‘Oh, Andrew! An-drew can’t draw. He never drew anything yet.’
‘Run away, dear; do.’
‘Besides, he’s going to Deauville to decorate a Bar … Scenes of English Life—’
‘My dear, all Europe is very much alike!’
‘And all the world, for the matter of that.’
‘I heard from George this morning.’
‘Really, what does he say?’
‘Oh, it’s only a line. So formal, with the date, and everything. And there is a tiny message, too, from her.’
‘Poor demoniac—’
‘Of course I haven’t seen you since!’
‘No—’
Mrs Calvally settled her pillows.
‘She came round like a whirlwind,’ she began.
‘… Manner means so much.’
‘A tornado. I was just putting on my shawl. You know how he loved anything strange—’
‘Well!’
Mrs Calvally paused.
‘I think there must be thunder about,’ she said. ‘I’ve been at the point of death all day.’
‘And where are they now?’
‘In Italy. Trailing about. And he went away with such an overweight of luggage …’
‘I expect he took his easels!’
‘This morning the letter was from Rimini. It appears it reminds them of Bexhill … and the hotel, it seems, so noisy.’
‘How painfully dull it sounds.’
‘Quite uninteresting!’
‘I think it sounds jolly.’
‘Shall we evoke Morocco with a rose and lilac shoe!’
‘What would be the good of that?’
‘No good at all, my treasure, only it might be fun.’
Mrs Henedge struggled to her feet.
‘Evoke Morocco!’ she said, ‘I fear I haven’t time. I’ve a dentist and a palmist, and—’
She surveyed half-nervously the shoe.
There was hardly any rose and scarcely any lilac. It was a crushed strawberry.
XXIV
‘To-day I’ll have threepennyworth!’
In a flowing gown tinged with melancholy and a soupçon rouged Mrs Shamefoot stood ethereal at her gate.
She laughed lightly.
‘And, perhaps, I’ll have some cream …’
With the movement of a princess she handed him a jar.
‘That jar,’ she said, ‘belonged, once, to … So mind it doesn’t break.’
And while the lad ladled she studied with insouciance the tops of the chimneys across the way.
The sky was full of little birds. Just at her gate a sycamore-tree seemed to have an occult fascination of its own.
Whole troops of birds would congregate there, flattening down each twig and spray, perpetually outpouring.
‘Before I came here,’ she inquired, ‘were the birds so many?’
He shook his head.
‘There was only an owl.’
‘It’s extraordinary.’
‘Shall I book the cream?’
‘What is the matter with the bells?’
‘They’re sounding for the Sisters.’
‘Are they ill? Again?’
‘They died last night – of laughter.’
‘What amused them, do you know?’
‘They were on the golf links …’
‘Death, sometimes, is really a remedy.’
‘Soon there’ll be no call for a dairy. What with the river—’
‘Indeed, it’s more like somewhere in Norway now!’
‘Not that, in milk—’
‘Crazes change so, don’t they?’
‘A nice deep pail of—’
‘Since yesterday, has anyone else … ?’
‘It’s a pretty jar,’ he said, in a subdued voice. ‘What is it?’
‘That’s Saxe,’ she said, as she carefully closed the door.
The long flaying room was flooded by the evening sun.
‘One needs an awning!’ she murmured, setting down the cream.
Before the house stretched a strip of faint blue sand. There were times when it brought to mind the Asz.
Only last night she had trailed towards the window, and with the tip of her toe …
She turned, half charmed, away. There could still be seen the trace …
‘I think the house will be the greatest success!’
Of course, the walls were rather carpeted with pictures—
There was the Primitive, that made the room, somehow, seem so calm. And the Blessed Damozel – that fat white thing. And a Giorgione, so silky and sweet. And a Parma angel. And the ‘study-of-me-which-is-such-an-infamy!’
‘I must have blinds,’ she exclaimed.
It was tiresome there were none now since Georgia was coming in to tea.
How prim the cups were upon their china tray!
