The Oyster

by Peer

CHAPTER VIII

"This bazaar," said Dollie Gresham, cheerily, "is humming. I have not been asked about as much as I should like to be lately; people forget poor little nobodies. The Duchess is giving her patronage, entre nous. Mavis Moover will dance for me—joy for her Grace of Boredom! Oh, I've got heaps and heaps of people! We are secretaries, and cashiers, and so forth, and we shall all wear flower dresses. Our stall shall be forget-me-nots. The Duchess chose tulips; she said she had a black silk gown and she knew there was a tulip of that colour. We shall be audaciously beautiful in sky blue, rather short."

Esmé had rushed into this new scheme.

"It won't cost much, will it?" she asked.

"Secretaries, workers, chérie," prattled Dollie, "have all expenses paid. All frocks, frills, etc.; they give their valuable time. Come with me to Claire's. She is at least original."

Dollie's maid brought in two cards. Mrs Gresham frowned over them.

"The tiresome secretary of the hospital," she said, "and Canon Bright, one of the founders. Look charitable, Esmé."

Next moment, all smiles, she greeted a kindly-looking, middle-aged man and a grey-haired clergyman; a stern-faced, clear-eyed man, who made this hospital for little suffering children his hobby.

They overwhelmed Dollie with thanks.

"This debt"—Canon Bright took out some notes of figures—"was weighing us down. Now, with your help, it will be paid off, and we shall have something besides to go on with, to buy sorely-needed appliances."

"Oh, of course," said Dollie, vaguely.

"We were looking for some kind lady or society to take it up; fortunately you met Mr Lucy at luncheon."

"Yes; that put it into my head," said Dollie, brightly. "Bazaars are so paying; this is my friend and sister secretary, Mrs Carteret. I've got every big name in London, Canon, or half of them. Oh, it will be a great success. We've taken the hall. We're all going to be summer flowers. 'The Summer Flower Bazaar,' such a good name, isn't it?"

Mr Lucy nursed his hat. "You won't let the expenses mount, Mrs Gresham," he said, "will you? Once they begin to swell our cripples would lose. You'll let me help you with the accounts. It's my métier, you see, and I could help you."

Dollie chilled visibly. She preferred to do it all herself, she said. "We really want to work," she went on, smiling again. "After all, it's quite simple. We have all our cheques paid in and we pay the exes and hand you the balance. We'll work it up like anything. You get all your people to come, Canon—all your charitable friends. The dear little cripples," cooed Dolly—"so nice to help them."

"Tiresome, muddling pair," she snapped when the two men had left. "Come to Claire's, Esmé. I owe her two hundred, but these flower dresses will cool her rage, and she'll know we'll pay for this lot all right."

Claire received them dubiously, then thawed to the order for the bazaar. If Mrs Gresham could get her the carnation order also, Lady Louisa's stall, and the roses. Forget-me-nots, by the way, were spring flowers.

Oh, it didn't matter. Clouds of gauze, blue satin, wreaths of flowers stiffened with turquoises, shoes, stockings. Dollie ordered lavishly.

"That Estelle girl shall help," Esmé said. "She is the kind of person who'll open boxes and get dusty and save us trouble. By the way, what shall we sell? Not tea. One has to run about. Sweets, I should think, and buttonholes."

"We are not distinguished enough for buttonholes," said Dollie, decidedly. "When Adolfus or Gargie buys a white pink for five shillings he likes to tell mamma and his lady friend that the Countess of 'Ighlife pinned it in with her own fingers, Vilet, her very own. Dolfus does not seem to realize that the use of other people's would be confusing. No, let it be sweets. Chocolates will show off our blue frocks."

Bertie Carteret found himself left more and more alone. Esmé was always feverishly busy, always just going on somewhere, chasing pleasure, growing thinner in the pursuit, using just a little more rose bloom, a little extra powder to hide jaded lines and fading colour.

At the end of May Bertie paid his household bills again and knew that they were far too large. No extravagance seemed to have been curtailed; if they had not lunched or dined so often at home, he had paid for a score of meals at fashionable restaurants. Esmé's careless demands for a few pounds for cabs were endless.

"I can't do it," he muttered, writing his cheques. "I can't get on."

A plea to Esmé would only make her sullen, irritable, railing at her poverty, muttering against poor marriages.

