“O, sir,” he exclaimed, and almost in his excitement forgetting altogether the insidious, lisping tones he preferred as a rule to employ: “O, sir, here comes that old piece of rubbish again with a fresh pack of tracts!”
“Collect yourself, Peter, pray do: what, lose our heads for a visit?” the Count said getting up and going to a glass.
“I’ve noticed, sir, it’s impossible to live on an island long without feeling its effects; you can’t escape being insular!”
“Or insolent.”
“Insular, sir!”
“No matter much, but if it’s the Countess Yvorra, you might shew her round the garden this time, perhaps, for a change,” the Count replied, adjusting a demure-looking fly, of indeterminate sex, to his line.
And brooding on life and baits, and what A will come for while B won’t, the Count’s thoughts grew almost humorous as the afternoon wore on.
Evening was approaching, when weary of the airs of a common carp, he drew in, at length, his tackle.
Like a shawl of turquoise silk the lake seemed to vie, in serenity and radiance, with the bluest day in June, and it was no surprise, on descending presently for a restricted ramble—(the island, in all, amounted to scarcely one acre)—to descry the invaluable Peter enjoying a pleasant swim.
When not boating or reading or feeding his swans, to watch Peter’s fancy-diving off the terrace end, was perhaps the favourite pastime of the veteran viveur: to behold the lad trip along the riven breakwater, as naked as a statue, shoot out his arms and spring, the Flying-head-leap or the Backsadilla, was a beautiful sight, looking up now and again—but more often now—from a volume of old Greek verse; while to hear him warbling in the water with his clear alto voice—of Kyries and Anthems he knew no end—would often stir the old man to the point of tears. Frequently the swans themselves would paddle up to listen, expressing by the charmed or rapturous motions of their necks (recalling to the exile the ecstasies of certain musical, or “artistic” dames at Concert-halls, or the Opera House, long ago) their mute appreciation, their touched delight…
“Old goody Two-shoes never came, sir,” Peter archly lisped, admiring his adventurous shadow upon the breakwater wall.
“How is that?”
“Becalmed, sir,” Peter answered, culling languidly a small, nodding rose, that was clinging to the wall:
“O becalmed is my soul
I rejoice in the Lord!”
At one extremity of the garden stood the Observatory, and after duly appraising various of Peter’s neatest feats, the Count strolled away towards it. But before he could reach the Observatory, he had first to pass his swans.
They lived, with an ancient water-wheel, beneath a cupola of sun-glazed tiles, sheltered, partially, from the lake by a hedge of towering red geraniums, and the Count seldom wearied of watching these strangely gorgeous creatures as they sailed out and in through the sanguine-hued flowers. A few, with their heads sunk back beneath their wings, had retired for the night already; nevertheless, the Count paused to shake a finger at one somnolent bird, in disfavour for pecking Peter: “Jealous, doubtless of the lad’s grace,” he mused, fumbling with the key of the Observatory door.
The unrivalled instrument that the Observatory contained, whose intricate lenses were capable of drawing even the remote Summer-Palace to within an appreciable range, was, like most instruments of merit, sensitive to the manner of its manipulation; and fearing lest the inexpert tampering of a homesick housekeeper (her native village was visible in clear weather, with the aid of a glass) should break or injure the delicate lenses, the Count kept the Observatory usually under key.
But the inclination to focus the mundane, and embittered features of the fanatic Countess, as she lectured her boatmen for forgetting their oars, or, being considerably superstitious, to count the moles on their united faces as an esoteric clue to the Autumn Lottery, waned a little before the mystery of the descending night.
Beneath a changing tide of deepening shadow, the lifeless valleys were mirroring to the lake the sombreness of dusk. Across the blue forlornness of the water, a swan here and there, appeared quite violet, while coiffed in swift clinging, golden clouds, the loftiest hills alone retained the sun.
A faint nocturnal breeze, arising simultaneously with the Angelus-bell, seemed likely to relieve, at the moon’s advent, the trials to her patience of the Countess Yvorra: “who must be cursing,” the Count reflected, turning the telescope about with a sigh, to suit her sail. Ah! poignant moments when the heart stops still! Not since the hour of his exile had the Count’s been so arrested.
