"Or whoever cared whether she does or does not?" said Mrs Chaucer Munro, who, with her peculiar bevy, had now made her way up among the front rank.
Then to have seen the tiara of Lady Ware, as it wagged and nodded while she looked at Mrs Munro, and to have witnessed the high moral tone of the ferocity with which she stalked away to her own stall with her daughters behind her,—a tragi-comedy which it was given to no male eyes to behold,—would have been worth the whole after-performance of the bazaar. No male eyes beheld that scene, as Mr Manfred Smith, the manager, had gone out to look for his duchess, and missing her carriage in the crowd, did not return till the bazaar had been opened. That Mrs Chaucer Munro did not sink, collapsed, among her bevy, must have been owing altogether to that callousness which a long habit of endurance produces. Probably she did feel something as at the moment there came no titter from any other bevy corresponding to the titter which was raised by her own. She and her bevy retired to their allotted place, conscious that their time for glory could not come till the male world should appear upon the scene. But Lady Ware's tiara still wagged and nodded behind her counter, and Margaret, looking at her, thought that she must have come there as the grand duenna of the occasion.
Just at three o'clock the poor duchess hurried into the building in a terrible flurry, and went hither and thither among the stalls, not knowing at first where was her throne. Unkind chance threw her at first almost into the booth of Mrs Conway Sparkes, the woman whom of all women she hated the most; and from thence she recoiled into the arms of Lady Hartletop who was sitting serene, placid, and contented in her appointed place.
"Opposite, I think, duchess," Mrs Conway Sparkes had said. "We are only the small fry here."
"Oh, ah; I beg pardon. They told me the middle, to the left."
"And this is the middle to the right," said Mrs Conway Sparkes. But the duchess had turned round since she came in, and could not at all understand where she was.
"Under the canopy, duchess," just whispered Lady Hartletop. Lady Hartletop was a young woman who knew her right hand from her left under all circumstances of life, and who never made any mistakes. The duchess looked up in her confusion to the centre of the ceiling, but could see no canopy. Lady Hartletop had done all that could be required of her, and if the duchess were to die amidst her difficulties it would not be her fault. Then came forth the Lady Glencora, and with true charity conducted the lady-president to her chair, just in time to avoid the crush, which ensued upon the opening of the doors.
The doors were opened, and very speedily the space of the bazaar between the stalls became too crowded to have admitted the safe passage of such a woman as the Duchess of St Bungay; but Lady Glencora, who was less majestic in her size and gait, did not find herself embarrassed. And now there arose, before the general work of fleecing the wether lambs had well commenced, a terrible discord, as of a brass band with broken bassoons, and trumpets all out of order, from the further end of the building,—a terrible noise of most unmusical music, such as Bartholomew Fair in its loudest days could hardly have known. At such a diapason one would have thought that the tender ears of May Fair and Belgravia would have been crushed and cracked and riven asunder; that female voices would have shrieked, and the intensity of fashionable female agony would have displayed itself in all its best recognised forms. But the crash of brass was borne by them as though they had been rough schoolboys delighting in a din. The duchess gave one jump, and then remained quiet and undismayed. If Lady Hartletop heard it, she did not betray the hearing. Lady Glencora for a moment put her hands to her ears as she laughed, but she did it as though the prettiness of the motion were its only one cause. The fine nerves of Mrs Conway Sparkes, the poetess, bore it all without flinching; and Mrs Chaucer Munro with her bevy rushed forward so that they might lose nothing of what was coming.
"What are they going to do?" said Margaret to her cousin, in alarm.
"It's the play part of the thing. Have you not seen the bills?" Then Margaret looked at a great placard which was exhibited near to her, which, though by no means intelligible to her, gave her to understand that there was a show in progress. The wit of the thing seemed to consist chiefly in the wonderful names chosen. The King of the Cannibal Islands was to appear on a white charger. King Chrononhotonthologos was to be led in chains by Tom Thumb. Achilles would drag Hector thrice round the walls of Troy; and Queen Godiva would ride through Coventry, accompanied by Lord Burghley and the ambassador from Japan. It was also signified that in some back part of the premises a theatrical entertainment would be carried on throughout the afternoon, the King of the Cannibal Islands, with his royal brother and sister Chrononhotonthologos and Godiva, taking principal parts; but as nobody seemed to go to the theatre the performers spent their time chiefly in making processions through and amidst the stalls, when, as the day waxed hot, and the work became heavy, they seemed to be taken much in dudgeon by the various bevies with whose business they interfered materially.