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And after the customary skirmishing of the Board, and reconciliatory garden-party, a theatrical tailor had been beckoned to, from Covent Garden, who had measured half the town.
And now, beneath the great horse-chestnut trees, where stood ‘the Fountain’, round which, of a summer morning, the ‘native’ women clustered, chatting charmingly, as they sold each other flowers, or posing, whenever they should be invited, to anxious artists for a shilling an hour, an enchanted American, leaning, observant, from a window of the Cresswell Arms, might almost fancy that, what with the determined duennas thronging to the Cathedral, and darting chambermaids holding long obtrusive envelopes, and tripping shepherdesses and dainty goose-girls, and occasionally, even, some pale, ring-eyed-powdered-nervous Margaret, with empty pitcher, and white-stockinged feet, it was still the threshold of the thirteenth century.
‘There’s nothing in the museum, whatever,’ the woman repeated. ‘Nothing at all.’ And she added almost desperately: ‘It’s where they keep the rubbish.’
But Mrs Shamefoot was not accustomed to be baulked.
‘There’re the sepulchral urns, and the tear bottles, at any rate,’ she said, ‘and there’s a good skeleton, I believe?’
‘Yes, marm. There is that.’
‘Well, then! …’ And pushing apart the light gilt gates, she swept inside. And even if it were only for the fascinating fanlight on the stairs, she was glad that she had come.
And there was also a mirror! The unexpected shock of the thing brought a flush of pleasure to her cheek. She had hardly hoped to find so much.
‘Marvellous woman,’ she exclaimed, going up to it, with an amicable nod, ‘where’ve you been?’
She was looking bewitching beyond measure, she believed, bound in black ribands, with a knot like a pure white butterfly under her chin.
And to her astonishment, there were mirrors, or their equivalents, upon most of the walls.
‘That habit of putting glass over an oil painting,’ she murmured, ‘makes always such a good reflection, particularly when the picture’s dark. Many’s the time I’ve run into the National Gallery on my way to the Savoy and tidied myself before the Virgin of the Rocks …’
And selecting a somewhat spindle-legged settee she glanced yearningly around.
It was the room of the Blueharnis Bequest.
In a place of prominence, unmistakable, was the Dehell portrait of the donor, leaning against a door, in full uniform, the arms folded, the eyes fixed, dangling a sword.
What could have happened?
Anxiously, for a clue, she scanned the pendant of his wife, a billowy, balloon-like creature, leading by a chain of frail convolvulus a prancing warhorse. But the mystery still remained.
Near by, upon a screen (being stored for her), was the Miss Millicent Mutton of Maclise. Here, in a party pinafore, Mrs Henedge was seen riding recklessly upon a goat clasping a panier of peaches and roses while smiling down at an angelic little boy who, with a thistle and a tambourine, was urging the nanny on.
Eventually, authorities affirmed, the canvas would find its way to the South Kensington Museum, where (besides being near to dear Father … and to old Father … and the Oratory), there was a room waiting ready to receive it where it would be perfectly happy and at home.
And as one work will beget another, Mrs Pontypool, not to be outdone, had contributed an ancestral portrait of a lady, reclining upon a canopy, plainly prostrate, beneath the hot furnaces, and the fiery skies, of Manchester …
But, for the most part, as was but fitting for a Cathedral town, the mildly Satanic school of Heironymus Bosch was chiefly to the fore.
Yet, whimsically wistful, an elderly frame in curtains was waiting to be found. Leisurely, Mrs Shamefoot rose.
That something, singularly wicked, was concealed beneath the hangings, she had no doubt.
And indeed it was ‘Le thé à l’Anglaise, chez Lucrezia Borgia’, in which an elegant and radiant Lucrezia, tea-pot in hand, was seen admiring the indisposition of her guests like a naughty child.
A glass of flowers by Fantin brought her to herself.
‘If I could feel it were all arranged!’ she murmured. ‘Unless this window-quibbling ceases, I’ll soon be in my grave. And Soco, I’m confident, could not be counted upon, even for the simplest cross. He’d marry again. The brute!’
