Tempest-Tost

by Robertson Davies

  Mrs. A.M. Mangin: lilac crepe, with lame panel to tone. Miss Dymphna M’dumphy: rust satin, with scarf in the M’dumphy tartan, and a parure of cairngorms. Mrs. Shakerley Marmion: wine velvet. Mrs. M. Medbourne: écru shantung, with panels of self-coloured lace. Mrs. E.P. Moubray: amethyst cut velvet. Mrs. James Mylne: pleated puce crepe, with inserts of Paddy green moire.… etc., etc.

  The persistent reader, seeking information about the ladies associated with the Little Theatre’s forthcoming production, might have compiled his own paragraph, thus:

  Mrs. Roscoe Forrester: champagne lace. Miss Valentine Rich: flame taffeta. Miss Bonnie-Susan Tompkins: a strapless peach satin, with slit skirt. Miss Pearl Vambrace: pink organdie with puff sleeves. Miss Griselda Webster: white silk jersey, with Greek drapery.

  The newspaper never made any mention of what the escorts of the ladies wore; it went without saying that they wore evening dress of every cut known during the past fifty years, and that the military wore dress uniforms, some of which had been made during their slimmer days, so that the trousers had been augmented at the back with gussets which were not always a perfect match.

  SINCE HALF-PAST FIVE Pearl Vambrace had been in her bedroom with the door locked. At three o’clock she had taken a long and elaborate bath, in the course of which she made a violent assault upon her armpits with her father’s razor. She had then composed herself for a nap, for she had read in a magazine that in order to look radiant at night, it was necessary to rest in the afternoon; such rest delayed the onset of crow’s feet, the article said, and Pearl, at nineteen, was determined to show no crow’s feet when she appeared at the Ball with Solly.

  As she lay on her bed, trying to relax completely, she thought how astonishing it had been that Solly had asked her to go to the Ball with him. She had never, even in dreams, expected that Roger would ask her. He never seemed to pay any attention to her at all. At rehearsals he took her in his arms, and kissed her in the manner prescribed by Valentine, and although this experience terrified and ravished her it did nothing to make Roger less of a stranger: so must some maiden of the ancient world have felt when Jove descended and absent-mindedly made her his own. Even in the two private rehearsals, in her home, which Professor Vambrace had been able to impose upon the reluctant Roger, he had paid little attention to her. No, it was beyond the range of belief that Roger would ask her to go to the Ball with him, and when Pearl heard that Griselda was to be his partner she was too miserable even to be jealous. And then, astonishingly, Solly had asked her to go to the Ball with him, and shortly afterward a note had arrived from his mother, inviting her to dinner beforehand.

  Relaxing completely was hard work. Try as she might to make herself heavy, and pretend that she was sinking through the bed, as the magazine had directed, she continued to twitch and jump unexpectedly. She would look dreadful at the Ball, she was sure—a mass of wrinkles, hollows and haggard shadows. And breath! Gargle as she might before going to the Bridgetowers’, how would she make sure afterward that her breath was—how did the advertisements put it?—“free of offense”? Could she slip her toothbrush and a tube of paste into her evening bag? She must sleep! She had a long and doubtless gay evening before her, in the company of a young man whom she scarcely knew. And even before the Ball began she had a dinner party! She had never been to a dinner party in her life, and she had heard that Mrs. Bridgetower was a lady who demanded a high standard of elegant behaviour from her guests. She must relax! She must! In her efforts to relax Pearl twisted herself into a ball, and closed her eyes so tightly that the red darkness behind her eyelids seemed to writhe and surge.

