Going down the soft carpeted staircase lighted by pink shaded lamps and lined with mirrors and laurel wreaths, called by Duncan Clive on his last American tour, we passed the entrance to the stalls, the open door revealing a now empty house with rows of pale pink and white chairs, and then mounting a step or two turned sharply to the right where a narrow door gave on to the wings. The stage was set with the last act of hypocrisy, a scene which depicted the precincts of the Chamelea Club, in which a masked ball is supposed to take place. Duncan Clive had not had time to change his dress and he now stood at the door with brown grease paint on his cheek and blue pencil lines around his eyes, smiling and welcoming his guests. One or two modish women notorious for their Bohemian tastes had brought their young daughters, who, surprised, delighted and a little bit frightened at the novel scene in which they found themselves, whispered together in corners, all a flutter with excitement and curiosity. The critics, imperturbable as usual, preserved a mask-like expression of countenance while they listened to the confidences of one or two leading actors on the vex subject of their parts, and a phalanx of men about town, a trifle bald about the temples, a little weary about the eyes, gradually gathered on the stage. All these exquisitely dressed individuals addressed the actor-manager as Duncan, pressed the hand while they whispered a compliment into the ear of Miss Lailage Lee and then distributed themselves among the society dames who graced the scene with their presence. Meanwhile the heat was stifling and the footlights below with the electric lights in the flies cast an unbecoming radiance on many a dyed head and wrinkled visage. In the distance a middle-aged and faded woman covered in diamonds had engaged Mr. Clive in close confabulation. That's Mrs. Stanley Goring, good family, rich, nice husband, but goes in for the stage, don't you know? whispered Lady Susan. She's never happy unless she's got Duncan to lunch or supper. A buffet had been hastily erected by a dozen men in theatrical livery and here cabinet ministers, fashionable doctors, blonde drus, white-headed generals, eminent tragedians and the press scrambled for champagne bottles, sandwiches and cigars. A stout, red-faced man who looked like a navvy in evening dress was surrounded by a little court all anxious to hear what he said. That is Brown, the stock exchange speculator, continued Lady Susan. He makes corners in things and people want to know which way the wind's going to blow. I'm just going to make love to him myself. I want a straight tip about Lake Shores. There's Percy Whitemore, the young man from the Thalia. Never mention the stage if you talk to him, my dear. Always discuss horses. He likes to be taken for a cavalryman. Meanwhile Mrs. Duncan Clive and a drab silk gown hovered vaguely with an apologetic smile in the background and a gallant old general who was devoted to the stage surprised her very much by detaining her in conversation. Miss Montmorency, who it was supposed had not only a past but a present, had swept out, smothered in a fur police and point lays directly the play was over. As Lady Susan had predicted, Miss Layledge Lee was the only actress there. For the daughter of an eminent ecclesiastic, I must say that Miss Lee displayed a considerable knowledge of the ways of an effete and over-civilized world. She was a very pretty woman, even with that flaunting dab of rouge on each cheek and those deep blue smudges around her eyes, even with that fixed conventional smile and that languorous professional glance. Already a little circle of men surrounded her, so that it was almost impossible to approach, but it was to Mr. Brown the stock exchange magnet that she seemed to have most to say. One heard her inquiring feverishly about Brighton A's and expressing doubts about the future of grand trunks. She wished to be well too with Mrs. Stanley Goring and detain that lady's hand in her own while she shot several killing glasses over her shoulder at the critic of the daily telephone. Mr. Duncan Clive had pressed my hand and murmured something pretty when I arrived, but he had not yet found time to come and speak to me. I do think this sort of thing is overrated, don't you? I whispered to Christina. They were bringing on a fresh supply of champagne now and the men were beginning to smoke and tell stories. The smart women were slipping out with their young daughters through the flapping canvas doors. Father thought it was time to go and so did I. Picking up our skirts, we stepped cautiously along the dusty world behind the scenes, threading our way through virgin forests, dungeon walls, and flowering June meadows to the stage door. It was pitch dark, but we could see outside stood a neat broom and a man's back. The back, as we emerged into the street, turned out to be that of Mr. Duncan Clive. With the grease paint still on his lips, my idol was imprinting a farewell salute on the bismuth-white-and-darm of Miss Lailage Lee who laughed as she slammed the carriage door. It was an evidently not unrehearsed stage idol. End of Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Of My Flirtations by Ella Hepworth-Dixon This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. 