B007TB5SP0 EBOK

by Firbank, Ronald

  ‘Oh, Mabel!’

  Miss Collins reached towards a bag of sweets.

  ‘In the crystal she could see mum reading my letters … she could see her, she said, on all fours hunting about …’

  ‘Your poor mother.’

  ‘What’s the good of grieving?’

  ‘Mab dear, you’re always nibbling!’

  ‘To beguile the time.’

  ‘But so bad for you.’

  ‘Beware of a dazzlingly fair man, the woman said. Beware of him. And in the end, after many petty obstructions, which you will overcome, she said, you’ll marry a raven!’

  Miss O’Brookomore became attentive to the scenery.

  To watch the trees slip past in the dusk was entrancing quite. In a meadow a shepherdess with one white wether stood up and waved her crook.

  ‘Poor Palmer seems completely worn out.’

  The maid stirred slightly at her name.

  ‘When Greek meets Greek, miss,’ she asked informingly, ‘can you tell me what they’re supposed to do?’

  ‘Since we’re all English,’ Miss O’Brookomore replied, ‘I don’t think it matters …’

  Miss Collins covered her face with a soiled suède glove.

  ‘Another tunnel!’

  ‘You should really rest, Mab. You’ll arrive so tired.’

  ‘I’m that already. But I won’t lean back – for fear of contracting something … infectious.’

  ‘Some day, dear, I may arrange your sayings in a wreath …’

  ‘Our coachman once—’

  ‘No, please – I’m altogether incurious.’

  ‘Although, even bolt upright, dear, I can sleep as easily as a prima donna upon a dais! Nothing wakes me.’

  Palmer raised an eye towards the waning moon.

  ‘The evenings,’ she remarked, ‘turn quite bleak. Had I known, I’d not have come away without my bit of fur.’

  V

  ‘And then we almost ran. Anybody would have said our husbands were behind … And perhaps they pitied us. But Miss O’Brookomore’s so unpunctual always; it’s a marvel we ever catch a train.’

  He waved a hand.

  ‘Those talents! That gift! Her mind!’

  ‘At Marseilles we even missed the boat. Otherwise, very likely, we would have never met.’

  ‘M-a-b-e-l,’ Miss O’Brookomore called.

  Miss Collins turned.

  ‘Do you need me, dear?’

  ‘Who is your handsome friend?’

  ‘He’s … Oh, Gerald!’

  ‘Where did you pick him up?’

  ‘He began by speaking of the tedium of water for a sailor, and then—’

  ‘I see!’

  ‘Oh, Gerald, it’s Count Pastorelli …’

  Miss O’Brookomore leaned back a little in her deck-chair.

  ‘Take my word for it,’ she said, ‘he’s not so pastoral as he sounds.’

  ‘And there’s another!’

  ‘You mean—?’

  ‘A porpoise!’

  Miss O’Brookomore crossed herself.

  ‘I always do,’ she said, ‘when anyone points.’

  ‘Shall we take a little prowl?’

  ‘Voluntarily.’

  ‘There’s a person on board, someone perhaps should speak to her, who sits all day staring at the sea beneath a very vivid violet veil. And when the waves break over her she never even moves …’

  The Biographer watched sagaciously the sun touch the dark water into slow diamonds.

  ‘One should blur,’ she observed, ‘the agony.’

  Miss Collins became evidently intellectual.

  ‘Which would you prefer,’ she inquired, ‘a wedding or a funeral out at sea?’

  ‘I’d prefer there was no unpacking.’

  ‘For the one emergency I’ve enough, of course, of white … and for the other, I dare say I could lean from the ship-side in a silver hat crowned with black Scotch roses.’

  ‘Were it mine, I’d give that hat to Palmer.’

  ‘Poor thing, every time the ship rolls she seems to hear something say: The captain – his telescope.’

  ‘She will see the land very soon now with her naked eye.’

  Miss Collins slipped an arm about her friend.

  ‘I look forward first to eleven o’clock,’ she said, ‘when the ship-boy goes round with bananas.’

  ‘Tell me, at Bovonorsip does every one speak so loud?’

  Miss Collins clicked her tongue.

  ‘Shall we go down upon the lower-deck, Gerald, and look through the cabin windows? There’s the Negress you called a Gaugin … All alone in her cabin it would be interesting to see what she does …’

  ‘Somehow I’d sooner save that poor veiled thing from getting wet.’

  But that ‘poor veiled thing’ was enjoying herself, it appeared.

  ‘… I don’t object to it, really,’ she said. ‘I rather like the sea! … I’m Miss Arne. Mary Arne – the actress. Some people call me their Mary Ann, others think of me as Marianne.’

  ‘The tragedienne.’

  ‘Comedy is my province. I often say I’m the only Lady Teazle!’

