To Journey Together (17 page)

Ilsa smiled.

"You see? She has the most prodigious memory for anything that concerns herself. She remembers all her roles and most of her costumes. But there is no one who can forget more completely if she wishes to do so."

By now they were both arrayed in their costumes, Ilsa in an infinitely becoming red-and-grey striped satin dress of the period, and Elinor in her blue taffeta.

"Dear girl! It might have been made for you!" Ilsa laughed with delight. "Sit down here and I'll redress your hair for you. It will be more comfort-

able if we can manage with our own hair. Powdered wigs are so hot."

So Elinor sat down before the mirror, secretly enchanted and astonished to see how subtly and yet unmistakably the blue dress changed her. Not only was it in itself a lovely creation, but it gave her an air of elegance and poise which made her feel that the reflection in the glass had nothing to do with young Elinor Shearn, who went home each day from the office, and rather worried her mother because she never seemed to have anything very exciting to do with her evenings.

"Why, I could just be--anyone in this," she exclaimed to Ilsa. And, although this might not be very lucidly put, Ilsa evidently understood what she meant.

"That is the whole purpose of a masquerade dress," she declared, with a laugh. "You feel like another person, and so you are gay and fresh and a little outside yourself. Come now and show Leni."

She had finished with Elinor's soft, dark hair, which she had drawn back and lightly secured on the top of her head, so that her very pretty ears were left showing, her face looked a little longer and less childlike, and the hair itself made a long, graceful line behind her ears and on to the nape of her neck.

"It is sufficiently a compromise, if not entirely in period," Ilsa explained. And then, together, they returned to the other room.

Madame Mardenburg surveyed them both with bright, critical glances that missed nothing. She made one or two suggestions for slight alterations, all of them very much to the point. But she was obviously tired now—in the sudden way old people do become tired—and, having expressed her final approval briefly, she dismissed them both almost peremptorily.

Back in Ilsa's room once more, they changed again into their own things, and Ilsa said, "You had better leave your costume here. It will be easier for you to come here and dress beforehand, so that I can do your hair for you. Besides—she is funny about

these things. Because the dresses are really hers, she will want, as you say, to have a finger in the pie, right up to the end, and will expect to see us all ready before we go on Tuesday."

"That's quite understandable." Elinor smiled. Then she remembered her own nice employer, who also liked to have a finger in any entertaining pie that was going. "But I am sure Lady Connelton will be disappointed if she doesn't see me in the dress also!"

"We can arrange it," Ilsa assured her. "You come

here and dress. Then Rudi and Anton can drive us over to the hotel, where we will pick up Kenneth and Rosemary. Then the Conneltons can see all of us in our glory."

This plan seemed to meet every requirement, and so it was arranged, and Elinor went back to report the various decisions to a very satisfied Lady Connelton.

"So you actually saw the fabulous Leni Mardenburg?" she said over dinner that night, when all five of them—for Rosemary seemed now to have joined the party more or less permanently—were

discussing the day's events. "Tell us what she is like now?"

Elinor gave as accurate and attractive a word picture as she could, but she felt that this fell short of the original.

"One can't really describe her," Elinor declared. "It's not only that she looks unusual for a woman of her years. In personality she just isn't like anyone else I have ever met."

"Well, I suppose she is the personification of a vanished epoch," Kenneth said, with rare understanding.

"What is her attitude towards the von Eibergs?" Sir Daniel enquired curiously.

Elinor thought of the way the old lady had spoken of Rudi and looked after Ilsa.

"I think she is not unattached to them, in a rather sardonic way," Elinor said cautiously. "Though she often speaks critically of them."

"Which aspect of them?" enquired Kenneth, a little too quickly, Elinor thought.

"It's difficult to say." Elinor was not going to give them away in detail. "I don't think she had any illusions about their father, even though she was fond of him, and she is a little inclined to attribute his weaknesses to them too. I have the impression that, by the time Rudi and Ilsa came into her life, she had made all the really close contacts she ever intended to make. She tolerates them, but she doesn't love them, and they are more like familiar visitors in her house than members of her family."

"Very acute observation," remarked Sir Daniel, looking at his secretary with amused approval. "Did she like you?"

"Yes."

"Did she say so?" enquired Kenneth, amused in his turn.

"No." Elinor was surprised to find that her conviction was so complete, although nothing had been put into words.

"You just sensed it?"

"Yes. She would like you too, I am sure," Elinor added, with the same conviction.

Kenneth raised his rather strongly marked eyebrows.

"What makes you think that?"

"Oh, I don't know. She spoke rather disparagingly about people who are all charm but have no real stability. And I thought " Elinor's voice trailed away doubtfully, as she became aware that this sounded like a back-handed compliment.

Kenneth grinned, as he obviously made a mental effort to disentangle this statement.

"If I have this right, you mean that I, on the contrary, though devoid of charm, am a good, solid fellow?" he suggested teasingly.

"Oh, no!" Elinor was taken aback. "I don't think you're devoid of charm. I just "

But both the Conneltons laughed heartily at this point, and Kenneth unexpectedly touched her hand

and said not unkindly, "Don't enlarge on that. I rather like it as it is."

"He's supposed to have oodles of charm, when he turns it on," remarked Rosemary to no one in particular. But Kenneth frowned at her, and the subject was dropped.

During the next few days Elinor saw a good deal of Vienna and its beautiful environs. With the Conneltons she did the more obvious sightseeing. The Cathedral, the Hofburg—where the Emperors used to live and where, even now, the magnificent crown jewels might still be seen—and some of the fine museums and art galleries. These last, however, were pronounced by Lady Connelton to be a joy to the eye rather than the feet—an opinion which will find a sympathetic reaction with all who have done similar sightseeing.