13 Christina, I said thoughtfully one day when we were alone, you are a young woman of sense and observation. Did it not occur to you when Mr. John Ford dined here last night that he had the cachet, the unmistakable appearance of a husband? What do you mean, Peggy? What ridiculous notions you always have. Why, everybody knows that John Ford is not and has never been married. Oh, that's nothing, I retorted. I tell you he was born to be hen-pet and to have a carriage with fat horses and never drive in it and to pay long expensive milliner's bills. The man looks like a husband. Some men don't and never will. Let them marry three times and they never look as he looks. Well, he hasn't shown any indecent haste about taking a wife, said Christina. He must be every day of fifty. No, I said meditatively. He is forty-six, meton forty-six. He likes French cooking and Italian operas, dear old fossils like the travatore and the traviata. He is slightly rotund. He will give his wife a great many diamonds and he will probably want to live in Prince's Gate. Now, if I were to marry a stockbroker, I would never wear diamonds. It is so like the city to wear diamonds. As a mere matter of taste I should have nothing but sapphires and pearls. And I should draw the line at Prince's Gate. As you have only seen the man twice in your whole existence I don't think you need to disturb yourself about the locality you will inhabit with him just yet. Christina, don't interrupt my daydream. As a matter of fact I should insist on Mayfair. Not Charles Street, it's too gloomy. Nor South Audley Street, it's too noisy. But say, Park Street or one of those cozy little cross streets, a red house with a white door and copper fixings. Brass would be more appropriate for you, my dear girl, said Christina sententiously, and then the thing slipped from my memory as the butler brought up a bunch of orchids from Mr. Van Skyler and a letter containing an invitation to dinner with Mr. Julian Clancy. John Ford, the well-known stockbroker, had made his first appearance in our house about a fortnight before. He had been brought to the studio by a pretty showy Jewish who was a great admirer of fathers and who liked to run in and out at all hours and bring home she liked. He was tall, broad-shouldered and clean-shaven, and had bright blue eyes set in a square face, a face which was red all over. He was not quite ugly, but his manners were odd. He was very silent. If he did speak it was principally of hunting and shooting. But when he left the house he was the possessor of father's new academy picture for which he had offered, in an offhand way in a distant corner, the sum of fifteen hundred pounds. The next time we saw him it was a dinner at one of our big dinners. It was one of those nights when I am simple and natural and my frock happened to be one of those white, soft, fluffy things which cost a small fortune and look so inexpensive. At first the conversation did not flourish but Mr. John Ford looked furtively and approvenly out of the corner of his eye as he ate his soup. Nice little frock, he said at last. Like to see little girls in white. Aught always to dress in white. And this was the first and last occasion on which Mr. John Ford has ever paid me a compliment. Talking, as I have said, was somewhat hard work, but before the dinner was over he had told me the most of his tastes and predilections. In a world where we change our idols every six months it was refreshing to find anyone with simple, old-fashioned tastes, a liking for pictures with sunset skies and waxen-faced maidens, for love stories which end happily, and for oleaginous Italian melodies. These were the things in fashion in Mr. John Ford's heyday of youth and they suggested a capacity for fidelity which was encouraging. And such is the adaptability of woman and the egoism of man that before we left the dinner table Mr. Ford was convinced that I cared for these things also. But it was not of academy pictures and three volume novels that I wish to talk with Mr. John Ford. Contagos, debentures, bears, and bulls have always been words of strange fascination for me, probably because I am totally ignorant of everything that goes on in the city. It came over me like madness that I wanted to have a little gamble and Mr. John Ford offered to give me a straight tip, as he called it, about Patagonians. And I, who never possessed more than one pound ten chillings altogether during my whole life, felt quite dissipated and worldly and reckless as we discussed the little flutter which I was to undertake. There is hardly anything so infectious as the disease of gambling. For the rest of the evening Mr. John Ford did not come near me, but Christina admitted afterwards that he was watching me all the time. And when he left I was told that my financial affairs were to be seen too at once. How excited, how dissipated I felt. During the next few days I received several business-looking blue envelopes in Mr. John Ford's handwriting in which I was informed that Patagonians were dull and afterwards that there was a boom in the same financial commodity and then again that a fall was expected soon to be followed by a rise, all of which was Greek to me but which sounded very reckless. But one day a week later I had a shock which will always be a date in my history. Christina and I were sitting alone over the teacups. A blue business-looking envelope was once more served up on a silver tray. I began to feel like a wroth child or a bearing. What's this? I muttered as I began to seize the purport of the few neatly written lines which meandered over a large page. He's bought me five shares in Patagonians at ten pounds each. I've got to pay fifty pounds during the next fortnight. Great heavens! I gasped. Why, I haven't got a penny in the world. I was only joking. An odd sort of joke, my dear child, said Christina Dryly. Couldn't you have remembered that rather important fact before? Oh, I can't pay it. What's to be done? Father must be told and—and—I shall never dare to look him in the face again. Who, father? No, Mr. Ford. And I like him so much with his little blue eyes and his face which is red all over. Why are him to come? Explain it nicely, said Christina, with what I thought then was a devilish calm as she produced some telegraph forms, pushed the ink and pen towards me and rang the bell for the man. In less than an hour John Ford was ushered into the room. Regardless of appearances I had had a thoroughly feminine cry and was now huddled up on the sofa with redened eyelids and roughened hair, a dismal-looking hostess to receive afternoon callers. He came in, shut the door and sat down, gazing at me in astonished silence. What's the matter, Miss Winman? He said at last. Been sending some poor devil about his business and regretted it already, eh? No, no. I never send anybody about their business. I—I hate business anyway. And oh, why did you buy all those shares? All those shares? Why, I only got you fifty pounds worth. I've just bought six thousand pounds worth myself. But I haven't got it and I can't