From the garden Peter’s voice rose questingly; but the Count was too wonder-struck, far, to heed it.
Caught in the scarlet radiance of the afterglow, the becalmed boat, for one brief and most memorable second, was his to gaze on.
In certain lands with what diplomacy falls the night, and how discreetly is the daylight gone: Those dimmer-and-dimmer, darker-and-lighter twilights of the North, so disconcerting in their playfulness, were unknown altogether in Pisuerga. There, Night pursued Day, as though she meant it. No lingering, or arctic sentiment! No concertinaishness… Hard on the sun’s heels, pressed Night. And the wherefore of her haste; Sun-attraction? Impatience to inherit? An answer to such riddles as these may doubtless be found by turning to the scientists’ theories on Time and Relativity.
Effaced in the blue air of evening became everything, and with the darkness returned the wind.
“Sir, sir?… Ho, Hi, hiiiiiiiiiiii!!” Peter’s voice came again.
But transfixed, and loath just then for company, the Count made no reply.
A green-lanterned barge passed slowly, coming from the sea, and on the mountain-side a village light winked wanly here and there.
“Oh, why was I not sooner?” he murmured distractedly aloud.
*****
“Oh Olga!”
“Oh Vi!”
“… I hope you’ve enough money for the boat, dear?…?”
“…!!?”
“Tell me, Olga: Is my hat all side-ways?”
“…”
The long windows of the Summer-Palace were staring white to the moon, as the Countess of Tolga, her aigrettes casting heroic shadows and hugging still her heath, re-entered the Court’s precincts on the arm of her friend.
XII
ONE evening, as Mrs Montgomery was reading Vanity Fair for the fifteenth time, there came a tap at the door. It was not the first interruption since opening the cherished green-bound book, and Mrs Montgomery seemed disinclined to stir. With the Court about to return to winter quarters, and the Summer-Palace upside down, the royal governess was still able to command her habitual British phlegm. It had been decided, moreover, that she should remain behind in the forsaken palace with the little prince, the better to “prepare” him for his forthcoming Eton exam.
Still, with disputes as to the precedence of trunks and dress-baskets simmering in the corridors without, it was easier to enjoy the Barley-sugar stick in one’s mouth, than the Novel in one’s hand.
“Thank God I’m not touchy!” Mrs Montgomery reflected, rolling her eyes lazily about the little white wainscoted room.
It was as if something of her native land had crept in through the doorway with her, so successfully had she inculcated its tendencies, or spiritual Ideals, upon everything around.
A solitary teapot, on a bracket, above the door, two Jubilee plates, some peacocks’ feathers, an image of a little Fisher-boy in bathing-drawers and a broken hand;—“a work of delicate beauty!” A mezzotint: The Coiffing of Maria—these were some of the treasures which the room contained.
“A blessing to be sure when the Court has gone!” she reflected half-rising to drop a curtsy to Prince Olaf who had entered.
“Word from your country,” sententiously he broke out: “My brother’s betrothed! So need I go on with my preparation?”
“Put your tie straight! And just look at your socks all tumbling down. Such great jambo
ns of knees!… What will become of you, I ask myself, when you’re a lower boy at Eton.”
“How can I be a lower boy when I’m a Prince?”
“Probably, the Rev. Ruggles-White, when you enter his House, will be able to explain.”
“I won’t be a lower boy! I will not!”
“Cs, Cs.”
“Damn the democracy.”
“Fie, sir.”
“Down with it.”
“For shame.”
“Revenge.”
“That will do: and now, let me hear your lessons: I should like,” Mrs Montgomery murmured, her eyes set in detachment upon the floor; “the present-indicative tense of the Verb To be! Adding the words. Political h-Hostess;—more for the sake of the pronunciation than for anything else.”
