My Little Sister Part 30

She asked a great deal about the Helmstones. "Ze only friends and zey are avay for seex mont!" Ah, it was well we were going to London. We should die, else, of aloneness. Aunt Josephine plainly was the one ray of light in our grey existence. Where did she live? Lowndes Square! Ah, but a very expensive and splendid part of London! No news to us, who had our own private measure for social alt.i.tudes. Bettina had looked out Lowndes Square on our faded map of London. Aunt Josephine was only a private person, but she lived nearer the King and Queen than the Helmstones did.

And for all her being a Biosophist she had asked us to stay for the Coronation. Bettina frequently led the conversation to the great event of June. But this queer little Frenchwoman was more interested in Aunt Josephine than she was in the King and Queen. Here was distinction for an Aunt!

And what was she like--this lady? We must have a picture of our only and so valuable relation.

Bettina went and rooted about in the deep print and photograph drawer, till she brought Aunt Josephine to light. Very faded and old-fashioned looking, but Madame Aurore regarded the face with a respectful enthusiasm. "Oh, une grande dame! une vraie grande dame!" Madame Aurore understood better now what was required.

We repudiated, on our aunt's behalf, the idea that she was so much grande dame as philanthropist, thinker, recluse. We did not deny her grandeur. We but clarified it; or, at least, Bettina did.

"Bettina talks too much to that woman," my mother said to me privately.

She sent for Bettina and told her she was not to speak to Madame Aurore about anything except her work.

Bettina thought to interpret this order literally would be inhuman.

Besides, she considered it very nice of Madame Aurore to take such an interest in us. "_I_ am grateful when people take an interest," said Bettina with her air of superiority.

When my mother heard that Bettina had been discussing Aunt Josephine, and had unearthed the photograph to show to Madame Aurore, she was annoyed. "Go and bring me the picture," she said.

Bettina went into the morning-room, and looked about for some minutes.

The little dressmaker sat there, in a litter of white and green, sewing furiously. Bettina said at last that she hated most dreadfully to bother Madame Aurore, but where was that old photograph?

Madame Aurore looked up absently. "Had Mademoiselle Bettina not taken it out?"

"Perhaps I did----" Bettina scoured the house.

Aunt Josephine's photograph was never found.

I was glad our mother did not know that Bettina had told Madame Aurore about the pendant and the diamond star. Bettina excused herself by saying Madame Aurore had been so certain a lady like our mother must have jewels, and that she would lend them to her daughters, in order to put the finishing touch of elegance to our toilette. Betty had felt it due to our mother to acknowledge that a part, at least, of this exalted expectation was not so wide of the mark. And Bettina endorsed Madame Aurore's opinion that a diamond star certainly _would_ "light up" my ivory satin and old lace. Also--but no, we must do without.

The green frock was all but finished. We had brought the cheval gla.s.s out of my mother's room. She was "not strong enough to stand the patchouli," so she missed the great moment of the final trying on.

Bettina stood before the gla.s.s, looking somehow more childish than ever, or rather seeming less of common earth and more of fairyland, in the tunic-frock of green, her short curls on her neck.

My fancy that she was like somebody out of "The Midsummer Night's Dream," was set to flight by Madame Aurore's shower of couturiere's compliment, mixed with highly practical considerations, such as: "See how it falls when you sit down. Parfaitement! And can you valk in it?

But _wis grace_!" Bettina proved she could. "A merveille! Sapristi!

Mademoiselle Bettine would see the sensation she was going to create in London. Could she lift ze arm--hein?" Mais belle comme un ange!--many makers of quite beautiful gowns studied the effect seulement en repos.

Mademoiselle Bettine would, without doubt, dance in that frock. Let us see, did it lend itself? Bettina moved about the morning-room to waltz time--laughing at and with Madame Aurore; stopping to make court curtsies; watching in the gla.s.s if green frock had pretty manners.

One thing more, its maker said, and behold Perfection! It needed ... it cried aloud for a single jewel.

"Ah, yes." Bettina's look fell. No doubt the finishing touch would have been a pearl and emerald pendant. But----

Madame Aurore struck in with a torrential rapture, drowning explanation and regret. Life, Madame Aurore shrilled, was for ever using her, humble instrument though she was--for the working out of these benevolences.

