The Gay, Gilded Scene

Mrs. Day, being told that her daughters proposed to go unchaperoned to the Assembly Rooms that night, declared that for them to do so was unheard-of and not to be sanctioned. But, under the strain of adversity the poor woman's will, never a strong one, had weakened. She was painfully conscious of her own helplessness in the grip of circumstances, and was always troubled with doubts as to the wisdom of her own judgment. By the time her day's work was over she was too tired to stand up against any power she came into collision with. In all that concerned Bessie she was absolutely feeble. Bessie was victor always, not by reason of superior strength but through fractiousness, through stubbornness, through a hysterical determination to talk the opposing voices down, through her habit of crying like a baby when contradicted, and flinging things about.

So, on this particular occasion, the elder daughter avowing in a high, excited voice that not many pleasures came in her way, and that when one did come she meant to take it, let her mother be pleased or let her be teased, the objections were speedily silenced.

Leaving the shop for once in the care of Mr. Pretty, Mrs. Day went upstairs for the pleasure of seeing her girls once more in gala attire.

"I have taken the liberty of ordering a fly for the young ladies," Mr.
Gibbon said as he and the mother sat awaiting the appearance of the pair.

"Oh, Mr. Gibbon, if you would go with them, and see them safe to the
Assembly Rooms I should be so much obliged."

Mr. Gibbon, with great solemnity of mien, thoroughly realising the responsibility of the office, undertook to do so. He, for his part, was going to take his chance of hearing the great singer with the expenditure of a shilling only. He would be in the Promenade, but his eyes should be on the Miss Days, and if protection were required by them he would be at hand.

Mrs. Day was by no means sure in her anxious heart that her daughters might not need the strong arm of the male to defend them. She thought as she surveyed them while they awaited the arrival of the fly that no mother had ever possessed such treasures to guard. Bessie was always especially comely in evening dress. Her plump, clearly pale cheeks were now pink with excitement. Her white skin against the black ribbon round her throat and threaded through the lace over her ample young bosom was dazzlingly fair.

"Mama, I'm afraid my frock is dreadfully short; even now that Emily has let down the hem," Deleah said, looking anxiously toward her extremities. "It shows all my feet!"

It showed the ankles too, truth to say; but what did that matter when the feet were so small and pretty, and the ankles so elegantly slim?

The wonder to the mother was to see how, since that white silk dress had been worn before, the girl's beauty had grown to perfection.

"Do you think it looks ridiculous, mama?" referring anxiously to the scantiness of the skirt and the unblushing exposure of the feet.

"Not at all ridiculous, my dear." What did any imperfection of raiment matter with a face and head like Deleah's; as exquisitely moulded, as delicately poised on her slender throat as a flower on its stalk? "There's a tiny bit of hair awry," the mother said, caught the girl's little chin in her hand and passed her fingers over the shadowy black hair for the mere pleasure of caressing it.

When Mr. Gibbon came in presently it was seen he had changed into dress-clothes, in which attire he had never before appeared.

"But, Mr. Gibbon, you need not have taken the trouble to dress for the shilling places!" Mrs. Day told him.

"I am to have the honour of escorting the two young ladies," he said.

He was red in the face, and appeared bashful and ill at ease in the costume which they saw was a new one.

"To think of his a-gettin' hisself up like that!" Emily said with an amused scorn of the poor man as the cab containing the three drove off. "There's no doubt what he've set his mind on, 'm. But Miss Bessie ain't for such as him. She'll look higher."

When Mr. Reginald Forcus came into the Assembly Rooms with his brother and the sister who since the death of Lady Forcus kept house at Cashelthorpe, and made his way to seats not very far removed from those the sisters occupied, Bessie impulsively seized a bit of Deleah's bare arm in her finger and thumb. She pinched it unconsciously but with such painful emphasis that in the morning Deleah discovered the place to be black and blue.

"There he is! Quite close to us! Now perhaps you will believe! I always knew it was he who sent the tickets, and sent all the flowers and things! and he sent them for me—only you always took them to yourself, Deda."

She was very smiling, very happy and excited and flushed, through the concert. She looked so pretty, so like the Bessie of the "party" days of old, that Deleah thought not only Reginald Forcus but every man who saw her must admire her pretty sister.

When the "half" arrived, and the ten minutes in which the audience is permitted to stretch its legs and crane its neck, and acknowledge the presence of its acquaintance, behold the younger Forcus eagerly recognising the sisters, and bowing in response to Miss Bessie's delighted smiles and nods.

"Oh, what a pretty girl!" a woman's voice said. There had come a sudden lull in the buzz of talk, and the exclamation reached the ears of many more than his for whom it was intended.

Deleah felt sure it was Bessie who was being admired. She looked quickly at the speaker. It was that middle-aged sister with the pleasant, kind face who had come to take the place of Sir Francis Forcus's dead wife. It was to Sir Francis she had spoken, but she might have been proclaiming the fact of her discovery of a pretty girl, for the general benefit; so complete had been the temporary calm into which her speech had broken. Heads were turned, and several pairs of eyes were fixed upon Deleah.

By a good many present the sisters were recognised, and here and there a smile was turned on them, and here and there a cool, discreet little bow was made. And more often the people who knew them, having involuntarily looked, looked away again; for them the girls' presence there, in a fashionable company and the most expensive seats, was an offence.

"People we were asked a little time ago to keep from starving!" they said to themselves. "If Mrs. Day's daughters can afford this sort of thing, we might as well have kept our guineas in our pockets."

