Lady Betty Across the Water | Page 5

a moment's notice. It's five days. They're not sailing till
Wednesday, and as they've a suite engaged,--the best on the ship, Mrs.
Ess Kay says,--your going won't put them out a bit, and they'll love
having you. As for the whys and wherefores, Mother's been telling you,
hasn't she?"
"She talked about my health and valuable experiences, and a lot of
things in the air, but I feel there's something behind it, and I hate
mysteries----"
"If I can convince you it's for the good of the family in general, if not
yours in particular, will you be a nice, white, woolly lamb, and go with
your kind little American friends?" Vic broke in, with her head on my
shoulder and an arm slipped round my waist.
"Mrs. Ess Kay's neither little nor kind," said I, "but, of course, I'll do
anything to help, if only I'm treated like a rational, grown-up human
being."
"And so you shall be. I told Mother it would be much better to be frank
with you, if you are a Baby. It's too late to explain things now, but if
you'll be sweet to Mrs. Ess Kay, and agree with everything everybody
says about your trip, when we come up to bed and Mother's door's shut,
I'll make a clean breast and show you exactly how matters stand."

With this, we separated, for we could hear Mrs. Ess Kay's voice in the
corridor, talking to Sally Woodburn on the way downstairs. Her voice
is never difficult to hear; rather the other way; and Miss Woodburn's
soft little drawl following it, reminded me of a spoonful of Devonshire
cream after a bunch of currants.
Mother was with them both in the oak drawing-room when Vic and I
got down, and I found myself staring at Mrs. Ess Kay with a new kind
of criticism in my mind; indeed, it hadn't occurred to me before to
criticise at all. I'd only felt that I didn't want to come any closer to her.
Now I was to come much closer, it seemed, and I looked at the
glittering lady, wondering how it would feel to be so close--wondering
what she herself was.
Outside, she's more like the biggest and most splendid dressmaker's
model ever made for a Paris show-window than anything else I can
think of; at least, she is like that from under her chin down to the tips of
her toes. I say under her chin, for that feature, as well as all the others
above it, are miles removed from a pretty, wax lady in a show-window.
I never supposed till I met Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox, that a live woman
could have a figure exactly like the fashion-plates, swelling like a tidal
wave above an hourglass of a waist, and retreating far, far into the dim
perspective below it, then suddenly bulging out behind like a round,
magnificent knoll, after a deep curve inward under the shoulders. But
Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox's figure does all these things even when she
stands still, and a great many more when she walks, which act she
accomplishes in a grand, sweepy kind of a way, with her head a little
thrown back, as if she wants everybody to know that she is
tremendously important in the scheme, not only of the world, but of the
universe.
Yet in spite of all, in the end it's her face which impresses you even
more than her figure--which is a real triumph, as the figure is so
elaborate and successful. On top of her head is a quite little coil of hair
that lifts itself, and spirals up, like a giant snail-shell. A dagger keeps it
in place, and looks as if the point plunged into Mrs. Ess Kay's brain,
though I suppose it doesn't. Over the forehead is a noble roll which has

the effect of a breaker just about to fall into surf, but never falling. It's a
black breaker, and the straight, thick eyebrows an inch below it are
black too; so are the short eyelashes, also thick and straight, like a stiff
fringe, but the eyes are grey--grey as glass, though not transparent.
Sometimes they seem almost white, with just a tiny bead of black for
the pupil. I never saw anything so hard (except the glass marbles I used
to play with): and they look at most people as if something behind them
were doing a mental sum in arithmetic, for the Something's own
advantage. They don't look at Mother in that way; no eyes in the world
would dare; but I'm talking about ordinary people, who are not tall
white arum lilies, with the air of having grown in kings' gardens.
Mrs. Stuyvesant-Knox's nose is well-shaped and rather large; so is her
mouth, with a "thin red line" of