‘How can one be an actress without anything to do with the stage?’ the Biographer wondered, drawing Miss Collins to her.
But Miss Collins did not seem to know.
‘I love that ripple in your throat,’ she said. ‘It isn’t a second chin. It’s just a … ripple!’
‘Mrs Kettler had the same.’
‘Are you perpetually pondering your great men?’
‘Naturally, those in hand.’
‘Often they must haunt you.’
Miss O’Brookomore smiled.
‘Occasionally,’ she said, ‘they do. In my dream last night I seemed to hear all those whose lives I’ve lately written moaning and imploring me not. Let the editions die, one good woman said to me. Let them be cancelled!’
‘Ingratitude!’
‘Dreams, have you never heard, go by contraries.’
‘Still, I’m sure you must need a change.’
‘Am I getting cloddish?’
‘Quite otherwise.’
‘Once again in a wagon-lit—’
Miss Collins slipped to her knees.
‘What would I not give,’ she said, ‘to go with you!’
Slightly startled, Miss O’Brookomore took from a cardboard box a cigarette.
‘Supposing …’
‘… supposing?’
‘Supposing – I only say “supposing” – supposing you were to accompany me to Greece …’
Sparkling, Miss Collins rose.
‘Only at the thought,’ she cried, ‘I could clap my feet in the air.’
The Biographer considered her. Dark against the brilliance.
‘My chief amusement,’ she explained, ‘has always been to exchange ideas with someone. And to receive new ones in return.’
‘At Corinth! …’
‘At Aulis!’
‘At Athens!’
‘At Epidauros!’
‘At Mycenae!’
‘In Arcadia!’
‘It would be like a fairy dream.’
‘So long as you’re good-humoured and sunny!’
‘They say I’m rather silly sometimes at home.’
Miss O’Brookomore dropped a sigh.
‘Few of us are born mellow,’ she declared.
Miss Collins sank again to the floor.
‘I suppose we should stifle all our emotions,’ she said. ‘And hide things … But I never do. I just let my heart speak. And so—’
‘I’m reading Lady Cray’s Travels,’ Miss Neffal broke in. ‘ “In the desert,” she says, “once, I tried to cook a partridge with a string, but the fire burnt the string and the partridge—” ’
‘Better to be foolish at home than—’
‘Here’s Effie!’
Candlestick in hand, and quite alone, their hostess appeared at the door.
‘I knocked, but could get no answer!’
‘I never heard you.’
‘Wild, interesting woman! Have you been doing much?’
‘Not a great deal. One’s best work is always unwritten.’
‘What she needs most,’ Miss Neffal reflected, ‘is the forsaken wing of a palace.’
‘Are you coming, Viola, to look at the children?’
‘Dare I, I wonder, in these shoes …’
‘Is there anything wrong with them?’
‘They might wake little Phillis …’
‘In any case, Mrs Orangeman, I fancy, is destined to do that.’
‘… You hear her sad mind when she sings!’
Miss Collins looked shrewd.
‘Her worries aren’t enough,’ she prophesied, ‘to keep her going …’
‘Unless you are more careful,’ Miss Neffal threatened, ‘I will write you down in my Book of Cats.’
‘Have you kept it long?’
‘Since I became engaged.’
Their hostess tittered.
‘Even we! …’ she said. ‘Usually now on a dull day Jack likes to touch up his will.’
‘Doesn’t it make you nervous?’
‘Why should it?’
‘I’d be afraid of his painting me out.’
‘That’s because you’re over highly strung. When people are pale and tired like you they need a rest.’
‘Well, I’ve finished almost for to-night. Perhaps I may come down presently when the curate’s gone. The last time we met he referred to poor Kettler as a Hospital Case …’
‘Have you no sketch of her at all that we could see?’
‘Only a replica. The original, if I recollect, is in the Liechtenstein Gallery.’
And with her long and psychic fingers Miss O’Brookomore smoothed out a scroll.
‘As a portrait,’ she said, ‘of course, it’s a miracle of badness. But I think her face is so amusing and so alight.’
