THE Odyssey or the Argonautic, or whatever you like to call the epic of the first wild adventure of a young woman into the Infinite of Clothes, has yet to be written. It would need not only a poet, but a master of psychology, to record the myriad vibrations of the soul as it reacts to temptations, yieldings, tremulous thrills of the flesh, exquisite apprehensions, fluttering joys, and each last voluptuous plenitude of content. It is an adventure which absorbs every faculty of the will; which ignores hunger and thirst, weariness of limb and ache of head; which makes the day a dream of reality and the night the reality of a dream. Hardened women of the world with frock-worn minds are caught at times by the lure of the adventure, even when it is a question of a dress or two and a poor half a dozen hats. But how manifold more potent the spell in the case of one who starts with her young body in Nymph-like innocence and is called upon to clothe it again and again in infinite variety, from toe to head, from innermost secret daintiness to outward splendour of bravery! Such a record would explain Olivia, not only to the world, but to herself during that first fortnight in London. Her hours could be reckoned by gasps of wonder. She lost count of time, of money, of human values. Things that had never before entered into her philosophy, such as the subtle shade of silk stockings which would make or mar a costume, loomed paramount in importance. The after-use scarcely occurred to her. Sufficient for the day was the chiffon thereof; also the gradual transformation of herself from the prim slip of a girl with just the pretension (in her own mind) to good looks, into a radiant and somewhat distinguished dark-haired little personage.
Her shrinkings, her arguments with Lydia Dawlish, her defeats, went all into the melting-pot of her delight. “No bath salts, my dear?” cried Lydia. “Whoever heard of a woman not using bath salts?” So bath salts were ordered. And—horrified: “My dear, you don’t mean to say you wash your face in soap and water. What will become of your skin?” So Olivia was put under the orders of a West End specialist, who stocked her dressing-table with delectable creams and oils. It was all so new, so unheard of, so wonderful to the girl, an experience worth the living through, even though all thousands at deposit at the bank should vanish at the end of it. Merely to sit in a sensuously furnished room and have beautiful women parade before her, clad in dreams of loveliness—any one of which was hers for a scribble on a bit of pink paper—evoked within her strange and almost spiritual emotions. Medlow was countless leagues away; this transcended the London even of her most foolish visions.
Afterwards Olivia, when, sense of values being restored she looked back on this phantasmagoria of dressmakers, milliners, lingerie makers and furriers, said to Lydia Dawlish:
“It’s funny, but the fact that there might be a man or so in the world never entered my head.”
And the wise Lydia answered: “You were too busy turning yourself into a woman.”
Twice or thrice during this chrysalis period she stole out of nights with Myra to the dress circle of a theatre, where, besides ingenuous joy in the drama, she found unconfessed consolation in the company of homely folk like herself—girls in clean blouses or simple little frocks like her own, and young men either in well-worn khaki or morning dress. On these occasions she wondered very much what she was about to do in the other galley—that of the expensively furred and jewelled haughtinesses and impudences whom she shouldered in the vestibule crush and whom she saw drive away in luxurious limousines. These flashing personalities frightened her with their implied suggestions of worlds beyond her ken. One woman made especial impression on her—a woman tall, serene, with a clear-cut face, vaguely familiar, and a beautiful voice; she overheard a commonplace phrase or two addressed to the escorting man. She brushed Olivia’s arm and turned with a smile and a word of gracious apology and passed on. Olivia caught a whisper behind her. “That’s the Marchioness of Aintree. Isn’t she lovely?” But she did not need to be told that she had been in contact with a great lady. And she went home doubting exceedingly whether, for all her flourish of social trumpets, Lydia Dawlish’s galley was that of Lady Aintree.
Criticism of Lydia, however, she put behind her as ingratitude, for Lydia made up royally for past negligence. Time and energy that ought to have been devoted to Lydia, Ltd., was diverted to the creation of Olivia.
“I don’t know why you’re so good to me,” she would say.
And the other, with a little mocking smile round her lips: “It’s worth it. I’m giving myself a new experience.”
The first occasion on which she went out into the great world was that of Sydney Rooke’s party. She knew that her low-cut, sleeveless, short-skirted gown of old gold tissue had material existence, but she felt herself half-ashamedly, half-deliciously clad in nothing but a bodily sensation. A faint blush lingered in her cheeks all the evening. Lydia, calling for her in Rooke’s car, which had been placed at her disposal, held her at arm’s length in sincere and noble admiration, moved by the artist’s joy in beholding the finished product of his toil, and embraced her fondly. Then she surveyed her again, from the little gold brocade slippers to the diamond butterfly (one of her mother’s bits of jewellery) in her dark wavy hair.
“You’re the daintiest elf in London,” she cried.
