XVII

On the night of the Drawing-Room, February 20, 1882, the rain rushed along the streets; wind, too, had risen, and, threatening to tear every window from its sash, it careered in great gusts. Sky there was none, nor sight of anything save when the lightning revealed the outline of the housetops. The rattling and the crashing of the thunder was fearsome, and often, behind their closely drawn curtains, the girls trembled, and, covering their faces with their hands, forgot the article of clothing they were in search of. In their rooms all was warm and snug, and gay with firelight and silk; the chaperons had whispered that warm baths were advisable, and along the passages the ladies'-maids passed hurriedly, carrying cans of hot water, sponges, and drying-sheets.

Alice and Olive slept in two rooms on the third floor, on either side of their mother; May and Mrs. Gould were on the fourth, and next to May was Fred Scully, who, under the pretext of the impossibility of his agreeing with his mother concerning the use of a latch-key, had lately moved into the hotel. May was deeply concerned in Fred's grievance, and, discussing it, or the new Shelbourne scandal—the loves of the large lady and the little man at the other end of the corridor—they lingered about each other's bedroom-doors. Alice could now hear them talking as they descended the staircase together; then a burst of smothered laughter, and May came in to see her.

'Oh, how nice you look!'

'If you don't "mash" Mr. Harding to-night, he'll be a tough one indeed. Did I tell you I was talking to him yesterday in the ladies' drawing-room? He is very enticing, but I can't quite make him out: I think he despises us all; all but you; about you he said all kinds of nice things—that you were so clever, and nice, and amusing. And tell me, dear,' said May, in her warm, affectionate way, 'do you really like him—you know what I mean?'

May's eyes and voice were so full of significance that to pretend to misunderstand was impossible.

'I like Mr. Harding well enough. It is very pleasant to have him to talk to. I am sure I don't want to run down my own sex—there are plenty only too anxious to do that—but I am afraid that there is not a girl in Dublin who thinks of anything except how she is to get married.'

'I don't know about that,' said May, a little offended. 'I suppose if you think of a man at all, you think of how he likes you.'

The defiant tone in which these words were spoken was surprising; and, for a moment, Alice stood staring blankly at this superb cream-fleshed girl, superb in her dress of cream faille, her sensual beauty poetized by the long veils which hung like gossamer-webs from the coils of her copper-gleaming hair.

'I am afraid, May,' she said, 'that you think a great deal too much of such things. I don't say anything against Mr. Scully, but I think it right to tell you that he is considered a very dangerous young man; and I am sure it does a girl no good to be seen with him. It was he who . . .'

'Now I'll not hear you abuse Fred,' cried May. 'We are great friends; I like you better than any other girl, and if you value our friendship, you'll not speak to me again like this. I wouldn't put up with it, no, not from my own mother.'

The girl moved towards the door hastily, but Alice laid her hand on her arm, saying:

'You mustn't be angry, May; perhaps you're right; I shouldn't meddle in things that don't concern me; but then we have been so long friends that I couldn't help—'

'I know, I know,' the girl answered, overcome as it were by an atmosphere. 'You were speaking only for my good; but if you're friends with a person, you can't stand by and hear them abused. I know people speak badly of Fred; but then people are so jealous—and they are all jealous of Fred.'

The girls examined each other's dresses, and at the end of a long silence May said:

'What an extraordinary thing this Drawing-Room is when one comes to think of it. Just fancy going to all this expense to be kissed by the Lord-Lieutenant—a man one never saw before. Will you feel ashamed when he kisses you?'

'Well, I don't know that I have thought much about it,' said Alice, laughing. 'I suppose it doesn't matter, it is only a ceremony, not a real kiss.'

At this moment Mrs. Barton's voice was heard calling: 'Now, Alice, Alice, where are you? We are waiting for you! Make haste, for goodness' sake; we are very late as it is.'