get it. I've counted my money carefully and I find I possess exactly one pound five shelling seven and a half pence. John Ford laughed. Well, I think I can manage to get rid of him for you. In fact, I know a chap who wants five more. To anyone not blinded by financial terrors, the little subterfuge must have been palpable. As it was, I never saw it till long afterwards. Do you really know of someone who wants them? I think you are an angel, I said fervently. John Ford blushed redder than ever and just for a minute there was an embarrassing silence. We did not mention Patagonians again and yet he stayed quite a long time that afternoon. At parting we looked straight at each other and I knew from that minute forward we should be firm allies. There has never been a moment's doubt from that day that we should get on. Six months have gone by since that day and lots of things have happened. Everyone in the house is very nice to me just now. Father calls me every minute into the studio to ask my advice. Mother, dear mother, looks at me solicitously and follows me about the house with a biscuit and a glass of port wine. Christina slips out of the room when the doorbell rings. Nobody contradicts me. It reminds me of once long ago when I was ill. And to be sure I am tired, very tired. Such quantities of gushing notes arrive by every post which all require an enthusiastic answer and large brown paper parcels with many wrappings which have to be undone. I might be qualifying for the treadmill. I have trapped so often up the bare staircases of empty houses where elderly ladies, smelling of gin and water, implore me to convince myself how excellent are the dustbins and what convenient linen covers there are next to the garrets. I bring home racking headaches from emporiums in the Tottenham Court Road once I emerge having ordered Louis the 16th clocks for all the servants' bedrooms and the particular shade of blue which I detest for the dining room chairs. Other days it is true I slink out of the shop with the excuse that the drawing-room carpet which I have been choosing for the last two hours is for a friend in that nothing can be decided without consulting her. But this transparent fabrication is invariably received with looks of withering scorn by the shopman in attendance. I am getting accustomed to this if not to the ineffable young person in black silk who presides at Madame Virginie's and who always leaves me after one of our lengthened and heating interviews with the pleasing impression that I am undersized, hopelessly plain and dressed in shocking taste. Her piercing black eyes look me through. They discover the weak points in the cut of my nethermost petticoat and I dare swear, if the truth be told, that she is perfectly aware that I have a small hole in the heel of my stocking. But the process of gentle, low-voiced bullying which goes on at the milliners only leaves one more obstinate, and I think I prefer my sworn enemy, the ineffable young person, to that other imperious heebie at the hat shop, who looks aggravatingly pretty in every shape, however eccentric, and who is of opinion that Madame cannot do better than take a straw saucer trimmed with stuffed birds and strawberries, seeing that Mrs. Langtree has definitely made it the mode. There are those nervous interviews, too, with grinning, sporting-looking attorneys in Lincoln's infields, when perfectly incomprehensible documents without stops are read out to me, and I finally put my signature on a parchment which makes one feel for all the world as if one were signing a death warrant. There are the relations to unknown aunts and cousins from the provinces and the suburbs who suddenly appear asking one disagreeable questions about one's age and who generally sigh, and hope it will all be for the best. Then there is the advice, the reams of good advice which they and my other friend shower upon me. I am assured, what I can well believe, that it is the first year which is so trying. Some would have me change the savories at dinner constantly, others insist that I must begin with mourning prayers, while another division conjure me not to allow smoking in the dining room. I am implored not to object to clubs, am mourned about pretty parlor mates, am told not to be too credulous, and am supplicated not to show signs of jealousy as being quite out of date. A few pray me to be tolerant of old friends, race meetings, and cigarettes, while many more urge me to keep an observant eye on sisters-in-law checkbooks and bills. There is all this, and as a final blow, there is the mackerel kettle. I think on the whole the mackerel kettle has given me more weary days and sleepless nights than any other article I have had to procure. In every book on furnishing we find the mackerel kettle placed foremost in the list of indispensable things. In no illustrated catalogue of ironmongery is attempting little woodcut of a mackerel kettle emitted, and yet in the flesh, or rather in the metal, the mackerel kettle forever eludes us. Fabulous sums are expanded in handsome cabs scouring the Tottenham Court Road in pursuit of this phantom article of hardware, and I begin to think that my chances of happiness may be seriously compromised. But time flies by. The day is very near now. One foggy winter afternoon I tall upstairs to Christina's room dragging after me, with the help of the maid, a long brown wooden box. What do you think has come? I demand breathlessly, bursting into the room where Christina is trying to read an article on the underpayment of feminine labor in one of the reviews. Put it down, Sarah. Unbuckle the strap, quick. Womanlike my sister throws down the 20th century, and we bend curiously over the box as the maid lifts gingerly out a garment of shimmering white and silver from under a layer of tulle. Symbols of the eternal feminine, those lengths of glittering satin flaunt themselves over the sofa and along the floor, lighting up the dim little room with their sumptuous whiteness, while, like a June cloud, the foam of tulle floats for an instant in the winter dusk. It is my wedding gown. End of Chapter 13. End of My Flirtations by Ella Hepworth Dixon. Recorded by Céline Mejore.