The Robe De Boudoir

MRS. HANNAFORD drove her fast-trotting pony neatly up the railway approach, gave the reins to the garden boy who accompanied her, repeated her directions for being met by the down train at 6.40, gathered up her sunshade, her purse-bag, and her novel, and passed into the cool shadow of the station.

She was making one of her customary excursions to London that happened every fortnight or three weeks, combining shopping with the acceptance of some invitation to lunch or an afternoon ‘At Home.’ Her husband was a sportsman and a country gentleman in a small way, — ill at ease away from his fields and his gun, and never leaving them willingly, — who visited London, when it was unavoidable, in a humor of ferocity that made him a difficult companion. But Mrs. Hannaford clung with persistence to the convention she had set up, that occasional shopping in London was a duty no conscientious house-manager could neglect; and she would have valued her vote as a badge of freedom very lightly if it had been offered to her against her ticket for the Stores.

One had to manage a little.

‘I think,’ she would say one day at tea, ‘I really ought to go up to town to-morrow, if I can, and get some shopping done.’

She would throw a slightly troubled accent into her voice.

Perhaps Mr. Hannaford would grunt, and in that case she could go on making her plans in fair security; perhaps he would say nothing, but just go on reading the Field; perhaps he would make some objection and she would defer her plain necessity until the following clay; perhaps at breakfast the next morning he might suddenly allege that he was aware of her intention for the first time, and with the simple statement, ‘You ‘d better not go today,’ postpone her excursion. She never felt quite sure of herself till the pony-trap cleared the avenue and the lodge gates, and was well along the wide white road to the station three miles away. And even surer and safer did she feel when the train began to move, and slipped from the familiar little platform away and away and away into freedom, giving her a whole six hours of liberty before the tether of the 5.45 brought her back to her home.

It was delicious — that liberty. But do not let it be inferred that Mrs. Hannaford had ever passed an hour of her life in any but circumstances of meticulous decorum. There was nothing awaiting her in London but the shops, and perhaps the small luncheonparty given by another woman, which were the avowed objects of her journey. But the experience of freedom; of being able to make her own decisions as to what she would eat and when; of being able to go down this street, or, if she willed it so, that one; of stopping here to look into a shop window, or going on without argument or justification or debate, thrilled into her veins like wine. Sometimes she would squander so much time at first in this joyous exercise of free will, that she would have to hurry immoderately at last to get through her allotted business. She went along Regent Street or Victoria Street or Oxford Street with the élan of a cage-bird that has escaped to the blue sky.

Once or twice, indeed, she had done things that seemed to her to beat the very bounds of liberty; once or twice she had gone into a picture gallery; once she had slipped into a concert, sitting in a back seat and looking furtively about her in the fear of seeing an acquaintance who might recognize her; but the anxiety of that and the subsequent strain of concealment seemed to her to overbalance the strange pleasure of the music. For it would be quite impossible to make it acceptable to Mr. Hannaford that she should do, or want to do, anything of the kind. To Mr. Hannaford attendance at concerts and picture galleries was either the doubtful privilege of people in ‘ society ‘ — a position he would repudiate — or the unhealthy proclivity of people who were ‘artistic.’ He felt about, ‘artistic’ people the same slightly contemptuous commiseration that he would have felt about colored people. He himself was not artistic, and he would take good care that his wife was not either. And all that body of sound, downright opinion that occupied the basement in Mr. Hannaford’s mind would have made it dreadfully difficult for Mrs. Hannaford to explain to him that she had been, alone, to such places — in fact, it made it impossible. It would be like confessing to a moral lapse. It might have the effect of curtailing her freedom to go to London at all.

