RESENTLY, when we were not in the least expecting it, there came a little sudden jolt that made us look at each other precipitately. Lady Torquilin was quite as nervous as I at this point. 'What has become of Oddie?' she exclaimed, and descried a red coat in a cab rolling up beside us with intense relief. As we passed through the Palace gates the cab disappeared, and chaos came again.

Original

'Naughty boy!' said Lady Torquilin, in bitterness of spirit. 'Why, in the name of fortune, couldn't he have come with us in the carriage? Men have no nerves, my dear, none whatever; and they can't understand our having them!' But at that moment we alighted, in a maze of directions, upon the wide, red-carpeted steps, and whisked as rapidly as possible through great corridors with knots of gentlemen in uniform in them to the cloak-room. 'Hurry, child!' whispered Lady Torquilin, handing our wraps to the white-capped maid. 'Don't let these people get ahead of us, and keep close to me!'—and I observed the same spasmodic haste in everybody else. With our trains over our arms we fled after the others, as rapidly as decorum would permit, through spacious halls and rooms that lapse into a red confusion in my recollection, leaving one of my presentation cards somewhere on the way, and reaching the limit of permitted progress at last with a strong sense of security and comfort. We found it in a large pillared room full of regularly-curving lines of chairs, occupied by the ladies of the forty carriages that were before us. Every head wore its three white feathers and its tulle extension, and the aggregation of plumes and lappets and gentle movements made one in the rear think of a flock of tame pigeons nodding and pecking—it was very 'quaint,' as Lady Torquilin said when I pointed it out. The dresses of these ladies immediately became a source of the liveliest interest to us, as ours were apparently to those who sat near us. In fact, I had never seen such undisguised curiosity of a polite kind before. But then I do not know that I had ever been in the same room with so many jewels, and brocades, and rare orchids, and drooping feathers, and patrician features before, so perhaps this is not surprising. A few gentlemen were standing about the room, holding fans and bouquets, leaning over the backs of the ladies' chairs, and looking rather distraught, in very becoming costumes of black velvet and silk stockings and shoe-buckles, and officers in uniform were scattered through the room, looking as if they felt rather more important than the men in black; as I dare say they did, representing that most glorious and impressive British institution, the Army, while the others were only private gentlemen, their own property, and not connected with her Majesty in any personal way whatever.

'Here you are,' said somebody close behind us. 'How d'ye do, Auntie? How d'ye do, Miss Wick? 'Pon my word, I'm awfully sorry I missed you before; but you're all right, aren't you? The brute of a policeman at the gates wouldn't pass a hansom.' It was Mr. Oddie Pratte, of course, looking particularly handsome in his red-and-plaid uniform, holding his helmet in front of him in the way that people acquire in the Army, and pleased, as usual, with the world at large.

'Then may I ask how you came here, sir?' said Lady Torquilin, making a pretence of severity.

'Private entree!' responded Mr. Pratte, with an assumption of grandeur. 'Fellow drove me up as a matter of course—no apologies! They suspected I was somebody, I guess, coming that way, and I gave the man his exact fare, to deepen the impression. Walked in. Nobody said anything! It's what you call a game o' bluff, Auntie dear!'

'A piece of downright impertinence!' said Lady Torquilin? pleasantly. 'It was your red coat, boy. Now, what do you think of our gowns?'

Mr. Pratte told us what he thought of them with great amiability and candour. I had seen quite enough of him since the day at Aldershot to permit and enjoy his opinion, which even its frequent use of 'chic' and 'rico' did not make in any way irreverent. This young gentleman was a connoisseur in gowns; he understood them very well, and we were both pleased that he liked ours. As we criticised and chaffed and chatted a door opened at the farther end of the room, and all the ladies rose precipitately and swept forward.

It was like a great, shimmering wave, radiant in colour, breaking in a hundred places into the foam of those dimpling feathers and streaming lappets, and it rushed with unanimity to the open door, stopping there, chafing, on this side of a silk rope and a Gentleman of the Court. We hurried on with the wave—Lady Torquilin and Mr. Oddie Pratte and I—and presently we were inextricably massed about half-way from its despairing outer edge, in an encounter of elbows which was only a little less than furious. Everybody gathered her train over her left arm—it made one think of the ladies of Nepaul, who wear theirs in front, it is said—and clung with one hand to her prodigious bouquet, protecting her pendent head-dress with the other. 'For pity's sake, child, take care of your lappets,' exclaimed Lady Torquilin. 'Look at that!' I looked at 'that'; it was a ragged fragment of tulle about a quarter of a yard long, dependent from the graceful head of a young lady immediately in front of us. She did not know of her misfortune, poor thing, but she had a vague and undetermined sense of woe, and she turned to us with speaking eyes. 'I've lost mamma,' she said, unhappily.

'Where is mamma? I must go to mamma.' And she was not such a very young lady either. But Lady Torquilin, in her kindness of heart, said, 'So you shall, my dear, so you shall!' and Mr. Pratte took his aunt's bouquet and mine, and held them, one in each hand, above the heads of the mob of fine-ladyhood, rather enjoying the situation, I think, so that we could crowd together and allow the young lady who wanted her mamma to go and find her. Mr. Oddie Pratte took excellent care of the bouquets, holding them aloft in that manner, and looked so gallantly handsome doing it that other gentlemen immediately followed his example, and turned themselves into flowery candelabra, with great effect upon the brilliancy of the scene.