  ‘Then of course you’ve met Lizzie Elstree?’

  ‘… I can recall her running about the green-room of the Garden Theatre in I should be afraid to say quite what …’

  ‘Well, I always hate to hustle.’

  Miss Collins nodded.

  ‘There’s the Count,’ she exclaimed. ‘He will keep bumping into me.’

  ‘I wonder who he can be.’

  ‘I believe he’s a briefless barrister.’

  Miss O’Brookomore looked wary.

  ‘How is one to tell?’ she murmured. ‘He may not be so briefless … !’

  ‘I know nothing about the law,’ Miss Arne said. ‘Although when I played in The Coronation of Lucy there was a trial scene that lasted nearly forty minutes.’

  ‘You must be delighted now to rest.’

  ‘Rest! I’m on my way to Greece to study Lysistrata.’

  ‘But couldn’t you have done it at home?’

  ‘Not with the same results. As I told the silly critics, I mean to treat her as a character-part.’

  ‘I understand. When one traces a shadow it’s mostly for the scenery.’

  ‘At Cape Sunium,’ Miss Collins said, ‘I shall lie like a starfish all day upon the sand.’

  ‘My dear, at Sunium there is no sand. It’s all rocks.’

  ‘How do you know there are rocks?’

  ‘Do you think I haven’t seen old engravings?’

  ‘Perhaps I might paddle.’

  ‘ “Oh! joy, joy! no more helmet, no more cheese nor onions!” ’ Miss Arne soliloquized.

  ‘I adore Aristophanes.’

  ‘Certainly, he has a flavour—’

  Miss Arne stood up.

  ‘What can that be over there?’

  ‘Those slopes …’

  ‘These villas …’

  ‘And temples …’

  ‘It must be …’

  ‘It is—’

  Miss Collins commenced a feverish country dance.

  ‘It’s Athens!’

  VI

  ‘So far I’ve not observed one!’

  ‘Of what?’

  ‘A nose! Athens and heavenly noses … Mum said I should.’

  Miss O’Brookomore threw upon her head a bewildering affair with a vampire-bat’s-wing slanting behind.

  ‘Patience,’ she murmured. ‘We haven’t been here long enough.’

  ‘Quite long enough to find out the English chemist isn’t English!’

  ‘Why, aren’t you up to the mark?’

  ‘I was attempting to ward off freckles.’

  ‘Pretty Mrs Wilna often used to say the utmost she ever did was to apply a little cold-cream just as she got into bed.’

  Miss Collins moved from one chair to another.

  ‘Oh, come and look! Oh!’

  ‘What ever is it?’

  ‘Ther
e’s such a shocking dispute in the Square!’

  Beneath a bruised blue, almost a violet, sky lay the town. Very white and very clean.

  On the pavement some youths, with arms entwined, seemed to be locked in the convulsions of a dance.

  ‘Let us go down and sit in a café.’

  Miss O’Brookomore became evasive.

  ‘I want you to repress yourself a little for a few days. Be more discreet.’

  ‘Because—’

  ‘Professor and Mrs Cowsend have the rooms next ours …’

  ‘Buz! Let them!’

  ‘Also, the Arbanels are here on their honeymoon … You never saw such ghosts on their rambles.’

  ‘Who is Mr Arbanel?’

  ‘He’s very blasé.’

  Miss Collins clasped her hands.

  ‘I’d give almost anything to be blasé.’

  Miss O’Brookomore turned from her.

  ‘Those Customs!’ she lamented. ‘Everything arrives so crushed.’

  ‘Are you going out to see what you can find?’

  ‘I dare say I may look in at the library of the University.’

  Miss Collins became contemplative.

  ‘Who knows, away in the Underworld she may be watching you …’

  ‘My poor puss, Athens must seem to you a trifle dull.’

  ‘It isn’t really. I could sit for hours on my balcony and watch the passers-by. So many of them don’t pass. At least, not directly.’

  ‘You mean they stop?’

  ‘Sometimes. But what does it matter? – when one isn’t a linguist.’

  ‘Palmer should be with you more.’

  ‘Palmer seems so squeamish.’

  The Biographer fetched a sigh.

  ‘Indeed, the way she sprinkles naphthaline has quite put out the violets.’

  ‘All except her own!’

  ‘Her own?’

  ‘Oh, Gerald … Every week there is a dance, dear, in the hotel.’

  Miss O’Brookomore shrugged her shoulders.

  ‘Don’t expect me to attend any of them,’ she said, ‘that’s all.’

  ‘Oh, darling, how can you be so Spartan! How?’

  ‘You forget, dear, my dancing days are nearly done.’

  ‘Wait … Wait … Wait till you hear the throb-thrum-throb of a string band … Oh, Gerald!’

