The Flower Beneath the Foot

by Ronald Firbank

  “But surely—” Lady Something smiled: for the servant-topic was one she felt at home on.

  “In Dateland, my dear, servant girls are nothing but sluts.”

  “Life is like that, ma’am, I regret indeed, to have to say: I once had a housemaid who had lived with Sarah Bernhardt, and oh, wasn’t she a terror!” Lady Something declared, warding off a little black bat-eared dog who was endeavouring to scramble on to her lap.

  “Teddywegs, Teddywegs!” the Archduchess exclaimed jumping up and advancing to capture her pet: “He arrived from London not later than this morning,” she said: “from the Princess Elsie of England.”

  “He looks like some special litter,” Lady Something remarked.

  “How the dear girl loves animals!”

  “The rumour of her betrothal it seems is quite without foundation?”

  “To my nephew: ah alas…”

  “Prince Yousef and she are of an equal age!”

  “She is interested in Yousef I’m inclined to believe; but the worst of life is, nearly everyone marches to a different tune,” the Archduchess replied.

  “One hears of her nothing that isn’t agreeable.”

  “Like her good mother, Queen Glory,” the Archduchess said, “one feels, of course, she’s all she should be.”

  Lady Something sighed.

  “Yes… and even more!” she murmured, letting fall a curtsy to King William who had entered. He had been lunching at the Headquarters of the Girl Guides, and wore the uniform of a general.

  “What is the acme of nastiness?” he paused of the English Ambassadress to enquire.

  Lady Something turned paler than the white candytuft that is found on ruins. “Oh la, sir,” she stammered, “how should I know!”

  The King looked the shrinking matron slowly up and down: “The supreme disgust”

  “Oh la, sir!” Lady Something stammered again.

  But the King took pity on her evident confusion: “Tepid potatoes,” he answered, “on a stone-cold plate.”

  The Ambassadress beamed.

  “I trust the warmth of the girls, sir, compensated you for the coldness of the plates?” she ventured.

  “The inspection, in the main, was satisfactory! Although I noticed that one or two of the guides, seemed inclined to lead astray,” the King replied, regarding Teddywegs, who was inquisitively sniffing his spurs.

  “He’s strange yet to everything,” the Archduchess commented.

  “What’s this—a new dog?”

  “From Princess Elsie…”

  “They say she’s stupid, but I do not know that intellect is always a blessing!” the King declared, drooping his eyes to his abdomen, with an air of pensive modesty.

  “Poor child, she writes she is tied to the shore, so that I suppose she is unable to leave dear England.”

  “Tied to it?”

  “And bound till goodness knows.”

  “As was Andromeda!” the King sententiously exclaimed…” She would have little, or maybe nothing, to wear,” he clairvoyantly went on: “I see her standing shivering, waiting for Yousef… Chained by the leg, perhaps, exposed to the howling winds.” [3]

  “Nonsense. She means to say she can’t get away yet on account of her engagements: that’s all.”

  “After Cowes-week,” Lady Something put in, “she is due to pay a round of visits before joining her parents in the North.”

  “How I envy her,” the Archduchess sighed, “amid that entrancing scene…”

  Lady Something looked attendrie.

  “Your royal highness is attached to England?” she asked.

  “I fear I was never there… But I shall always remember I put my hair up when I was twelve years old because of the Prince of Wales.”

  “Oh? And… which of the Georges?” Lady Something gasped.

  “It’s so long ago now that I really forget—”

  “And pray, ma’am, what was the point of it?”

  The Archduchess chuckled:

  “Why, so as to look eligible of course!” she replied, returning to her knitting.

  Amid the general flutter following the King’s appearance, it was easy enough for the Duchess of Varna to slip away. Knowing the palace inside out it was unnecessary to make any fuss. Passing through a long room, where a hundred holland-covered chairs stood grouped, Congresswise, around a vast table, she attained the Orangery, that gave access to the drive. The mellay of vehicles had considerably increased, and the Duchess paused a moment to consider which she should borrow, when recollecting she wished to question one of the royal gardeners on a little matter of mixing manure, she decided to return through the castle grounds instead. Taking a path that descended between rhododendrons and grim old cannons towards the town, she was comparing the capriciousness of certain bulbs to that of certain people, when she heard her name called from behind, and glancing round perceived the charming silhouette of the Countess of Tolga.

