Mrs. Pallinder ought to have remembered it, for Mazie had begun with: "'Oh, my child! That poor tiara, what has become of it?'" so that a number of the audience and nearly all the actors had been extinguished in giggles. But she only said vaguely, "Oh, ah, yes, I believe there was something of the kind said. Mazie, honey, I've just been asking Mr. Carson what he had done with the tiara, the necklace, I mean—I reckon he thinks I think he's stolen it!"
"Oh, I didn't even undo the parcel," said Mazie languidly. "I just pretended to on the stage. I couldn't worry around with the thing. That play's too long anyhow; I cut it short right at the end there on purpose. We had the necklace all twisted up on wires, you know. I just pitched it into the bureau-drawer and locked it up. It's safe."
"I'm afraid you're tired," said Bob, as Mrs. Pallinder, with a return of her accustomed tact, moved unobtrusively away. "I'm afraid you're worn out," repeated the young fellow tenderly. "You had the hardest part of anybody."
FOOTNOTE:
[6] Happening to mention Capoul the other day, I discovered that none of my hearers remembered that dashing Faust, Count Almaviva, Romeo of twenty-five years ago. "And who was Capoul?" their blank looks seemed to ask. Sic transit gloria!—M. S. W.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
It was over at last—the party was over; like everything else in life, things had turned out neither quite so good nor quite so bad as we had expected. "Mrs. Tankerville" was a failure—but then "William Tell" had been a success, so the score was even. The curtain had gone down on both of them, and was about to descend upon another little drama, if we had known it. Everyone said the evening was a great success, one more feather in the Pallinder crown; downstairs, under the colonel's benevolent supervision, limitless champagne flowed; the supper was a triumph; the german one of the prettiest ever danced. Muriel led with J. B., and some of the older people stayed to see it, and talked for days afterwards about the favours Mazie had brought from New York; the figure where the men got little silver pencil-cases and the girls painted gauze fans; and that other figure where they all looked so pretty with Japanese parasols and paper lanterns; and the figure where they had the Easter eggs—that was charming! But it was all over at last; blank dreariness and silence settled upon the ballroom, the last carriage rumbled away, the musicians sacked and boxed up their instruments and disappeared, featureless and unremarked, along with the caterers' men rattling their dishes, and banging amongst their folding chairs—"into the dark went one and all." They left behind a tired and not too good-tempered mob of young people; on the stage and behind it everything was in a frenzied disorder; and when in the pinched and colourless small hours, we went yawning to our beds, those useful articles of furniture were hardly to be found cumbered as they were with wreckage. There were hats, dresses, damp towels, artificial flowers and withering natural ones, slippers and odd stockings, soiled and tumbled veils, handkerchiefs, gloves, fans, the gilt and tinsel scraps of favours—it was a wilderness where the most amazing things turned up in the most amazing places. Somebody found a comb in a box of candy; a pair of corsets wrapped carefully together with some fine damask table-napkins, and sticking upright in a water-pitcher (an empty one by good luck); and old Mrs. Botlisch's teeth (the lower set) jammed firmly between the strings of a guitar that had been used in "Tell"—these were some of the discoveries. We were too tired to be amiable, and there were some sharp wrangles over lost nightdresses, and the ownership of tooth-brushes in the girls' quarters before we settled down for what was left of the night—the morning, rather. We were two in a bed, one on the lounge, and always three or four in a room according to the Pallinders' happy-go-lucky style of hospitality. The men, very likely, retired with even less formality; they had some big rooms in an ell running out from the main building at the back given over to their use.
It seemed as if I had no more than closed my eyes (and, as I afterwards found, it had actually only been about ten minutes since the last door locked and the last gas-jet was turned off) when the consciousness of disturbance somewhere about the house roused me. Someone was shouting out of a window, and being answered from below. The sash slammed; and presently there was the sound of stockinged feet padding downstairs. Kitty waked up, and crossly suggested that one of the guests had forgot something, and come back for it. "Of all things at this time of night!" she snapped. "Might have waited till daylight, seems to me. Some people have no sense!"