She looked out across a half-wild garden to the Asz. Beyond the broad bridges, the peaked hayricks, sprinkling the hills, stood sharp, like pyramids, against the sky. There was something monstrous and disquieting in their shapes that thrilled her. To be an Independent upon some promontory, she mused, above the sea; a land-mark; perhaps, a shrine! …
White birds, like drifting pearls, would weave their way about her, examining her with their desolate empty eyes.
Or to be a lighthouse; looped in lights!
Although to search out some poor face, when it the least expected it would be carrying ill-nature, perhaps, to a rather far extreme. Better some idle tower. But in England, towers so seldom mellowed rightly. They were too rain-washed, weather-beaten, wind-kissed, rugged; they turned tragic and outlived themselves; they became such hags of things; they grew dowdy and wore snapdragons; objects for picnics; rendezvous of lovers, haunts of vice …; they were made a convenience of by owls; they were scarred by names; choked by refuse, and in the end, they got ghoulish and took to too much ivy, and came toppling down.
She stood repressed.
Over the darkly gleaming water of the Asz a boat passed by with cordings like the strings of some melancholy instrument. From the deserted garden below an odour of burning leaves loitered up to her. The long pink Infidels flared stiffly from the shade.
‘Heigh-ho,’ she yawned, ‘one can’t play fast and loose for ever …’ And she turned away, dolefully, through the damp deserted rooms.
A piece of tessellated pavement, a sandaled foot, detained her. ‘Street!’ she murmured, stooping down, enthralled.
The frou-frou of the custodian’s skirts disturbed her.
‘Such a mixture of everything as there is; a country Cluny!’
‘I daresay, marm. I’ve never been round the worruld; I’ve lived in Ashringford, man, and boy, these sixty years.’
‘Indeed; that’s why you look so young!’
‘I beg your pardon, marm?’
‘I say, that’s why you look so young!’
And startled by his historic attire, she trailed slowly towards the door, gazing back at him across her shoulder, with one arm stretched before, the other lingering behind, in the attitude of a nymph evading a satyr upon a Kylix.
It was a relief to hear voices! Chatting beneath an immaterial study of the sunset breeze, she beheld the ample form of Sumph.
‘And in Act IV,’ she was saying, ‘the husband pretends to go away. But, of course, he doesn’t! He goes only a little distance … And the “curtain” should be beautiful! Lovely it ought to be. The birds all singing as if their last hour had come. And Miss Compostella and Mr Chalmers—’
‘Is your mistress anywhere about?’ Mrs Shamefoot interrupted her.
Sumph smiled.
‘Why, no,’ she said, ‘she’s not. I’m here with Mrs Henedge’s maid; just taking a look round.’
‘Really? …’
‘Whenever I’m able I like to encourage anything that’s Art.’
‘And how do you like Ashringford?’
‘I like it. It puts me in mind of the town Dick Whittington came to when all the bells were ringing.’
‘You’ve been up the tower!’
‘It didn’t seem worth while. They told us beforehand we could never see back there … But we watched them pull the bells. Quite a receipt of their own they seemed to have. Such swingings and pausings and noddings and rushings. You should have seen the dowdies run! And in such bonnets. As Thérèse remarked, it was an education in botany.’
‘Oh-h-h!’
There came a cry.
Mrs Henedge’s maid was before the
Borgia thé.
Nodding sympathetically to Sumph, Mrs Shamefoot disappeared.
XVI
‘Ever since the accident,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘she has been going about in such heavens of joy. I’ve seldom seen anyone so happy.’
Mrs Guy Fox passed a hand across her eyes.
‘It fell,’ she remarked, ‘so suddenly; I was in my bath.’
Miss Compostella helped herself to honey.
‘I fear St Dorothy’s badly damaged.’
‘Half of it is down.’
‘Oh no, dear; not half.’
‘It’s as if the gods granted it to her,’ Lady Georgia declared; ‘she’s been so brave.’
‘Such gusts of wind! The way they pulled the bushes—’
‘How did it happen, exactly?’
‘A pair of scissors, it appears, was left upon the scaffolding, and caught the lightning’s eye.’
‘What a dreadful thing!’
Mrs Fox shuddered.
‘That the Cathedral should submit to be struck,’ she said, ‘strikes me as being so strange. It never has before.’
‘Lady Anne has twice ’phoned.’
‘… Surely not already?’
‘Before breakfast, too!’