Once, indeed, she had done something even more inexplicable. In the early darkness of a winter afternoon, changing from a motor-bus from the West End to another for Victoria Station, she passed close by the great shadowed mass and orange-lit windows of Westminster Abbey. There was a sound of music, like a trail of thin smoke across the air. It was as if she saw it for the first time; it uprose in its great height so strangely aloof that it penetrated her with awe and wonder; it was like a giant in still communion with the stars, while the little men ran about their little dark affairs around its feet. The pealing of the bells for evensong beat against the roaring traffic like the legendary phantom peal of a church swallowed long years ago by the encroachment of the sea.

She saw people passing in through a small doorway in the great one, and with sudden daring she too passed into the murmurous, shaded mystery of the interior. She slipped into a chair and knelt; the pealing bells sounded as if they were ringing at an immense distance; the sound of a voice rose and fell far away, with chanted responses; the pattering up the aisles of feet on the pavement, the shrill scroop of a chair — all this soft web of sound enclosed her in a globe of solitude. Her whole being was pierced with a sense of self-abasement, of humility too profound for adoration. She knelt with her face pressed upon her muff; her eyes filled with tears so that she had to seek her handkerchief; she wept. Presently she rose and slipped away, fearful lest she should have lost too much time to catch her train; but she found she had been there barely ten minutes. She concealed that incident of her day with the scrupulosity that another woman might have employed upon a rendezvous.

Those were rare and trepid adventures. Usually she enjoyed the simple pleasure of passing along the streets, the simple exercise of her own free will.

It was a very warm, very beautiful day in June. She was a pretty woman; riding and country life had kept her fresh and young. There was the usual group on the platform, of three or four neighbors, some farmers and workpeople; no women she knew, she was glad to see, since they would have traveled up with her; the men would make off to smoking-carriages.

There was Colonel Burton, raising his hat.

‘You coming up, Mrs. Hannaford? Beautiful day. Wonderful weather.’ And so on, as usual, for five minutes.

The train came snorting in. Mrs. Hannaford parted from the colonel and got into her own compartment. She opened her novel.

Now novels were a source of imaginative stimulus unreckoned with by Mr. Hannaford. He knew about pictures, he knew about music; he knew that they led women into trouble and tended to break up a man’s home; he knew that a conspicuous interest in religion could be neutralized by red beef and exercise and a little auction in the evenings; but he did not know, since he never opened one, what novels were like nowadays, and how astonishingly they illuminate the female mind. Mrs. Hannaford did not obtrude them. She changed them at the library inconspicuously.

The floating population of novels and other popular works that came and went were accepted by Mr. Hannaford as part of the furniture proper to a country house. People who came to stay expected them, as they expected to find the newspapers about and things to smoke. He was not a reader himself; he had too much to do. He would have been immeasurably shocked to see a French novel among them, and would quickly have put a stop to that; but, lulled by the long security of the Victorian era, he never thought of opening them or doubting their innocuous fatuity so long as they bore titles in English. Among them, unsuspected by him, were translations from Russian, from French, from Italian — wolves in sheep’s clothing. And so it came about that Mrs. Hannaford had glimpses, and more than glimpses, not only of reality, of the mental and emotional workings of nearly every sort of human being in the world, but of adventure and experiment and peril and happiness, and of all the beauty and tenderness of love that the most ingenious minds of our age can devise.

As she read, something like the weight of a big clumsy hand resting upon her mind passed away. She reached Victoria in the highest spirits. It was an extremely beautiful day.

She determined on a bus to Sloane Square. There was a shop there where they had pretty clothes in the window, and an attractive old furniture shop; and then she liked to walk up the length of Sloane Street — she liked its breadth and clarity, the long stretch bordered by gardens, and at the top the bright, interesting, individual shops. And then the great glossy curved plateglass windows of the big drapers’ shops in Knightsbridge, where she would make some small purchases.

The warm summer air was still fresh with the morning; women passed her, charmingly dressed; there was a sparkle in the sunshine that made people smile at slight provocation. It was pleasant to linger under the broad awning of a florist and breathe the scent of the gorgeous mass of blossom banked against the cool depths of the open shop; it was pleasant to see the neat baskets of glossy, pampered fruit, the speckless gleaming glass bottles of a parfumeur, the smart, luxurious stationer’s, with its profuse elaborations of letter-writing.

