There was a large painted chest in the schoolroom, an imitation of a Renaissance marriage-chest, with woodland scenes of dark glades, pale ladies, hounds and a white stag painted on the sides. This was the dressing-up chest, and it was unusually well stocked with silken shifts, frilled shirts, embroidered shawls, fillets for veils and coronets for princes.
“It helps,” Violet said to Philip, “to have a dressmaker as an auntie, who can turn a toga into a ball dress and back, or magic silk flowers out of old stockings. I think we should dress Hedda as Peaseblossom. Here is a lovely pink and violet shift.”
Hedda had her arms deep in the silks, rummaging.
“I want to be a witch,” she said.
“I told you, dear,” said Violet. “Hallowe’en’s for witches. Midsummer is for fairies. With pretty wings, organdie, look.”
“I want to be a witch,” Hedda repeated. Her small face was an angry frown.
Olive had come in with a sparkling buckle she needed Violet to stitch to a sash. She ruffled Hedda’s hair.
“She can be a witch if she likes,” she said easily. “We want them to be comfortable, don’t we, so they can run about and have fun. Have you found witch clothes, darling? Here’s my old black shawl with a lovely fringe and a fiery dragon on it. And here’s Phyllis’s old black dancing-tunic—if you just put a few stitches, Vi, so she doesn’t spring apart. And here’s a glass beetle-brooch, just the thing. And Philip will make you a hat with black paper. Not too big, Philip, so it stays on—”
“And a broomstick,” said Hedda.
“You must ask in the kitchen for the loan of a besom.”
Violet’s face had a mutinous look, not unlike Hedda’s, but she did as she was asked, or told, and the little girl was soon spinning in a whirl of black batwings and floating fringe. Violet did up the unresisting Florian in yellow and green, with a scalloped jerkin, as Mustardseed. He had a pointed felt cap, which he kept patting uncertainly. Phyllis accepted the rejected Peaseblossom, and was lovingly hung with silk gauze, mauve, rose and ivory; she had a silver cloak, like folded dragonfly-wings, and a wreath of silk flowers on her hair.
Dorothy was Moth, in a grey velvet tunic with a cloak with painted eyes. Violet tried vainly to persuade her to wear wired antennae.
Tom had to be Puck. He went barefoot in brown tights and a leaf-coloured jerkin. He too rejected a headdress and said he would put twigs in his own hair. Phyllis said Puck didn’t wear glasses. Tom said “This one does. Or he’ll fall into the pond and get trapped in brambles.”
They came to the question of Philip. He said he couldn’t dress up, he would feel silly. No one wanted to suggest he should be a rude mechanical. It would be insensitive. Tom said “Can’t you put on a sort of toga and be one of the Athenians?”
Philip did not know A Midsummer Night’s Dream and was totally baffled by the costume selection. He said he didn’t think he could wear a toga. He was not, in fact, sure what a toga was.
“I don’t like to be looked at,” he said, strangled. All the children, even those who were prancing about flaunting their disguises, understood the need not to be looked at. Dorothy had an idea, and took down the butcher-blue painting smock Tom wore for crafts lessons.
“You could go as an artist. You might wear this anyway, to make pots and things.”
The smock had a high neck, full sleeves, deep pockets. It was a coverall. It was in many ways less of a disguise than the borrowed clothes he had on. Philip looked down at his legs.
“You could go barefoot,” said Dorothy. “We do.”
“You could just stay as you are,” said Tom.
Philip put on the smock. He felt comfortable. He allowed Violet to change his boots for sandals. Everyone who was not barefoot wore sandals.
“Now you can run and jump,” said Dorothy.
His feet under the straps were whitish but not white. He felt a moment’s pleasure at the idea of running and jumping.
• • •
The guests began to arrive in the midafternoon. They came at intervals, from far and near, in carriages, pony-traps, station flies, on foot, and, in one case, on a tandem tricycle.
Humphry and Olive stood on the steps to receive them. They were dressed as Oberon and Titania. Humphry had a silk jerkin embroidered with Florentine arabesques, black breeches and a voluminous velvet cloak, swinging at a daring angle from a silken cord across his shoulder. He looked absurd and beautiful. And amused. Olive wore pleated olive silk over pleated white linen, with a gauze overcloak, veined like insect wings. Her hair was dressed with honeysuckle and roses. She looked warm and wild. Violet, beside her, wore a dress stitched with ivy-leaves on satin, and held her head girlishly on one side, heavy with silk ivy and white feathers. The children were running around. They would be called to order when other children arrived.
The firstcomers—they had only to walk across the meadow from their farm cottage—were the Russian anarchists. Vasily Tartarinov had escaped from St. Petersburg in 1885. He gave lectures on Russian society, and received generous assistance (including the cottage) from English socialists. He had two sets of clothes, his working smock and the dress suit in which he gave his lectures. He had come in the dress suit. He was a dramatic figure, inordinately tall and thin with a long pointed white beard like a wizard. His wife, Elena, wore the better of her two dresses, which was brown poplin with black braid and black buttons. Her hair was scraped back. They had made no concession to fancy dress. The children, Andrei and Dmitri, both around Phyllis’s age, wore their usual aprons, red and blue. They mostly pretended they could not speak English.
The tricycle rolled in, vigorously pedalled by Leslie and Etta Skinner, fellow Fabians. Skinner worked on human statistics and heredity at University College, London. He had sleek black hair, white skin and blue eyes. Etta Skinner was older than Leslie. They had met in the Men and Women’s Club, at the college, in the 1880s. They had discussed the Woman Question, birth control, animal passion and the sexual instincts. Skinner was very serious and had a beautiful voice. He aroused a great deal of animal passion in colleagues and students. The Wellwoods agreed he had married Etta to protect himself from frenzied maenads. Etta was a dedicated Theosophist, attended gatherings on esoteric and astral matters in Albemarle Street, lectured on vegetarianism, and taught reading, writing and arithmetic to the London poor. She had a round face, tight lips and pepper and salt hair with a fuzz of broken ends. She looked as though she had once been expectant and greedy, but had learned better. She was distantly related to the Darwins, the Wedgwoods and the Galtons, which, Humphry pointed out, must have been attractive to a specialist in heredity. But the Skinners, married for ten years, had no children. Humphry said it was odd that people interested in ancestry often were not ancestors. Olive replied that she didn’t like Etta’s clothes, which were home-dyed and sacklike. The usual dress appeared, in an unsteady plum colour, as she divested herself of her cycling skirt and veil.
Close on their heels came Toby Youlgreave, also on a bicycle. He had a tiny weekend cottage in the woods. He and Etta began a discussion of folk customs at midsummer.
Prosper Cain came from Iwade House in a carriage, with Julian, and his daughter, Florence. They wore fancy dress. Prosper was disguised as Prospero in a sumptuous black robe covered with signs of the zodiac. He carried a long staff, made of a narwhal tusk, with a pommel stuck with moonstones and peridots. Julian was Prince Ferdinand, in theatrical black and silver. Florence, who was twelve, was very prettily dressed as Miranda, in a flowing sea-coloured shift, with her dark hair flowing, and a necklace of pearls. Julian and Tom eyed each other cautiously. They had shared an adventure, but were not sure they wanted to be friends. Olive came smiling forward and Prosper kissed her hand. He said in her ear