She had placed them there herself …
In a bowl beside them floated a few green daisies with heavy citron hearts.
And if they chose to make eyes at the cherries, what did it matter, since the background was so plain?
She glanced at her reflection.
‘O mon miroir, rassure-moi; dis moi que je suis belle, qui je serai belle éternellement!’
She paused, causelessly sad.
Even here, the world, why … one was still in it—
‘We should pray for those who do not comprehend us!’ she murmured. And, of course, that would end in having a chaplain. Or begin by having one.
A camera study of her sister, Mrs Roy Richards, a woman whose whims would have made the theme of a book, or a comedy en famille, with her seven children standing round her nearly naked, had arrived, only lately, as if to recall her to herself.
‘Not since the last famine …’ she murmured, tucking it into a drawer.
‘Ah, there!’ One could hardly mistake that horn …
She lifted the wooden pin in the door and peered through the grill.
‘Who knocks?’
‘A sinner.’
‘A couple,’ Lady Castleyard corrected, ‘of the very worst. Regular devils.’
‘Come in. Unfortunately, my Gretchen has gone out.’
‘I hear you are achieving sainthood by leaps and bounds!’
Mrs Shamefoot embraced her guests.
‘I fear … it’s far more gradual.’
‘It must be so desolate for you, dear, here all alone, cut off from everybody.’
‘I love my solitude.’
‘Whatever do you find to do, in the long evenings?’
‘I’m studying Dante—’
Lady Georgia rolled her eyes:
‘I imagine you keep a parakeet,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’
Mrs Shamefoot busied herself with the tea.
‘Have you noticed the birds?’ she asked. ‘Such battalions … And before I came there was only an owl!’
‘I admire your garden. Those tragic thickets of thorns—’
‘I think the autumn here should be simply sublime.’
‘I will witness it, I hope, from my roof-top! I’m like an Oriental when I get up there. I’m sure I was one, once.’
‘How, dear?’
‘Oh, don’t expect me to explain.’
‘Victor would still insist that you had saved the country.’
‘Locally, of course.’
‘He’s so enchanted with the window. He has got me to change our pew.’
‘When the sunlight comes it is too superb!’
‘Yes; and never a glare, dear – ; always tempered.’
‘Several young men in town seem struck by it too. They like to sit before it. I believe they even kneel … So annoying! Often, just when I want to be there myself—’
‘I’m glad you go somewhere. It’s wrong to withdraw yourself too completely. Without a servant even!’
‘My servant, Gretchen, ran, silly child, to the post-office about a week ago.’
‘I wonder you let her …’
‘I
needed stamps.’
‘Stamps!’
‘Soco had scribbled …’
‘What are his views?’
‘He speaks of a visit. He has never seen St Dorothy. I received such a volume from him this morning, quires and quires and quires, all about nothing.’
‘You must bring him to Stockingham when he comes. We’re giving The Playboy of the Western World in the Greek Theatre … I don’t know how it will be!’
‘Julia’s Pegeen—’
‘I see she’s reviving Magda.’
‘So she is. But you know nothing lasts her long.’
‘And her strange maid, apparently, is going on the stage. She is to take a part of a duchess.’
Lady Castleyard yawned.
‘I love your room,’ she said. ‘It’s so uncommon.’
‘I want to show you my mourner’s lamps.’
‘Where are they?’
‘In my bedroom.’
‘Your bedroom, Biddy. I expect it’s only a cell.’
‘It overlooks the grave-ground.’
‘Oh, how unpleasant!’
‘I don’t mind it. I like to sit in the window and watch the moon rise until the brass weather-cock on the belfry turns slowly silver above the trees … or, in the early dawn, perhaps, when it rains, and the whole world seems so melancholy and desolate and personal and quite intensely sad – and life an utter hoax—’
Lady Georgia rubbed away a tear.
‘I don’t know!’ she said.
‘A hoax! You wonder I can isolate myself so completely. Dear Georgia, just because I want so much, it’s extraordinary how little I require.’
