Missy Part 23

Fifine finally located her mistress down in the back parlour, occupied with shears and a heap of old magazines. Missy was clipping sketches from certain advertis.e.m.e.nts, which she might trace upon cardboard squares and decorate with water-colour. These were to be the "place-cards"--an artistic commission Missy had put off from day to day till, now, at the last minute, she was constrained to rise early, with a rushed and remorseful feeling. A situation familiar to many artists.

She succeeded in concentrating herself upon the work with the greatest difficulty. For, after breakfast, there began a great bustling with brooms and carpet-sweepers and dusters; and, no sooner was the house swept than appeared a gay and chattering swarm to garnish it: "Marble Hearts" with collected "potted palms" and "cut flowers" and cheesecloth draperies of blue and gold--the "club colours" which, upon the sudden need for club colours, had been suddenly adopted.

Missy betook herself to her room, but it was filled up with two of the girls and a bolt of cheesecloth; to the dining room, but there was no inspiration in the sight of Marguerite polishing the spare silver; to the side porch, but one cannot work where giggling girls sway and shriek on tall ladders, hanging paper-lanterns; to the summerhouse, but even to this refuge the Baby followed her, finally upsetting the water-colour box.

The day went rushing past. Enticing odours arose from the kitchen. The grocery wagon came, and came again. The girls went home. A sketchy lunch was eaten off the kitchen table, and father stayed down town. The girls reappeared. They overran the kitchen, peeling oranges and pineapples and bananas for "heavenly hash." Marguerite grew cross. The Baby, who missed his nap, grew cross. And Missy, for some reason, grew sort of cross, too; she resented the other girls' unrestrainable hilarity. They wouldn't be so hilarious if it were their own households they were setting topsy-turvy; if they had sixteen "place-cards" yet to finish.

In England, the hostess's entertainments went more smoothly. Things were better arranged there.

Gradually the girls drifted home to dress; the house grew quiet.

Missy's head was aching. Flushed and paint-daubed, she bent over the "place-cards."

Mother came to the door.

"Hadn't you better be getting dressed, dear?--it's half-past five."

Half-past five! Heavens! Missy bent more feverishly over the "place-cards"; there were still two left to colour.

"I'll lay out your dotted Swiss for you," offered mother kindly.

At this mention of her "best dress," Missy found time for a pang of vain desire. She wished she had a more befitting dinner gown. A black velvet, perhaps; a "picture dress" with rare old lace, and no other adornment save diamonds in her hair and ears and round her throat and wrists.

But, then, velvet might be too hot for August. She visioned herself in an airy creation of batiste--very simple, but the colour combination a ravishing mingling of palest pink and baby-blue, with ribbons fluttering; delicately tinted long gloves; delicately tinted slippers and silken stockings on her slender, high-arched feet; a few glittering rings on her restless fingers; one blush-pink rose in her hair which, simply arranged, suffered two or three stray rippling locks to wander wantonly across her forehead.

"Missy! It's ten minutes to six! And you haven't even combed your hair!"

It was mother at the door again.

The first guest arrived before Missy had got her hair "smoothed up"--no time, tonight, to try any rippling, wanton effects. She could hear the swelling sound of voices and laughter in the distance--oh, dreadful! Her fingers became all thumbs as she sought to get into the dotted swiss, upside down.

Mother came in just in time to extricate her, and b.u.t.toned the dress with maddeningly deliberate fingers.

"Now, don't fret yourself into a headache, dear," she said in a voice meant to be soothing. "The party won't run away--just let yourself relax."

Relax!

The musicians, out on the side porch, were already beginning their blaring preparations when the hostess, at last, ran down the stairs and into the front parlour. Her agitation had no chance to subside before they must file out to the dining room. Missy hadn't had time before to view the completely embellished dining room and, now, in all its glory and grandeur, it struck her full force: the potted palms screening the windows through which floated strains of music, streamers of blue and gold stretching from the chandelier to the four corners of the room in a sort of canopy, the long white table with its flowers and gleaming silver--

It might almost have been the scene of a function at Chetwoode Manor itself!

In a kind of dream she was wafted to the head of the table; for, since the function was at her house, Missy had been voted the presiding place of honour. It is a very great responsibility to sit in the presiding place of honour. From that conspicuous position one leads the whole table's activities: conversing to the right, laughing to the left, sharply on the lookout for any conversational gap, now and then drawing muted tete-a-tetes into a harmonic unison. She is, as it were, the leader of an orchestra of which the individual diners are the subsidiary instruments. Upon her watchful resourcefulness hangs the success of a dinner-party. But Missy, though a trifle fluttered, had felt no anxiety; she knew so well just how Lady Chetwoode had managed these things.

