‘Macabre person! … Fiend!’ she said.
Winsome looked up sleepily.
‘I came,’ he explained, ‘to collect a few books for Mrs Henedge.’
Mrs Shamefoot blinked.
‘That looks,’ she observed, ‘like going.’
‘I don’t want to be too hard on her,’ the Bishop said, ‘but I think she might have told me first.’
‘I cannot say,’ Winsome said. ‘In the country one is always grateful to find anything to do.’
‘Have you been here long?’
‘Since yesterday. Already, I could howl for staleness.’
Mrs Shamefoot glanced at the Bishop.
‘Very likely,’ she said; ‘but to run away the moment you arrive, just because it’s the most appealing place on earth … I should call it decadent!’
And, indeed, after a few hours nearer Nature, perpetually it was the same with him. A nostalgie du pavé began to set in. He would miss the confidential ‘Things is very bad, sir,’ of the newspaper boy at the corner; the lights, the twinkling advertisements of the Artistic Theatre … the crack of the revolver so audible those nights that the heroine killed herself, the suspense, the subsequent sickening silence; while the interest, on lighter evenings, would be varied by the ‘Call me my biplane,’ of Indignation as it flew hurriedly away.
Mrs Shamefoot picked up a rich, red-topped hymn-book.
‘And so,’ she said, ‘the aloe, apparently, has bloomed!’
‘No; not yet. But there’s nothing like being ready.’
‘And when do you think it’s to be?’
‘I hardly care to say. Though, when the change is made, you can be certain it will be done quite quietly.’
‘In Ashringford,’ the Bishop said, ‘nothing is ever done quite quietly.’
‘But that’s so silly of Ashringford!’ Mrs Shamefoot exclaimed. ‘When my sister ’verted, I assure you nobody took the slightest notice. But then, of course, she was always going backwards and forwards … She made excursions into three different religions. And she always came back dissatisfied and grumbling.’
‘The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.’
‘Many people,’ the Bishop remarked, ‘are very easily influenced. They have only to look at a peacock’s tail to think of Brahma.’
Mrs Shamefoot turned her eyes towards the entrancing glass.
How mysterious it was! Like the luminous carpets that veil a dream.
She became abstracted a moment, lost in mental measurements, unhappy and elaborate-looking, in her mourning, as a wasted columbine.
‘Well, since you’re here, Mr Brookes,’ she said, ‘you must absolutely try the organ. And Doctor Pantry has never heard me sing.’
XI
From a choice of vivid cushions she placed the least likely behind her head.
‘I’m ready!’ And with a tired, distrustful smile, she looked away towards the house as if it were a hospital.
At her feet crouched an animal who, hourly, was assuming an expression as becoming, and as interesting, she believed, as the wolf of St Francis. Her hands full of dark clematis, clutched and crowned …
‘There’ll be the funnel of the jam factory, and a few chimney-pots for background,’ Winsome said. ‘Do you mind?’
‘My dear, what can I do? In the end, these horrid encroaching shapes will drive me out.’
‘One, two, three; do smile … less. I’d rather work a water-wheel than be a photographer.’
Mrs Henedge relaxed.
‘I wish,’ she murmured, ‘instead, you’d decide about being Rose.’
‘I will. But in these wilds the very notion of a début makes one shiver.’
‘My dear Mr Brookes, when you give your first concert, I will lead you on to the platform, and stay by you all the time!’
‘Well, I’m vacillating. I only need a push.’
‘Oh, be careful of the tail.’
And, indeed, an animal who had bitten a poet, worried a politician, amused a famous actress and harried a dancer, was not to be ignored.
How was it possible, it may be asked, for anything in Ashringford to have come in contact with such celebrities? By what accident had these Illustrious crossed his path? Incidentally, St Dorothy was responsible for all.
And now that Miss Compostella was awaited at Stockingham, and with a Rose de Tivoli within reach, there appeared every likelihood of lengthening the list – a poet, a politician, a pianist, two famous actresses, etc. in anticipation – he counted them over upon his paws, surveying, meanwhile, the newly painted scene; for his lady cared only for those airier sorts of trees, larches, poplars, willows, so that, in the spring, the garden looked extraordinarily inexperienced and green.
