‘It’s only now and then,’ she informed Lord Blueharnis, inclining towards him, ‘that I ever venture; wine has to be utterly exquisite, or I make a face!’
Falling between Dean Manly and Mr Guy Fox, she resembled a piece of Venice glass between two strong schoolroom mugs.
‘I expect he’ll fall in love some day with somebody,’ Lady Georgia exclaimed, injuring a silence, ‘and marry; or don’t you think he will?’
‘Marry; who?’
‘Claud Harvester.’
‘Why should he? If Claud can be the Gaby Deslys of literature now, he doesn’t seem to mind.’
‘But would he be literature?’
‘Why, of course!’
‘ “Love’s Arrears”,’ Dean Manly said, ‘was an amazing piece of work.’
Miss Compostella turned upon him:
‘I’m Maggie!’ she said.
But Mrs Shamefoot took compassion upon the Dean’s surprise.
‘He’s become almost too doll-like and Dorothy latterly,’ she inquired, ‘hasn’t he?’
‘Of course, Claud’s considered a cult, but everybody reads him!’
‘And Mr Garsaint’s comedy?’
‘With the exception of Maria Random, Anna’s maid, the cast is quite complete.’
‘I suppose Anna Comnena had a maid?’ Mr Guy Fox remarked.
Lady Georgia stiffened a candle that had begun to bend.
‘I want you to tell me, presently,’ she said, ‘about young Chalmers. I used to know his mother long ago. She was a great hypocrite, poor dear, but I was very fond of her, all the same!’
But Miss Compostella never put off anything.
‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘of course he’s wonderfully good-looking and gifted, and rather a draw; but I dislike playing with him. Directly he comes on to the stage he begins to perspire.’
‘And that nice little Mr Williams?’
‘He joined the Persian Ballet.’
Mrs Guy Fox put up her Lorgnon. Her examination of the purple Sèvres dessert service and the James I spoons, she intended, should last at least two minutes; her aversion to the word perspire was only equalled by her horror for the word flea …
And indeed Mrs Guy Fox was continually upon the alert.
Ever since her sisters-in-law had been carried off by peers, she had looked upon her husband as a confirmed stick-in-the-mud. It was unreasonable of her, Mr Guy Fox complained, when it was hardly to be hoped that Fortune would repeat herself with him.
‘No, really, I ask for nothing better,’ Mrs Shamefoot said to the Dean, ‘than to waste my sweetness on the desert air …’
‘And I see no reason why you should not,’ he replied. ‘The Bishop, I’m confident, doesn’t intend to be disobliging.’
‘Yes; but you know he is!’
‘I wish it were in my power to be of service to you. But you’re negotiating, I believe, with five or six cathedrals, at the present time?’
‘Not so many. I’ve Overcares in view, though, to be surrounded by that unpleasant Gala glass would be a continual strain. And then, there’s Carnage. But somehow the East Coast never appealed to me. It’s so stringy.’
‘Even Ely?’ he inquired.
‘Oh, Ely’s beautiful. But how sad!’
‘Ashringford, also, is sad. Sometimes, in winter, the clouds fall right down upon us. And the towers of St Dorothy remain lost in them for days.’
‘A mariage mystique would be just what I’d enjoy.’
‘Has it occurred to you to become identified with some small, some charming church, the surprisal of which, in an obscure alley, would amount almost to an adventure?’
‘But I’m so tired,’ she said, ‘of playing Bo-Peep.’
‘Still, some cosy gem!’
‘A cosy gem?’
‘St Lazarus, for instance—’
‘I’m told it leaks. There are forty-two holes in the roof.’
‘Or St Anastasia.’
‘St Anastasia is quite unsafe. Besides, I can’t endure a spire. It’s such a slope.’
‘St Mary Magdalen?’ he ventured.
‘I have her life upstairs! Did you know she was actually engaged to John the Baptist. Until Salome broke it off. It was only after the sad affair at the palace that Mary really buckled to and became what she afterwards became. But her church here is so pitch dark, and it’s built, throughout, with flints. I couldn’t bear it.’
‘Or Great St Helen’s!’
She shuddered.
‘There’s the graveyard,’ she said. ‘I’d never like it. I don’t understand the tombs. And I hope I never shall! Those urns with towels thrown over them cast shades like thirteenth-century women.’
