That Unfortunate Marriage Volume I Part 17

"Piper!" said Pauline, languidly dropping her eyegla.s.s, and looking round at May. "What can this mean?"

"Oh, it means Miss Polly and Miss Patty and my schoolfellow Constance Hadlow!" cried May, clapping her hands. "Fancy Conny being in town! I dare say the Pipers invited her on a visit. I'm so glad!"

Mrs. Dormer-Smith's countenance expressed anything but gladness; and she privately informed May that it would be impossible to do more than send cards to these ladies by the servant. "I _can't_ have them here on my Thursdays, you know, May," she said plaintively, and with an injured air.

Three months ago May would have indignantly protested against this tone, and would have pointed out that it would be unfeeling and ungrateful on her part to slight her old friends. But she had by this time learned to understand how unavailing were all such representations to convince Aunt Pauline, in whose code personal sentiments of goodwill towards one's neighbour had to yield to the higher law of duty towards "Society."

"Perhaps," said May, after a pause, "if you cannot go yourself, Uncle Frederick would take me to Miss Piper's some Sunday after church, when we go for a walk with the children. You see they have written 'Sundays'

on the corner of their card."

"Oh, do you think they would be satisfied with that sort of thing?"

asked her aunt.

"They are most kind, good-natured old ladies," pursued May. "They wouldn't mind the children at all. Indeed, they like children. And as to coming to your Thursdays, Aunt Pauline, I really don't think they would care to do it. Music is their great pa.s.sion--at least, Miss Polly's great pa.s.sion--and when they are in London I think they go to concerts morning, noon, and night. Miss Hadlow is different. Her grandpapa was a Rivers," added May, blus.h.i.+ng at her own wiliness, "and she is very handsome, and sure to be asked out a great deal."

But May's profound strategy did not end here. She coaxed Uncle Frederick by representing what a treat it would be to Harold and Wilfred to go out visiting with papa. Those young gentlemen, privately incited by hints of possible plum-cake, were soon all eagerness to go; and when, on the very next Sunday, May set off with her uncle and cousins to walk to Miss Piper's lodgings, she felt that she had achieved a diplomatic triumph.

CHAPTER XIII.

Those Oldchester persons who considered Miss Piper's artistic tendencies responsible for her occasional freedom of speech would have been confirmed in their opinion as to the demoralizing tendency of Art and Continental travel had they known how the daughters of the late Reverend Reuben Piper employed Sunday afternoon in London. Miss Patty herself had been startled at first by the idea of not only receiving callers, but listening to profane music on that day; and the sisters had had some discussion about it. When Patty demurred to the suggestion, Polly inquired whether she truly and conscientiously considered that there was anything more intrinsically wrong in seeing one's friends and opening one's piano on a Sunday than on a Monday.

"No; of course not _that_," answered Patty. "If I thought it wrong, I shouldn't discuss it even with you. I should simply refuse to have anything to do with it."

"I know that, Patty," said her sister. "And I hope I am not altogether without a conscience either."

"No, Polly; but would you do this in Oldchester?"

"Certainly not."

"Then that's what I say. We ought not to have two weights and two measures. If a thing is objectionable in Oldchester, it is objectionable in London."

"Not at all. Circ.u.mstances alter cases. I may think it a good thing to take a sponge-bath every morning; but I should not take it in public."

"Polly! How can you?"

"What I mean is, that, so long as we are not a stumbling-block of offence to other people, we have a right to please ourselves in this matter."

So Miss Polly's will prevailed, as it prevailed with her sister upon most occasions; and the Sunday receptions became an established custom.

The house in which the Miss Pipers lodged when they came to London was in a street leading out of Hanover Square. The lower part of it was occupied by a fas.h.i.+onable tailor--a tailor so genteel and exclusive that he scorned any appeal to the general public, and merely had the word "Groll" (which was his name) woven into the wire blind that shaded his parlour window. The rooms above were sufficiently s.p.a.cious, and were, moreover, lofty--a great point in Miss Polly's opinion, as being good for sound. They were furnished comfortably, albeit rather dingily. But a few flower-pots, photographic alb.u.ms, and bits of crochet-work, scattered here and there, answered the purpose--if not of decoration, at least of showing decorative intention. A grand pianoforte, bestriding a large tract of carpet in the very middle of the front drawing-room, conspicuously a.s.serted its importance over all the rest of the furniture.

May and her uncle, accompanied by the two little boys, were shown upstairs, and, the door of the drawing-room being thrown open, they found themselves confronted by a rather numerous a.s.sembly. The last bars of a pianoforte-piece were being performed amidst the profound silence of the auditors, and the newly arrived party stood still near the door, waiting until the music should come to an end.