‘Don’t the neighbours tire you?’
‘I hardly ever see them! I am afraid I frighten Lady Anne … Old Mrs Wookie made me some advances with a face-cloth she had worked me for my demise … And I’ve become quite friendly with the Pets. He has such character. Force. I am leaving him a lock of my hair.’
‘S-s-sh! How morbid! Shall we explore the cell? I’ve never seen one yet.’
‘I’d sooner not be over-chastened,’ Lady Castleyard confessed. ‘It might spoil me for the antiquarians … and the last time I was here I unearthed such a sweet old chair with hoofs.’
‘Poor Mrs Frobisher found four Boucher panels there once.’
‘I’m quite sure it was once!’
Mrs Shamefoot slid aside some folding doors.
Ashringford, all towers, turrets, walls, spires, steeples and slanting silver slates, stretched before her in the evening sun.
‘I’ll come as far as St Dorothy with you,’ she murmured, ‘if you like. It’s just the time I go for my quiet half-hour.’
PART I
Inclinations
‘Besides, I never ventured once to carry you with me to any conference I had with the Pope for fear you should be trying some of your coquettish airs upon him.’
– Lady Kitty Crockodile to Miss Lydell.
I
‘ “Hair almost silver – incredibly fair: a startling pallor.” ’ Otherwise, unmistakably, there was a close resemblance.
It is true, whenever she began a new work she said the same.
There were the Ducquelin, the Pizzi, the Queen Quickly periods … and that curious autumn evening when she had experienced the impulse of an old and wicked Caesar …
‘And here am I rusting in Yorkshire!’ she exclaimed.
In the twilight her face showed vague and indistinct: an earring gleamed.
‘I adore your patience!’
‘She seems to have had eleven children.’
‘Who, dear?’
‘Mrs Kettler. Catherine. Kitty.’
‘I wonder you don’t get tired of going just on and on.’
‘My dear, you’re always wondering.’
‘But now that Effie has begun her Tuesdays—’
‘So often the mood only takes me as the gong sounds for dinner.’
Viola Neffal moved her lips as if she were counting.
‘Well, that Mortlake tapestry,’ she said, ‘pierced with nails and overhung by mirrors, is enough to make one weep!’
The Biographer clasped nervously her long, expressive hands.
‘I sometimes think,’ she ventured, ‘that Modern things, rightly chosen, accentuate the past.’
Through the open windows, a line of trees, leaning all one way, receded across the garden like figures escaping from a ball.
‘Who was that woman, dear, who put her lover’s head into a pot of basil?’
‘You mean Isabel. But nothing shall ever dissuade me! Besides, after Princess Orvi I need a change. Two Italian women …’
Miss Neffal sprayed herself liberally with ‘Lethe Incarnate’.
‘… Here’s luck!’ she wished.
‘Somehow I feel it may be a failure. I saw the new moon with my left eye.’
‘You never told me quite what there is to admire in Mrs Kettler. Why she attracts you.’
‘It’s hard to explain … As a man of rare weight once remarked, she was like some radiant milkmaid.’
‘Are milkmaids so radiant as a rule?’
‘She was. And then she was so English! Even from her earliest utterance: “I would worship,” she said, “to spend a summer in a hut in a hollow of Old Sarum.” She was then barely two.’
‘She appears to have been a gipsy.’
‘After all, very little about her is known! There’s not much material. Hers was one of those flickering shadow-lives … You catch her in flashes. In her hey-day she is said to have grown weary of her world and gone to Ceylon.’
‘Ceylon?’
‘Well, if it wasn’t Ceylon— With these constant changes one is bound to get mixed. I’m not sure if it wasn’t Greece. I’ve an idea it was Athens!’
‘At any rate she was insular.’
‘Soul is as rare as radium.’
Miss Neffal revealed her mind.
‘The persons whom I should most have cared to meet were Walpole and Sappho,’ she said.