The trail of a sachet-scented petticoat could be detected on this length of Brussels carpet, the acrid vulgarity of eau de Cologne hung like a curtain before an open door, a vision of white silk gleamed for a moment as it fled from room to room: men in a strange garb—black velvet and steel buttons—hurried away, tripping over their swords, furtively ashamed of their stockinged calves. On the first landing, about the winter-garden, a crowd of German waiters, housemaids, billiard-players with cigars in their teeth and cues in their hands, had collected; underneath, in the hall, the barmaids, and old ladies, wrapped up in rugs and shawls to save them from the draughts, were criticizing the dresses. Olive's name was on every lip, and to see her all were breathless with expectation; her matrimonial prospects were discussed, and Lord Kilcarney was openly spoken of. 'Ah! here she is! there she is!' was whispered. The head-porter, wild with excitement, shouted for Mrs. Barton's carriage; three under-porters distended huge umbrellas; the door was opened, an immense wind tore through the hall, sending the old ladies flying back to their sitting-room, and the Bartons, holding their hair and their trains, rushed across the wet pavement and took refuge in the brougham.

'Did one ever see such weather?' said Mrs. Barton. 'I hope your hair isn't ruffled, Olive?'

'No, mamma, I think it is all right.'

Reassured, Mrs. Barton continued: 'I don't think there ever was a country so hateful as Ireland. What with rain and Land League. I wonder why we live here! Did you notice the time, Alice, as we left the hotel?'

'Yes, mamma; it was twenty-five minutes to ten.'

'Oh! we are very late; we shan't be there before ten. The thing to do is to get there about half-past nine; the Drawing-Room doesn't begin before eleven; but if you can get into the first lot you can stand at the entrance of Patrick's Hall. I see, Alice, your friend Harding is going to the Drawing-Room. Now, if you do what I tell you, you won't miss him; for it does look so bad to see a girl alone, just as if she was unable to get a man.'

While Mrs. Barton continued to advise her girls, the carriage rolled rapidly along Stephen's Green. It had now turned into Grafton Street; and on the steep, rain-flooded asphalte, they narrowly escaped an accident. The coachman, however, steadied his horses, and soon the long colonnades of the Bank of Ireland were seen on the left. From this point they were no longer alone, and except when a crash of thunder drowned every other sound, the rattling of wheels was heard behind and in front of them. Carriages came from every side: the night was alive with flashing lamps; a glimpse of white fur or silk, the red breast of a uniform, the gold of an epaulette, were seen, and thinking of the block that would take place on the quays, the coachmen whipped up their horses; but soon the ordering voices of the mantled and mounted policemen were heard, and the carriages came to a full stop.

'We are very late; hundreds will pass before us,' said Mrs. Barton despairingly, as she watched the lines of silk-laden carriages that seemed to be passing them by. But it was difficult to make sure of anything; and fearful of soiling their gloves, they refrained from touching the breath-misted windows.

Despite the weather the streets were lined with vagrants, patriots, waifs, idlers of all sorts and kinds. Plenty of girls of sixteen and eighteen came out to see the 'finery.' Poor little things in battered bonnets and draggled skirts, who would dream upon ten shillings a week; a drunken mother striving to hush a child that cries beneath a dripping shawl; a harlot embittered by feelings of commercial resentment; troops of labourers; hang-dog faces, thin coats, torn shirts; Irish-Americans, sinister faced, and broad-brimmed. Never were poverty and wealth brought into plainer proximity. In the broad glare of the carriage lights the shape of every feature, even the colour of the eyes, every glance, every detail of dress, every stain of misery were revealed to the silken exquisites who, a little frightened, strove to hide themselves within the scented shadows of their broughams; and in like manner the bloom on every aristocratic cheek, the glitter of every diamond, the richness of every plume, were visible to the wondering eyes of those who stood without in the wet and the cold.

'I wish they wouldn't stare so,' said Mrs. Barton; 'one would think they were a lot of hungry children looking into a sweetmeat shop. The police ought really to prevent it.'

'And how wicked those men in the big hats look,' said Olive; 'I'm sure they would rob us if they only dared.'

At last the order came that the carriages were to move on, and they rolled on, now blocked under the black rain-dripping archway of the Castle yard, now delayed as they laboriously made the tour of the quadrangle. Olive doubted if her turn would ever come; but, by slow degrees, each carriage discharged its cargo of silk, and at last Mrs. Barton and her daughters found themselves in the vestibule, taking numbers for their wraps at the cloak-rooms placed on either side of the stairway.

The slender figures ascending to tiny naked shoulders, presented a piquant contrast with the huge, black Assyrian, bull-like policemen, who guarded the passage, and reduced, by contrast, to almost doll-like proportions the white creatures who went up the great stairway. Overhead an artificial plant, some twenty feet wide, spread a decorative greenness; the walls were lined with rifles, and at regular intervals, in lieu of pictures, were set stars made out of swords. There were also three suits of plate armour, and the grinning of the helmets of old-time contrasted with the bearskin-shrouded faces of the red guardsmen. And through all this military display the white ware tripped past powdered and purple-coated footmen, splendid in the splendour of pink calves and salmon-coloured breeches.