At the piano sat a smooth-faced young gentleman playing a series of incoherent discords with an air of calm resolve. Immediately behind him stood an elderly man of gentleman-like appearance, whom May found herself watching, as one watches a person swallowing something nauseous, and involuntarily expecting him to "make a face" as each new dissonance was crashed out close to his ear. But his amiable countenance remained so serene and satisfied, that the doubt crossed her mind whether he might not possibly be deaf. In the embrasure of a window stood a very tall, thin man, whose bald head was encircled by a fringe of grizzled red hair, and whose eyes were fast shut. But as he stood up perfectly erect, with his hands folded in a prayerful att.i.tude on his waistcoat, it was obvious that he was not asleep. Miss Piper was seated with her back towards the door and her face towards the pianist, so that May could not see it. But the composer of "Esther" nodded her head approvingly at every fresh harmonic catastrophe which convulsed the keyboard. Her satisfaction seemed to be shared by a stout lady of majestic mien, who sat near her and fired off exclamations of eulogium, such as "Charming!" "Wonderful modulation!" "Intensely wrought out," and so on--like minute guns; and with a certain air of suppressed exasperation, as though she suspected that there _might_ be persons who didn't like it, and was ready to defy them to the death. A dark-eyed girl, very plainly dressed, and holding a little leather music-roll in her hand, occupied a modest place behind this lady. Sitting close to the dark-eyed girl was a man of about thirty-five years old, well-featured, short in stature, and with reddish blonde hair and moustaches. This personage's countenance expressed a singular mixture of audacity and servility. His smile was at once impudent and false, and he listened to the music with a pretentious air of knowledge and authority. The rest of the company, with Miss Patty, were relegated, during the performance, to the back drawing-room, where tea was served; and the folding-doors were closed, lest the clink of a teaspoon, or the sibillation of a whisper, should penetrate to the music-room. But, in truth, nothing less than a crash of all the crockery on the table, and a simultaneous bellow from all the guests, could have competed successfully with the pianoforte-piece then in progress.

At length, with one final bang, it came to an end, and there was a general stir and movement among the company. The amiable-looking elderly man advanced towards Miss Piper with a most beaming smile, and said, in a soft refined voice--

"That is the right way, isn't it? One knows the sort of thing said by people who don't understand this school of music, the only music, in fact; but I have long been sure that this is the right way."

"Of course, it is the right way," exclaimed the stout lady, breathing indignation, not loud but deep, against all heretics and schismatics.

"We are so very, very much obliged to you, Mr. Turner," said the hostess. "That new composition of yours is really wonderful!" (And so, indeed, it was.)

As Miss Piper went up to the young gentleman who had been playing the piano, and who remained quite cool and unmoved by the demonstrations of his audience, she caught sight of the group near the door, and hastened to welcome them. May was received with enthusiasm, and her uncle with one of Miss Piper's best old-fas.h.i.+oned curtsies. Mr. Dormer-Smith began to apologize for bringing his little boys, and to explain that he had not expected to find so numerous an a.s.sembly; but Miss Piper cut him short with hearty a.s.surances that they were very welcome, and that her sister in particular was very fond of children. Then, the doors being by this time reopened, she ushered them all into the back room, crying--

"Patty! Patty! Who do you think is here? May Cheffington!" and then Miss Patty added her welcome to that of her sister.

Harold and Wilfred had been shyly dumb hitherto, although once or twice during the pianoforte-playing Wilfred had only saved himself from breaking into a shrill wail and begging to be taken home, by burying his face in the skirts of May's dress; but on beholding plum-cake and other good things set forth on the tea-table, they felt that life had compensations still. They took a fancy also to the Miss Pipers, finding their eccentric ornaments a mine of interest; and before three minutes had elapsed Harold was devouring a liberal slice of cake, and Wilfred, seated close to kind Miss Patty, was diversifying his enjoyment of the cake by a close and curious inspection of that lady's bracelet, taken off for his amus.e.m.e.nt, and endeavouring to count the various geological specimens of which it was composed.

As soon as May appeared in the back drawing-room, Constance Hadlow rose from her seat in a corner behind the tea-table, and greeted her.

"Dear Conny," cried May, "I am so glad to see you! Then you are staying with the Miss Pipers! I guessed you were."

Mr. Dormer-Smith was then duly presented to Miss Hadlow. Constance was in very good looks, and her beauty and the quiet ease of her manner made a very favourable impression on May's uncle.

Miss Hadlow found a seat for him near herself; and then turned again to May, saying, "There is another Oldchester friend whom you have not yet spoken to. You remember my cousin Owen?"

May's experience of society had not yet toned down her manner to "that repose which stamps the caste of Vere de Vere." She heartily shook hands with the young man, exclaiming, "This is a day of joyful surprises. I didn't expect to see you, Mr. Rivers. Now, if we only had the dear canon, and Mrs. Hadlow, and granny, I think I should be _quite_ happy."

"You are not a bit changed," said Owen Rivers, giving May his chair, and standing beside her in the lounging att.i.tude so familiar to her in the garden at College Quad.

"Changed! What should change me?"

"The world."

"What nonsense!" cried May, with her old schoolgirl bluntness. "As if I had not been living in the world all my life!"

Mr. Rivers raised his eyebrows with an amused smile.

"Well, _isn't_ it nonsense," pursued May, "to talk as if a few hundred or thousand persons in one town--though that town is London--made up the world?"

"It is a phrase which every one uses, and every one understands."

"But every one does not understand it alike."

"Perhaps not."

"What did you mean by it, just now?"

"What could I mean but the world of fas.h.i.+on, _the_ world par excellence?

Rightly so-called, no doubt, since it affords the best field for the exercise of the higher and n.o.bler human faculties. Those who are not in it exist, indeed; but with a half-developed, inferior kind of life, like a jelly-fish."

May laughed her frank young laugh.

"You're not changed either!" she said emphatically.