She walked along very gayly, now in the shade, now in the sun, humming a little soundless tune, her parasol drooping back over her shoulder. The branches of the trees swayed in their full green of summer; the smartly fronted houses had hung out striped sun-blinds over window boxes blooming with that high pressure of achievement peculiar to West-End plants; taxis passed with a swish, motor-buses with a heavy impetus; there was the glittering passage of a water-cart, a keen, fresh smell, the swirl of water in the gutter. She had a wonderful sense of happiness, of looking charming, of being admired by passers-by while she kept her eyes quietly upon the shop windows or the interests of the traffic. It was pleasant, it was delightful. And she had five hours more.

The big shop in Knightsbridge, where she meant to buy some gloves, foamed and frothed over with the light gossamer of summer raiment, stocked with an exuberant abundance. In the lingerie department, through which she had to pass, were lying on the counters and displayed on stands fragilities as lovely and light as soap bubbles. She marveled at a series of transparencies, sheaths of chiffon faintly flushed with color, their low décolletages edged very simply with lace, and labeled ‘Robes de Boudoir.’ Mrs. Hannaford had never seen their like before; it was, in fact, the first season that that particular kind of garment appeared in the department of feminine wear which has of late years done so much to rid itself of its old partnership with scarlet flannel. She looked, and then went on, just a little embarrassed by those wisps of chiffon. They were so different in every particular, in every characteristic, from anything she had ever possessed. But they were lovely. As she sat among the austerities of the glove department, they were enormously alluring to think of; they took insolent possession of her imagination; they clung about her like cobwebs. It was a scrap of the world of imaginative beauty become fact and reality; it was as if a figure from a floating, quivering mirage had suddenly thrust forward and touched her with a living hand. Such things existed. They were made; they were bought.

She would buy one.

She went back a little nervously through the lingerie department, as if she were casually strolling; she stopped in front of one of the coveted coquetries and fingered its edge with an expression of sternness, as if she were debating whether it would wear well.

A pretty young saleswoman approached her. ‘These are just in, madam. Are they not charming, madam?’ And she twirled the stand to show it off.

‘Very pretty,’ replied Mrs. Hannaford with dignity. ‘I think this one would look very well, lined with blue silk.’

Fatally she caught sight of a quick spasm of amusement that lit up the pretty young saleswoman’s face. She dropped the edge of the chiffon wrap as if it were hot, turned straight about and walked off, out the department, along a series of shops toward the street. She was not thinking, she was too confused; but as the heavy swingdoor was being pulled open for her, something like a voice spoke straight into her ear:

‘Some day you will be dead!’

She turned away from the open door, feigning to examine a festoon of lace. Then in a moment, she walked with straight swift resolution back to the robes de boudoir.

‘I will take that one,’ she said very gravely, as soon as she got there.

‘Two and a half guineas, madam,’said the saleswoman, whipping it off the stand.

‘Thank you,’said Mrs. Hannaford, with a sense of having just jumped off the edge of a precipice and of floating, floating in mid-air.

‘No, I will take it with me, thanks.

‘No, thanks, I will pay for it now.

‘No, please do not put it in a box. A small parcel please.’

She took the little flat parcel and doubled it up again. It might have contained a veil.

She continued her shopping methodically, a little entranced.

Punctually at 6.40 the train from Victoria brought Mrs. Hannaford back to her station. She gathered up her novel, her sunshade, her parcels, and looked out of the window.

She was astonished to see her husband waiting for her on the platform.

He had a jackdaw curiosity about parcels. He liked to see that she had got good value with his good money. Her idiotic dress had no pocket.

The train stopped. Very quickly she took the slim little parcel that might have contained a veil, and slipped it as far as possible down into the crack between the seat and the back of the carriage.