Lady Betty Across the Water Part 20

"They'll go to the Pink Ball with him, and by him. They couldn't without him. That's what they'll _do_," said Mrs. Ess Kay, as if she saw my cousin's whitening bones picked clean by the Pitchley family.

"And we shall have to be intimate with them, the whole time he stays."

"Oh, you needn't feel bound to for my sake. It isn't as though Mohunsleigh----" I began; but Mrs. Ess Kay snapped my poor sentence in two, as if it had been cotton on a reel.

"I have to think for all of us," said she; "Cora Pitchley is a climber."

We changed our dresses (Sally says one must be forever changing one's dress at Newport), lunched; and then at the door appeared a gorgeous white motor car lined with scarlet, which I had never seen before. As we all had on white, from head to foot, we matched it beautifully; and feeling that we looked nice enough even to grace an accident, if it _must_ come, we started to pick up Carolyn Pitchley and my cousin.

Mrs. Ess Kay didn't go, for she wasn't quite herself yet; and besides, she perhaps thought that in the circ.u.mstances Mohunsleigh ought to be brought to call before she met him informally. I don't know that any of us were as sorry as we ought to have been not to have her.

The Pitchleys' house, which is called the Chateau de Plaisance, is on a much grander scale than The Moorings. It thinks it is an old French Chateau, and tries to convey the same impression to beholders, as do several others of more or less the same sort. But it's a hopeless effort. The poor dears might as well give up and resign themselves once for all to being a blot on the exquisite blue and gold landscape; though perhaps if they can hold out for two or three hundred years, they may do better. The farther we went, along a glorious road called the Cliff Drive, and the more charming Colonial houses and delightful "cottages" I saw, the more I felt that the regular palaces were mistakes, with Newport for a setting and the sea for a background. I am glad that I didn't live at the time when all the real castles of the world were young and awkward. Perhaps they looked just as crude as these, at first, though it's hard to imagine it.

When we went back, the first thing that Mrs. Ess Kay asked, was: "Well, what about Lord Mohunsleigh?"

"He's made up his mind to stop, and send for his things," said I.

"You gave him my note? He's coming to us?"

"I gave him the note, and he's coming round presently to thank you for being so kind. But--he feels he had better stay with the Pitchleys. You see, it's like this. They happen to be sending a servant to New York to-day, to do some commissions for Mrs. Pitchley, so the man will go to Mohunsleigh's hotel too. And as they're doing so much for him, and Mrs.

Pitchley and her husband know some friends of his at Home, he thinks--But he'll tell you all about it himself."

"I told you so!" said Mrs. Ess Kay.

X

ABOUT A VIOLET TEA AND A MILLIONAIRE

While we were motoring, Mrs. Ess Kay had been terribly busy with her secretary, getting invitations ready for a Violet Tea.

She was giving the Tea, she explained, to introduce me to Newport Society, and she was having a Violet one because it was not the right time of year for violets.

I meekly suggested that as a reason for giving some other kind of Tea, but she said not at all. She wished to have that kind because violets were hard to get, though not impossible. I would see when the time came that she could get them. And I should also see, if it were indeed true that I did not know, what a Violet Tea was. She wanted it to be a surprise for me; she thought I would like it.

I hadn't long to wait before learning the true inwardness of a Violet Tea, for Mrs. Ess Kay was determined to get me "out" as soon as possible; and it seems that in America the time to bring a girl out is at a tea. At least, that is one way; and as Mrs. Ess Kay was even then planning to give something very big just before the much talked about "Pink Ball," so as to "take the shine off that grand affair," she wished to get the teacups washed up before she sent out the next invitations.

I'm sure Mother wouldn't take as much trouble for a house party to meet the King and Queen, as Mrs. Ess Kay did for that Violet Tea; and I daren't think even now--though it happened weeks ago--of the money she must have spent.

For one thing, she and Sally and I had to have violet dresses. She would buy mine (I don't see how I should have done it, if she hadn't, especially as Vic wrote just then that Mother felt poorer than ever, and That Man hadn't yet proposed), and it was beautiful; pale violet silk muslin, trimmed with violets and their leaves. Then violet and silver livery was ordered in a great hurry for the four footmen--to be worn on one afternoon, and no more! But these things were mere sketchy details, compared to other preparations.

One room, where tea was to be served, was entirely draped with violet silk, from the palest to the darkest shades; and for the smaller of the two drawing-rooms--the one where Mrs. Ess Kay would stand to receive her guests--wire frames were made, from measurements, to fit and cover all four walls. I couldn't imagine what these frames were for, at first, but when their hour came, they were padded with moss and covered with fresh violets. The curtains were taken down from the windows, and a network of violets was hung up in their place, with an effect of great loveliness when the light streamed through the screen of flowers.

And even this was not all, for a soft thick mat of gra.s.s and moss was spread over the polished floor, with a sprinkling of violets. All the furniture was taken away, and instead, along the walls, were placed banks of artificial moss and violets. No doubt these would have been real, too, but when crushed, they would have stained the dresses of those that sat upon them. Altogether, the room was turned into a woodsy bower of violets; and I was given a great bunch of the dear flowers to carry.

There had been only a week in which to prepare these sensational effects, but everything was finished in time, and without flurry.

Already I knew a great many of Mrs. Ess Kay's friends; and on the day of the tea it seemed that each person whose acquaintance I had made had remembered me with a cartwheel of violets. All my flowers were placed in vases on tables in the big drawing-room, adjoining the bower of violets; and as a card was attached to each bunch, pinned on the ma.s.ses of violet satin ribbon which trailed from it, each giver could have the pleasure of seeing how his gift compared with his neighbour's. It was a wonderful display--a violet show. And, as Mrs. Ess Kay had said, "it was not the right time of the year for violets."