‘It’s unaccountable to me,’ the Dean said, ‘that you should care to tie yourself to consecrated ground, when you might be an Independent. A Theodoric!’
‘I hope you’ll make it plain to Doctor Pantry,’ Lady Georgia said to him, as the ladies left the room, ‘that she’s fading fast away. She has scarcely tumbled a crumb between her lips now for weeks: it almost breaks my heart to look at her.’
Miss Compostella twined an arm about her friend.
‘If I worship anything,’ she confessed, ‘it’s trees …’
‘Come outside; the flowers smell so sweet in the dark.’
The tired cedars in the park had turned to blackened emerald, the air seemed smeared with bloom. Here and there, upon the incomparably soft grey hills, a light shone like a very clear star.
‘How admirable, ’Orgy, it is!’
‘Though to my idea,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘the hills would undoubtedly gain if some sorrowful creature could be induced to take to them. I often long for a bent, slim figure, to trail slowly along the ridge, at sundown, in an agony of regret.’
Mrs Guy Fox drew on a glove.
‘I’m quite certain,’ she remarked, ‘that Sir Victor would not require much pressing.’
Lady Georgia made her gentlest grimace.
‘I wish,’ she said, ‘he would, for his figure’s sake. He is getting exactly like that preposterous effigy of King Edward the Last in the Public Gardens.’
‘Mrs Barrow of Dawn vows it produces a romantic effect on her.’
‘Poor Violet! Cooped up half the year with an old man and seven staid servants, it cannot be very gay.’
‘They say if she’s absent, even an hour together,’ Mrs Guy Fox said, ‘he sends a search party after her. And he’s so miserably mean. Why the collar of pearls he gave his first wife strangled her!’
‘I heard she died in torment; but I didn’t know from what.’
Mrs Shamefoot held the filmy feathers of her fan slantwise across the night. It pleased her to watch whole planets gleam between the fragile sticks.
‘Nobody,’ she exclaimed, ‘would do for me the things that I would do for them!’
‘… One can never be sure what a person will do unless one has tried.’
Lady Georgia drew a scarf devotionally about her head.
‘Julia has offered to speak some scenes from tragedies to us,’ she said.
‘Gladly, Georgia, I will, when we’re full numbers.’
‘Here come our husbands now!’
‘At the risk of seeming sentimental,’ Sir Isaac declared, ‘I want to tell you how good your dinner was; it was excellent.’
‘All millionaires love a baked apple,’ Lady Georgia murmured, as she led the way with him towards the Greek theatre.
‘ “Que ton âme est bien née Fille d’Agamemnon,” ’ Miss Compostella declaimed dispassionately, by way of tuning up.
In sympathetic silence Mrs Shamefoot followed with the Dean.
The statues stood like towers above the low dwarf trees, dark, now, against the night. Across the gardens, from the town, the Cathedral bells chimed ten. Ten silver strokes, like the petals falling from a rose.
She sighed. She sought support. She swayed …
XIV
Alas, that conviviality should need excuse! Whil
e Miss Compostella, somewhat tardily, raised the Keen for Iphigenia, Lady Anne conducted a dinner conference, for women alone.
A less hospitable nature, no doubt, would have managed (quite charmingly), upon tea. But Lady Anne scorned the trickle.
Nor was it before the invitations were consigned to the pillar-box in the Palace wall, that she decided, in deference to the Bishop, who was in Sintrap, to add the disarming nuance. To append which, with a hairpin, she had forced the postman’s lock.
For indeed excess is usually the grandparent to deceit. And now, with a calm mind beneath a small tiara, she leaned an elbow, conferentially, upon a table, decorated altogether recklessly by Aurelia, with acacia leaves and apostle spoons.
She had scarcely set her spark.
‘No, really! … I can’t think why she should have it,’ Miss Wardle exclaimed, leaping instantly into a blaze.
‘She’s very handsome, isn’t she? And that’s always something. And when you’re next in Sloane Street, you’ll observe she has a certain wayward taste for arranging flowers.’