‘I shall have to chloroform him,’ Mrs Henedge said, ‘if he does it again.’
‘He might be grateful. One can never tell.’
‘Why, what’s wrong?’
‘I’ve so many moods. You cannot like ’em all … I’m never characteristic!’
‘Poor Mr Vane! Never mind if you’re bored. Relax! Recoup! The country’s very good for you.’
‘That’s what everyone says. Mrs Shamefoot said the same to me this morning.’
‘Oh, have you seen her?’
‘In the Cathedral. Do you know, if I stopped here long, I’d start a Satanic colony in your midst just to share the monotony.’
‘My dear, there’s one already.’
‘Direct me—’
‘No; stay here and be good. I’ve something to tell you that will please you.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes. Old Mrs Felix said to my maid: “I think Mr Brookes so beautiful. He has such a young, romantic face!” ’
‘What else did she say?’
‘She said nothing more.’
‘Hooray!’
Mrs Henedge raised a finger. ‘S-S-S-Sh! or you’ll disturb Monsignor Parr. He’s half asleep in a rocking chair making his soul.’
‘According to Monsignor Parr, heaven will be a perpetual concert. Do you think that true?’
‘I believe he has been favoured … In fact, in the little powdering closet, before it became my Oratory, something picked him up, and danced him round …’
‘Oh! When?’
‘Only the other day. My dear, yes! And twice in the month of Mary!’
‘Zoom – zoom!’
‘Read to me.’
‘What shall I read?’
‘Get the Lascelles Abercrombie, or the Francis Jammes—’
‘ “La maison serait pleine de roses et de guêpes” – that’s adorable.’
‘It makes one dormative too.’
‘Let’s talk of it.’
She sighed shortly.
‘With so many tiresome cats about, it ought to be protected.’
‘Still, with a bronze-green door at night and a violet curtain in the day—’
‘I know!’
‘And what is it to be?’
‘I suppose we shall adhere to the original plan, after all, and call it John the Baptist.’
‘Oh, don’t!’
‘And why not, pray?’
‘For lack of humour,’ Winsome said, ‘I know of nothing in the world to compare with the Prophet’s music in Salomé. It’s the quintessence of Villadom. It suggests the Salvation Army, and General Booth. It—’
‘You don’t like it?’ she interrupted him.
‘Not very much.’
‘If you’re going to be childish, I propose you should take a walk.’
‘There is nowhere attractive to go.’
‘My dear, there are the walls. They are not Roman walls, but they are very nice walls.’
‘I find it rather boring, the merely picturesque.’
‘Then I’m sure I hardly know—’
‘I’ve an irresistible inclination to attend Mrs Featherstonehaugh’s fête in the Close – admittance a shilling.’
‘Keep your money, my dear boy, or look
through the fence.’
‘Ah, Rome! …’
‘Well, I’m going indoors. I’ve letters … Perhaps you want to write to Andrew, too? I expect he must miss you.’
‘Poor Andrew! He goes stumbling along towards some ideal; it’s difficult to say quite what.’
‘The more reason, then, to write to him.’
‘Oh, stay; another minute, please; and I’ll be g-good—’
‘Then put your tie straight, my dear Rose … And, mind Balthasar’s tail!’
XII
‘Hail, angel!’
‘Darling!’
‘Dearest!’
‘I’ve been thinking about you so much, dear, all day.’
‘Well, I find myself thinking of you too …’
George Calvally had collided with Miss Thumbler, holding ‘a marvellous bargain’, a score of music and a parasol.
‘At the corner of Vigo Street,’ she confessed, ‘my ear began to burn, so frightfully.’
‘Are you going anywhere, dear?’
‘I was in the act,’ she said, shivering, and growing strangely spiritual, ‘of paying a little bill.’
‘Then—’
He looked up. Overhead the sky was so pale that it appeared to have been powdered completely with poudre-de-riz.
