The Tale of Triona. William John Locke

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СКАЧАТЬ to understand that though Lydia was, naturally, the lady of his evening’s devotion yet his heart was filled with a sense of Olivia’s graciousness. Half a dozen words and a bow did it. In a polite phrase, a bow and a gesture he indicated that if Miss Gale would join them, his cup of happiness would overflow. Olivia pleaded fatigue. Then another evening? With Mrs. Dawlish. A pleasant little party, in fact. He would be enchanted.

      “We’ll fix it up for about a fortnight hence,” said Lydia significantly. “To-morrow, then, dear, at eleven.”

      When they had gone Olivia, who had accompanied them to the flat door, threw herself on the sofa and, putting her hands behind her head stared over the edge of her own world into a new one, strange and bewildering.

      Myra entered.

      “Are you ever going to bed?”

      “I suppose I must,” said Olivia.

      “Are dressed-up men like that often coming here?”

      “God knows,” said Olivia, “who are coming here. I don’t.”

CHAPTER V

       Table of Contents

      THE Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you like to call the epic of the first wild adventure of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, but a master of psychology, to record the myriad vibrations of the soul as it reacts to temptations, yieldings, tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite apprehensions, fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty of the will; which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness of limb and ache of head; which makes the day a dream of reality and the night the reality of a dream. Hardened women of the world with frock-worn minds are caught at times by the lure of the adventure, even when it is a question of a dress or two and a poor half a dozen hats. But how manifold more potent the spell in the case of one who starts with her young body in Nymph-like innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and again in infinite variety, from toe to head, from innermost secret daintiness to outward splendour of bravery!

      Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the world, but to herself during that first fortnight in London. Her hours could be reckoned by gasps of wonder. She lost count of time, of money, of human values. Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, such as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would make or mar a costume, loomed paramount in importance. The after-use scarcely occurred to her. Sufficient for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl with just the pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, into a radiant and somewhat distinguished dark-haired little personage.

      Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, her defeats, went all into the melting-pot of her delight. “No bath salts, my dear?” cried Lydia. “Whoever heard of a woman not using bath salts?” So bath salts were ordered. And—horrified: “My dear, you don’t mean to say you wash your face in soap and water. What will become of your skin?” So Olivia was put under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked her dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It was all so new, so unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, an experience worth the living through, even though all thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish at the end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room and have beautiful women parade before her, clad in dreams of loveliness—any one of which was hers for a scribble on a bit of pink paper—evoked within her strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was countless leagues away; this transcended the London even of her most foolish visions.

      Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored she looked back on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, milliners, lingerie makers and furriers, said to Lydia Dawlish:

      “It’s funny, but the fact that there might be a man or so in the world never entered my head.”

      And the wise Lydia answered: “You were too busy turning yourself into a woman.”

      Twice or thrice during this chrysalis period she stole out of nights with Myra to the dress circle of a theatre, where, besides ingenuous joy in the drama, she found unconfessed consolation in the company of homely folk like herself—girls in clean blouses or simple little frocks like her own, and young men either in well-worn khaki or morning dress. On these occasions she wondered very much what she was about to do in the other galley—that of the expensively furred and jewelled haughtinesses and impudences whom she shouldered in the vestibule crush and whom she saw drive away in luxurious limousines. These flashing personalities frightened her with their implied suggestions of worlds beyond her ken. One woman made especial impression on her—a woman tall, serene, with a clear-cut face, vaguely familiar, and a beautiful voice; she overheard a commonplace phrase or two addressed to the escorting man. She brushed Olivia’s arm and turned with a smile and a word of gracious apology and passed on. Olivia caught a whisper behind her. “That’s the Marchioness of Aintree. Isn’t she lovely?” But she did not need to be told that she had been in contact with a great lady. And she went home doubting exceedingly whether, for all her flourish of social trumpets, Lydia Dawlish’s galley was that of Lady Aintree.

      Criticism of Lydia, however, she put behind her as ingratitude, for Lydia made up royally for past negligence. Time and energy that ought to have been devoted to Lydia, Ltd., was diverted to the creation of Olivia.

      “I don’t know why you’re so good to me,” she would say.

      And the other, with a little mocking smile round her lips: “It’s worth it. I’m giving myself a new experience.”

      The first occasion on which she went out into the great world was that of Sydney Rooke’s party. She knew that her low-cut, sleeveless, short-skirted gown of old gold tissue had material existence, but she felt herself half-ashamedly, half-deliciously clad in nothing but a bodily sensation. A faint blush lingered in her cheeks all the evening. Lydia, calling for her in Rooke’s car, which had been placed at her disposal, held her at arm’s length in sincere and noble admiration, moved by the artist’s joy in beholding the finished product of his toil, and embraced her fondly. Then she surveyed her again, from the little gold brocade slippers to the diamond butterfly (one of her mother’s bits of jewellery) in her dark wavy hair.

      “You’re the daintiest elf in London,” she cried.

      To the dinner at the Savoy Sydney Rooke had invited a white-moustached soldier, Major-General Wigram, whose blue undress uniform, to the bedazzlement of Olivia, gleamed with four long rows of multi-coloured ribbon; a vivacious middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who wrote novels, plays, books of travel, and fashion articles in a weekly periodical—Olivia learned all this in their first five-minute converse in the lounge; Sir Paul and Lady Barraclough, he a young baronet whose civilian evening dress could not proclaim hard-won distinctions, she a pretty, fair, fragile creature, both of them obviously reacting joyously to relaxation of tension; and, last, the Vicomte de Mauregard, of the French Embassy, young, good looking, who spoke polished English with a faultless accent. It was, socially, as correct a little party as the brooding, innocent spirit of Mrs. Gale could have desired for her about-to-be prodigal daughter. Olivia sat between her host and Mauregard. On her host’s right was Lady Barraclough; then the General, then Lydia, then Sir Paul, facing Rooke at the round table, then Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who was Mauregard’s left-hand neighbour. They were by the terrace windows, far from what Olivia, with her fresh mind playing on social phenomena, held then and ever afterwards, most rightly, to be the maddening and human intercourse-destroying band.

      Not that her first entrance СКАЧАТЬ