‘Polite …’
Lady Georgia rolled her eyes.
‘What is one to do with a person,’ she demanded, ‘who cannot feel the spell of a beautiful supreme thing like Tintoretto’s Crucifixion?’
‘And where is she now?’
‘Oh, my dear, she’s wandering exultant about the house. She’s been doing it since six.’
‘Leave her,’ Mr Guy Fox advised. ‘Perhaps presently she’ll come down and have a good cry.’
‘Darling Biddy, she’s been divinely patient. But the strain was becoming too much for her. It was undermining her health.’
‘Holding ten cathedrals at arm’s-length must have been terribly tiring.’
‘I had an idea it was quite the other way. In any case, thank heaven, the wrangling’s over. Done.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But clearly a difficulty is removed. They’re sure to secure her for the Restorations.’
‘My maid has asked if she can go over and see the ruins,’ Miss Compostella said.
‘She should take the bridle-path through the fields,’ Lady Georgia murmured, rising to welcome Mrs Shamefoot as she came in.
Over a rug that suggested a summer morning, Mrs Shamefoot skimmed, pale in cloud-white laces, her hands buried beneath the flimsy plumage of a muff, like some soul who (after a tirade or two), would evaporate and take flight.
‘You may kiss me,’ she murmured wistfully, ‘but kiss me carefully.’
‘I heard you at the telephone as I crossed the hall.’
‘Lady Anne ra-rang.’
‘I hope she was pleasant.’
‘No. She was only half-charming, if you know; she was nice, without being nice … But one feels she’s climbing down. Of course, I told her, without the approbation of all Ashringford, I wouldn’t for the world … and on her side, she spoke of making a ragout with the remains.’
‘She’s so tasteless,’ Lady Georgia exclaimed. ‘But there it is, many people seem to imagine that a stained-glass window is nothing of the kind unless some over-good-looking young saint is depicted in bathing drawers and half-an-inch of water.’
Mrs Shamefoot raised her muff beneath her chin.
‘Soco’s so silly,’ she said. ‘He’d fire at anything like that with his revolver. And, oh, Mr Guy Fox … I’ve got to scold you. Standing beneath my window and calling me by my name millions and millions of times was fearfully indiscreet …’
‘I thought you’d be interested to know.’
‘ “It’s down,” you said, “it’s down.” The servants must have wondered what you meant! Though it’s really rather odd; when your voice disturbed me, I was having such a curious-funny dream. People were digging me up for reliques …’
‘Here’s your coffee, dear.’
‘All I need, darling, is a Railway Guide. I must return at once to town; I’m so busy!’
‘Remain until to-morrow,’ Miss Compostella said, ‘and travel back with me.’
‘But, Julia, you’re not leaving us so soon!’
‘I must. You know I’m in despair with my helmet for the Garsaint piece. I do not care about myself in it at all; it’s too stiff. And the crown; I’m sure the crown’s too timid.’
But Mrs Guy Fox was reading aloud some extracts of a letter from her son, a dutiful diplomat who, even when fast asleep, it was said, suggested the Court of St James.
‘Just now,’ she read, ‘the Judas trees along the banks of the Bosphorus are coming into flower. The colour of these trees is extraordinary. They are neither red nor violet, and at evening they turn a sort of agony of rose.’
‘Delicious!’ Lady Georgia said, staring at Atalanta in dismay. There were moments, especially in the early morning, when she alarmed her mother. Moments when she looked remotely Japanese …
‘No; there’s nothing in the paper at all, except that the Wirewells have arrived,’ Lady Castleyard said, stepping out upon the lawn.
Mrs Shamefoot joined her.
After the gale a yellow branch lay loose beneath each tree, making the park appear to be carpeted by some quite formal silk. The morning was fine with courageous crazy clouds.
‘You’re tired?’
‘A little,’ Lady Castleyard confessed. ‘All this death makes me melancholy.’
‘I expect it’s merely Lionel!’
‘Lionel? But I’m not tired of Lionel. Only, now and then, I long rather for a new aspect …’
‘Do you suppose, if there were no men in the world, that women would frightfully mind?’
‘I don’t know, really … What a pity to leave that gloriously bound book out all night!’
They turned aside through a wicket-gate into an incidental garden.