Miss Collins gazed at the likeness sadly.
‘I’ve seen so few good pictures,’ she lamented; ‘although an artist did come one autumn to Bovonorsip. He took a room at the Wheat Sheaf and trespassed all day at the Chase.’
‘Some artists can be very insinuating.’
‘So was he! It was impossible not to share this man’s joy when he said he had captured a whole mood with a little grey paint … “Do not be too anxious to be like Corot, young ladies,” he would say when we went sketching too. And before he left he gave me a little wood scene with naked peasants.’
Her hostess took up her torch.
‘Poor Mr Fairmile seems so miserable, Mabel, since you’ve disappeared!’
‘How is he to show what he feels when—’
‘When?’
‘Oh, Effie, why did you tempt him? …’ Miss Collins asked as she darted out.
‘I wonder at anyone sitting down to pen the life of a woman so baggy about the eyes!’ Miss Neffal exclaimed, returning the engraving.
‘… Hark to Mrs Orangeman. Well, Viola, will you come?’
Alone, Miss O’Brookomore wandered leisurely to the window and leaned out.
Beneath her a landscape all humming with little trees stretched away towards such delicate, merest hills.
‘Was it solely Vampirism that made me ask her,’ she queried, ‘or is it that I’m simply bored?’
She looked up.
There was a suggestion of azalea in the afterglow that recalled to her the East.
‘Either way,’ she murmured, ‘her mother most likely would never consent.’
And seating herself before her mirror she began an examination of her raspberries for fear of little worms.
‘When people are pale and tired like you …’ had not Effie said?
She paused to dream.
How it tallied with Kate Kettler’s description:
‘Hair almost silver – incredibly fair: a startling pallor …’
II
A beehive in Brompton, a tray of gleaming fish, the way the wind blew – everything that morning seemed extraordinarily Greek.
As Miss O’Brookomore made her way towards Harrods she rejoiced.
Miss Collins actually was in town!
‘Take her and keep her,’ Mrs Collins somewhat unexpectedly wrote. ‘Who better than Miss O’Brookomore could break my child of her tomboy habits? Athens, I imagine, must be a sweet spot. Those glorious noses! Fancies fade, but a portrait of Byron on horseback,’ etc.
And now, as Miss O’Brookomore strolled along, for some reason or other she screwed up her eyes and smiled.
All about her in heroic strips of green showed pastoral plots. Dark shrubberies …
‘Of course she will need a few new frocks,’ she mused, pausing before a – ‘Robes – Artistic Equipments’ – at the corner of Ygdrasil Street, from whose folding doors at that same moment stepped the famous Mrs Asp.
The veteran Biographer held out a hand.
‘Your extensive acquaintance,’ she said, ‘I fear, has almost destroyed you for myself! They told me you had gone.’
‘I shall be leaving town now in about a week.’
‘Are you to be al
one?’
‘I shall have a maid – and a little Miss Collins, who is not yet fifteen.’
Mrs Asp began to purr.
‘Should you need a really reliable maid,’ she said, ‘I could tell you of an excellent woman. Nine weeks with a Mrs Des Pond and two … A treasure! Or, should you be requiring a becoming blouse, or an eerie hat, or anything … Mrs Manwood in there … It would be a charity! Silly thing … She put all her money on Quiet Queenie, or was it Shy Captain, and lost …’
‘For my journey,’ Miss O’Brookomore said, with a glance of concern, ‘I shall take with me only what is most serviceable and neat, and absolutely austere.’
‘My dear, you will allow me, I hope, to know as much about travelling as you do. I expect I have been abroad as many times as you have.’
‘Rumours, no doubt, have reached you of my present choice?’
Mrs Asp became faintly asthmatic.
‘How hugely, purely, curiously and entirely reckless one’s disciples are …’
‘Naturally, I shall suggest poor Kitty’s cynicisms with fairy lightness … in fact—’
‘To me,’ Mrs Asp said, ‘Mrs Kettler has always made her appeal … And when you’re in Athens you should go to Tanagra – not that there’s very much there to see.’