  “I couldn’t stand it inside: Could you?”

  “My dear, what a honeymoon hat!”

  “It was made by me!”

  “Oh, Violet…” the Duchess murmured, her face taking on a look of wonder.

  “Don’t forget, dear, Sunday.”

  “Is it a party?”

  “I’ve asked Grim-lips and Ladybird, Hairy and Fluffy, Hardylegs and Bluewings, Spindleshanks, and Our Lady of Furs.”

  “Not Nanny-goat?”

  “Luckily…” the Countess replied, raising to her nose the heliotropes in her hand.

  “Is he no better?”

  “You little know, dear, what it is to be all alone with him chez soi when he thinks and sneers into the woodwork.”

  “Into the woodwork?”

  He addresses the ceiling, the walls, the floor—me never!”

  “Dear dove.”

  “All I can I’m plastic.”

  “Can one be plastic ever enough, dear?”

  “Often but for Olga…” the Countess murmured considering a little rosy ladybird on her arm.

  “I consider her ever so compelling, ever so wistful —” the Duchess of Varna averred.

  “Sweet girl —! She’s just my consolation.”

  “She reminds me, does she you, of that Miss Hobart in de Grammont’s Memoirs.”

  “C’est une âme exquise!”

  “Well au revoir, dear: We shall meet again at the Princess Leucippe’s later on,” the duchess said, detecting her gardener in the offing.

  By the time she had obtained her recipe and cajoled a few special shoots from various exotic plants, the sun had begun to decline. Emerging from the palace by a postern-gate, where lounged a sentry, she found herself almost directly beneath the great acacias on the Promenade. Under the lofty leafage of the trees, as usual towards this hour, society, in its varying grades had congregated to be gazed upon. Mounted on an eager-headed little horse his Weariness (who loved being seen) was plying up and down, while in his wake a “screen artiste,” on an Arabian mare with powdered withers and eyes made up with kohl, was creating a sensation. Every time she used her whip the powder rose in clouds. Wending her way through the throng the duchess recognised the rose-harnessed horses of Countess Medusa Rappa—the Countess bolt upright her head carried stiffly staring with a pathetic expression of dead joie-de-vie between her coachman’s and footman’s waists. But the intention of calling at the Café Cleopatra caused the duchess to hasten. The possibility of learning something beneficial to herself was a lure not to be resisted. Pausing to allow the marvellous blue automobile of Count Ann-Jules to pass (with the dancer Kalpurnia inside), she crossed the Avenue, where there seemed, on the whole, to be fewer people. Here she remarked a little ahead of her the masculine form of the Countess Yvorra, taking a quiet stroll before Salut in the company of her Confessor. In the street she usually walked with her hands clasped behind her back, huddled up like a statesman: “Des choses abominables!… Des choses hors nature!” she was saying, in tones of evident relish, as the duchess passed.


  Meanwhile Madame Wetme was seated anxiously by the samovar in her drawing-room. To receive the duchess, she had assumed a mashlak à la mode, whitened her face and rouged her ears, and set a small, but costly aigrette at an insinuating angle in the edifice of her hair. As the hour of Angelus approached, the tension of waiting grew more and more acute, and beneath the strain of expectation even the little iced-sugar cakes upon the tea-table looked green with worry.

  Suppose, after all, she shouldn’t come? Suppose she had already left? Suppose she were in prison? Only the other day a woman of the highest fashion, a leader of “society” with an A, had served six months as a consequence of her extravagance…

  In agitation Madame Wetme helped herself to a small glassful of Cointreau, (her favourite liqueur) when, feeling calmer for the consommation, she was moved to take a peep out of Antoine.