At periods, upon the enclosing walls, stood worn lead figures of cupid gardeners, in cavalier hats and high, loose boots, and cunning gloves, leaning languidly upon their rakes, smiling seraphically over the gay rings of flowers that broke the grass.
‘Age holds no horrors for me,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘now, any more. Some day I’ll have a house here and I’ll grow old, quite gracefully.’
‘Surely with age one’s attractions should increase. One should be irresistible at ninety.’
‘A few of us, perhaps, may. You, dear Dirce, will—’
‘But in Ashringford! You used always to say it would be at Versailles, or Vallombrosa, or Verona, or Venice; a palladio palace on the Grand Canal. Somewhere with a V!’
‘I remember … ; although I was tempted too rather, wasn’t I, towards Arcachon. And that’s an A!’
‘Poor Soco. He’ll be so surprised …’
‘It’s a pity, whenever he speaks, he’s so very disappointing.’
‘Still, there’ll be the bill …’
‘Well, he could scarcely have seriously supposed I’d throw myself away upon a lancet! Besides, I believe I’ll be desired somehow more when I’m gone. What good am I here?’
‘My dear, you compose in flowers. You adorn life. You have not lived in vain.’
They were in the dogs’ cemetery.
Lady Castleyard tapped a little crooked cross.
‘One fears,’ she said, ‘that Georgia must have poisoned them all for the sake of their epitaphs.’
‘Here come the children!’
‘And remember, Frank,’ Fräulein was warning Master Fox, in her own wonderful Hanoverian way, ‘not to pursue Mirabel too much towards the end. It makes her hot.’
They were preparing to play at Pelléas.
Lady Georgia insisted that her children should practise only purely poetic games. She desired to develop their souls and bodies harmoniously at the same time.
‘Remember the chill she caught as Nora!’ Fräulein said. ‘And, Dawna, must I re-implore you not to pick up the sun-
money with your hands? Misericordia! One might think your father was a banker.’
‘I do so love the sun!’
‘Do you, dear?’
Obviously, it was an occasion to kiss and form a group.
XVII
‘Certainly I should object to milk a cow,’ Miss Compostella said. ‘Why?’
Sumph smiled.
‘I see so many,’ she said. ‘One, the prettiest possible thing, the very living, breathing image of the Alderney that you engaged, miss, to walk on in The Princess of Syracuse.’
‘It would be the signal,’ Miss Compostella said, ‘often for a scuffle.’
‘And don’t I know it!’ said Sumph.
‘Although to me, it was always extraordinary that Miss Elcock, who almost fainted whenever she encountered it in the wings, would become indifferent to the point of being tossed the instant the curtain rose. She was too preoccupied about appearing young, I suppose, to care about anything else, her own part included.’
‘Oh no, miss. She was a great, great actress. Watching her in certain scenes, how cold my hands would grow! The blood would fly to my heart!’
The invaluable woman grew nostalgic.
‘I fear you don’t delight in the country, somehow, as you should.’
‘I don’t know, miss. Ashringford amuses me. I find myself dying of laughter here several times a day.’
‘Indeed—’
‘Naturally not in the house. It’s too much like a sanatorium for that. Every time I come to you along the corridors I feel just as if I was going to visit some poor sick soul and had forgotten my flowers.’
Miss Compostella gave an arranging touch to a bouquet of blue berries above her ear.
‘I hope you passed a pleasant afternoon,’ she said, ‘among the ruins.’
‘It was lovely. I sat on a piece of crumbled richness in the long grass for over an hour. Afterwards, I took tea at the Closed House with Thérèse. She was so busy with her needle. “I shall need a frock for my conversion,” Mrs Henedge told her the other day, “and another for my reconversion, in case that’s necessary.” “But fashions change so quickly, madame,” Thérèse said to her. “And so do I,” she said, “I can travel a long way in a week.” Chopping and changing! But it’s to be quite a decided little frock for all that. Very plain. With some nice French buttons. The other is one of those curious colour contrasts … So quickly. But rather smart. A discord of lemon, pink, and orange. And I came back, miss, to Stockingham, by way of the Asz, in spite of Signora Spagetti. “Never walk by the waterside,” she said to me, when I was a child. That’s why we left Stratford. Because of the Avon.’