To the dinner at the Savoy Sydney Rooke had invited a white-moustached soldier, Major-General Wigram, whose blue undress uniform, to the bedazzlement of Olivia, gleamed with four long rows of multi-coloured ribbon; a vivacious middle-aged woman, Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who wrote novels, plays, books of travel, and fashion articles in a weekly periodical—Olivia learned all this in their first five-minute converse in the lounge; Sir Paul and Lady Barraclough, he a young baronet whose civilian evening dress could not proclaim hard-won distinctions, she a pretty, fair, fragile creature, both of them obviously reacting joyously to relaxation of tension; and, last, the Vicomte de Mauregard, of the French Embassy, young, good looking, who spoke polished English with a faultless accent. It was, socially, as correct a little party as the brooding, innocent spirit of Mrs. Gale could have desired for her about-to-be prodigal daughter. Olivia sat between her host and Mauregard. On her host’s right was Lady Barraclough; then the General, then Lydia, then Sir Paul, facing Rooke at the round table, then Mrs. Fane Sylvester, who was Mauregard’s left-hand neighbour. They were by the terrace windows, far from what Olivia, with her fresh mind playing on social phenomena, held then and ever afterwards, most rightly, to be the maddening and human intercourse-destroying band.
Not that her first entrance down the imposing broad staircase, into the lounge filled with mirifically vestured fellow-creatures, to the accompaniment of a clashing rag-time imbecility, did not set all her young nerves vibrating to the point of delicious agony. It was like a mad fanfare heralding her advent in a new world. But soon she found that the blare of the idiot music deadened all other senses. Before her eyes swayed black-and-white things whom at the back of her mind she recognized as men, and various forms all stark flesh, flashing jewels and a maze of colours, whom she knew to be women. The gathering group of her own party seemed but figures of a dream. Her unaccustomed ears could not catch a word of the conventional gambits of conversation opened, on introduction, by her fellow guests. It was only when they passed between the tables of the great restaurant and the horrible noise of the negroid, syncopated parody of tune grew fainter and fainter, and they reached the peace of the terrace side, that the maddening clatter faded from her ears and consciousness of her surroundings returned.
Then she surrendered herself to huge enjoyment. Both her neighbours had been all over the world and seen all sorts and conditions of men. They were vividly aware of current events. Pride would not allow her to betray the fact that often they spoke of matters far beyond her experience of men and things. Under their stimulus she began to regain the self that, for the past fortnight, the cardboard boxes of London had snowed under.
“It’s no use asking me,” she said to Mauregard, “whether I’ve been to Monte Carlo or Madagascar or Madame Tussaud’s, for I haven’t. I haven’t been anywhere. I’ve somehow existed at the back of Nowhere, and to-night I’ve come to life.”
“But where did you come from? The sea foam? Venus Anadyomene?”
“No, I’m of the other kind. I come from far inland. I believe they call it Shropshire. That oughtn’t to convey anything to you.”
“Indeed it does!” cried Mauregard. “Was I not at school at Shrewsbury?”
“No?”
“But yes. Three years. So I’m Shropshire, too.”
“That’s delightful,” she remarked; “but it does away with my little mystery of Nowhere.”
“No, no,” he protested, with a laugh. He was a fair, bright-eyed boy with a little curled-up moustache which gave him the air of a cherub playfully disguised. “It is the county of mystery. Doesn’t your poet say:
‘Once in the wind of morning
??I ranged the thymy wold;
The world-wide air was azure
??And all the brooks ran gold.’?”
“That’s from A Shropshire Lad,” cried Olivia.
“Of course. So why shouldn’t you have come from the wind of morning, the azure world-wide air or the golden brook?”
“That’s beautiful of you,” said Olivia. “Well, why shouldn’t I? It’s more romantic and imaginative than the commonplace old sea. The sea has been overdone. I used to look at it once a year, and, now I come to think of it, it always seemed to be self-conscious, trying to live up to its reputation. But ‘the wind of the morning——’ Anyhow, here I am.”
“Blown to London by the wind of a Shropshire morning.”
Olivia’s spirit danced in the talk. With his national touch on the lighter emotions, Mauregard drew from her an exposition of the Dryad’s sensations on sudden confrontation with modern life. To talk well is a great gift; to compel others to talk well is a greater; and the latter gift was Mauregard’s. Olivia put food into her mouth, but whether it was fish or flesh or fowl she knew not. When her host broke the spell by an announcement in her ear that he had a couple of boxes for “Jazz-Jazz,” she became aware that she was eating partridge.
Mr. Sydney Rooke talked of women’s clothes, of which he had an expert knowledge. Lady Barraclough chimed in. Olivia, fresh from the welter, spoke as one in authority. Now and again she caught Lydia’s eye across the table and received an approving nod. The elderly General regarded her with amused admiration. She began to taste the first-fruits of social success. She drove in a taxi to the theatre with the Barracloughs and Mrs. Fane Sylvester and sat with them in a box during the first act of the gay revue. For the second act there was a change of company and she found herself next to the General. He had served in India and was familiar with the names of her mother’s people. What Anglo-Indian was not? Long ago he had met an uncle of hers; dead, poor chap. This social placing gave her a throb of pleasure, setting her, at least, in a stranger’s eyes, in her mother’s sphere. The performance over, they parted great friends.