A sudden movement among the ladies nearest the silken barrier—a sudden concentration of energy that came with the knowledge that there was progress to be made, progress to Royalty! A quick, heaving rush through and beyond into another apartment full of emptiness and marble pillars, and we were once more at a standstill, having conquered a few places—brought to, a masterly inactivity by another silken cord and another Gentleman of the Court, polite but firm. In the room beyond we could see certain figures moving about at their ease, with no crush and no struggle—the ladies and gentlemen of the Private EntrÉe. With what lofty superiority we invested them! They seemed, for the time, to belong to some other planet, where Royal beings grew and smiled at every street-corner, and to be, on the other side of that silken barrier, an immeasurable distance off. It was a distinct shock to hear an elderly lady beside us, done up mainly in amethysts, recognise a cousin among them. It seemed to be self-evident that she had no right to have a cousin there.

'I'll see you through the barrier,' said Mr. Oddie Pratte, 'and then I'll have to leave you. I'll bolt round the other way, and be waiting for you at the off-door, Auntie. I'd come through, only Her Maj. does hate it so. Not at all nice of her, I call it, but she can't bear the most charming of us about on these occasions. We're not good enough.' A large-boned lady in front—red velvet and cream—with a diminutive major in attendance, turned to him at this, and said with unction, 'I am sure, Edwin, that is not the case. I have it on excellent authority that the Queen is pleased when gentlemen come through. Remember, Edwin, I will not face it alone.'

'I think you will do very well, my dear!' Edwin responded. 'Brace up! 'Pon my word, I don't think I ought to go. I'll join you at——'

'If you desert me, Edwin, I shall die!' said the bony lady, in a strong undertone; and at that moment the crowd broke again. Oddie slipped away, and we went on exultantly two places, for the major had basely and swiftly followed Mr. Pratte, and his timid spouse, in a last clutching expostulation, had fallen hopelessly to the rear.

About twenty of us, this time, were let in at once. The last of the preceding twenty were slowly and singly pacing after one another's trains round two sides of this third big room towards a door at the farther corner. There was a most impressive silence. As we got into file I felt that the supreme moment was at hand, and it was not a comfortable feeling. Lady Torquilin, in front of me, put a question to a gentleman in a uniform she ought to have been afraid of—only that nothing ever terrified Lady Torquilin, which made it less comfortable still. 'Oh, Lord Mafferton,' said she—I hadn't recognised him in my nervousness and his gold lace—'How many curtseys are there to make?'

'Nine, dear lady,' replied this peer, with evident enjoyment. 'It's the most brilliant Drawing-Room of the season. Every Royalty who could possibly attend is here. Nine, at the least!'

Lady Torquilin's reply utterly terrified me. It was confidential, and delivered in an undertone, but it was full of severe meaning. 'I'm full of rheumatism,' said she, 'and I shan't do it.'

The question as to what Lady Torquilin would do, if not what was required of her, rose vividly before me, and kept me company at every step of that interminable round. 'Am I all right?' she whispered over her shoulder from the other end of that trailing length of pansy-coloured velvet. 'Perfectly,' I said. But there was nobody to tell me that I was all right—I might have been a thing of shreds and patches. Somebody's roses had dropped; I was walking on pink petals. What a pity! And I had forgotten to take off my glove; would it ever come unbuttoned? How deliberately we were nearing that door at the farther end! And how could I possibly have supposed that my heart would beat like this! It was all very well to allow one's self a little excitement in preparation; but when it came to the actual event I reminded myself that I had not had the slightest intention of being nervous. I called all my democratic principles to my assistance—none of them would come. 'Remember, Mamie Wick,' said I to myself, 'you don't believe in queens.' But at that moment I saw three Gentlemen of the Household bending over, and stretching out Lady Torquilin's train into an illimitable expanse. I looked beyond, and there, in the midst of all her dazzling Court, stood Queen Victoria. And Lady Torquilin was bending over her hand! And in another moment it would be—it was my turn!

I felt the touches on my own train, I heard somebody call a name I had a vague familiarity with—'Miss Mamie Wick.' I was launched at last towards that little black figure of Royalty with the Blue Ribbon crossing her breast and the Koh-i-nor sparkling there! Didn't you believe in queens, Miss Mamie Wick, at that moment? I'm very much afraid you did.

And all that I remember after was going down very unsteadily before her, and just daring the lightest touch of my lips upon the gracious little hand she laid on mine. And then not getting nearly time enough to make all of those nine curtseys to the beautiful sparkling people that stood at the Queen's left hand, before two more Gentlemen of the Court gathered up my draperies from behind my feet and threw them mercifully over my arm for me. And one awful moment when I couldn't quite tell whether I had backed out of all the Royal presences or not, made up my mind that I had, then unmade it, and in agony of spirit turned and backed again!

It was over at last. I had kissed the hand of the Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and—there's no use in trying to believe anything to the contrary—I was proud of it. Lady Torquilin and I regarded each other in the next room with pale and breathless congratulation, and then turned with one accord to Oddie Pratte.

'On the whole,' said that young gentleman, blandly, 'you did me credit!'

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