"I—oh, you are alone. I've brought the book which Esmé asked me for." Estelle Reynolds came on Bertie as he sighed over his bills. "And the pearls she left to be mended."

She put down a new novel on the table, one barred by libraries. Esmé would look at it, probably forget to finish it, unless she thought she found any of her friends were pilloried between the flaring green covers.

Estelle put down a receipt with the pearls, one for two pounds. Bertie looked at the amount.

"Has Esmé paid you?" he asked.

"Oh, no, it does not matter—any time." Estelle blushed. "I can ask her."

"I wonder"—he turned—"how much she has let you pay, this careless wife of mine. For the future, Estelle, bring anything to me."

"You seem to have enough to pay for." Estelle pointed to a pile of books and cheques.

"Too much! More than I can manage. Estelle, is nothing of value unless it costs money? Must one always lunch and dine and sup with people whose daily income equals our half-yearly one? Can a woman ever look well in a frock which costs less than twenty pounds? Oh, one must go to so-and-so—everyone does. Is there nothing simple left in life?" said Bertie, drearily. "No pleasure in a corner of the country where a man could pay his way honestly, and eat strawberries in June and peaches in August?"

"Is it as bad as that?" Estelle came to the table, glanced at some of the books.

She was a slight girl, with nothing but her grey eyes redeeming her from mediocrity.

Bertie Carteret sat opposite a full-length portrait of his wife. It was tinted, showing her dazzling colouring, her rounded figure. It stared at him with Esmé's careless, joyous smile. Never yet, when he had touched her, had the softness of her ivory neck, the warmth of her white skin, failed to wake passion in him, make him wax to the heat of love, melting and desiring. So she had won his heart when he met her in the country, the beauty of a small military station, a doctor's daughter, well born, but dowerless, bringing beauty alone as her marriage portion. Her beauty, her joyous love of life, had won her a niche in London Society. Friends had given her introductions, and Esmé had grown into the life as a graft grows to the parent stem.

What poet has written that each woman is a flower with its characteristics, its scent, or beauty?

Was not this wife of his a gorgeous sunflower, turning her head to the light and warmth of amusement, standing out among her fellows, dazzling as she caught the light, a thing to look at and admire, but not to bend one's face over drinking in a rare sweet perfume.

Now that he sat thinking he knew there had been none of the intimacy of married lovers; no scheming for their dual interests, no planning of some little trip to be taken together, none of the talks which wed man and woman more surely than the service ordained by law. Nothing but love and laughter. Together, with the world shut out, Bertie must not talk of ordinary things, but of Esmé. She would lean against him, exquisite, perfect, silken draperies merely veiling her long, rounded limbs, and he must talk of her alone. Tell her again and again how beautiful she was; find new perfection in her golden hair, her bright cheeks, the curves of her beauty.

Then in the mornings, when there was an hour before they need get up, when Esmé had put on a lace cap and got into some soft-hued wrapper, she would chatter gaily, but never of their future, of the home which Bertie, man-like, dreamt of; but of the day's doings, of luncheon and tea and dinner and theatre, of flying from place to place, from friend to friend.

"The Holbrooks are sending their small car for me to do my shopping in; aren't they kind, Bert? Lady Sue sent us a big basket of fruit yesterday for my little dinner. We've such heaps to do, Bertie, to-day—such heaps!"

She would stretch her warm limbs in the luxurious joy of being alive, the joy of youth and strength and happiness.

There were no kisses in the morning. Marie had already laved Madame's face in scented water, and rubbed in Madame's face cream to prepare her skin for its light dust of powder.

Sometimes, half shyly, Bertie would try to talk of the future, say they could not always live in the army.

"There are such dear little places to be found, Es"—he used to study advertisements—"just big enough. We could keep a horse or two, a garden—be so happy!"

"And become cabbages ourselves. Play bridge with the parson and his wife, and go to summer tennis-parties with two men and forty maids. London, my Bertie, it's the only place for poor people. The country is all very well if you need never stay there, but to grow rooted to garden soil! Boo! I'll get you on! You shall be a General and inspect armies."

Bertie gave up his dream of a little house in the country; he got used to the careless, ever-moving life. And now he sickened of it.

If women were flowers, this woman standing near him was a violet, a simple thing, only beautiful to those who love sweetness better than flaring beauty.