General Wigram and Mrs. Fane Sylvester excusing themselves from going on to Percy’s, the others crowded into Sydney Rooke’s limousine. The crash of jazz music welcomed them. Already a few couples were dancing; others were flocking in from the theatres. They supped merrily. Sydney Rooke pointed out to Olivia’s wondering eyes the stars of the theatrical firmament who condescended to walk the parquet floor of the famous night club. He also indicated here and there a perfectly attired youth as a professional dancer.
“On the stage?”
He explained that they had their professional partners and gave exhibition dances, showing the new steps. They also gave private lessons. It was the way they made their living. Olivia knitted a perplexed brow.
“It doesn’t seem a very noble profession for a young man.”
Sydney Rooke shrugged his shoulders politely.
“I’m with you a thousand times, my dear Miss Gale. The parasite, per se, isn’t a noble object. But what would you have? The noble things of the past few years came to an end a short while ago, and, if I can read the times, reaction has already begun. In six months’ time the noble fellow will be a hopeless anachronism.”
“Do you mean,” asked Olivia, “that all the young men will be rotten?”
He smiled. “How direct you are! Disconcerting, if I may say so. So positive; while I was approaching the matter from the negative side. There’ll be a universal loss of ideals.”
Olivia protested. “The young man has before him the reconstruction of the world.”
“Oh no,” said Rooke. “He has done his bit. He expects other people to carry out the reconstructing business for him. All he cares about is to find a couple of sixpences to jingle together in his pocket.”
“And have these young men who devote their lives to foxtrotting done their bit?”
He begged the question. “Pray be guided by my prophecy, Miss Gale. Next year you mustn’t mention war to ears polite. These young men are alive. They thank God for it. Let you and me do likewise.”
This little supper-table talk was the only cloud on a radiant night. The Vicomte de Mauregard took her to dance. At first she felt awkward, knowing only the simple steps of five years ago. But instinct soon guided her, and for two hours she danced and danced in an unthinking ecstasy. The clattering and unmeaning din which had dazed her on her entrance to the Savoy was now pregnant with physical significance. The tearing of the strings, the clashing of the cymbals, the barbaric thumping of the drum, the sudden raucous scream from negro throats, set vibrating within her responsive chords of an atavistic savagery. When each nerve-tearing cacophony came to its abrupt end, she joined breathlessly with the suddenly halting crow in eager clapping for the encore. And then, when the blood-stirring strings and cymbals crashed out, overpowering the staccato of hand beating hand, she surrendered herself with an indrawn sigh of content to her partner’s arm—to the rhythm, to the movement, to the mere bodily guidance, half conscious of the proud flexibility of her frame under the man’s firm clasp, to something, she knew not what, far remote from previous experience. Strange, too, the personality of the man did not matter. Paul Barraclough, Sydney Rooke, Mauregard, she danced with them all in turn. In her pulsating happiness she mixed them all up together, so that a flashing glance, liable to be misinterpreted, proceeded from a mere impulse of identification. Now and then, in the swimming throng of men and women, and the intoxication of passing raiment impregnated with scent and cigarette smoke, she exchanged an absent smile with Lydia and Lady Barraclough. Otherwise she scarcely realized their existence. She was led panting by Mauregard to a supper table while he went in search of refreshment. He returned with a waiter, apologizing for the abomination of iced ginger ale and curled orange peel, which was all that the laws of the land allowed him to offer. Horse’s neck, it was called. She laughed, delighted with the name, and, after drinking, laughed again, delighted with the cool liquid so tingling on her palate.
“It’s a drink for the gods,” she declared.
“If you offered it, the unfortunate Bacchus would drink it without a murmur.”
“Do you really think it’s so awful?”
“Mon Dieu!” replied the young Frenchman.
Then Lydia came up with a dark-eyed, good-looking boy in tow, whom she introduced, as Mr. Bobbie Quinton and Olivia was surprised to recognize as one of the professionals. She accepted, however, his invitation to dance and went off on his arm. She found him a boy of charming manners and agreeable voice, and in the lightness and certainty of his dancing he far outclassed her other partners. He suggested new steps. She tried and blundered. She excused herself.
“This is the first time I’ve danced for four years.”
“It doesn’t matter,” said he. “You’re a born dancer. You only need a few lessons to bring you up to date. What I find in so many of the women I teach is that they not only don’t begin to understand what they’re trying to do, but that they never try to understand. You, on the other hand, have it instinctively. But, of course, you can’t learn steps in a place like this.”
“I wonder if you could give me some lessons?”
“With all the pleasure in life, Miss Gale,” replied Mr. Bobbie Quinton promptly.
About two o’clock in the morning Sydney Rooke and Lydia deposited Olivia at the front door of Victoria Mansions. Rooke stood hat in hand as she entered.
“I hope you’ve not been too bored by our little evening.”
“Bored! It has been just one heaven after another opening out before me.”
“But not the seventh. If only I could have provided that!”
“I’ll find it in the happiest and soundest night’s rest I ever had,” said Olivia.