‘If those are her chief credentials, I shall not interfere …’
‘Nobody denies her taste for flowers,’ Mrs Pontypool exclaimed. ‘Though, from her manner of dress, one wouldn’t perhaps take her to be a Christian. But handsome! I must say, I don’t think so. Such a little pinched, hard, cold, shrivelled face. With a profile like the shadow of a doubt. And with a phantom husband too, whom nobody has ever seen.’
‘To be fair to her, one has read his ridiculous speeches.’
‘If a window is allowed at all, surely Miss Brice should have it?’
‘But why should the Cathedral be touched? It’s far too light as it is. Often, I assure you, we all of us look quite old … The sun streams in on one in such a manner.’
‘Besides, when she has already nibbled at Perch, why must she come to us?’
‘Nibbled! One fancies her to have stormed Overcares, Carnage, Sintrap, Whetstone, Cowby, Mawling, Marrow and Marrowby, besides beseeching Perch.’
‘If she could only bring herself to wait,’ Mrs Wookie wailed, ‘Mrs Henedge might cater for her at St John’s …’
‘St John’s! From what one hears, it will be a perfect Mosque.’
Lady Anne refused a peach.
‘I’ve begged the Dean to propose something smaller to her,’ she said, ‘than St Dorothy, where she can put up a window and be as whimsical as she likes.’
‘That’s common-sense. It wouldn’t matter much what she did at Crawbery.’
‘Or even in the town. So many of the smaller churches are falling into dilapidation. It’s quite sad. Only this evening Miss Critchett was complaining bitterly of the draught at St Mary’s. Her life, she says, is one ceaseless cold. A window there, that would shut, would be such a blessing.’
‘And the building, I believe, is distinctly Norman.’
‘Call it Byzantine to her …’
‘It’s a pity she won’t do something useful with her money. Repair a clock that wanders, for instance, or pension off some bells. Whenever those bells near us begin to ring they sound such bargains.’
‘Or fence in St Cyriac, where my poor Percy is,’ Mrs Wookie said pathetically. ‘It really isn’t nice the way the cows get in and loll among the tombs. If it’s only for the milk—’
‘What is your vote, Mrs Pontypool?’
‘Oh, my dear, don’t ask me! I mean to be passive. I mean to be neutral. I shan’t interfere.’
‘But isn’t it one’s duty?’
‘Well, I’m always glad of any change,’ Mrs Barrow said. ‘Any little brightness. Nothing ever happens here.’
Miss Wookie became clairvoyant. ‘If I’m not much mistaken,’ she said, ‘it’s an expiatory window she intends us to admire.’
‘That’s perfectly possible.’
‘Indeed, it’s more than likely.’
‘For some imprudence, perhaps. Some foolish step …’
‘Ah, poor thing …!’
‘And in any case, the window, for her, will be a kind of osprey!’
‘One could understand a window in moderation, but apparently she’s quite insatiable.’
‘When my hour comes,’ Mrs Wookie said, ‘I shall hope to lie in the dear kitchen-garden.’
Miss Wardle groped about her, and shivered slightly.
‘I’d like my cloak,’ she murmured, ‘please, if you don’t mind.’
And indeed, it was a matter of surprise, and a sign of success, that she had not sent for it before.
For any gathering that might detain her beyond her own gate after dark it was her plan to assume a cloak of gold galloon that had hidden, once, the shoulders of the Infanta Maria Isabella.
How the garment had reached Miss Wardle’s wardrobe was unknown; but that she did not disown it was clear; since frequently she would send a footman for it midway during dinner. It was like the whistle that sounded half-time at a football match, bucolic neighbours said.
‘What is the feeling about it in the town?’ Lady Anne inquired.
‘Until the decision is final, people hardly know which way to object. But Mr Dyce says if she has the window, he’ll show up the Cathedral.’
‘Really! Horrid old man! What can he mean?’
‘Insolency!’
‘And Mr Pet … But, my dear, fortunately he’s such a rapid preacher. One misses half he says.’
‘The text he took on Sunday was Self-Idolatry, the Golden Calf …’
‘I thought it was to be green!’
‘What, the calf?’
‘No, the window.’
‘Perhaps he’ll go before it’s all arranged.’
‘Very likely. I hear he finds Ashringford so expensive …’
Mrs Pontypool scratched her smooth, fair fringe.
‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘poor young man, with exactly twopence a year, he’d find everywhere ruinous.’
‘And then, I wonder, who will take his place?’
‘Oh, surely Mr Olney will.’
‘He’s such a boy …’
‘My dear, age is no obstacle. And his maiden sermon came as a complete surprise! Of course, he was a trifle nervous. He shook in his shoes till his teeth rattled. And his hair stood on end. But, all the same, he was very brilliant.’
‘Oh, don’t!’ Miss Pontypool murmured.
And indeed, notwithstanding a certain analogy between her home circle with that of the Cenci, she was almost an Ingenious. She would say, ‘Don’t!’ ‘Oh, don’t!’ ‘My dear, don’t!’ apropos of nothing at all.
‘Oh, don’t!’ she murmured.
‘I recall a song of his about a kangaroo,’ Mrs Wookie said, ‘once. At a hunt ball.’
‘ “Garoo-garoo-garoo”, wasn’t it?’ Aurelia asked. ‘Disgraceful.’
‘My dear. Don’t …’
‘How fortunate for that little Miss Farthing if he should come. Although she’d have to change her ways. As I’ve so often tried to tell her, one should wear tailor-mades in the country, instead of going about like a manicure on her holiday.’
‘I don’t believe there is anything in that,’ Miss Hospice said.
‘I’m not at all sure. Whenever they meet he gives such funny little gasps …’
‘Mr Olney needs a wife who could pay at least her own expenses.’
‘What has he a year?’
‘He owns to a thousand. But he has quite fifteen hundred.’
‘Besides, he’s too pale, and his face lacks purpose.’
Lady Anne rapped her fan with pathos.
‘Any side issues,’ she said, ‘might be settled later.’
‘Well, I don’t see why she should have it,’ Miss Wardle repeated. ‘To the glory of Mrs Shamefoot, and of the Almighty … No, really I can’t see why!’
‘Had she been a saint,’ Mrs Wookie observed, ‘it would have been another matter.’
‘There’s not much, my dear, to choose between women. Things are done on a different scale. That’s all.’
‘Hush, Aurelia. How can you be such a cynic!’
‘All the same,’ Miss Pantry said, ‘trotting to the Cathedral solely of a Sunday, and caring about oneself, solely, all the week, is like crawling into heaven, by weekly instalments …’
‘Indeed, that’s charitable,’ Miss Chimney, who was dining at the Palace as a ‘silent protest’, was constrained to say.
‘But it’s such a commonplace thing to do, to condemn a person one knows next to nothing of!’
‘Mrs Shamefoot was at St Dorothy, for the Thanksgiving, wasn’t she?’
‘I believe so. But Miss Middling sat immediately before me. And with all that yellow wheat in her hat I couldn’t see a thing.’
‘I remarked her rouging her lips very busily, during a long Amen.’
‘Well, I couldn’t quite make out what she had on. But she looked very foreign from behind.’
‘That was Lady Castleyard. Mrs Shamefoot’s little jacket was plainer than any cerecloth. And on her head there was the saddest slouch …’
‘Then she shall have my vote. For counting the pin-holes in it made me positively dizzy.’
‘And you may add mine.’
‘And mine …’
‘I forbid anything of the kind, Kate,’ her mother said. ‘Lady Anne will return it to me, I’m sure.’ And extending a withered hand in the direction of the vote she slipped some salted almonds into her bosom.
‘Oh, Tatty!’
‘I shall put your vote with mine, Kate,’ she said, ‘for it grieves me to see you are such an arrant fool.’
‘Don’t!’
‘Where’s the good of stirring up Karma for nothing?’ Aurelia wondered.
Mrs Barrow shook her head sceptically.
‘I’ve too little confidence,’ she said, ‘in straws and smoke, as it is, to credit the pin-marks of a bonnet. It was her maid’s.’
‘How agnostic, Violet, you are! I shall have you going over to Mrs Henedge before you’ve done.’
‘Why, she wears the Cathedral even now.’
‘I thought she had dropped it. She is getting so tawdry.’
‘There’s a powder-puff and a bottle of Jordan water, or Eau Jeunesse, of hers here still,’ Aurelia said. ‘Besides a blotting-book.’
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