John Strange Winter

I am convinced that there is a huge opening for what I would call an all-round advice bureau. Its claims would reach far and wide, its clients would be drawn from all classes. Among them would be the women who have no taste in dress. The only difficulty would be to convince them of the fact.

Regina found The Dressing-Room without difficulty. To be exact, it was situated in Berners Street and the number was forty-five. Regina gained admittance, was greeted pleasantly, and expressed a certain portion of her wishes.

“You would like to have your hair brushed?” said the charming little lady who received her. “Oh, but you have beautiful hair,” she said, having enveloped Regina in a snowy garment, unfastened the still abundant coils, and allowed the locks to stray over her shoulders. “O, you have lovely hair, but how little you make of it!”

“That is exactly why I have come”—her tone was pathetic in its eagerness. “How would you advise me to wear it?”

“I don’t know, I never like to give an opinion off-hand. I’ll brush it thoroughly, see how it lies, study you face and figure—”

“Oh—my figure!” said Regina.

“Why, what is the matter with it?”

“Too fat,” Regina sighed.

“Too fat? I’d be glad of a little of your complaint,” said the little woman, who was herself about as fat as a match.

“But I am too fat,” Regina cried.

“Well, perhaps you might do with a little less, but I shouldn’t overdo it in the other direction. Of course, there is no doubt that good-looking women are generally those who are inclined to be stout, but keep themselves within reasonable limits. They have the best skin, the best hair, they have so few lines and so few wrinkles, and they escape the withered look of age.”

She was brushing softly yet vigorously at Regina’s soft brown locks.

“You are beginning to wear your hair off your forehead.”

“I have always worn it off my forehead,” said Regina, with dignity.

“No—I don’t mean that, I mean that the continued brushing in one direction has begun to wear it away, and your forehead seems higher than it really is.”

“Yes, it is wearing back.”

“Now, we ought to contradict that tendency.”

“I can’t wear a fringe,” said Regina.

“No, a fringe would be out of keeping with your general appearance, and I never advocate a fringe if it can be dispensed with, but you have been wearing your hair so tightly dressed. Now, would you let me shampoo your hair?”

“Oh yes, do what you like,” said Regina, with child-like faith and very unchild-like patience.

“It will help you a little—in this way, it gives the hair a fresh start. One should never try to dress one’s hair in a new fashion without shaking off as much as possible the old way.”

So Regina’s hair was washed and dried, and then came the great question of what style of hair-dressing she should adopt.

“I would like you not to look in the glass,” said Madame Florence, as the little lady had asked Regina to call her. “I should like you to see the finished picture of yourself without your seeing the process. So often what comes to one as a surprise is so much better than what comes gradually.”

She opened a large box on a table at her right hand, and chose from it a light frame of the exact color of Regina’s hair. This she put on Regina’s head, then she deftly manipulated the abundant tresses, gathered them loosely over the frame into a knot at the top of the head, fixing it here and there with combs, and then slightly waved the looser portions of hair.

“In most instances,” she said when she had reached this point, “I should recommend the wearing of a net, but your hair is so much of a length, and so unlikely to become untidy, that I should not recommend you to trouble to do more than I have done. Now look at yourself.”

It was such a glorified vision of Regina that met that lady’s gaze when she looked at herself that she positively jumped out of her seat.

“It is really me?” she cried.

“Yes, it is really you,” said Madame Florence.

“But how shall I be able to do it myself, I—I do not keep a maid.”

“Well, wear it to-day, see how you like it, see how your people appreciate it, do it as well as you can and come back again to me to-morrow. I will do it for you until your hair has got into condition and takes these lines naturally. How do you like it?”

“I think I must have looked a perfect fright before,” said Regina in a burst of confidence.

“Well, compared with what you do now, you certainly did. It was a sin to see all that lovely hair wasted and made nothing of. By the way, about your combs—I have put you in my ordinary combs; would you like to have a proper set?”

“Oh yes,” said Regina, “I will have everything that is necessary,” for, as I have already explained, money was not a matter of paramount importance to her.

“I have put in ordinary imitation tortoise-shell combs just to try. Take the glass, if you please, and look at yourself all round. See, I will turn on the light. Do you like the shape of the head? You see the combs improve it. I should advise you to have real tortoise-shell; it is better for the hair, and more in accordance with your age and position than little cheap ones.”

“Oh yes, I will have good combs.”

Madame Florence touched a bell and immediately there came into the room a young girl of intelligent aspect and stylish exterior.

“Miss Margaret,” said Madame Florence, “will you get me the good combs?”

“In sets?” said Miss Margaret.

“Yes, like these, only real.”

“Certainly.”

As the girl left the room Regina turned to Madame Florence. “You have a quaint custom here of using the Christian name,” she said.

“We wish to be impersonal,” said Madame Florence. “Our establishment is called The Dressing-Room, that is sufficient for our purpose, and as we must have some distinguishing mark, my partner and I are Madame Florence and Madame Cynthia, and our helpers are Miss Margaret, Miss Bertha and Miss Violet. It gives us a personality here which has nothing to do with our private personality. We find that it works excellently well.” She broke off as Miss Margaret came back into the room carrying a large box. Regina chose a set of combs and Madame Florence adjusted them in her hair, taking away the cheaper ones with which she had first dressed it.

“Now,” she said, “you may find your toque a little difficult—well, I should like to see your toque on.”

The effect was terrible, for Regina’s toques were never things of beauty, and this one was less beautiful than most of her headgear.

“It is impossible!”

“Well, it is rather impossible. Forgive me for saying so, but how could you buy such a thing?”

“Madame Florence,” said Regina, “you are a lady.”

“I hope so; I have always believed myself to be such.”