  HER MISGIVINGS WOULD HAVE BEEN GREATER if she had had any idea of what had been in progress at the Bridgetower home during the past week. Solly had no particular desire to go to the Ball, but his mother had accepted their joint invitation on his behalf as well as her own. He felt that, if Griselda were to be there with Roger, he might as well be there himself, to keep an eye on her. But with whom? He must have a partner. His mother, in a fit of unaccustomed perverseness, had declared that it was impossible that he should go with her alone. He must have a suitable girl, and she would accompany them in the role of dowager and chaperone. But what girl? Cora Fielding was bespoken. Any other girl whose name he suggested was for one reason or another blackballed by his mother. Finally, in a fit of rebellion, he asked Pearl, whom he hardly knew, and when she regained her powers of speech she said, very politely, that she would be delighted.

  Then the fat was in the fire! His mother had risen to new and, to her, refreshing heights of satire when he told her who his partner was to be. She had then decided that, whatever impossible social situations her son might prepare for her, she would comport herself with dignity and according to the rules of etiquette which she recognized. It was out of the question that the Vambraces should invite Solly to dinner before the Ball: therefore she would give a dinner party, and invite Pearl. It would not be a large party; her health would not permit of such a thing. But she would invite young Lieutenant Swackhammer, an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy who was the son of a cousin of her husband’s, and whoever he was taking to the Ball with him. This was, she later learned, a Miss Tompkins, to whom she sent a note of invitation.

  CRUEL THINGS WERE SAID of Pearl Vambrace. Mrs. Bridgetower insinuated that she had ugly legs, although her legs were graceful enough. Griselda had told her father that Pearl had a moustache, which was untrue, although there was a suggestion on her lip of something which might, in forty years or so, be a small and ladylike moustache. Mrs. Forrester thought that her hair was greasy, but it was not uncommonly so. There was something about Pearl which attracted the malignity of most women; only Valentine Rich had seen that, under proper guidance, she had a quality which was close to beauty. Pearl herself was unconscious of anything of the kind; she had washed the offending hair the night before and rinsed it in water which contained so much lemon juice that it was now rather brittle, and flew about unaccountably. She had invested most of her small savings, painfully gleaned from the sums which her parents occasionally gave her, in some cosmetics, the first that she had ever bought. And by efforts which had been humiliating and exhausting, she had acquired a dress which she thought was suitable for the Ball.

  Her parents had not been interested when she told them that Solly had asked her to be his partner. Professor Vambrace, who had taken such pains to make his daughter a good talker, did not appear to be concerned as to whether she ever had a chance to show this talent. He had come to life, however, when Pearl said that she had nothing which was fit to wear on such an occasion. She had a garment of dark corduroy, with a short skirt, which had been her ceremonial garb since she was fifteen, but she had no ball gown. The Professor had announced that he himself would take this matter in hand, and Mrs. Vambrace was content that it should be so. Therefore the Professor had marched Pearl into a shop, and had told a salesgirl, firmly, that he wanted a gown suitable for the Ball, and that it must be pink and of a modest design, and must not cost more than thirty-five dollars. There was only one gown answering to these specifications in the shop. Pearl tried it on. Her father stared at her long and hard.

  “The straps of your chemise show,” said he.

  “She’ll have to wear a strapless bra,” said the salesgirl.

  “A what?” asked the Professor.

  “I’ll fix her up with one,” said the girl.

  “Don’t trouble,” said the Professor; “she can tie some ribbons on her under-garment and it will look well enough. It will look better when you are wearing the right shoes,” he said.

  “These are the best ones I have, Father,” said Pearl, who was now thoroughly miserable. Unskilled in matters of dress she knew enough to see that the gown was of a very unpleasant pink, suggestive of measles, and made her dark skin look yellowish.

  “Is there to be no end to expense?” asked the Professor, rhetorically. “Have you any slippers in pink satin?”

  “Nobody has worn satin
slippers for about twenty years,” said the girl, who felt for Pearl. But to Pearl it seemed that the whole world of fashion had weighed the Vambrace family, and found it wanting.