Miss O’Brookomore held up an arm.
‘If I’m late at all,’ she observed, ‘I shall miss Miss Collins … or keep her waiting, perhaps, about the street. One can hardly credit it, but she has never been away from home before!’
‘Well, even when I was still seventeen I would take my skipping-rope into the Park …’
‘I should like to have seen you.’
‘We have a wee box in the third tier at the opera for to-night if you would care to come!’
‘This evening we are going to the Dream Theatre, and can’t … Besides, I’ve an aversion for Covent Garden, I fear. One sits in a blaze of light, looking eighty, or ninety, or a hundred – as the case may be.’
Mrs Asp nodded.
‘I shall expect to hear from you,’ she said, ‘at any rate, quite soon. An Athenian husband for you both … a villa each in Thrace … I could wish for nothing more! And now, as the Oratory is so near, I feel tempted almost to run in. Although, as a rule, I never care to go to Confession in anything that’s tight.’
And there, in front of Harrods, teasing a leashed dog with a requirements-list, stood Miss Collins.
‘Let us make haste,’ Miss O’Brookomore said, saluting her somewhat nervously, ‘to do our shopping. And afterwards, just to break the ice, I intend to take you to an Oriental restaurant in Soho …’
III
‘It’s funny,’ Miss Collins said, ‘but even the most trivial things amuse me now I’m away from home!’
‘Your strong joie de vivre,’ Miss O’Brookomore informed her, ‘your youthfulness, already have done me good.’
‘Tell me whom you see.’
‘Hardly one’s ideal. On the couch, half asleep, are Guarini and Ozinda. Pirouetting round them, making their survey, is Lord Horn and the Misses Cornhill, and on the dais there’s January, Duchess of Dublin, and her Doxy.’
‘Which is Doxy?’
‘In tears. At galleries she’s quite dreadful. She will begin to weep almost for the Spinario’s “poor foot”.’
‘Once while beagling, accidentally—’
There came a murmur of voices.
‘… terrifying nightmare women.’
‘… One of his wild oats.’
‘… fascinating, fiendish colours.’
‘It’s unmistakably his.’
‘Pish!’
‘Take me away!’
‘And behind us,’ Miss O’Brookomore chimed in, ‘Lady Betty Benson is being escorted by a tenth son and a real murderer, and in ambush by the door, chatting to Miss Neffal’s fiancé, is Mrs Elstree, the actress.’
‘O-o-o-o-h!’
‘You have the catalogue.’
‘What should you say it was?’
‘Dear old Mr Winthrop! He’s so vague always – “Sunrise India”. And I know for a fact it was painted in his street. Those trees are in Portman Square.’
‘Is not that Miss O’Brookomore? We heard that you had gone.’
Miss O’Brookomore turned slightly.
‘We are in Ospovat’s hands,’ she murmured, ‘still.’
‘Have you chosen yet your route?’
‘We go from Marseilles to the Piraeus, and from there we take the tram.’
‘O-o-o-o-h!’
‘You have the catalogue.’
‘… know Mr Hicky?’ Mrs Elstree was beginning to scream. ‘Why, when I was playing in the Widow of Wells I died in his arms every night for over a year.’
‘Hugh, where’s Viola?’
‘I’m afraid I must decline to tell you.’
‘Indeed! …’
‘I left her burning Zampironi before a Guardi and invoking Venice.’
‘Anything later than the eighteenth century I know how she dislikes.’
Mrs Elstree addressed the Historian.
‘Daring one,’ she murmured, ‘I admire you more than you’re aware of! You’re simply never trite.’
‘You mean my Mrs Kitty? …’
‘And even should you not discover much, failure makes one subtler!’
‘All I hope to get’s a little glamour.’
‘Once – did I ever tell you? – I rented a house in Lower Thames Street, where the Oyster Merchants are.’
Miss O’Brookomore closed her eyes.
‘When I was quite a child,’ she said, ‘I did not care for sweets … but I liked Oysters. Bring me Oysters, I would say. I want Oysters.’
‘Poet.’