As the white mass of silk pushed along the white-painted corridor, the sense of ceremony that had till then oppressed it, evaporated in the fumes of the blazing gas, and something like a battle began in the blue drawing-room. Heat and fatigue soon put an end to all coquetting between the sexes. The beautiful silks were hidden by the crowd; only the shoulders remained, and, to appease their terrible ennui, the men gazed down the backs of the women's dresses. Shoulders were there, of all tints and shapes. Indeed, it was like a vast rosary, alive with white, pink, and cream-coloured flowers; of Maréchal Niels, Souvenir de Malmaisons, Mademoiselle Eugène Verdiers, Aimée Vibert Scandens. Sweetly turned, adolescent shoulders, blush-white, smooth and even as the petals of a Marquise Mortemarle; the strong, commonly turned shoulders, abundant and free as the fresh rosy pink of the Anna Alinuff; the drooping white shoulders, full of falling contours as a pale Madame Lacharme; the chlorotic shoulders, deadly white, of the almost greenish shade that is found in a Princess Clementine; the pert, the dainty little shoulders, filled with warm pink shadows, pretty and compact as Countess Cécile de Chabrillant; the large heavy shoulders full of vulgar madder tints, coarse, strawberry-colour, enormous as a Paul Neron; clustering white shoulders, grouped like the blossoms of an Aimée Vibert Scandens, and, just in front of me, under my eyes, the flowery, the voluptuous, the statuesque shoulders of a tall blonde woman of thirty, whose flesh is full of the exquisite peach-like tones of a Mademoiselle Eugène Verdier, blooming in all its pride of summer loveliness.

To make way for this enormous crowd, the Louis XV. sofas and arm-chairs had been pushed against the walls, and an hour passed wearily, in all its natural impudence, in this beautiful drawing-room, the brain aching with dusty odour of poudre de riz, and the many acidities of evaporating perfume; the sugary sweetness of the blondes, the salt flavours of the brunettes, and this allegro movement of odours was interrupted suddenly by the garlicky andante, deep as the pedal notes of an organ, that the perspiring armpits of a fat chaperon exhaled slowly.

At last there was a move forwards, and a sigh of relief, a grunt of satisfaction, broke from the oppressed creatures; but a line of guardsmen was pressing from behind, and the women were thrown hither and thither into the arms and on to the backs of soldiers, police officers, county inspectors, and Castle underlings. Now a lady turns pale, and whispers to her husband that she is going to faint; now a young girl's petticoats have become entangled in the moving mass of legs! She cries aloud for help; her brother expostulates with those around. He is scarcely heeded. And the struggle grows still more violent when it becomes evident that the guardsmen are about to bring down the bar; and, begging a florid-faced attorney to unloose his sword, which had become entangled in her dress, Mrs. Barton called on her daughter, and, slipping under the raised arms, they found themselves suddenly in a square, sombre room, full of a rich, brown twilight. In one corner there was a bureau, where an attendant served out blank cards; in another the white plumes nodded against the red glare that came from the throne-room, whence Liddell's band was heard playing waltz tunes, and the stentorian tones of the Chamberlain's voice called the ladies' names.

'Have you got your cards?' said Mrs. Barton.

'I have got mine,' said Olive.

'And I have got mine,' said Alice.

'Well, you know what to do? You give your card to the aide-de-camp, he passes it on and spreads out your train, and you walk right up to His Excellency; he kisses you on both cheeks, you curtsy, and, at the far door, two aides-de-camp pick up your train and place it on your arm.'

The girls continued to advance, experiencing the while the nerve atrophy, the systolic emotion of communicants, who, when the bell rings, approach the altar-rails to receive God within their mouths.