We stood on our feet for hours, smiled yards of smiles, and said the same things over and over again so many times, that I began to feel like a phonograph doll which I saw in my first New York shop. Only, when I ran down n.o.body wound me up, and I had to go on by myself as best I could, which was fatiguing, and made the machinery squeak.

But everybody said it was a huge success. The New York papers had each more than a column about the "function," as they called it, and Mrs.

Ess Kay was piously happy.

I had thought we were very gay before; but after the Violet Tea, from getting up to going to bed, we never had a moment that hadn't its own appointed place in the procession of hours, like a bead in a long rosary.

After breakfast, we went to the Casino, to play tennis, listen to the concert, or pretend to, and to gabble. There, we would meet everybody we knew; and it was odd to see the calm, but slightly conscious air of superiority with which the Everybodies, going in or out, pa.s.sed the poor n.o.bodies a.s.sembled to watch the Casino entrance. Just as the middle and lower cla.s.s people stand till they are ready to drop, only to see the Queen drive into the Park, or leave Buckingham Palace dreadfully bored, to open a bridge, so these Americans jostle each other to see their millionaires and especially millionaires, going to enjoy themselves. Fancy if Londoners reduced themselves to a state of collapse for the pleasure of seeing Mr. Beit take off his hat to Mrs.

Wertheimer! But the millionaires in America seem to be like our aristocracy, only more important, for the non millionaires take a great deal more trouble to stare at them than the common people do at us.

After the Casino, there was always the beach, and the most delightful things happened at the beach. It was never twice the same. Then, we would lunch with some one, or some one would lunch with us at The Moorings. Afterwards there would be a drive, calls to make, perhaps two or three wonderful "At Homes," or concerts, with great singers and entertainers from New York; twenty minutes' rest, and then a scramble to dress for dinner, with a "dinner dance" to follow, or amateur theatricals.

Of course, as I haven't been presented yet, and don't know anything about what the Season is like in Town, except what Vic has told me, I can't judge of the differences at first hand; but then, Vic has told me a lot, and I have heard Stan and Loveland talk; besides, one seems to know one's own country and country people by instinct without having actually to see what they do; and I'm sure that even in the smartest set at home they don't dream of bothering their heads to think of such original entertainments as in America.

In England there are just two or three kinds of parties. You give a crush, which is grand if you have a big house, or you ask a few bright, particular ones and enjoy yourself. Or in the country you have a house party, and pick out the men because they can shoot and the women because they are pretty; or else, if it's winter, you hunt and you have theatricals. But the Americans at Newport turn up their noses at that slow, old-fashioned kind of thing. They lie awake nights (I'm sure they must) to think of something so original that n.o.body else can ever have had anything the least like it before. It is better, too, to have it very sensational and startling. If you are invited to a party, you never know a bit what it will be like; whether you will dance in a barn, and eat your supper on horseback out of decorated mangers; whether there will be captive balloons at a garden party; whether a Noah's Ark will have been rigged up on a miniature lake, or whether you will have a pair of skates provided for you and find yourself cutting figures on the ice in a gorgeously illuminated skating-rink, with the thermometer up to goodness knows how many degrees outside.

Of course, in a place where everybody gets nervous prostration trying to outdo everybody else in originality and extravagance, it wouldn't be like Mrs. Ess Kay to let herself fall behind.

She simply made up her mind that her big entertainment should be _the_ affair of the season, before she decided what form it should take. She thought instead of sleeping, for several nights, and began to wear the expression on her face which I have in motor cars when I think we are going to telescope with something twice our size, and am trying to prepare for eternity with a pleasant smile on my lips. She ate scarcely anything, telephoned a good deal, and took phenacetin in hot milk.

Then, suddenly, it came to her;--I mean the Idea.

We were at lunch when she thought of it, and luckily there were no visitors except Mrs. Pitchley and Carolyn, Mohunsleigh, and Tom Doremus. It was bad enough even with them, for she half sprang up, then sat down again, first going red, then going pale; and we all thought she was getting ready to faint. But as soon as she could speak, she said, when we shrieked at her, "It's nothing--nothing. I've just thought of something, that's all."

Afterwards, when she and Sally and Potter and I were alone together, she told us that at last she had got the right inspiration for her big entertainment.

It was two days after the Violet Tea, so it was quite time she should get it, she said; and she had been dreadfully worried, because the invitations ought to go out almost at once. The famous Pink Ball at the Casino was for the 23d, and she wanted to have her party the night before, so that everybody would be worn out, and the ball would fall flat.

"But we've got our cards all right now," said Potter. "Why do you want to queer the show?"

"I intend to show Mrs. Van der Windt what I can _do_," she answered.

"Suppose a lot of the people you want refuse you, so that they can be fresh for the ball?" Sally suggested.

"They won't," said Mrs. Ess Kay, "when they have seen what I shall say on the invitations."

Then she got up, went to her desk, took out some engraved cards which she had ready, all but filling in the date, and wrote something in one corner. "What do you think of that?" she asked Sally.

Sally took the card, looked at it for a minute, laughed, and pa.s.sed it on to me, while Potter came and stared over my shoulder.

She had written across the card: "Fancy Dress, with Masks. A Visit to the Maze; and Aladdin's Cave."

"Do you think that will bring them?" she enquired, with a triumphant and mysterious air.

"I think it _will_," said Sally.

"You know your business, old girl," remarked Potter.

"They'll want to know what it means, and they'll be bound to come and find out. What _is_ your idea, anyway?"