"You're worried," she said. "Where is Esmé?"

"Esmé is out for the day," he said.

"Then you've often promised me an outing. Come and be a cheap tripper with me; let it be my treat. I got a cheque from mother yesterday. I'm rich. Let's pretend we're very poor, and enjoy ourselves. You mustn't sit there brooding."

Bertie put away the books, laughed up at the gentle face. He would, but he must pay half.

The May day was theirs; they would enjoy it as two children.

They would take a 'bus, lunch, go to the White City, see how economy can be practised.

They lunched at a little restaurant in Germain Street, studying the menu with puckered brows, taking omelette and a grill which they could share, and biscuits and cheese, and light white wine.

The amount of a bill which would not have covered tips at the Berkeley or the Ritz was gaily paid.

Bertie saw a new side to Estelle's character; the childish power of enjoyment. Take a taxi? No! Taxis were for the rich. They sat on the top of a motor 'bus, going down roaring Piccadilly.

Esmé, coming to the door of the Berkeley, happened to look up at the packed mass of humanity seated on the monster's head.

"Bertie!" she flashed out, mockingly, "and the South African girl. Bertie happily saving his pennies and seeing London. Oh! how funny."

She forgot that a year ago she had often gone in a 'bus with him.

There were only taxis in the world for her now, or motors. The little electric carriages were so cheap to hire. Esmé's bill at the nearest garage was running up rapidly. "It was such a 'bore' to look for a taxi in the evenings; this was ready and took one on to supper or ball, and back again, and cost very little more," she would say.

Bertie had not seen his wife. He sat enjoying the sunshine, looking down at the packed streets, as the 'bus slipped through the traffic—past Grosvenor Gate, on to the London which is not London to Society, but merely "down in Kensington," into the vast grounds of the Exhibition, to play as children might have played. To rock on switchbacks, taking the front seat for the heart-sinking glides and dips; to come foolishly down watershutes; to slide on mats round perilous curves; to go and laugh at themselves in ridiculous mirrors. And then with an aftermath of seriousness to look at the quaint buildings of Shakespeare's time, and talk of the dead master of the drama.

Estelle had read every play; she could quote aptly, talk of those which she had seen.

"He had one fault," she said. "His good women were mawkish fools; his villainesses splendidly lovable. It was the spirit of the age, no doubt, that to be good one must be a mere loving nonentity, that brains led the feminine world to destruction."

If the world would but hang out warnings to the blind mortals who scurry through its maze, seeking for openings, or shouting, laughing, as they go; if we knew that an hour hence our life's history would change, and that a refusal to go to lunch, a turning up one corner instead of another, would leave it as it was, would it be better for us?

If Bertie Carteret, talking eagerly, almost boyishly, with a new interest in words, had realized that the turnstile of the Exhibition was taking him into a land of pain and regret, would he have seen the warning, laughed, or turned back? He had passed through it now; his feet were set on the path.

They drank tea out of blue-and-white Japanese cups, with sight-seers all round them. Esmé would have shuddered at the place, absolutely refused to take tea with milk in it, and with such impossible people about her.

Estelle enjoyed it; the day was still theirs as they dined at the same little restaurant with the same waiter, his memory sharpened by Bertie's surreptitiously large tip, rushing to find a table for them.

Weariness made economy less rigid; the little dinner they picked out was simple, but not for poor people. Since men in morning coats may not appear in respectably expensive seats, they climbed high at a theatre, looking down at the stage far below them; the brilliant mass of colour in the stalls; the rows of perfectly-dressed women's heads; of men's—sleek and generally thin of hair. Parties strolled into boxes, late for half an act, carelessly looking at the play on the stage.

"There's Esmé! See!"

Esmé came into one of the larger boxes with Dollie Gresham, Jimmie Gore Helmsley; a couple of soldiers; and then at the last, pretty Sybil Chauntsey, gesticulating as she ran in, everyone laughing at something she said.

"I wish"—Bertie looked gravely at the group—"that Sybil Chauntsey would keep away from that Helmsley man. He's no child's guide."

It was Jimmie's party. He had telephoned to Esmé to chaperone it. They were supping at the Ritz afterwards. Little Sybil had been engaged; she had run in telling them of her many difficulties before she could get away. At a small dance to-night one man would look for a partner who would never come.