There had she--but three days ago--all innocent, unknowing--tossed that piece of chiffon tilleul into her trunk. Or rather, not her hand performed the act--not hers at all. The hand of Fate! And now, _The Finger!_ ... pointing straight at the pearl and emerald pendant. But, instantly, must Mademoiselle Bettine go and get the ravishing jewel--the diamond star, as well, while she was about it.

Then poor Betty had to say these glories were no more.

Madame Aurore snapped her boot-b.u.t.ton eyes, and rolled them up. Our poor, _poor_ mother! Deeply, ah! but profoundly, Madame Aurore commiserated une dame si distinguee, si elegante, being in straitened circ.u.mstances. Ah, Madame Aurore understood! She would be most economical with the coals.

All the same she wasn't.

But what did it matter! since she turned us out dresses that we were sure Hermione, herself, would have characterised as "Dreams." Bettina went about the house, singing:

"'Where are you going to, my pretty maid?'

'Going to London, Sir,' she said...."

Madame Aurore even managed to put the finishing touches to the two frocks made in the village, which Bettina called our Coronation robes--just white muslin, but not "just muslin" at all, after they had pa.s.sed through Madame Aurore's hands. She listened indulgently while Bettina wondered how the young Princes would like driving through London in a gold coach, and above all how the little Princess would feel; and how she would look; and how did Madame Aurore think she would do her hair?

"I don't like that woman," my mother observed pointedly to Bettina.

"Oh, dearest, she feels it. I know from something----"

"I do not object to her knowing. But I am not interested in Madame Aurore." My mother dismissed her.

The fact was that none of the torrent of talk (carried on now in a whisper, with elaborate deference to the chere malade)--none of it had to do with Madame Aurore herself. We had had to ask her all of the little we came to know about her. She had no regular business in London.

Ah, no, she was too often ill. She merely went out to work when she was "strong enuss."

"Zen too, ze leedle gal. I haf to sink about her." The thought seemed one to hara.s.s. All would be different if Mme. Aurore had a shop.

We agreed that to have a shop full of lovely French models, would be delightful. And by-and-by the little Aurore would help in the shop.

"_Nevair!_" said Mme. Aurore with sudden pa.s.sion. She knew all about being in shops. It was to prevent her daughter from knowing, too, that Mme. Aurore must make money. The little Aurore should go to the Convent school--which seemed somehow an odd destination for the daughter of Madame Aurore. She spoke of it as a far dream, beckoning.

"Nossing--but _nossing_ can be done in zis world vidout monny." And what people will do for money--oh, little did we know! But the world was like that. Eh bien, Madame Aurore had not made it. _Had_ she done so, it would be a better place.

Betty and I smiled at the pains taken to make this clear. Madame Aurore professed herself revolted by an arrangement which made "ze goodness or ze badness of a pairson" dependent upon where you happened to find yourself.

"Par example you can be extremement good _here_." More. She would go so far as to say you must be a genius to discover how to be bad here.

Through Betty's laughing protest, the little woman went on with seriousness to a.s.sure us it was "une chose bien differente dans ..." she checked herself, bit off the end of her thread, and spat it out.

"It is different, you mean, in Crutchley Street?" Betty asked. And, though she got no answer, I think we both understood the anxious mother to be thinking of the small Aurore left all alone in one of the world's Mean Streets. Perhaps the reason Betty got no answer to her question was that she had slightly raised her voice in putting it, and I had said, "Sh!"

"What ees it?" Madame Aurore demanded, looking round.

"I was only reminding Betty," I said. "We mustn't disturb my mother."

Hah! naturally not. _Whatever_ happened, she was not to be disturbed!

I was afraid, from the tone in which Madame Aurore said this, that she thought I had been reproving her. And, to divert her thoughts, I asked: "Who takes care of her--the little daughter--while you are away?"

Again she bit viciously at the thread. "Not motch 'care'!" The small eyes snapped as she drew the thread through the needle's eye. I had never seen even her hands fly so fast, or her whole feverish little body attack the basting with such fury of energy as after that reference to the child left behind in Crutchley Street.

Bettina said soothingly: "I suppose you left her with some good friend?"