  At last a pair of slippers had been found which met with the Professor’s approval. But they had no toes in them, and that meant a pair of new stockings. They marched home at top speed, and the Professor renewed the oxygen in his blood in a very angry manner. He had quite a lot of money, chiefly because he never spent any of it on his wife and daughter, but Pearl’s outfit had run to almost fifty dollars, and he felt himself to be on the verge of bankruptcy. That evening, as they ate a rather nasty potato salad and some sour canned cherries, he had raged like a Savonarola against the vanities of female dress. Pearl, who loved her father, felt that she had ruined him, that she had behaved in a selfish and unworthy fashion, and that she was a sorrow to her parents. It was not until two days later that she could feel any pleasure in the prospect of going to the Ball.

  At half-past five she began to dress. Normally she could dress herself for any occasion in three minutes, but she believed that her toilette for her first Ball should be a ceremony, and she was determined to make a ceremony of it. Her sleep had not been a success; indeed, she had never really slept at all, but had lain in a reverie compounded of all the social mishaps and miseries which could befall her in the evening to come. She was glad when it was time to dress.

  Everything must be clean. She therefore put on clean underthings, and reflected that they were not very inspiring. She then put on the new stockings, in which her legs looked so well that even Mrs. Bridgetower would have been hard pressed to find fault with them; it was too bad that she had to hitch these glories to a garter-belt which age and many washings had brought to a sad pass. She then put on the pink organdie dress itself, and in her excitement thought that it looked better than it had done in the shop.

  It is a measure of Pearl’s inexperience in such matters that she put on her dress before she began to make up her face, and set to work without protecting that garment in any way. She laid out her purchases on her chest of drawers, before the mirror with the whorl in it. What should she do first? Cream, was it? She rubbed her face with a medicated substance which she had economically purchased, and which was said to improve the complexion, keep away mosquitoes, and relieve soreness after shaving. There: her face looked shiny, but you toned that down with powder. She patted a great deal of powder into the grease; she had chosen a light shade, to relieve the darkness of her complexion, and the transformation, she felt, was remarkable. Now what? Rouge, probably. She had purchased dry rouge, and she patted a firm spot of it on each of her well-marked cheek-bones. It was surprising what this did to her eyes; they looked quite brilliant, almost wild, in fact. Now the eyes themselves. The girl in the shop had recommended a light eye-shadow, but Pearl had preferred a rich green, with flecks of gold in it; she applied this liberally to the sockets of her eyes, below as well as above. She had read somewhere that makeup, to be effective, must be put on with boldness as well as subtlety, or it was of no avail; certainly the eye-shadow made a difference, but no doubt it was designed to look its best under artificial light. Now eyebrows: the eyebrow pencil which she had was new, and it took her some time to sharpen it, for the point kept breaking; her own brows were full, though not heavy, and had never been plucked; she drew some lines over them which gave them solidity. Now lipstick, and she would be finished. She had bought a purplish lipstick, thinking that it would form a pleasant contrast with the rather chalky pink of her rouge. She had seen girls put it on; they lathered their lips generously with the colour, and then bit them. She did this, and immediately her mouth was a messy wound. With a soiled handkerchief she scrubbed it off and tried again. The very light down on her lip—so cruelly referred to by Griselda as a moustache—caught the colour, and made her look ridiculous. In all, Pearl put on five mouths before she achieved one which she decided would have to do.

  Now hair. She could not dress it neatly, for washing had taken all the oil out of it, but she had a plan. She had a piece of ribbon which nearly matched her dress, and she tied this in a bow on one side of her head, and let her hair hang down behind it. This showed her ears, which were neat.

  She knew now why ladies of high fashion took so long to dress. It was nearly seven o’clock, the hour when Solly had promised to call for her. Ah, there he was below, talking to Father. She seized her coat—her only coat, a much worn garment in light brown, of a vaguely sporting character—and pulled it round her shoulders, hoping that it would look as though she were the casual sort who always wore a sports coat with evening dress. She took up her bag—a rather too capacious bag of dingy red velvet, with a tassel hanging from the bottom, which had belonged to her mother—and ran downstairs. Solly seemed startled to see her, but Professor and Mrs. Vambrace appeared to notice nothing amiss. Professor Vambrace was prepared to act the Fond Father, and Mrs. Vambrace was not a woman who paid much attention to externals.

