Part 37 (1/2)

Clanricarde Place is a little nook of Queen Anne houses--genuine Queen Anne, be it understood--between Piccadilly and St. James's Palace, and hardly five minutes' walk from Arlington Street. It is a quiet little _cul de sac_ in the very heart of the fas.h.i.+onable world; and here of an afternoon might be seen the carriages of Madame Seraphine's customers, blocking the whole of the carriage way, and choking up the narrow entrance to the street, which widened considerably at the inner end.

Madame Seraphine's house was at the end, a narrow house, with tall old-fas.h.i.+oned windows curtained with amber satin. It was a small, dark house, and exhaled occasional odours of garlic and main sewer: but the staircase was a gem in old oak, and the furniture in the triple telescopic drawing rooms, dwindling to a closet at the end, was genuine Louis Seize.

Seraphine herself was the only shabby thing in the house--a wizened little woman, with a wicked old Jewish face, and one shoulder higher than the other, dressed in a s.h.i.+ny black moire gown, years after moires had been exploded, and with a rag of old lace upon her sleek black hair--raven black hair, and the only good thing about her appearance.

One ornament, and one only, had Seraphine ever been guilty of wearing, and that was an old-fas.h.i.+oned half-hoop ring of Brazilian diamonds, brilliants of the first water. This ring she called her yard measure; and she was in the habit of using it as her Standard of purity, and comparing it with any diamonds which her customers submitted to her inspection. For the clever little dressmaker had a feeling heart for a lady in difficulties, and was in the habit of lending money on good security, and on terms that were almost reasonable as compared with the usurious rates one reads of in the newspapers.

Lesbia's first sensation upon having this accomplished person presented to her was one of shrinking and disgust. There was something sinister in the sallow face, the small shrewd eyes, and long hooked nose, the crooked figure, and claw-shaped hands. But when Madame Seraphine began to talk about gowns, and bade her acolytes--smartly-dressed young women with pleasing countenances--bring forth marvels of brocade and satin, embroideries, stamped velvets, bullion fringes, and ostrich feather flouncings, Lesbia became interested, and forgot the unholy aspect of the high priestess.

Lady Kirkbank and the dressmaker discussed Lesbia's charms as calmly as if she had been out of the room.

'What do you think of her figure?' asked Lady Kirkbank.

'One cannot criticise what does not exist,' replied the dressmaker, in French. 'The young lady has no figure. She has evidently been brought up in the country.'

And then with rapid bird-like movements, and with her head on one side, Seraphine measured Lesbia's waist and bust, muttering little argotic expressions _sotto voce_ as she did so.

'Waist three inches too large, shoulders six inches too narrow,' she said decisively, and she dictated some figures to one of the damsels, who wrote them down in an order-book.

'What does that mean?' asked Lesbia, not at all approving of such cavalier treatment.

'Only that Seraphine will make your corsets the right size,' answered Lady Kirkbank.

'What? Three inches too small for my waist, and six too wide for my shoulders?'

'My love, you must have a figure,' replied Lady Kirkbank, conclusively.

'It is not what you are, but what you ought to be that has to be considered.'

So Lesbia, the cool-headed, who was also the weak-minded, consented to have her figure adjusted to the regulation mark of absolute beauty, as understood by Madame Seraphine. It was only when her complexion came under discussion, and Seraphine ventured to suggest that she would be all the better for a little accentuation of her eyebrows and darkening of her lashes, that Lesbia made a stand.

'What would my grandmother think of me if she heard I painted?' she asked, indignantly.

Lady Kirkbank laughed at her _navete_.

'My dear child, your grandmother is just half a century behind the age,'

she said. 'I hope you are not going to allow your life in London to be regulated by an oracle at Grasmere?'

'I am not going to paint my face,' replied Lesbia, firmly.

'Well, perhaps you are right. The eyebrows are a little weak and undecided, Seraphine, as you say, and the lashes would be all the better for your famous cosmetic; but after all there is a charm in what the painters call ”sincerity,” and any little errors of detail will prove the genuineness of Lady Lesbia's beauty. One _may_ be too artistic.'

And Lady Kirkbank gave a complacent glance at her own image in one of the Marie Antoinette mirrors, pleased with the general effect of arched brows, darkened eyelids, and a daisy bonnet. The fair Georgie generally affected field-flowers and other simplicities, which would have been becoming to a beauty of eighteen.

'One is obliged to smother one's self in satin and velvet for b.a.l.l.s and dinners,' said Lady Kirkbank, when she discussed the great question of gowns; 'but I know I always look my best in my cotton frock and straw hat.'

That first visit to Seraphine's den--den as terrible, did one but know it, as that antediluvian hyena-cave at Torquay, where the threshold is worn by the bodies of beasts dragged across it, and the ground paved with their bones--that first visit was a serious business. Later interviews might be mere frivolities, half-an-hour wasted in looking at new fas.h.i.+ons, an order given carelessly on the spur of the moment; but upon this occasion Lady Kirkbank had to arm her young _protegee_ for the coming campaign, and the question was to the last degree serious.

The chaperon and the dressmaker put their heads together, looked at fas.h.i.+on plates, talked solemnly of Worth and his compeers, of the gowns that were being worn by Bernhardt, and Pierson, and Croisette, and other stars of the Parisian stage; and then Lady Kirkbank gave her orders, Lesbia listening and a.s.senting.

Nothing was said about prices; but Lesbia had a vague idea that some of the things would be rather expensive, and she ventured to ask Lady Kirkbank if she were not ordering too many gowns.

'My dear, Lady Maulevrier said you were to have _carte blanche_,'