I shall be glad when the book is finished, for Elizabeth Cawthorne, who tells me everything, doesn’t think so much collaborating is quite what is due to Mother, and that if she were the mistress, “blessed if she’d let herself be put upon by a countess.”
Elizabeth says Lady Scilly is a daisy—that’s what her name means, Paquerette. That’s what she tells me to call her. I am proud to call a grown-up person by her Christian name, and a titled lady too, and it makes Ariadne jealous, which does her good, and keeps her down. Paquerette treats Ariadne on quite another footing, any one can see she is not nearly so intimate with her as she is with me. I go there at all times and seasons, and I accept no benefits from her. I won’t. If she gives me things, I take them and give them to Ariadne. So I feel I may say and think what I like of her, while amusing myself with her, and listening to all the silly things she says. The funny thing is, I am always trying to be grown-up, and she is always trying to be childish.
The other day when I got to Curzon Street about twelve—Lady Scilly had sent a messenger for me—she was still in bed in the loveliest pale-blue tea-jacket, down to where the bed-clothes came up to, and she was writing her letters in pencil on a writing-board, trying to squeeze a few words in round a great sprawling gilt monogram that took up nearly all the paper. There were three French books on the bed, they had covers with ladies with red mouths and all their hair down, and La Femme Polype was the name of one, and Madame Belle-et-m’aime another. Lady Scilly says she always gets up all her history and philosophy in French if possible, so as to improve her grasp of the language. There was also on the pillow a box of cigarettes, and a great bunch of lilies, that made me feel sleepy. There are daisies worked all over the curtains and the counterpane, and great bunches of them painted on the mirrors hanging head downwards, and about three sets of silver-topped brush things spread out on the dressing-table. As for photographs, I never saw so many in my life! There are about a dozen cabinets with “To darling, from Kitty London,” and as many more with “Best love, yours cordially, Gladys Margate,” and I have given up trying to count the ones of actresses! Then the men! There is one of the poet with the bumpy forehead, and wrinkly trousers, who wrote The Sorrows of the Amethyst, and one of the K.C. who wrote Duchesses in the Divorce Court—the Ollendorff man I call him; and one of the men who did the Gaiety play called The Up-and-Down Girl, which Lady Scilly acted in the provinces once, for a charity, till Lord Scilly stopped her. There he is in his volunteer uniform looking like a lamb. I do like Lord Scilly, and I think he’s put upon. So I am as nice to him as I can be when I see him, which isn’t often. He never comes into her room where I principally am. There’s a desk in one corner, where she writes her little notes—I don’t suppose she ever wrote a real letter in her life, her handwriting is so big it would burst the post-bag—and there are two sorts of racks on it, one to hold her bills that she hasn’t paid, and that’s got printed on it in gold “Oh Horrors!” and another with those she has paid with “Thank Heaven!” on it, though that one is mostly empty. She never hardly pays bills, she says it is waste of tissue, and bad form, but sends something on account, and that I think is a very good way, for however broke you are, you must go on ordering dresses, else the dressmaker would close your account, and if you only go on long enough, the chances are you’ll die first and leave a nice little bill behind you, that, being dead, you can’t be expected to pay!
I hate kissing people in bed, I nearly always tumble over them; and also, if they are writing, I can’t help seeing what it is, and then if it is “Dearests” and “Darlings” I do feel awkward. But to-day when she had said “How do you do?” she handed me the writing-board.
“Write for me, dear,” she said, “to the most odious woman in London. And the most insolent, and the most unwashed! Insolent! Yes, positively she dared to play Lady Ildegonde in The Devey Devastator at a matinée at Camberwell yesterday, in perfect dreams of dresses—stood by the management of course—and nails like a coal-heaver’s. Now don’t you think, that as the part of Lady Ildegonde was admittedly written round my personality, with my entire consent, that it is an outrage for Irene Lauderdale to dress the part better than I can afford to do! I shall not forgive her. Now you write. ‘Dear thing!’ Don’t be surprised, I can’t afford to quarrel with her, unfortunately! ‘You were wonderful yesterday! I know what’s what, and believe me that’s it!’ I mean the dresses, but she will think I mean her playing! That is what we call diplomacy. Don’t say any more. Short, and spiteful. Now seal it. I will see that Mrs. Ptomaine guys Lauderdale in Romeo. Tommy will do anything for me, and The Bittern will do anything for her. We will go and see her this very afternoon. I must get up, I suppose. Ring for Miller, dear. Oh, good heavens! how bored I am!”
She threw one of the French novels (they were library books, so it didn’t matter) across the room, and it fell into the wash-basin, and then she seemed to feel better.
“I wish I could do without Miller!” she said. “Old Miller hates me, and I loathe her. But she will never leave me. Too good ‘perks’ for that. She always folds up my frocks as if she knew they would belong to her one day. So they will! I can’t afford to quarrel with a woman who can do my hair carelessly, with a single hair-pin. What am I going to wear to-day, Miller?”
“Well,” said Mrs. Miller (she’s Scotch, and she is rather stingy of “ladyships”), “there’s your blue that come home last week. It seems a pity to leave it aside just yet.”
“You mean you can do without it a little longer, eh, Miller? No, I can’t put that on, it’s too big for me since massage. I simply swim in it.”
“Then there is the grey panne.”