‘The proper place,’ he said, ‘to feel the first hint of autumn, I always think, is the angle of Regent Street, close to the Piccadilly Hotel.’
‘How splendidly sequestered, dear, it sounds!’
And already, quite perceptibly, there was a touch of autumn in the air.
In the shops the chrysanthemums mingled with the golden leaves of beech. Baskets of rough green pears lay smothered beneath blue heather.
‘How sweet, child, you look!’
‘I’m so glad. Have I changed since yesterday? Sunday in town leaves such scars … Have I my profile still?’
‘You’ve got it. Just!’ he assured her.
For the dread of Miss Thumbler’s life was that one day she should find herself without it.
‘And do you like me, dearest, so! Mamma considers me quite ghastly in crêpe; she seems to fancy it may somehow cause an earthquake in Cremona, and bring down a doom upon papa …’
‘You’re wonderful. You should never, never, wear anything else.’
‘And it’s scarcely a second since I commanded a muslin sprinkled with showers of tiny multi-coloured spots like handfuls of confetti flung all over it!’
‘Darling!’
‘Dearest?’
Now that George Calvally had lifted Mira up into the sun, she had become more melodious perhaps.
Continually she would be tying things round her forehead, to her mother’s absolute astonishment, or perusing, diligently, the lives of such characters as Saskia, Hélène Fourment, Mrs Blake …
Sometimes, when the mood would seize her, she would wander, for hours, through the slow, deep streets of the capital, in a stiff, shelving mantle, with long, unfashionable folds. At other times, too, she would meet George Calvally, swathed like an idol, and they would drive together in a taxi, full of twilight, holding each other’s hands. Oh, the mad amusement of Piccadilly … the charm, unspeakable, of the Strand … the intoxication of the Embankment towards St Paul’s.
‘Darling, what would you care to do?’
‘At the Coliseum,’ she said, ‘they’re giving Georges Dandin, with the music of Lully. Shall we go?’
He laughed.
‘On such a glorious afternoon, it would be ungrateful to stay indoors.’
‘But Professor Inglepin, dear, has designed the dresses, and his sense of costume is simply …’
‘Angelic one, he’s getting …’
‘Though, certain busts of Bernini, George!’
‘Oh, mind … There’s weariness!’
Holding a pink-purple flower to her nose, her eyes closed, Miss Compostella swept by them, in some jewelled hades of her own.
‘How magnificent she looked!’
Mira turned, serpentine.
‘Was that the first sign of autumn, do you suppose?’
‘Listen. I’ve something to ask you, child.’
With her scroll of music she caressed, sympathetically, his arm.
‘It’s about the church your father’s setting up.’
‘Dearest, he says it’s the last he ever means to build.’
‘Mrs Henedge has asked me to undertake the frescoes …’
‘That’s joy!’
‘But you must help.’
‘You mean … give me time, dear, I’ll see.’
‘Darling! Decide.’
‘Wouldn’t Rosamund—?’
‘Impossible. Every five minutes she needs a rest! Besides—’
‘Rubbish, besides!’
‘But I need you.’
‘What will Mary say?’
‘What difference can it make to her?’
‘I suppose not. She left, just now, the sweetest note, with tickets for the Queen’s Hall.’
‘She’s very fond of you, I know.’
‘Oh, George, it makes me miserable to think of her.’
He hailed a taxi.
‘How would the Wallace be?’
‘The Collection?’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it indoors … dear! And surely it’s the most stagnant place on earth?’
XIII
‘Wierus, Furiel, Charpon, Charmias!’
The very air seemed charged with tragic thoughts. The play of colour from her aura was so bright, it lit the room.
‘Charmias!’ she called, compellingly.
Stretched out upon an Anne settle, watching her, Lady Castleyard lay, in a rather beautiful heap.
‘Can you see anything?’ she inquired. With a bottle of pact-ink overturned upon the dressing-table, she had retreated to the background, to be ‘out of the way’.
‘Selah! …’
Lady Castleyard took up a mirror.
