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 black-balled 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 Balclass="underline" 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 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 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.