The massive, the low-hanging, the opulently twisted gold candelabra, the smooth lustre of the marble columns are evocative of the persuasive grandeur of a cathedral; and, deep in the darkness of the pen, a vast congregation of peeresses and judges watch the ceremony in devout collectiveness. How symmetrical is the place! A red, a well-trimmed bouquet of guardsmen has been set in the middle of the Turkey carpet; around the throne a semicircle of red coats has been drawn, and above it flow the veils, the tulle, the skirts of the ladies-of-honour—they seem like white clouds dreaming on a bank of scarlet poppies—and the long sad legs, clad in maroon-coloured breeches, is the Lord-Lieutenant, the teeth and the diamonds on his right is Her Excellency. And now a lingering survival of the terrible Droit de Seigneur—diminished and attenuated, but still circulating through our modern years—this ceremony, a pale ghost of its former self, is performed; and, having received a kiss on either cheek, the débutantes are free to seek their bridal beds in Patrick's Hall.

'Miss Olive Barton, presented by Mrs. Barton!' shouted the Chamberlain.

Olive abandoned her train to the aides-de-camp; she saw their bent backs, felt their nimble fingers exhibiting this dress whereon Mrs. Barton and Mrs. Symond had for days been expending all the poetry of their natures. What white wonder, what manifold marvel of art! Dress of snow satin, skirt quite plain in front. Bodice and train of white poplin; the latter wrought with patterns representing night and morning: a morning made of silver leaves with silver birds fluttering through leafy trees, butterflies sporting among them, and over all a sunrise worked in gold and silver thread; then on the left side the same sun sank amid rosy clouds, and there butterflies slept with folded wing, and there birds roosted on bending boughs; veils of silver tissue softened the edges of the train, silver stars gleamed in the corn-coloured hair, the long hands, gloved with white undressed kid, carried a silver fan; she was adorably beautiful and adorably pale, and she floated through the red glare, along the scarlet line, to the weary-looking man in maroon breeches, like some wonderful white bird of downy plumage. He kissed her on both cheeks; and she passed away to the farther door, where her train was caught up and handed to her by two aides-de-camp. He had seemed to salute her with deference and warmth; his kiss was more than ceremonial, and eager looks passed between the ladies-of-honour standing on the estrade; the great bouquet of red-coats placed in the middle of the floor, animated by one desire, turned its sixteen heads to gaze after the wonderful vision of blonde beauty that had come—that had gone. Mrs. Barton experienced an instant thrill of triumph, and advanced into the throne.

In the composition of her dress she had given range to her somewhat florid taste. The front was brocade, laid upon a ground of grey-pink, shot with orange, and the effect was such as is seen when the sun hangs behind a lowering grey cloud, tinged with pink. On this were wonderful soft-coloured flowers, yellow melting into pink, green fading to madder-like tints. The bodice and the train were of gold-brown velvet that matched the gold-brown of the hair. Mrs. Barton was transformed from the usual Romney portrait to one by Sir Peter Lely; and when she made her curtsy, Her Excellency's face contracted, and the ladies-of-honour whispered: 'The harm she does her daughters . . . I wonder . . .'

'Miss Violet Scully, presented by Mrs. Scully,' shouted the Chamberlain.

Now there was an admixture of curiosity in the admiration accorded to Violet. Hers was not the plain appealing of Olive's Greek statue-like beauty; it was rather the hectic erethism of painters and sculptors in a period preceding the apogee of an art. She was a statuette in biscuit after a design by Andrea Mantegna. But the traces of this exquisite atavism were now almost concealed in the supreme modernity of her attire. From the tiny waist trailed yards of white faille, trimmed with tulle ruchings, frecked as a meadow with faintly-tinted daisies; the hips were engarlanded with daisies, and the flowers melted and bloomed amid snows of faille and tulle.

The Lord-Lieutenant leaned forward to kiss her, but at that moment of his kiss the thunder crashed so loudly that he withdrew from her, and so abruptly that Her Excellency looked surprised. The incident passed, however, almost unperceived. So loud was the thunder, everybody was thinking of dynamite, and it was some time before even the voluptuous strains of Liddell's band could calm their inquietude. Nevertheless the Chamberlain continued to shout:

'Lady Sarah Cullen, Lady Jane Cullen, Mrs. Scully, presented by Lady
Sarah Cullen.'

Then came a batch of people whom no one knew, and in the front of these the aides-de-camp allowed Alice to pass on to His Excellency. She was prettily dressed, dragging after her a train of white faille trimmed with sprays of white heather and tulle, the petticoat being beautifully arranged with folded draperies of crêpe de Chine.

A number of ladies had collected in the farther ante-room, and, in lines, they stood watching the effluent tide of satin and silk discharging its volume into the spaces of Patrick's Hall.