Estelle was tired when the theatre was over; it was hot up there above the dress circle. She pointed to her morning dress and refused supper.

"We'll have some at home then. Esmé may be back. The economy must end at twelve. I'll drive you home in a taxi."

They came to the flat to find it silent, shut up. Esmé was not coming home until three or four. A few sandwiches stood ready for her, but Bertie would have none of them. He could cook; there were chafing dishes downstairs. Together they raided the trim larder, to find nothing but cold beef and eggs and butter. But how they laughed as Bertie scrambled the eggs, and did it skilfully, if he had not put in pepper twice, and Estelle grilled slices of beef in boiling butter, and dusted them with curry powder; then they heated cold potatoes and carried up their hot dishes, with bread and butter and plates.

Estelle said she adored pepper, as she burnt her throat with scrambled eggs. Bertie concealed the fact that the beef was corned; the potatoes, hot by the time the eggs and beef were finished, were excellent. Estelle made coffee.

They cleared up at last, washing dishes, putting things away, going home together on a cool summer's night in a crawling growler.

Esmé's new maid, looking in once, had slipped away unseen.

A foolish, childish day; a glimpse of how two people may enjoy themselves in the vast mother city of the world, away from where the golden shower of wealth rains so heedlessly, where cost is the hallmark of excellence, and a restaurant which is not the fashion of the moment is impossible.

As they said good-bye on the doorstep—Estelle had her key—Bertie held her cool, slender hands in his; asked her if she would spend a day out of London with him. "Down in Devonshire," he said, "at Cliff End. I have to go there soon. We can go early. Your aunt will not mind."

"Oh, not with you," said Estelle, simply. "She knows it is all right."

He felt a little pang at the words—a pang he could not understand. It was right that she should trust herself with him; he was married and a mere friend; yet the little vexed feeling in his heart was the warning held up by the gods.

Bertie walked back—a long walk along quiet streets with great London brooding in her silent might. Sometimes he passed a house lighted up, red carpeting on its steps, rows of carriages and motors waiting; women in rich cloaks coming out, their faces weary behind their smiles. Sometimes strange birds of the night flitted past. Other women, painted, weary as their rich sisters behind their set smile of invitation, going home alone, abandoning search for foolish prey. Men, evil-faced, furtive, glanced at him, standing to watch if the "toff" would turn into some unfrequented narrow street. Gleams of white shirt front as men of his class strolled to their rooms or lodging, their black cloaks flapping back to show the evening dress underneath. A few tipsy, foolish boys, lurching along looking for trouble. The big clubs were still lighted, their warm wealth behind their great windows. On to "down at Kensington," to the great pile of the flats towering to the soft blue sky.

A little electric carriage rolled noiselessly past him. Esmé got out. A man's voice said "Good-bye." It was one of the soldiers whom he had seen in the box. He heard some words of parting, then Esmé's careless, heart-whole laugh. They were on the second floor; he heard her exclaim as she saw the lights all up:

"How careless of someone."

She was brilliantly dressed; something of black and silver, clinging, graceful, billowing out round her feet; there were diamonds in her fair hair, a new necklace on her soft white throat. She shivered a little, turning on the fire, filling herself a glass of brandy from the decanter, pouring in a little Perrier.

"I was the careless one, Esmé. I forgot them."

"But you have only just come in," she said.

"I was in and went out again. You look tired, Esmé."

The morning light, stealing in through the drawn curtains, was blue and searching. It showed the powder on her cheeks, the line of the deftly-applied carnation bloom; it made her a little haggard, older than her twenty-five years.

"Yes, I'm tired," she yawned. "I thought you would be asleep." She lighted a strong cigarette. "I'm tired. We had supper at the Ritz and went on to Sue's ball. She had a new necklace, a beauty! She's just got an electric landaulette. Heigho! I'm tired of being poor—of pinching."

"You came home in an electric landaulette, Butterfly," Bertie smiled at her, but it was a mirthless smile.

"Oh! I'll pay for them myself," she flashed out ill-humouredly. "I can't hunt for taxis. I—" she stopped. Bertie allowed her a hundred a year for small things, pocket-money; she must make him think she saved out of that.

"And new diamonds." He touched the necklace glittering on the soft white flesh.

