She could not forget that she was now faced with the footing of the bill. In the course of the next day or so it would have to be met. She had made a definite promise to Miss Cass to declare the true state of affairs and shoulder the entire responsibility. There would be the devil to pay all round. Her father would be furious, her mother would never forgive her, but having the natural temperament of a fighter she was not afraid of either. Besides, she consoled herself with the thought that it served them right. It might teach them not to be quite so cynical in arranging other people’s lives.
There was a place, however, where she now perceived the shoe was going to pinch. She had just discovered that she was in love with General Norris. Had she been quite honest with herself she would have made that discovery on the very evening of her arrival. Looking back across the expanse of fantastic difficulties in which she had landed herself, she saw that it was General Norris who had supplied the motive power from day to day. Without the charm of that most alluring personality she would never have been able “to stick it.” Life as they lived it at The Laurels would have defeated her after one irksome and humiliating twenty-four hours.
A hardened sinner, she was wholly unrepentant. Quite a number of undesirable people had been gorgeously “scored off.” It was not a case for regrets on their account, but as, flanked by Miss Joan and Master Peter on either hand, she trudged resolutely into Clavering to witness the climax of her audacity at the Assembly Rooms and proceeded to draw up a kind of moral balance sheet as she did so, she realized pretty clearly that there was one item in it that must throw a considerable strain on her resources. She was in love with George Norris. And, still worse, he was in love with her.
Readers of Thackeray will not need to be told that the Clavering Assembly Rooms are in the High Street, which is the second turn on the left when you have crossed the charming little bridge over the River Morwen. On arrival Miss Cass and her charges found they had a few minutes to spare, as the performance was not announced to begin until half-past two. All the same the press of carriages in the High Street was considerable. In fact, it might almost be said to amount to congestion.
The performance for the first time on any stage of “The Lady of Laxton,” by Sir Toby Philpot, Bart., was under such distinguished auspices that it was recognized locally as quite a function. For a full quarter of an hour before the curtain went up the weirdest of vehicles with the weirdest of occupants—how they would have delighted the heart of Michael Angelo Titmarsh, Esquire!—streamed incessantly into the High Street. They were so many, so various, so infrequently seen that even Mr. Shuker, the dealer in antiques whose shop was next door to the Assembly Rooms, who was the recognized local authority on “The County,” was almost if not quite defeated by such an array. Had it been humanly possible for The County to baffle Mr. Shuker, on this historical occasion Mr. Shuker would have been baffled undoubtedly.
For instance, that closed one-horse brougham whose lozenged panel displayed a couchant lion and a rampant unicorn with the simple but appropriate motto Festina Lente was—well, never mind who. There really isn’t time just now to go fully into the matter. The Armistice is hardly more than a fortnight old, you know. But you may take it, my dear Titmarsh, our friend Mr. Shuker could have told you.
Elfreda, holding her charges by the hand, passed resolutely up the three steps into the vestibule and mingled with the throng. And what a throng! She seemed to have known these funny people all her life. Surely that old thing in the Victorian bonnet was bowing to her. Could it be old Lady S.? An antique voice level with her right ear was saying with its curious drawl, “My brother Alec was at Eton with her father.” Into her left ear a voice very similar was saying, “The dear Duke, I suppose, would be her grandfather.” And at the back a third voice remarked, “The youngest of six, I believe, but they have all married well. A very gifted family.”
It was a relief to Elfreda’s feelings when she got through the crowd into the hall itself. The platform embellished with footlights and a drop curtain had been transformed into a stage. So great was the flux of grandees from miles around that the party from The Laurels had been relegated to the back row of the stalls. Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson saw in this circumstance one more subtle affront to her social position; all the same the family chariot had arrived a clear five minutes before Miss Cass, Master Peter and Miss Joan because, as Mrs. Trenchard-Simpson shrewdly observed to Miss Parbury and General Norris, “the people were likely to be more amusing than the performance.”
In a sense, this prophecy was strikingly borne out. The performance, at any rate in its early phases, promised very little in the way of amusement. The play
itself was almost unbelievably infantile, but this would not have mattered had not the acting been at the same level. Hardly had the curtain been up five minutes before it was clear that the patience of the audience was going to be sorely tried.
By that time, it was fully realized “behind” that they were “for it.” The brief opening scene between a couple of comic servants, although calling for liberal prompts from the indefatigable Mr. Jupp, really passed off very well; but its defect was, as the candid critic of the Dramatic Pictorial was not slow to inform the author, it didn’t last long enough. The action of the play really began with the entrance of Sir Toby himself and with it began the trouble. The little baronet, of course, had cast himself for the part of the hero; it was only human that he should do so, but nature having endowed him with very few inches, a voice so loud as to verge upon the uncanny and an aggressiveness of manner which a certain amount of stage nervousness served rather cruelly to accentuate, those skilled in the signs began to fear the worst, even before the worst had happened.