  But nobody chic at all met her eye. Between the oleanders upon the curb, that rose up darkly against a flame-pink sky, two young men dressed “as Poets” were arguing and gesticulating freely over a bottle of beer. Near them, a sailor with a blue drooping collar and dusty boots (had he walked poor wretch to see his mother?) was gazing stupidly at the large evening gnats that revolved like things bewitched about the café lamps. While below the window a lean soul in glasses, evidently an impresario, was loudly exclaiming: “London has robbed me of my throat, sir!! It has deprived me of my voice.”

  No, an “off” night certainly!

  Through a slow, sun-flower of a door (that kept on revolving long after it had been pushed) a few military men bent on a game of billiards, or an early fille-de-joie (only the discreetest des filles “serieuses” were supposed to be admitted)—came and went.

  “To-night they’re fit for church,” Madame Wetme complacently smiled as the door swung round again: “Navy-blue and silver-fox looks the goods,” she reflected, “upon any occasion! It suggests something sly—like a Nurse’s uniform.”

  “A lady in the drawing-room, Madame, desires to speak to you,” a chasseur tunefully announced, and fingering nervously her aigrette Madame Wetme followed.

  The Duchess of Varna was inspecting a portrait with her back to the door as her hostess entered.

  “I see you’re looking at my Murillo!” Madame Wetme began.

  “Oh… Is it o-ri-gi-nal?” the duchess drawled.

  “No.”

  “To judge by the Bankruptcy-sales of late (and it’s curious how many there’ve been…) it would seem from the indifferent figure he makes, that he is no longer accounted chic,” Madame Wetme observed as she drew towards the duchess a chair.

  “I consider the chic to be such a very false religion!…” the duchess said, accepting the seat which was offered her.

  “Well, I come of an old Huguenot family myself!”

  “——… ?”

  “Ah my early home… Now, I hear, it’s nothing but a weed-crowned ruin.”

  The duchess considered the ivory cat handle of her parasol: “You wrote to me?” she asked.

  “Yes: about the coming court.”

  “About it?”

  “Every woman has her dream, duchess! And mine’s to be presented.”

  “The odd ambition!” the duchess crooned.

  “I admit we live in the valley. Although I have a great sense of the hills!” Madame Wetme declared demurely.

  “Indeed?”

  “My husband you see…”

  “… “

  “Ah! well!”

  “Of course.”

  “H I’m not asked this time, I shall die of grief.”

  “Have you made the request before?”

  “I have attempted!”

  “Well?”

  “When the Lord Chamberlain refused me, I shed tears of blood,” Madame Wetme wanly retailed.

  “It would have been easier, no doubt, in the late king’s time!”

  Madame Wetme took a long sighing breath.

  “I only once saw him in my life,” she said, “and then he was standing against a tree, in an attitude offensive to modesty.”

  “Tell me… as a public man, what has your husband done?”

  “His money helped to avert, I always contend, the noisy misery of a War!”

  “He’s open-handed?”

  “Ah… as you would find…”

  The duchess considered: “I might,” she said, “get you cards for a State concert…”

  “A State concert, duchess? That’s no good to me!”

  “A drawing-room you know is a very dull affair.”

  “I will liven it!”

  “Or an invitation perhaps to begin with to one of the Embassies—the English for instance might lead…”

  “Nowhere…! You can’t depend on that: people have asked me to lunch, and left me to pay for them…! There is so much trickery in Society…” Madame Wetme laughed.

  The duchess smiled quizzically: “I forget if you know the Tolgas,” she said.

  “By ‘name!’”

  “The Countess is more about the throne at present than I”

  “Possibly—but oh you who do everything, duchess?” Madame Wetme entreated.

  “I suppose there are things still one wouldn’t do however—!” the duchess took offence.

  “The Tolgas are so hard.”

  “You want a misfortune and they’re sweet to you. Successful persons they’re positively hateful to!”

  “These women of the Bedchamber are all alike so glorified. You would never credit they were Chambermaids at all! I often smile to myself when I see one of them at a première at the Opera, gorged with pickings, and think that, most likely, but an hour before she was stumbling along a corridor with a pailful of slops!”

  “You’re fond of music, Madame?” the duchess asked.