"Paste," she said, "paste. The thing only cost ten pounds. I had nothing decent to wear."

Until one took up the necklace one could not guess—see the solid backing. It was a brilliant thing; the workmanship perfect; but it had cost five times ten pounds.

Bertie bent to kiss the soft, warm flesh; slipped his arm round the supple shoulders.

"Come! I'll put you to bed," he whispered; "be your obedient maid, Butterfly."

"Susan will come, I told her to. Go to the little room, Bertie. I sleep so badly and anything disturbs me. I've heaps to do to-morrow."

He took his arm away, his ardour chilling, and went out without a word. Susan, sleepy but attentive, came in; put Madame to bed; washed the soft skin free of powder and paint; brought a little glass to the bedside.

"Madame's drops. Madame might not sleep."

Crystal clear, tasteless, soothing, bringing dreamless, heavy sleep; a slide of treachery down which women slip to ill-health and worse. Already, at five-and-twenty, Esmé was taking chloral.

The Society Bazaar began to take shape, to approach the days of its holding. Gorgeous gowns of satin and gauze and lace were fashioned for fair débutantes and pretty matrons.

Sweets, china, baskets; the hundred and one things which no one wants and which they must buy at three times the value when ordered.

The Duchess of Boredom would sell baskets. Dollie suggested an idea of diamond-like brilliancy: "Tie a card to every one:

'The Duchess of Boredom,
Boredom Court,'

with just a letter 's' and 'stall' in the corner. Everyone suburban in the room will rush for those baskets, and shop with them for months to come, forgetting, of course, to take off the card. It's perfect," said Dollie, "if she'll do it."

"Or you might have some made in the shape of strawberry leaves," said Bertie, gravely.

The Duchess did not object to her card being used. She was willing to order some hundreds of cards for the sake of charity.

"The Bazaar, of course, paying my stationers," said the Duchess, severely.

There were sweet stalls, where pretty notabilities, for five shillings extra, would sign their names on the boxes.

There was a stall kept by great actresses, who sold their autographs and their photographs, and buttonholes of rosebuds and carnations.

There were side shows, café chantants, everything to take money from the public.

"For the tiny crippled children. Help them." Children selling flowers and sweets, dressed all in pale pink, crowned with rosebuds, carried little cards on their heads, with these words printed.

"Let us be nothing if not sentimental," said Dollie, looking round the hall. Dull green gave background to the flower dresses; dull green on stalls and against the walls. Royalty had promised to be present. It was a great affair.

"It will buy tweeds," said Dollie. "It always does. And baskets, and sweets for the hospitals. And it—the male part of it—won't be allowed any of the photographs it wants from the stage stall."

A great bazaar, which a minor Royalty graciously declared open, and then remembered an engagement; its royal purse was sparsely supplied.

All Society seemed to be assisting, but Suburbia flocked to it, and in the evening Shopland would render gallant support.

"For the tiny crippled children; see the lovely dears," said Mrs Harris to Mrs Smith of Clapham. "What's your name, little love, now?"

"Pollie Laverdean," a small mite of eight raised dark liquid eyes. "Buy somefin', p'ease."

"Lady Marrianne," whispered a better-informed friend. "The Countess of Gardenia's eldest—ain't she sweet?"

"An' to call her plain Pollie. My! my!" murmured the friend.

Mrs Smith and Mrs Harris bought two small china dogs at five shillings each, and a box of shilling chocolates at the same price.

The Duchess's baskets went as snow before the sun.

Lady Lila Blyth and her lovely daughters sold flowers freely. The names of the assistants were written plainly over each stall—another idea of Dollie's.

Lady Lila Blyth, Miss Eva Blyth, Miss Lulu Blyth; Lady Eliza O'Neill; Mrs Holmes; the Marquess of Tweesdale; Lord Rupert Scot; the Earl of Domomere.

Brilliantly handsome in her blue gown, Esmé sold chocolate and dragées and crystallized fruits.

Canon Bright had worked hard to help; got flowers and fruit sent in great quantities. He and the little secretary came now through the stalls.

"It's splendid," he said to Dollie; "the stores near us sent a box of stuff to your stall."

"Oh, yes, thanks awfully! Is it there, Esmé? We haven't opened it yet. When these shop things are sold we will."

