CHAPTER XXXII

AT THE MILLINER'S

'My dear,' said the relict of Tomkin-Jones, M.D., 'if I may be allowed the impertinent question, why did you say, "oh!"'

'I――I think I saw some one I know,' answered Winefred, colouring.

'None of the Finnboroughs! Do not say that. We will drive on――or turn the carriage. In which direction? I did not see the liveries. Perhaps on foot.'

'Yes.'

'The Viscount. No――positively. You must introduce me as an old and valued friend, you know.'

'It was not――I am not sure. I may be mistaken, but I think I caught a glimpse of my father.'

'Your father! Not possible. Not returned from the Colony?――I see――to be advanced. He knows that you are here. He will call and inquire.'

'I am not sure he knows that I am with you. It was arranged without him.'

'He must have arrived quite recently. Prodigious! My dear Mr. Frank, let us procure the last edition of the _Bath Gazette_――we shall find him among the fashionable arrivals.'

'The new number will not be issued till the day after to-morrow.'

'True――we must remain in suspense. Or shall we inquire at the principal hotels? This will be quite an accession to our circle, and a heightening of our pleasure. All the more reason, if her father be here, that Miss Holwood should appear to the best advantage. I wonder now, whether he designs to take her out with him――to be the belle of the assemblies of what's the place! How good of you, Mr. Frank, to assist us with your counsel. I suppose it will hardly do to ask you to our table to take pot-luck with us? Our circle is but one of ladies.'

'A garland of imperishable roses,' said Mr. Wardroper. 'I should be more than happy.'

'Nonsense, Mr. Wardroper――pot-luck, remember. Upon my honour, I believe there are but scraps in the house, and I expect only rissolles or cottage pie.'

'Mamma, you know that you ordered a head and shoulders of salmon, and that Mrs. Jose has brought us two beautiful ducks.'

'Prodigious! I had forgotten.'

'Really,' said the young man, 'what is on the table will be immaterial to me in such society, where eye and ear are in a thrill of ecstasy.'

He took off his hat and bowed round.

'Oh, Mr. Wardroper, excuse me, what an elegant new ring you are wearing!' said the widow. 'How did you come by it? If not asking impudent questions, is it a present or a purchase?'

'If the ring meet with your approval, that is its highest value. It is actually my father's signet-ring. His hands have become so crippled with rheumatism, and the joints of the fingers so swollen, that he is no longer able to wear it, so he has transferred it to me. It is an heirloom.'

The young man removed a fine engraved cornelian, set in gold, and handed it to Mrs. Tomkin-Jones.

'Your arms, I presume?' she said, looking at it.

'Certainly――a chevron between three choughs. The crest a Cornish chough. Though, I protest, I have not the smallest idea what the bird is――whether it exist, or is extinct as the dodo, or fabulous as the wyvern.'

'But I know it,' said Winefred.

'Martlets have, I believe, no feet,' said Mrs. Jones.

'But these have legs and beaks of sealing-wax scarlet,' said Winefred. 'Otherwise they are as black as ravens. They are clever birds and build in our cliffs. We had one about a year ago, but a cat got at it. He was tame and loved to be stroked and caressed and talked to. He would run up a ladder like a squirrel. But oh! he was mischievous, once he got at mother's box――――'

'Do you mean your poor deceased mother's jewel-case, or only the workbox of your nurse?' asked the widow.

'I mean where were the tapes and pins and buttons,' answered Winefred, colouring.

'Really,' said the young man, 'I protest that you make me desirous to see one of these birds. Conceive my ignorance in not knowing what a chough was, and yet bearing three of them on my shield and one on my helm.'

'It would be pure,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, 'to have one, tame, in the square garden. I suppose that it would remain there, were the wing clipped. But there are cats.'

'Oh!' exclaimed Winefred, 'our bird would have been able to keep away from the cat if it had not been ill, but it had swallowed a brass thimble and was heavy and drooping. If you had it in the house, nothing would content it but to trip upstairs to the very garret.'

'Elle est ingenue, n'est pas?' An aside of Mrs. Tomkin-Jones to Mr. Wardroper. Then, 'It would be really too charming to have one of these birds in the garden.'

'I can get you a pair,' said Winefred. 'When I go home I will see to it. You can have only young choughs, but their beaks and legs are orange the first year; it is not till the second that they become scarlet. The wild, full-grown birds cannot be caught. They are becoming scarce. I think that the jackdaws are driving them.'

'How gratified Sir Barnaby will be!' observed the relict of Dr. Jones to young Wardroper. 'How it will amuse him to see in the flesh hopping about in the garden the choughs that are engraved on his plate, and worn on his livery. Ah! here we are.'

To a woman there is no happiness more sincere, more honest than that of spending money freely on her personal adornment. Next in degree is that of spending it on the decoration of another. Such as have not money at command to lavish, enjoy a very real and full happiness when the chance comes to them to dip freely into another person's purse regardless of the object for which they dip. Mrs. Tomkin-Jones had felt poignantly her inability to sweep into every shop in Bath, and run up bills commensurate with her social importance, and worthy of the memory of the late M.D. the Maker of Bath. But now her bosom swelled, and every pulse tingled with pride, because she was able to exhibit before the shop assistants that she was a woman who, if she did not spend much herself, was able to introduce to them such as could do so. The consciousness of importance gave stiffness to her back, amplitude to her bosom, elevation to her chin, and passed in electric rustles through the folds of her gown.

The mere looking through an assortment of materials, the matching of ribbons, the balancing of trimmings against the textile fabrics they are to enrich, afford a joy to the female heart such as no man can enter into.