And after considerable persuasion, prompting, and “bribing,” with various sorts of sweets:—
“I am a Political Hostess,
Thou art a Political Hostess,
He is a Political Hostess,
We are Political Hostesses,
Ye are Political Hostesses,
They are Political Hostesses.”
“Very good, dear, and only one mistake. He is a Political h-Hostess: Can you correct yourself? The error is so slight.”
But alas the prince was in no mood for study; and Mrs Montgomery very soon afterwards was obliged to let him go.
Moving a little anxiously about the room, her meditations turned upon the future.
With the advent of Elsie a new régime would be established: increasing Britishers would wish to visit Pisuerga; and it seemed a propitious moment to abandon teaching, and to inaugurate in Kairoulla an English hotel.
“I have no more rooms. I am quite full up!” she smiled, addressing the silver andirons in the grate.
And what a deliverance to have done with instructing unruly children, she reflected, going towards the glass mail-box, attached to her vestibule door. Sometimes about this hour there would be a letter in it, but this evening there was only a picture postcard of a field mouse in a bonnet, from her old friend Mrs Bedley.
“We have Valmouth at last,” she read, “and was it you, my dear, who asked for The Beard Throughout the Ages? It is in much demand, but I am keeping it back anticipating a reply. Several of the plates are missing I see, among them, those of the late King Edward, and of Assur Bani Pal; I only mention it, that, you may: know I shan’t blame you! We are having wonderful weather, and I am keeping pretty well, although poor Mrs Barleymoon, I fear, will not see through another winter. Trusting you are benefiting by the beautiful country air: your obedient servant to command, Ann Bedley.
“P.S.— Man, and All About Him, is rebinding. Ready I expect soon.”
“Ah! Cunnie, Cunnie…?” Mrs Montgomery murmured, laying the card down near a photograph of the Court-physician with a sigh: “Ah! Arthur Amos Cuncliffe Babcock…?” she invoked his name dulcetly in full: and as though in telepathic response, there came a tap at the door, and the doctor himself looked in. He had been attending, it seemed, the young wife of the Comptroller of the Household at the extremity of the corridor; a creature, who, after two brief weeks of marriage, imagined herself to be in an interesting state: “I believe baby’s coming!” she would cry out every few hours.
“Do I intrude?” he demanded, in his forceful, virile voice, that ladies knew and liked: “pray say so if I do.”
“Does he intrude!” Mrs Montgomery flashed an arch glance towards the cornice.
“Well, and how are you keeping?” the doctor asked, dropping on to a rep causeuse that stood before the fire.
“I’m only semi-well, doctor, thanks!”
“Why, what’s the trouble?”
“You know my organism is not a very strong one, Dr Cuncliffe…” Mrs Montgomery replied, drawing up a chair, and settling a cushion with a sigh of resignation at her back.
“Imagination!”
“If only it were!”
“Imagination,” he repeated, fixing a steady eye on the short train of her black brocaded robe that all but brushed his feet.
“If that’s your explanation for continuous broken sleep…” she gently snapped.
“Try mescal.”
“I’m trying Dr Fritz Millar’s treatment,” the lady stated, desiring to deal a slight scratch to his masculine amour propre.
“Millar’s an Ass.”
“I don’t agree at all!” she incisively returned, smiling covertly at his touch of pique.
“What is it?”
“Oh it’s horrid. You first of all lie down; and then you drink cold water in the sun.”
“Cold what? I never heard of such a thing: It’s enough to kill you.”
Mrs Montgomery took a deep-drawn breath of languor.
“And would you care, doctor, so very much if it did?” she asked, as a page made his appearance with an ice-bucket and champagne.
“To toast our young Princess!”
“Oh, oh, Dr Cuncliffe? What a wicked man you are:—” And for a solemn moment their thoughts went out in unison to the sea-girt land of their birth—Barkers’, Selfridges’, Brighton-pier, the Zoological gardens on a Sunday afternoon.
“Here’s to the good old country!” the doctor quaffed.
“The Bride, and,” Mrs Montgomery raised her glass, “the Old Folks at h-home.”
“The Old Folks at home!” he vaguely echoed.