"But," the Canon picked up a huge guinea box of fruits, stickily alluring, "you've had to buy all these, haven't you?"

"Yes, and you see it wouldn't be fair if we didn't sell quite a lot of these things as we get them at a reduction. But we'll open the box; the children can sell the things."

Going on to Lady Lila's stall, a mass of carnations and roses and sweet peas, the secretary asked for the gifts of flowers. The Canon had begged from half his county.

The same vague look. "Oh, all these hampers and boxes. You see, these were in and the florist's people arrange and settle them for us. We'd have to bunch all these others, wouldn't we? Oh, of course, they'd be clear profit, but one cannot wait for chance gifts, can one? One must be ready."

Baskets of dewy rosebuds, of white pinks, sweet peas, of carnations lay withering behind the stalls. The florists had decked the tables, would do the same to-morrow. One could not bother with piles of things loose in baskets.

Canon Bright, used to humble county bazaars, where every gift was welcomed, could not understand it.

He bought lavishly. He looked with a smile which was almost wistful at the mites who fluttered about the thronged hall, their notices held up by wires above the crowns of roses.

"For the tiny crippled children." They rattled their little bags of money as they sold their goods.

"Fink there are any crippled children?" said Lady Pollie to her friend the Honourable Anne Buller.

"No fear! They's all kept in big places in beds. It's just fun for us an' Mumsie. She loves her yellow dress; she's a rose too, Mumsie is. Who gave you the gold piece, Pollie?"

"The fat man there; he said I was a sufferin' angel, or perhaps it was 'nother long word. Let's go an' eat ices or strawberries."

Money pouring into cash boxes; sovereigns for buttonholes; notes for foolish trumpery.

Royalty, gracious, really charitable, came in the afternoon, made its way through the crush which thronged to watch it, bought lavishly but sensibly, spoke kindly to stall-holders, honoured Dollie and Esmé with special notice.

"I hear you got it all up. So good of you. It is one of the hospitals most needed. We went there last week."

Small Royalty carries off a box of sweets with the glee of extremely natural childhood; a merry mite; far more simply brought up than shrewd little Lady Pollie. She knew that there were real crippled children, wan, stunted products of the slums, tended and made happy, perhaps cured, in that struggling hospital. She had seen them in their little blue jackets, looking eagerly at her kindly mother and at her as they went from bed to bed. They passed through a curtseying crowd, bought, went on to tea, gracious, kindly people.

"They've simply made it," Esmé said. "What a crowd we have. A charming box of sweets. Yes. Souvenir of the Bazaar—boxes specially made—one guinea. Too much? There's a small one for ten shillings; but the Princess took one of the others. Thank you! The big one? Oh, Captain Gore Helmsley—buy sweets?"

Jimmie, darkly handsome, his years disguised by careful grooming, strolled by. He stopped to say, laughing, that his digestion could not assimilate chocolates and dragées. Sybil Chauntsey, a glowing little nasturtium, her brown beauty set off by brilliant yellow, came hurrying up, young Knox with her; he had come up to try again. She was selling buttonholes, helping at one of the flower stalls.

"I'll buy a flower though," Jimmie turned quickly.

"I've only one left," Sybil said, "this yellow carnation. Captain Knox wants it. I was just coming for a pin. Mine have all dropped. It's five shillings."

"I'll give you ten," Helmsley said. "Touch it with your lips it shall be a pound."

"Two," said Knox, sharply.

"An auctioneer!" Esmé clapped her hands. "Well done, Sybil. Come, Captain Helmsley."

"Four!" said Helmsley, carelessly.

"Five!"

A little crowd gathered. Sybil, glowing, laughing, her childish vanity touched by this piece of vulgar advertisement. In her gay yellow and red-striped gown she stood holding up the flower; the nasturtium's head-dress was a hood of vivid green, opening over mock flower petals.

"Six!"

"Seven!"

"Ten!" said Jimmie, carelessly. "Come, that's a fair price for a flower—but I'll go on."

Young Knox stopped bidding suddenly, his face growing white. He watched Sybil, laughing brightly, kiss the flower, saw Jimmie Helmsley touch it covertly with his lips where her soft red ones had lain, and hold out the yellow bud to be fastened on.

"I win the flower," he said mockingly.