  “Take care of her, Bridgetower; take care of our little one,” said the Professor in a voice half jocular, half tearful. “It is the father’s heart which is broken at his daughter’s first ball.” This notion, he thought, was worthy of Barrie, and he was proud of it. He kissed Pearl, with his eyes shut, which may have been as well, and shortly afterward she was with Solly in his mother’s car. He said very little, and seemed to Pearl to be strangely apprehensive, but as she shared this feeling she decided that he, like herself, was worried about the evening before them.

  “GOOD EVENING, MY DEAR. You look sweetly pretty,” said Mrs. Bridgetower, as she greeted Pearl in the hall. But Pearl could scarcely answer; she caught sight of herself in a full-length mirror. She looked ill and slightly crazed, with a pink bow on one side of her head, and her eyes aglare. The flush of tuberculosis was on her cheeks, and her mouth looked as though she had eaten untidily of the insane root which takes the reason prisoner.

  And her gown! It looked like one of the crepe paper costumes which children wear at Hallowe’en. What should she do? What could she possibly do?

  “Hello, Pearl! Gosh, anything for a laugh, eh? That’s the spirit!” The speaker was Bonnie-Susan Tompkins, the partner of Lieutenant Swackhammer; they had followed Mrs. Bridgetower into the hall.

  Pearl was stricken. When her hostess suggested that she leave her coat upstairs, she darted upward in unmistakable flight, without waiting for Ada, the elderly maid, to show her the way.

  The Torso was a silly girl, and a hoyden, and unseemly in her desire for the attentions of the male. But like many silly, hoydenish, man-crazy girls, she had a great charity within her. One of her admirers had said that she had “a heart as big as a bull”, and if this special enlargement carries with it a certain sweetness and generosity of nature, the phrase may be allowed to stand. She ran up the stairs after Pearl. What she did cannot be related here, but in ten minutes they were both in the drawing-room, drinking sherry, and Pearl looked better than she had ever looked in her life; if there was any makeup on her face, it had been applied with The Torso’s artful hand. And the relaxation which she had sought earlier in sleep had come now, by this great purgation through self-knowledge and terror.

  MRS. BRIDGETOWER’S DINNER PARTY was an unforeseen success. She had expected nothing from it, for she disapproved strongly of Pearl Vambrace, whom she had not seen in three years, and she knew nothing of Lieutenant Swackhammer’s partner, but feared the worst. And when the Lieutenant had appeared in her drawing-room with The Torso, it seemed to her that matters had gone beyond the limits even of her generous pessimism. Bonnie-Susan wore a gown of peach satin from which her beautiful shoulders emerged in startling nakedness; the creation was held in place, presumably, by some concealed armature, for it had no straps, and although it was impossible to peep down the front of it, the impression which it gave was to the contrary. And as if this were not enough, the skirt was split to the knee in such a way that very little of her left leg was visible at a time, but there was a tant
alizing promise of infinite riches. It was a beautiful gown, and had cost her father a lot of money, but it was not a gown to win the approval of the anxious mother of a susceptible son. Mrs. Bridgetower’s first words to The Torso were to bid her to come close to the fire, lest she be cold.

  The Torso, however, was a girl of great resource. She knew that the mothers of young men rarely liked her on sight, though she was not sure why this was so, and she had developed a manner which disarmed and often won these natural enemies. She was so frank, so pleasant, that mothers usually decided that they had misjudged her; she impressed them by her common sense in agreeing with their opinions; she charmed them by taking sides with them against their sons in matters relating to the wearing of overshoes and warm scarves. She laughed at their jokes and, in her own phrase, she “jollied” them. She jollied Mrs. Bridgetower so successfully that after half an hour that lady felt that there might be some hope for the younger generation after all.