When the audience resumed their seats Bessie kept her eyes pretty constantly directed upon the smooth fair head of Reggie Forcus. Perhaps he was conscious of her gaze and found it a compelling one, for again and again he turned round to look at the sisters, and always Bessie's eyes caught and held his.

Except to the accompaniment of the singing of her own heart the poor girl was unconscious of the music. If it was to the evening's nightingale she listened or to the twittering of the inferior songstresses of the grove who lifted up their voices when the queen was silent she could hardly have said; the melody her heart was chanting triumphantly drowned every note of theirs.

"It has been heavenly," she said, when it was all over, and they stood up for the singing of "God Save the Queen." "In all my life, Deleah, I have never enjoyed a concert so much before."

While she said it she was lingering in her place, stopping the gangway for people anxious to make their way out, pretending to arrange her own cloak and her sister's, in the endeavour to time their exit to that of the Forcus family. She did manage it too; and in the crush as they all approached the door Bessie's happy shoulder was rubbing against the shoulder of the attractive Reggie.

"It's been first-rate, hasn't it?" he said, as if the two years in which he had had no speech with the girl were as nothing, and they had parted yesterday. "Wasn't She fine! Glad I came. I wouldn't have missed her for anything."

"Heavenly!" Bessie acquiesced, then quickly introduced the personal note. "I wonder you knew me! I thought I was quite forgotten, and was surprised when you bowed."

"Ages since we met, isn't it? I did think about coming to call, but I suppose Mrs. Day is busy?"

"I'm not busy. And I'm always at home. Do come."

"Rather! Shall I call your carriage?"

"Will you?"

So the words "Miss Days' carriage" were passed from mouth to mouth; men yelled it in the street, the officials in the porch of the Hall bawled it to one another, a man in the crowd nearer the door turned his head and shouted "Miss Days' carriage" into the concert room. The air was reverberating with the cry, it seemed to poor Deleah. How could Bessie have made them conspicuous in that way!

Sir Francis Forcus had been looking with some curiosity at the girl to whom his brother was speaking, wedged into the crowd just in front of him; the younger girl at her sister's back was by his side. He glanced at her now, and saw it was she to whose loveliness his sister had called public attention. The Days, of course! He remembered when he heard the name called; remembered all about them.

"Good-evening. How do you do?" he said, looking down upon Deleah.

And Deleah, recalling the last occasion on which she had heard his voice, lifted a pale and speechless face to him, for all her answer.

Some big and important Person at the back, impatient of the delay, here attempted to battle her way through the crowd congested by the too narrow doors. Sir Francis turned and looked at her reprovingly.

"It's no good, Lady Elizabeth. You'll have to wait like the rest of us.
It's only a matter of a few minutes."

"Oh, do hurry up in front there!" Lady Elizabeth called back to him, laughing, but imperious. The pressure she and her party were making still continued, with the result that Deleah was driven roughly forward.

"Gently! Gently!" Sir Francis called again, and Deleah felt that his hands were on her shoulders and he was shielding her with his arms as much as possible from the crushing of the crowd.

A minute, and they were through the doorway into the spacious porch, where individual movement was possible, and the fresh night air blew, and Deleah could see the light from the big lamp over the archway flaring on the top of her shabby old fly, while behind it was a long line of handsome carriages whose drivers vituperated the driver of the cab, in his broken hat. At the window was Bessie's face. Bessie's excited voice was heard shrilly calling on Deleah's name.

"Deda! Deda! Where on earth have you got to?"

"Miss Days' carriage stops the way"—the cry which made one Miss Day long to hide her minished head in the earth—woke the echoes again.

Deleah half turned her head on its long neck, whispered a shy "thank you" to the tall gentleman at her back; and darted away.

"Oh here you are, Deleah! Come along," Reggie Forcus cried, appearing before her. "We thought we'd lost you. Take my arm."

But before Deleah could comply another arm was proffered, and proffered in a manner so brusque and so determined that the young Forcus fell back involuntarily.

"Thank you. Miss Deleah is in my charge," a voice said; and Deleah felt herself dragged through the crowded porch, and over the pavement to the cab-door, on the arm of Mr. Charles Gibbon.

"You'll excuse me," he said, looking in upon the sisters through the cab window when the door was shut. "I hope you young ladies did not think I intruded. But your mother had asked me to keep an eye on you."

"And pray why didn't you come with Reggie?" Bessie demanded indignantly as the fly at last moved on.

Deleah laughed hysterically. "I was torn away from him," she said. "He all but knocked Reggie down, and seized upon me." She indicated the form of Mr. Gibbon, dimly seen, seated sentinel on the box beside the broken-hatted driver.

"Impertinence!" Bessie said. "We have to be civil to him at home, but when we are among other people I think he might leave us to our friends."

"Reggie Forcus hasn't been much of a friend."

"He is going to be for the future. He asked leave to call. It is a little awkward as you are always at the school, and mama is always downstairs"—(Bessie had never yet brought herself to say "Mother is in the shop") "I would have asked him to come in the evenings, but he" (again a nod towards the figure of the guardian-angel on the box-seat) "is always there."

"Well, why not?"

"Can't you understand that Reggie might not care to meet a young man out of a draper's shop?"

"But he comes to call on people in a gro—"

"That's different," Bessie quickly announced. "We weren't always there, remember."

"Wednesday afternoons I am at home after three. Saturdays I am at home all day."

"I know," Bessie said, but did not promise to avail herself of the protection offered by her sister's presence on those occasions.