The hostess must also, of course, direct the nutrimental as well as the conversational process of the feast. She is served first, and takes exactly the proper amount of whatever viand in exactly the proper way and manipulates it with exactly the proper fork or knife or spoon. But Missy had felt no antic.i.p.atory qualms.

She was possessed of a strange, almost a lightheaded feeling. Perhaps the excitement of the day, the rush at the last, had something to do with it. Perhaps the spectacle of the long, adorned table, the scent of flowers, the sound of music, the dark eyes of Mr. Edward Brown who was seated at her right hand.

(Dear old faithful Ben!--to think of how his devotion to tippling Tim had brought Edward Brown into her life!)

She felt a stranger to herself. Something in her soared intoxicatingly.

The sound of her own gay chatter came to her from afar--as from a stranger. Mr. Brown kept on looking at her.

The butler appeared, bringing the oyster c.o.c.ktails (a genteel delicacy possible in an inland midsummer thanks to the canning industry), and proceeded to serve them with empress.e.m.e.nt.

The butler was really the climactic triumph of the event. And he was Missy's own inspiration. She had been racking her brains for some way to eliminate the undistinguished Marguerite, to conjure through the very strength of her desire some approach to a proper servitor. If only they had ONE of those estimable beings in Cherry vale! A butler, preferably elderly, and "steeped in respectability" up to his port-wine nose; one who would hover around the table, adjusting this dish affectionately and straightening that, and who, whenever he left the room, left it with a velvet step and an almost inaudible sigh of satisfaction...

And then, quite suddenly, she had hit upon the idea of "s...o...b..ll"

Saunders. s...o...b..ll had come to the house to borrow the Merriams'

ice-cream freezer. There was to be an informal "repast" at the Shriners'

hall, and s...o...b..ll engineered all the Shriners' gustatory festivities from "repasts" to "banquets." Sometimes, at the banquets, he even wore a dress suit. It was of uncertain lineage and too-certain present estate, yet it was a dress suit. It was the recollection of the dress suit that had given Missy her inspiration. To be sure, in England, butlers were seldom "coloured," but in Cherry vale one had to make some concessions.

The butler was wearing his dress suit as he came bearing the oyster c.o.c.ktails.

"h.e.l.lo, s...o...b..ll!" greeted Raymond Bonner, genially. "Didn't know you were invited to-night."

s...o...b..ll? what a gosherie! With deliberate hauteur Missy spoke:

"Oh, Saunders, don't forget to fill the gla.s.ses with ice-water."

Raymond cast her an astonished look, but, perhaps because he was more impressed by the formality of the function than he would have admitted, refrained from any bantering comment.

The hostess, then, with a certain righteous complacence, lowered her eyes to her c.o.c.ktail gla.s.s.

Oh, heavens!

It was the first time, so carried away had she been with this new, intoxicating feeling, that she had really noticed what she was eating--how she was eating it.

She was eating her oysters with her after-dinner coffee spoon!

The tiny-p.r.o.nged oyster fork was lying there on the cloth, untouched!

Oh, good heavens!

An icy chill of mortification crept down her spine, spread out through her whole being. She had made a mistake--SHE, the hostess!

A whirlwind of mortal shame stormed round and round within her. If only she could faint dead away in her chair! If only she could weep, and summon mother! Or die! Or even if she could sink down under the table and hide away from sight. But she didn't know how to faint; and hostesses do not weep for their mothers; and, in real life, people never die at the crucial moments; nor do they crawl under tables. All she could do was to force herself at last, to raise her stricken eyelids and furtively regard her guests.

Oh, dear heaven!

They were all--ALL of them--eating their oyster c.o.c.ktails with their after-dinner coffee spoons!

Missy didn't know why, at that sight, she had to fight off a spasm of laughter. She felt she must scream out in laughter, or die.

All at once she realized that Mr. Brown was speaking to her.

"What's the matter?" he was saying. "Want to sneeze?"

That struck her so funny that she laughed; and then she felt better.

"I was just terribly upset," she found herself explaining almost naturally, "because I suddenly found myself eating the oyster c.o.c.ktail with the coffee spoon."