Too Old for Dolls: A Novel

by Anthony M. Ludovici

At tennis it would be a blister suddenly formed on Leonetta's hand; at croquet it would be a fledgling just beside her ball; on the beach it would be a peculiar pebble,—anywhere, everywhere, there was always something over which Leonetta would suddenly stand dramatically still, until every male within sight, including sometimes Sir Joseph himself, had run all agog to her side.

Now the imitation of such tactics is difficult enough; their defeat, when they are combated consciously, is literally exhausting. In two or three days Cleopatra was exhausted.

Never at a loss for a pretext, never apparently thinking any excuse too jejune, too transparently fatuous, or too puerile, to draw the attention of the men, Leonetta, with unabated high spirits, won again and again, every day, every hour, such a number of these silent secret victories over the rest of the young women of the party, that at the end of a week, when their cumulative effect was so overwhelmingly manifest as no longer to allow of denial, she openly assumed the rôle of queen of the party.

Again and again, in a game of tennis, Cleopatra's tired and overworked brain would grapple with the problem, why a certain empty remark of Leonetta's had caused Denis and Guy to double up with laughter, and had thus held up the game for a moment; and the solution was hard to find. She knew that even a brighter remark from herself would not have so much as caused them to interrupt their service; but she was imperfectly acquainted with the psychology of rulership, and did not understand that when once, by fair means or foul, a certain member of a party has by her own unaided efforts elevated herself to the position of its queen, everything ostensibly witty that proceeds from her mouth is greeted with obsequious laughter by her devoted subjects.

Indeed, in order not to appear a spoilsport, Cleopatra was at last reduced to the humiliating resort of joining in the courtly merriment which appeared to her so extravagantly to result from her sister's mildest jests.

To say that by this time she was feeling a slight sinking sensation in the region of her heart, would be to express with scrupulous moderation what was actually taking place. For Cleopatra, theretofore, had held her own against the best. A good rider, a splendid shot, with almost a professional form in tennis and golf, and a good swimmer and dancer besides, she possessed none of those shortcomings, so handsomely acknowledged when they are present, which would even have justified her in taking up an unassuming position. Besides she was quite rightly aware of owning certain sterling qualities which promised to afford a very much more solid support to the everyday life of this world, than the constant carnival brilliance of her sister; and she found it oppressive to have to appear perpetually in carnival spirits, when she craved for those more sober moods in which her less volatile virtues could make a good display.

She was beginning to find her sister's hard, unrelenting rivalry difficult to forgive, and the steady shaping of a dreaded feeling of loathing for the cause of her partial eclipse began to cause her some alarm.

Thus each day ended with a tacit, concealed, but very real victory for Leonetta, without her sister deriving any further satisfaction from the unavowed contest, than an aching weariness both of body and spirit.

Meanwhile Vanessa, more piqued by her whilom "sweetheart's" increasing neglect of her than by that young lady's inordinate success with the men, would come on the scene in the evening with all the advantage of being less jaded than Cleopatra by the day's incessant duel, and then would frequently score point after point against her schoolmate, without ever revealing a sign of the eagerness she felt for the fray. In addition she made herself a great favourite of the wealthy baronet, and recognising in him a means of possibly exercising some power over Denis, cultivated his affection by every wile of which her clever race made her capable.

Denis Malster was obviously the most staggered by the turn events had taken. Bewildered and fascinated by Leonetta's art of blowing hot and cold, as the spirit moved her, kept constantly alert by the rapid changes of her caprice, he had come to have eyes and ears only for her imperious youth. If she ran off with Guy Tyrrell or with Stephen Fearwell,—a mere boy,—he grew grave, meditative, taciturn; when she returned he resumed his rôle of obsequious courtier without either reserve or concealment. And who can be more obsequious to a pretty schoolgirl than an Englishman of thirty?