Part 102 (2/2)
”She was not in the least shy. I think we should soon be very great friends. May her nurse bring her to see me sometimes? Most babies love flowers, and there is a garden full of them where I am staying. Do you live here?”
”Live here? Gracious, no!” Red Umbrella opens the round, brown eyes that Baby's are so unlike in shape and expression, and shrugs her pretty shoulders as high as the big ruby b.u.t.tons that blaze in her pretty ears.
”Me and Baby are only visiting--stopping with her nurse and my two maids for a change at the Herion Arms--me having been recommended sea-air by the doctors for tonsils in the throat. The house is advertised as an up-to-date hotel in the ABC Railway Guide, but diggings more wretched I never struck, and you do fetch up in some queer places on tour in the Provinces, let alone the States,” says Red Umbrella, tossing the wistaria-wreathed hat. ”Which may be a surprise to people who think it must be nothing but jam for those ladies and gentlemen that have made their mark in the Profession.”
”Yes?”
Lynette's golden eyes smile back into the laughing brown ones with pleasant friendliness, combined with an irritating lack of comprehension.
And Red Umbrella, who derives a considerable income from percentages upon the sale of her photographs, and is conscious that her celebrated features are figuring upon several of the postcards that hang up for sale in the window of the only stationer in Herion, is a little nettled.
”I refer to the stage, of course.” She fingers a long neck-chain of sapphires, and tinkles her innumerable bangles with their load of jingling charms. ”But perhaps you're not a Londoner? Or you don't patronise the theatre?”
”Oh yes. We have a house in Harley Street. And I am very fond of the Opera,” says Lynette, smiling still, ”and of seeing plays too; and I often go to the theatre with Lord and Lady Castleclare, or Major Wrynche and Lady Hannah, when my husband is too much engaged to take me. One of the last pieces we saw before we left town was 'The Chiffon Girl' at The Variety,” she adds.
”Indeed! And how did you like 'The Chiffon Girl'?” asks the lady of the red umbrella, with a gracious and encouraging smile. Unconscious tribute rendered to one's beauty and one's genius is ever well worth the having.
And the editor of the _Keyhole_, a certain weekly journal of caterings for the curious, will gladly publish any little anecdote which will serve the dual purpose of amusing his readers and keeping the name of Miss Lessie Lavigne before the public eye. ”How did you enjoy the performance of the lady who played the part?”
Lynette ponders, and her fine brows knit. Vexed and indignant, Red Umbrella, scanning the thoughtful face, admits its youth, its high-breeding, its delicate, chiselled beauty, and the slender grace of the supple figure in the grey-blue serge skirt and white silk blouse; nor is she slow to appreciate the value of the diamond keeper on the slight, fine, ungloved hand that rests upon the sun-hot moss between them.
”I think I felt rather sorry for her,” says the soft cultured voice with the exquisite, precise inflections. The golden eyes look dreamily out over the undulating sand-dunes beyond the crisp line of foam to the silken s.h.i.+mmer of the smoothing water. The little wind has fallen. It is very still. The nurse, sitting on a hillock of bents in dutiful nearness to the perambulator, has taken out her paper-covered volume, and is deep in a story of blood and woe. And Baby, a sleepy, pink rosebud, dozes among her white embroidered pillows, undisturbed by Red Umbrella's shrill exclamation:
”Sorry for her! Why on earth should you be?”
The shriek startles Lynette. She brings back her grave eyes from the distance, flus.h.i.+ng faint coral pink to the red-brown waves at her fair temples.
”She--she had on so few clothes!” she says. And there is a profound silence, broken by Lessie's saying with icy dignity:
”If the Lord Chamberlain opined I'd got enough on, I expect that ought to do for you!”
”I--don't quite understand.”
Lynette opens her golden eyes in sincere wonder at the marvellous change that has been wrought in the little lady who sits beside her.
”_I_ am Miss Lessie Lavigne,” says the little lady, with an angry toss of the pretty head, adorned with the wistaria-trimmed hat. ”At least, that is the name I am known by in the profession.”
”I beg your pardon,” Lynette falters. ”I did not recognise you. I am afraid you must think me rather rude!”
”Oh, pray don't mention it!” cries the owner of the red umbrella.
”Rude?--not in the least!”
Mere rudeness would be preferable, infinitely, to the outrage the little lady has suffered. She, Lessie Lavigne, the original exponent of the role of ”The Chiffon Girl,” the idol of the pit and gallery, Queen regnant over the hearts beating behind the polished s.h.i.+rt-fronts in the stalls, has lived to hear herself pitied--not envied, but commiserated--for the scantiness of the costume in which it is alike her privilege and her joy to trill and caper seven times in the week before her patrons and adorers.
Small wonder that she feels her carefully-manicured nails elongating with the desire to scratch and rend.
Then she reveals the chief arrow in her quiver. Not for nothing is she the widow of an English n.o.bleman. With all the hereditary dignities of the Foltlebarres she will arm herself, and reduce this presuming stranger to the level of the dust. At the thought of the humiliation it is in her power to inflict she smiles quite pleasantly, displaying a complete double row of beautifully stopped teeth. And she says, as she fumbles in a chatelaine bag of golden links, studded with turquoises, and with elaborately ostentatious dignity produces therefrom a card-case, as precious as regards material, and emblazoned with a monogram and coronet, enriched with diamonds and pearls:
”I think you mentioned that you lived in the neighbourhood? May I know who I have the a--pleasure of being indebted to for finding my daughter to-day?”
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