‘If the devil won’t come,’ she said, ‘we can’t force him.’
Mrs Shamefoot seemed piqued.
‘Not come? Why, he’s taken all the wave out of my hair.’
‘It certainly is less successful, from the side.’
‘What would you advise?’
‘I should take what the Bishop offers you. Don’t break adrift again.’
‘You’d accept Ashringford?’
‘Well … One may as well as not!’
She collapsed, disheartened.
‘I’m like a loose leaf,’ she moaned, ‘tossed about the world.’
‘Don’t be so foolish; probably it’s more amusing for the loose leaf than for the rooted tree.’
‘And you no longer care to join?’
‘Birdie, when I’ve squared my card losses, and my race losses, and my dressmaker, and re-decorated our new house a little, I’ll have nothing over.’
‘There’s Lionel! …’
‘Oh, he’s so prodigal; I know I’ll die in a ditch.’
‘Then it’s clear, of course, you mustn’t.’
‘Besides, Biddy, you couldn’t expect me to climb away into the tracery lights; it would be like singing Souzouki in Butterfly.’
‘And you forgive me?’
‘I bear no bitterness.’
Mrs Shamefoot moved towards the window.
The gardens looked almost heroic in the evening light. If the statues, that lit the sombre ever-greens of the walks, did not suggest Phidias, they did, at least, their duty.
‘When the birds fly low, and the insects turn, and turn,’ she said, ‘there’s rain!’
Lady Castleyard closed her eyes.
‘I like a storm,’ she murmured, ‘particularly at night. Sometimes one can catch a face in it – somebody one’s been wondering about, perhaps, or who’s been wondering of you. And one meets in the explosion.’
With a string of pearls Mrs Shamefoot flicked at a passing bat.
‘We should dress,’ she observed, ‘for dinner.’
‘Sir Isaac is
strolling about outside still, isn’t he?’
Mrs Shamefoot peered out.
Already the sun had dipped below the hills, using, above Ashringford, the golds and purples of Poussin that suggested Rome. In the twilight the old, partly disused, stables looked strangely mysterious and aloof.
‘And Sir Isaac?’
‘Yes, he’s there still; like a tourist without a guide-book. But he’s not going to be stitched into a Vionnet model by eight; nor has his head been ruffled recently by the devil.’
‘Is that a Vionnet shimmering across the bed … What does Soco say?’
‘My dear, he never looks. In the spring he goes striding past the first violet; and it’s always the same.’
‘I wish he’d take up Lionel until my ballroom’s done. His idea of decoration never varies, and it’s becoming so wearisome. Horns at intervals! …’
‘How appalling!’
‘We shall be all spears and antlers, when you come.’
‘Have you that same artistic footman still?’
‘Oh, heavens; yes!’
‘I adored him. He would clap his hand to his forehead whenever he forgot the … potatoes in an attitude altogether Age d’Airain.’
‘Biddy, see who it is; there’s somebody at the door.’
‘It’s me!’
‘Who’s me?’
‘It’s Sumph.’
‘Who’s Sumph?’
‘It’s me.’
‘I know.’
‘I’m Miss Compostella’s maid.’
‘So Julia’s here.’
‘Opst!’
‘And when did she arrive?’
Sumph smiled. ‘I’ve been buzzing about the house,’ she said, ‘this last half-hour.’
‘Indeed!’
‘Miss Compostella sent me downstairs after a cucumber. Travelling disorients her so. And I must have missed my way.’
‘I believe she’s in the Round Tower.’
‘The housekeeper did say. But had she been the mother of Roxolana, Duchess of Dublin, she could hardly have been more brief.’
Mrs Shamefoot became concerned.
‘When you find your way again,’ she said, ‘give your mistress these, with my love; they’re certain to cure her.’
‘The poor soul was stretched out like some dead thing that breathes,’ Sumph murmured, ‘as I came away.’
Nevertheless, at dinner, nobody could have guessed Miss Compostella’s recent critical condition. Had she returned that moment from a month at Mürren one would have wondered still what she had employed.
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