Miss Collins folded herself together as though for a game of hide-and-seek.
‘Really, Mabel! Noting you with dismay is Mrs Felicity Carrot of Style.’
‘A reporter!’
‘One should be the spectator of oneself always, dear, a little.’
‘Don’t move – I am not sure but I see my aunt!’
‘Your aunt?’
‘Mrs Hamilton-of-Hole.’
‘… My husband’s horizons are solely political ones,’ Mrs Hamilton was explaining as she elbowed by.
‘And there is Mr Winthrop, whose landscape—’
Mrs Elstree moved away.
‘Ozinda has fallen sound asleep in Guarini’s arms! …’
There came a confusion of voices.
‘Babes-in-the-Wood.’
‘We think of crossing over to witness the autumn at Versailles.’
‘… goes to auctions.’
‘The slim, crouching figure of the Magdalen is me.’
‘Those break-neck brilliant purples.’
‘Pish!’
‘A scarlet song.’
‘ “Order what you please from Tanguay,” he said – “a tiara, what you please.” ’
‘—You’d think they’d been set by Boehmer!’
‘O-o-o-h!’
‘You have the catalogue.’
‘Mrs Elstree took it with her.’
IV
‘Let us all cling together!’
Miss O’Brookomore blinked her eyes.
‘Is it a station?’
‘To-morrow,’ Miss Collins announced from behind her chronicle, ignoring the sleep-murmurings of the Historian’s maid, ‘six Cornish girls are to dance at the Lune Grise. What a pity to have missed them. Although I believe I mind more about Mona. When she discovers I’ve been in Paris without even trying to find her—’
‘Who is that, dear?’
‘Napier’s sister – Mr Fairmile’s. Oh, Gerald!’
‘What is it?’
‘Mr Fairmile and I once … Yes, dear! We’re engaged … And when he said good-bye he didn’t kiss me. He just crushed me to his heart …’
‘Crushed you?’
‘My frock a little. One of Miss Johnson’s jokes.’
‘That white one?’
/>
‘Of course Mona I’ve known always. She’s just a dear. Tall, with a tiny head. And such beautiful mystic hands … She and I were at school together.’
‘I didn’t know you had ever been at school.’
‘… a Term. She was quite my bosom-chum at York Hill. Once we exchanged a few drops of each other’s blood. Oh, Gerald!’
‘Really!’
‘It was on a certain Sunday in June.’
Miss O’Brookomore dropped the fireproof curtain across her eyes. She glazed them.
‘I think I shall tuck up my feet,’ she said, ‘and lie down.’
‘Just as there’s a sunset coming on?’
‘I’m tired. My head aches. My mind has been going incessantly all day …’
Miss Collins showed her sympathy.
‘Reading in the train would upset anyone,’ she observed. ‘I’m sure it would me.’
‘I was renewing my acquaintance with the classics.’
‘Before I came away mum made me get by heart a passage from The Queen of Tartary to recite to you the instant we landed, as a surprise. You know the great tirade! The Queen has taken the poison and leaves the Marquee on her confidante’s arm. Inside, the banquet is in full swing. Now and again you can hear their hearty laughter … Ha, ha, ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha! And the Queen turns to Melissa – and mum declares she shall never forget the impression Madam Dolce Naldi made as the Queen, although Miss Faucet, as Melissa, was exquisite in her fragility as a foil – and says: “My hands are cold. It’s as if my eyelids had weights upon them … I hear a singing in my ears. I feel,” etc. And so on through the greater part of the medical dictionary.’
‘It’s curious your mother did not select the triumphal speech. Act II, Scene 3: “Everybody crowded round me, …” ’ Miss O’Brookomore remarked.
‘I don’t know. The only books I care for are those about Farms.’
‘My dear, when one speaks of Farms one forgets the animals. Little piggy-wiggs …’
‘I don’t think that that would matter.’
‘Perhaps some day, when you marry a country squire, you will have a farm of your own.’
‘It isn’t likely. Before leaving town I consulted a clairvoyant. There are indications, she said, that something very disgraceful will come about between January and July.’
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