“Bollinger, you naughty man,” the lady murmured, amiably seating herself on the causeuse at his side.
“You’ll find it dull here all alone after the Court has gone,” he observed, smiling down, a little despotically, on to her bright, abundant hair.
Mrs Montgomery sipped her wine.
“When the wind goes whistling up and down under the colonnades: oh, then!” she shivered.
“You’ll wish for a fine, bold Pisuergian husband; shan’t you?” he answered, his foot drawing closer to hers.
“Often of an evening, I feel I need fostering,” she owned, glancing up yearningly into his face.
“Fostering, eh?” he chuckled, refilling with exuberance her glass.
“Why is it that wine always makes me feel so good?”
“Probably, because it fills you with affection for your neighbour!”
“It’s true; I feel I could be very affectionate: I’m what they call an ‘amoureuse’ I suppose, and there it is…”
There fell a busy silence between them.
“It’s almost too warm for a fire,” she murmured, repairing towards the window; “but I like to hear the crackle!”
“Company, eh?” he returned, following her (a trifle unsteadily) across the room.
“The night is so clear the moon looks to be almost transparent,” she languorously observed, with a long tugging sigh.
“And so it does,” he absently agreed.
“I adore the Pigeons in my wee court towards night, when they sink down like living sapphires upon the stones,” she sentimentally said, sighing languorously again.
“Ours,” he assured her; “since the surgery looks on to it, too…”
“Did you ever see anything so ducky-wucky, so completely twee!” she inconsequently chirruped.
“Allow me to fill this empty glass.”
“I want to go out on all that gold floating water!” she murmured listlessly, pointing towards the lake.
“Alone?”
“Drive me towards the sweet seaside,” she begged, taking appealingly his hand.
“Aggie?”
“Arthur—Arthur, for God’s sake!” she shrilled, as with something between a snarl land a roar, he impulsively whipped out I the light.
“H-Help! Oh Arth—”
Thus did they celebrate the “Royal engagement.”
XIII
BEHIND the heavy moucharabi in the little dark shop of Haboubet of Egypt all was song, fête and preparation. Additional work, had brought additional hands, and be-tarbouched boys in burnooses, and baskets of blossoms, lay strewn all
over the floor.
“Sweet is the musk-rose of the Land of Punt!
Sweet arc the dates from Khorassan…
But bring me (O wandering Djinns) the English rose, the English apple!
O sweet is the land of the Princess Elsie
Sweet indeed is England —”
Bachir’s voice soared, in improvisation, to a long-drawn, strident, wail.
“Pass me the scissors, O Bachir ben Ahmed, for the love of Allah,” a young man with large lucent eyes, and an untroubled) face, like a flower, exclaimed, extending a slender, keef-stained hand.
“Sidi took them,” the superintendent of the Duchess of Varna replied, turning towards an olive-skinned Armenian youth, who, seated on an empty hamper, was reading to a small, rapt group, the Kairoulla Intelligence aloud.
“‘Attended by Lady Canon-of-Noon and by Lady Bertha Chamberlayne (she is a daughter of Lord Frollo’s [9]) the Princess was seen to alight from her saloon, in a chic toque of primrose paille, stabbed with the quill of a nasturtium-coloured bird, and, darting forward, like the Bird of Paradise that she is, embraced her future Parents-in-law with considerable affection…,’”
“Scissors, for the love of Allah!”
“‘ And soon I heard the roll of drums! And saw the bobbing plumes in the jangling brow-bands of the horses: it was a moment I shall never forget. She passed… and as our Future Sovereign turned smiling to bow her acknowledgments to the crowd, I saw a happy tear…!’”
“Ah Allah.”
“Pass me two purple pinks.”
“‘ Visibly gratified at the cordial ovation to her Virgin Daughter was Queen Glory, a striking and impressive figure, all a-glitter in a splendid dark dress of nacre and nigger tissue, her many Orders of Merit almost bearing her down.’”
“Thy scissors, O Sidi, for the love of Muhammed?”
The Flower Beneath the Foot Page 9