"One moment." Young Knox bent close to Sybil. "I'll say good-bye. It's not quite my game—this. But if you ever want me, remember I'm there, as I told you before. Good-bye."

The glow died out of Sybil Chauntsey's face; her fingers trembled as she fastened in the flower and took her five pound notes.

Helmsley walked on with her. Would she come to tea? He had a big box of sweets for her. Wouldn't she have them?

Sybil woke up after a minute or two, grew feverishly gay with the gaiety which cloaks sorrow; was almost noisy, her cheeks glowing, her eyes glittering; took a dozen presents from Gore Helmsley: Venetian beads, sweets, charms, bought at fabulous prices.

"Poor chap, not to think your flower worth more than a tenner," Helmsley had said in his mocking voice.

The Great Charity Bazaar ran on wheels oiled by golden oil; the cash-boxes filled. Kindly Canon Bright walked round it dreaming of the debt which would be paid off his beloved hospital. Of instruments, of comforts for the tiny sufferers, of the increased room which they could make.

Lord Boredom, very immaculately dressed, was helping his mother, but he preferred taking a basket at a time round the hall than attending the stall. Once he came back with a demure-looking young lady whom the Duchess welcomed cordially as "My dear Miss Moover," making Sukey Ploddy sniff loudly.

But the sensation of the evening was when the Duchess was taken to the Café Chantant to see on the white curtain the words: "Miss Moover, by kind permission of the Magnificent Theatre."

The Duchess went in. Miss Moover's dance was audacious, her draperies shadow-like; she squirmed and twisted and bounded across the stage, displaying the exquisitely-formed limbs which made London flock to see her. She was agile, graceful, never exaggerated, full of the joy of youth.

From the Magnificent Theatre! The Duchess, breathing heavily, staggered out, her black dress rustling. "A dancer! A creature!"

"I shall never," she said, "countenance those Holbrooks again," and with stony eyes she cut Luke deliberately and sent for her son.

"It was unfortunate, my love," said Mr Holbrook, mildly, "the whole idea."

The big bazaar day died to change to a blaze of electric lights, to a kaleidoscope of colour, of flower dresses, blue and yellow and pink and white, blending and moving; of diners in the miniature Ritz Hotel and other restaurants, eating luxurious meals.

It began again next day, a cheaper, less select affair, with half the assistants far too tired to come, and it ran through another day; a huge spider sucking golden blood from innumerable flies.

It was over at last; the stall-holders ate a merry supper; assistants from the shops cleared away their goods; no one bothered much about it all now.

The Society papers would publish accounts and photographs, with Dollie and Esmé, charitable ladies, always in the most prominent place.

Canon Bright and the secretary were jubilant at supper, thanking everyone; they would call in a day or two. If Mrs Gresham would let them, they would help her with the accounts.

But Dollie told them pleasantly that she wanted no help as yet.

A few days later she sat with Esmé over piles of papers, totting carelessly.

"They've charged horribly for those sweets. Oh! and Claire's bill is exorbitant!" She held it up.

"It's double what it ought to be," said Esmé.

"H'm!" Dollie totted. "I want to pay her off. Just a little on to the hall account, and to odd nothings, and there are a few extra gowns in the price of the blue; that will make it right. One can't slave for nothing," said Dollie. "You can get a couple of gowns, too. I arranged that with her. It was worth it," said Dollie, "to stop the woman's mouth."

When cheques came in other people seemed to have found their expenses equally high. London tradesmen charge highly for decorating, for assistance. The golden coins paid out for charity went for glitter and show, for gowns and waste. The Ritz had not paid its way. All stall-holders lunched and dined free there. Hunt & Mason sent in a bill of some size.

In a month's time Dollie wanted it all to be forgotten; she sent a cheque to the hospital with all her accounts carefully copied out.

The secretary turned pale as he read the amount. "That!" he said, "that—after it all! And now, for a year's time, if we appeal for funds, people will say, 'But you've just had that bazaar; we went there, bought lavishly, we cannot help again so soon.'

"Miss Harnett," he said heavily to the matron, "we must give up all idea of that west ward; we cannot afford it; or those new reclining chairs and instruments."

He wrote drearily, for his heart was in his work, to Canon Bright.

"All such a splendid success," Dollie's friends had said to her, and kindly Royalty, with its love of true charity, asked her to a select garden-party.