  “It’s my joy: I could go again and again to The Blue Banana!”

  “I’ve not been.”

  “…”

  “Pom-pom, pompity-pom! We might go one night, perhaps, together.”

  “Doudja Degdeg is always a draw, although naturally now she is getting on!”

  “And I fear so must I” —the duchess rose remarking.

  “So soon?”

  “I’m only so sorry I can’t stay longer!”

  “Then it’s all decided,” Madame Wetme murmured archly as she pressed the bell.

  “Oh I’d not say that.”

  “If I’m not asked remember this time, I shall die with grief.”

  “To-night the duke and I are dining with the Leucippes, and possibly…” the duchess broke off to listen to the orchestra in the café below, which was playing the waltz-air from Der Rosenkavalier.

  “They play well!” she commented.

  “People often tell me so.”

  “It must make one restless, dissatisfied, that yearning, yearning music continually at the door?”

  Madame Wetme sighed.

  “It makes you often long,” she said, “to begin your life again!”

  “Again?”

  “Really it’s queer I came to yoke myself with a man so little fine…”

  “Still! If he’s open-handed,” the duchess murmured as she left the room.

  IV

  ONE grey, unsettled morning (it was the first of June) the English Colony of Kairoulla [4] awoke in arms. It usually did when the Embassy entertained. But the omissions of the Ambassador were, as old Mr Ladboyson the longest-established member of the colony declared, “not to be fathomed,” and many of those overlooked declared they should go all the same. Why should Mrs Montgomery (who, when all was said and done, was nothing but a governess) be invited and not Mrs Barleymoon who was “nothing” (in the most distinguished sense of the word) at all? Mrs Barleymoon’s position, as a captain’s widow with means, unquestionably came before Mrs Montgomery’s, who drew a salary, and hadn’t often an h.

  Miss Grizel Hopkins, too—the cousin of an Earl, and Mrs Bedley the, “Mother” of the English Colony, both had been ignored. It was true Ann Bedley kept a circula
ting library and a tea-room combined and gave “Information” to tourists as well (a thing she had done these forty years), but was that a sufficient reason why she should be totally taboo? No, in old Lord Clanlubber’s time all had been made welcome, and there had been none of these heartburnings at all. Even the Irish coachman of the Archduchess was known to have been received—although it had been outside of course upon the lawn. Only gross carelessness, it was felt, on the part of those attaches could account for the extraordinary present neglect.

  “I don’t myself mind much,” Mrs Bedley said, who was seated over a glass of morning milk and “a plate of fingers” in the Circulating end of the shop: “going out at night upsets me. And the last time Dr Babcock was in he warned me not.”

  “What is the Embassy there for but to be hospitable?” Mrs Barleymoon demanded from the summit of a ladder, from where she was choosing herself a book.

  “You’re shewing your petticoat, dear—excuse me telling you,” Mrs Bedley observed.

  “When will you have something new, Mrs Bedley?”

  “Soon, dear… soon.”

  “It’s always, soon,” Mrs Barleymoon complained.

  “Are you looking for anything, Bessie, in particular?” a girl, with loose blue eyes that did not seem quite firm in her head, and a literary face enquired.

  “No, only something,” Mrs Barleymoon replied, “I’ve not had before and before and before.”

  “By the way. Miss Hopkins,” Mrs Bedley said, “I’ve to fine you for pouring tea over My Stormy Past.”

  “It was coffee, Mrs Bedley—not tea.”

  “Never mind, dear, what it was the charge for a stain is the same as you know,” Mrs Bedley remarked, turning to attend to Mrs Montgomery who, with his Lankiness, Prince Olaf, had entered the Library.

  “Is it in?” Mrs Montgomery mysteriously asked.

  Mrs Bedley assumed her glasses.

  “Mmnops,” she replied, peering with an air of secretiveness in her private drawer where she would sometimes reserve or hold back, a volume for a subscriber who happened to be in her special good graces.

  “I’ve often said” Mrs Barleymoon from her ladder sarcastically let fall, “that Mrs Bedley has her pets!”