“I recognized it. I recognize it still more as I remain in your presence. I will be frank with you, I will be candid. I see you have a copy of the Illustrated Ladies’ Joy on the table. I should like to speak to you alone,” she said in an undertone.

Madame Florence gave a look at the younger lady, which she interpreted, and immediately disappeared from the room.

“I may speak to you in confidence?”

“Certainly.”

“Give me the number of the Illustrated Ladies’ Joy for the week before last.”

“Certainly. Here it is.”

Regina turned with trembling fingers to the answers to correspondents on matters connected with the toilette. “Read that,” she said, pointing to the answer which was headed “broken-hearted Miranda.”

“I am that woman; I am ‘broken-hearted Miranda.’”

“Dear, dear, dear,” said Madame Florence, “are you really sure that it is so?”

“I am afraid so. My husband is the noblest of men—generous, brave, true-hearted—he has been got hold of, Madame Florence.”

“And you must get him back again,” said Madame Florence in sharp staccato accents. “You are a good-looking woman, a little stout, but that can be got rid of by judicious means.”

“I have taken means; I have just bought some of Madame Winifred Polson’s little brown tablets.”

“Two guineas’ worth?”

“Yes.”

“I would not take them if I were you. They will eat away the lining of your stomach, they will make you dyspeptic, they will perforate your bowels and do all sorts of horrible things. They are made of iodine and sea wrack. Put them into the fire, my dear lady.”

“But I paid two guineas for them,” said Regina.

Madame Florence laughed. “Well, take them home with you if you like, and look at them occasionally and say ‘These cost me two guineas,’ but don’t take them. If you want to get thin, go to a medical man who thoroughly understands the science of food and fat—or fat and food.”

“Are there such people?”

“Oh yes. You say you like simple diet, and take all sorts of starchy foods and think that makes your skin fine and clear. My dear lady, it is not the milky foods you take, the bread and butter and cream and the extra two lumps of sugar in your tea that make your skin fine and clear; it is simply that you were born with a fine skin, and have been doing everything you could to ruin it during the whole of your life.”

“You think that under diet my skin will regain its normal beauty?”

“Of course it will. If you put yourself into proper hands, you won’t know yourself. When I say ‘proper hands’ I do not mean my own. My business is connected entirely with the hair, nothing else, but I know who are skilled in all matters of diet. I will give you the name and address of a doctor in Harley Street who will charge you a fixed sum for your course, and who will give you the smallest and closest directions for getting rid of your superfluous fat without making you in the least bit skinny or withered.”

“I am very grateful to you,” said Regina; “I wish I had not gone to Madame Polson. Not that two guineas is a matter of very great importance, but I hate being done.”

“Of course you do, all nice, sensible people do. But you will not take those tablets, will you?”

“Not in the face of what you have told me. Will you give me the address of the doctor in Harley Street? I will go to him now.”

“You cannot go to him now; you see it is past his hours—you have been here so long. Let me give you a cup of tea.”

“You are very kind.”

“And you will let me do your hair for a week?”

“Yes, I will come every day for a week. Tell me, how do you charge for your treatments?”

“Well, we give so many for a guinea. A simple treatment is brushing it and arranging it in the ordinary way. Shampooing is extra, the combs are extra, the frame is extra, and waving the hair is again another charge. We will put your treatment to-day at a lump sum—half-a-guinea. You should take another guinea’s worth of simple treatments—that is to say, I will brush your hair every day for a week, wave it and dress it like this for a guinea. After that, if you come to me once a week you will find that your hair will be kept in perfect condition. Occasionally you will care to have a shampoo, but that is as you feel. I have many clients who never have their heads touched except with my hair brushes.”

“But about my toque? I cannot go out like this. I must put my hair back to-day. I must get home.”

“I never like,” said Madame Florence, “I never like to recommend special means if my clients are restricted in the way of money. I—er—it is the season of changing one’s clothes; you will be buying new toques?”

“Oh yes.”

“We have another business—nothing to do with me—but another business is run under this roof,” said Madame Florence. “Would you care to see some toques?”

“Oh, have you? Then I will have a new toque,” said Regina. “I—I will be frank and candid with you. I am a very remarkable woman—I am Mrs. Alfred Whittaker. I have been for many years President of the Society for the Regeneration of Womanhood—I have regenerated all sorts of things connected with women, and now I want to regenerate myself. I have given up my presidency, I have worked for others long enough, and some hussy has, in a measure, supplanted me with my husband. I want—I want to learn a great deal, I want to go to school again. I have never known how to dress myself, I have never known how to make the most of myself. Dear Madame Florence, I like you; you have faithful eyes, I can see you are a woman to be trusted—it has been my business for years past to judge characters by exteriors—you inspire me with confidence. Will you help me, will you come and choose something to put on my head?”

I am bound to say that it was with great difficulty that Madame Florence restrained the broadest of broad smiles.

“Madame Clementine,” she said, “has a suite of rooms on the first floor. If you will come with me I will introduce her to you. No, I would not put your toque on, it is so ugly. Best not to let her know you have ever worn anything so unbecoming. I will send a message down to make sure she is alone.” She touched a bell, and again Miss Margaret came into the room. “Just go down and see if Madame Clementine is below and alone. This lady is going down to choose a toque.”

Two minutes later Regina found herself following Madame Florence down the stairs leading to the first floor.

“Good afternoon, Madame Clementine,” said Madame Florence, cheerfully, “I have brought you a new client. This is Mrs. Alfred Whittaker—so well known—all women know the name of Mrs. Alfred Whittaker. I have been arranging her hair, and I want you to crown my efforts with the prettiest toque you have in your show-rooms.”