When the preliminaries had been discussed and determined, then ensued the second act of the drama, the ascent to the measuring and fitting room, from which man is as absolutely excluded as of old from the mysteries of the Bona Dea. Mrs. Tomkin-Jones described a circle with a sweep of her skirts and said to Jesse, 'My dear, I am sure you will remain here with Mr. Wardroper, whilst I attend Miss Holwood above!' Then to the young man, 'I am truly sorry, but do you mind?'

'To be left with Miss Jesse is like being given the custody of the Crown jewels,' answered he.

When Winefred and Mrs. Tomkin-Jones were gone, Jesse turned with a laugh to Frank Wardroper, and said: 'It is positively bad. We are boring you intolerably.'

'Not at all. My soul lives in art.'

'You are laughing at us.'

'Set your mind at rest. Do you not see that the proper dressing of a lovely girl is a matter of transcendental importance? It is like the setting of a fine melody to rich and appropriate harmonies, it is the clothing of a poetic idea in a cloud of expressive, illustrative words. Be a jewel ever so fine, it exacts proper mounting.'

'Is this your own?' asked Jesse bluntly.

'It is from my father――like the ring. I do not pretend to originate, only to embellish.'

'I have no great interest in dress.'

'You are wrong. Excuse my saying it, but you are. You have, you say, at home salmon and ducks. The whole charm, delight of our prospective meal will consist in their being well dressed, stuffed and garnished. There is style in everything, in language, in painting, in cooking, and in clothing, and no woman is justified in forgetting this.'

After the lapse of a quarter of an hour, the feet of Mrs. Tomkin-Jones appeared on the stair, followed by the gradual unrolling of the lady, next by that of Winefred, and then that of the shop-woman, as they descended from the measuring department.

A placitude, an elevation, an illumination invested the countenance of Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, as though she had endowed a hospital, or was about to give her body to be burned in martyrdom for the Faith.

'Will one of the young men call my coachman,' said the lady with dignity. 'And, Miss Finch, you will remember my instructions about the _ruche_.'

'Home!' ordered Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, accepting the offices of the shopman, when he shut the carriage door, as undeserving of recognition, being of everyday occurrence. 'Since we live in the same square, Mr. Frank, my carriage will take you to your door after having set us down.'

One of the party alone was dispirited and indisposed for conversation, and that was she whose money was being spent, and whose person was to be adorned. A fibre of her soul had been jarred.

On reaching the door round the corner, the ladies descended. Frank Wardroper had jumped out.

'Baker shall drive you on,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones grandly.

'Not at all――we are but five doors off.'

'He really may as well.'

'I am already out and on my feet.'

He took off his hat and bowed.

'Au revoir,' said Mrs. Jones, 'à sept heures.'

On entering the house, Winefred, who had become somewhat pale, laid her hand on the arm of her hostess and said, 'I should wish to say something.'

'By all means, my dear, when?'

'Now, but not in the passage.'

'The hall,' was Mrs. Jones's correction. 'Is it concerning the tulle for the Assembly Ball? I myself question the ribbons?'

'It is not about any dresses,' answered Winefred.

'Well, here, come into the dining-room. Sylvana! No, she is not there, and the fire is low. Goodness, how the smell of last meal hangs about! Why did she not open the windows? As to the domestic servants, they think of nothing. Now, my dear, what is it?'

'Shall I come in?' asked Jesse.

'Yes,' said Winefred. 'I should wish you to hear what I have to say.' She shut the door. Mrs. Tomkin-Jones drew off a glove, and then threw up her veil.

'Very well, yes, my dear.'

'It is one thing only,' said the girl.

Jesse saw that she was in earnest, that her communication would not concern the dresses. She said to herself, 'That girl has a temper, and is going to fly out.'

'It is one thing only,' repeated Winefred, looking straight at the widow. 'What did you say to the gentleman in a foreign language?'

'To Frank Wardroper? In what language? I speak several.'

'I cannot tell what tongue it was, but it was not English.'

'Oh! I did say something in French, I remember. But of course you know French?'

'I do not. You know that I do not.'

'Every lady is familiar――――'

'I was not brought up as a lady.'

Mrs. Tomkin-Jones was confounded, but she recovered herself. 'No, my dear child, I know you were left in charge of an ignorant person who neglected――――'

'I was sent to a Dame's school, but I did not learn French there. That matters not. You were, I think, alluding in French to my――to my――Mrs. Marley. You used some words; that was before we entered the shop. If they concerned me I do not care, but if they reflected on her, I _do_ care. I care with my whole heart and soul, and'――the tears were near filling her eyes――'I have heard you call her a person, a creature, a thing, and what you said about her in French I know not, but it was not civil or you would not have spoken it in a strange tongue. What did you say?'

'I really do not recall.'

'It does not matter. But, madam, consider this. I will not have Mrs. Marley spoken of, in English or in French, in a way that is not respectful. None but I know what she has been to me, nor how that there is no one in the world to fight her battles but myself. No one but I know how good she is, how true, how honest, how loving; those who snap and sneer at her are not worthy to buckle her shoes. A word spoken against her, in ridicule or in disparagement, I _will_ not bear, I _cannot_ bear. I cannot tell what I might say or do if I heard it again. But of this I am certain, I will throw all the advantages away from me which I might gain by being here rather than hear it again. I would rather leave the house and go back to her once more.'

'It does your heart credit,' said Mrs. Tomkin-Jones, who was really a good and well-meaning woman.

Then Jesse burst forth: 'Let me kiss you. Now I know that I shall love you. If mamma says a word against her, I will stamp on her corns, and she has soft ones, too!'