‘If you aren’t contented now you never will be!’
‘That’s vain.’
‘I was referring only to Hugh.’
‘Hugh! I am marrying him, Geraldine, as you know, mainly for his conversation. And of course I shall be very glad to be married …’
‘My dear Viola.’
‘When one is nearing the end of the twenties—’
‘Nonsense!’
‘Tell me more about the little milkmaid.’
‘Oh, well, very soon, now, I hope to be setting out again on my travels. I intend making a fairly extensive trip in her footsteps.’
‘You’re off to Greece?’
‘I’m going wherever she went.’
‘Perhaps you’ll wander round by Cannes!’
Geraldine O’Brookomore, the authoress of Six Strange Sisters, Those Gonzagas, etc., unlocked a sombre lacquer case: a work of art, in its way, with its many painted labels all on tinted pearl.
‘Reminiscences. Anecdotes. Apologias. Crimes. Follies. Fabrications. Nostalgia. Mysticism. Trivia. Human Documents. Love Letters. His to Me: Mine to Him,’ she read.
‘It’s Nostalgia you need …’
Miss O’Brookomore raised her eyes.
‘I’m sure I’m willing to hope so.’
‘Isn’t it difficult often to be impartial?’
‘It depends so much upon one’s health. When one is tired a little or below par—’
‘How I wish you were more sensible. Is it wise when the gong goes—’
‘I know. But Effie spoils me … Only a moment ago she sent me a peach that tasted like a dark carnation …’
‘Effie overdoes her hospitality I somehow think. Placing rouge in all the bedrooms. Even in Mr Fairmile’s room, poor boy!’
‘Who is there downstairs?’
‘Such gold-wigged Botticellis – playing bridge. They’ve sent me up to look for you.’
‘For me?’
‘To watch them.’
/> ‘I won’t. Because where would be the good?’
‘Then they’ll come trooping here instead. After dinner it’s usually Effie’s way to take a candle and drag everybody to gaze at the children in bed and asleep.’
‘Here comes someone now!’
‘Were I to look in should I bother, weary, worry you?’
‘It’s Miss Collins.’
‘Mabel!’
‘I’ve been waiting for you ever so long. This is quite the dullest house—’
‘You poor little dreary cat!’
Miss Collins, who had never gone out before, seemed to believe a soirée to be a succession of bons-mots, songs and bursts of laughter.
‘One should try to be happy always!’
‘I suppose you’ll say it’s silly, but I want so much to l-i-v-e! I want to go flitting about the world like you.’
Miss O’Brookomore became pensive.
‘My work,’ she said, ‘lies largely among the dead.’
‘Is it imperative?’
‘The worst of modern biography, you understand, is, one is never quite sure to what one is entitled—’
‘If only to avoid the pitiful consequences,’ Miss Neffal theorized, ‘we should go through the world neatly and compact.’
Miss Collins turned from her, oppressed.
‘Effie sends a fresh supply of fruit. She is coming up very soon to look at the children.’
‘Raspberries!’
‘Are there raspberries in Chaldea?’
‘You astonish me! Why do you ask?’
‘For information. Naturally, living continually in the same place—’
‘Do you never go away?’
‘From home? Oh yes … Sometimes, in winter, we go to Scotland.’
‘Surely Scotland in winter would be a desolation! Stone, and slate, and asphalt, and the wrong red hair …’
‘You see, we cannot get rid of our house.’
‘Indeed. And why not?’
‘Because it stands in a valley. Although, of course, at times one gets some surprising effects of mist …’
Miss Neffal leaned back in her chair with listless arms and fingers interlaced.
‘Why attack the scenery?’ she inquired.
Miss Collins shuddered.
‘All that waving green,’ she said, ‘before the windows … Why, the Chase looks haunted even in the sun.’
‘Poor child!’
‘You’ve no conception … I assure you there isn’t a creature in all the countryside to interest one except, perhaps, Madame La Chose, who’s an actress, although she has nothing to do with the stage.’
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