Rudi it was who took her driving in the Ring, as he had promised, and who also showed her the out-of-the-way corners and streets and courtyards which only the real native of a city ever seems to know. And in his company she went to the beautiful Stadtpark, to pay her respects, as Rudi put it, to the statue of Johann Strauss, whose waltzes have for so long been so much an expression of Vienna that it is impossible to think of one without the other.

All these experiences Elinor enjoyed immensely. But once or twice she thought of that early morning tour round Salzburg with Kenneth, and she was not at all sure that that was not the loveliest sightseeing experience yet.

On the Tuesday Lady Connelton showed as much interest in the preparations for the evening as if she had herself been going, and when she elicited the extraordinary fact that this was, in reality, Elinor's first dance, she found the whole thing so romantic that she could not help indulging in some sentimental recollections of her own.

"Not that you will want to hear about my first dance, dear," she said to Elinor—who protested to the contrary. "But I remember, as though it were yesterday, how I cried because my mother insisted

on my wearing white, and I wanted a gorgeous red affair which was entirely unsuitable but very glamorous in my eyes."

"Oh, how Deborah would sympathize, if she were here!" declared Elinor, laughing with a sort of nostalgic affection as this recollection somehow brought her little sister almost before her. "She is passionately addicted to what she calls `glamorous' clothes, and believes the height of happiness is to be dressed like an adventuress—whatever she thinks that is."

"She sounds such a nice, individual sort of child. I must meet her when we get home," Lady Connelton said.

"She would love that. And so should I," Elinor said. And then she wondered if life would ever be quite the same again. It was impossible to imagine herself going back into her shell and simply observing what other people did.

Here she was, carelessly and confidently arranging for Deborah to meet Lady Connelton, and not finding it either strange or frightening.

She was a little frightened, of course, when she actually came to the delicious crisis of the evening. But she kept on reminding herself that in the lovely blue taffeta dress she would hardly be herself, and that therefore she must regard herself as playing a part—and just enjoy the moment.

Dressing with Ilsa, in the bedroom of Leni Mardenburg's incredible apartment, she already began to feel that sensation of tingling excitement and unreality which belongs to all the loveliest pieces of "make-believe"—from the dressing-up of childhood to the most elaborate masquerade.

"The men's costumes are really wonderful, too," Ilsa informed her, with all the satisfaction of a good producer. "Rudi and Anton look born for theirs, of course. They have just that rather picturesque, nonchalant manner that makes fancy dress seem quite natural. Kenneth was the one I was worried about, to tell you the truth. He is so very uncompromising and twentieth-century. But he is splendid

in Alfonso's rather austere get-up. Have you seen him?"

"No. He hasn't even talked about it much."

"Oh well, you'll see him in a very little while now. I went with the three of them when they chose their costumes. That's how I know. Now I think we are ready. Let's collect Rudi and Anton, and go and show ourselves to Leni."

In answer to Ilsa's peremptory call, Rudi, looking quite extraordinarily handsome and very much at home in satins and laces, made an appearance, followed by a pleasant and humorous-looking young man who seemed to be having some trouble with his sword.

He was introduced to Elinor as Anton Mardenburg and, after Ilsa had secured his sword for him, they all went into Madame Mardenburg's room for a last-minute inspection.

She smiled at Elinor and told her she was "sehr schon," and after a critical suggestion or two, declared that the others were excellent too.

"I wish you were coming!" Elinor exclaimed. "You are far more in character for this sort of thing than all of us put together."

The old lady laughed softly.

"My masquerade days are over, dear child. But yours are just beginning. Play your part well tonight." And, unexpectedly, she drew Elinor down and kissed her.

She did not kiss any of the others. And when they had all departed to install themselves in Anton's impressively big car, Ilsa said thoughtfully, "I never saw Leni do that before, did you?"

"Do what?" Anton enquired.

"Kiss someone in that almost impulsive way."

"She's never seen anyone like Elinor before," Rudi said lightly. "I can quite understand wanting to kiss her in an impulsive way—especially as she looks now."

Elinor laughed and coloured. But a beautiful, light-hearted feeling of confidence began to take possession of her. She looked, she knew, more

attractive than she ever had in her life before. She was young, she was gay, she was happy—and the first breath of spring was wafting through the streets of Vienna.

Arrived at the hotel, they all went in, causing a good deal of admiring interest, and were taken up in the lift to the Connelton's private sitting-room.

"Come in, come in! Dear me, how splendid you all look," exclaimed Lady Connelton in delight. "Kenneth and Rosemary should be here any minute now." And, even as she spoke, Rosemary entered in her turn, indescribably pert and pretty in a short-skirted rose-pink dress with a frilly apron and the sauciest of frilly caps perched on her hair.

A chorus of approval greeted her appearance, and they were all still congratulating each other when the door opened again and Kenneth appeared in his Alfonso costume.

This was the signal for a concerted shout of delight and amusement from those who knew the opera well, for nothing could have been more piquantly suited to the part than the thin, dark, faintly sardonic good looks of Kenneth.

He withstood the outburst of laughter and exclamations calmly, looking quite at home in his costume. Then, as he glanced round, his eyes lighted on Elinor, standing there smiling and curiously self-possessed.

The whole width of the room divided them, but something in his glance told her that her appearance was a surprise—in some inexplicable way, almost a shock—to him.

It was some minutes before he came and spoke to her, and when he did so, all he said was: "I like your dress. What a wonderful blue it is."