  ‘I should be sound asleep.’

  ‘Fiddlesticks! You’d fling a wrap about you and down you’d come.’

  ‘It’s true.’

  ‘And you’d heighten your cheeks in such a hurry that everybody would suppose you’d been using jam.’

  ‘Believe me, I’d deal with the manager without the least compunction.’

  ‘You’d complain?’

  ‘I’d demand to change my room.’

  ‘S-s-s-h! Here’s Palmer.’

  ‘Ah, no more naphthaline, please.’

  ‘There’s a packet for Miss Hill …’

  ‘Take it away. It’s not for us.’

  ‘I expect it’s for me! Collins, Colline, Collina Hill. I thought it was advisable not to give my own name at any of the shops …’

  ‘Collina! Have you been chatting with the Count?’

  ‘As I went out he was stirring up the weather-glass in the front hall.’

  ‘I fear he takes you to be an heiress.’

  ‘But he’s very well off as it is! Haven’t you noticed? He doesn’t tip. He rewards. Besides, dear, I could never marry a man who had corns on his feet, or who didn’t say his prayers.’

  ‘How do you know he has corns?’

  ‘Because he told me. He couldn’t get up to the Acropolis, he said, on account of his corns …’

  ‘Isn’t that a blessing?’

  ‘Look, Gerald, I bought these tags to keep off flies.’

  ‘In Arcadia they will be just the thing.’

  ‘The Count was saying how rash it was for two docile women to go alone into such inaccessible places …’

  With pursed lips the Historian tuned her veil.

  ‘Pooh!’ she fiddled.

  VII

  ‘And when papa’s reverse of fortune did come … why, then, of course, I thought of everything … to be a maid, I thought … To look up at the moon through the palings … But somehow, no! I couldn’t …’

  ‘… Shall we have our coffee in the lounge?’

  ‘The night is wonderful,’ a woman with a thrilling voice declared.

  ‘Evening here is really the nicest time!’

  In an alcove, unable to contain her laughter, Miss Collins was teaching English versicles to the Count.

  ‘The naked oak-tree in the deer-park stands

  Mocking the brooding moose.’

  ‘Dear?’

  ‘D-e-e-r!’

  ‘Oh, my dear!’

  ‘Hinds! … Deer!’

  ‘I adore you, dear.’

  ‘Harts!’

  ‘Our two hearts!’

  ‘Mabel! Miss O’Brookomore called.’

  ‘Oh, Gerald, what ever is it?’

  ‘Come and thank Mrs Cowsend … She has consented to take you out occasionally when I’m engaged.’

  ‘I shall be delighted,’ Mrs Cowsend said. ‘To-morrow we intend to pass the morning in the royal gardens.’

  ‘Unfortunately I’m not overfond of flowers. Gardening in the rain was one of our punishments at home.’

  ‘But at the palace there are so few flowers. Scarcely any! It’s bays a bit, and cypress a bit, and ilex a little, and laurel a lot, with here and there an oleander, perhaps, or a larch … Nothing that could remind you!’

  ‘The very sight of a wheelbarrow quite upsets me.’

  ‘Personally, I’m inclined to worship a wheelbarrow. It makes a change with the temples.’

  Miss O’Brookomore became introspective.

  ‘To visit Greece with Professor Cowsend,’ she said, ‘would be my idea of happiness …’

  ‘My dear Miss O’Brookomore, I have found things in Somerset just as lovely as in the Vale of Tempe. And with none of the fatigue.’

  The Historian held up a map.

  ‘Where we are going,’ she announced, ‘is dotted white.’

  ‘You must be very careful! … It’s just the region—’

  Miss O’Brookomore stiffened.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she begged.

  ‘I dare say you’ve not encountered a sheep-dog here before? Some of them are so fierce. More like wolves.’

  ‘And dogs frequently fly at me!’

  ‘Round Delphi they are quite dreadful. Parnassos, I assure you, is literally overrun …’

  ‘Dogs delight to lick me,’ Miss Collins said, ‘when they get the chance …’

  With a lorgnon Mrs Cowsend drummed the map.

  ‘At Megara,’ she said, ‘there is a calvary to commemorate one of the Seymoures. But of course Lady Maisie attracted attention by her peplum even in the town.’

  ‘I’m told the measles in Athens just now is very bad.’

  ‘Even so, I must say, I find the city dull. Mr Cowsend, you see, is continually out gathering notes for lectures. Often he will leave the hotel as soon as it is light and pass the entire day poking about the Pnyx … And the shops for me … Well, on the whole, I don’t think much of them.’

  ‘I would take a camp-stool sometimes and sit on the Pnyx as well.’

  ‘… When I did the other day he didn’t seem to like it! And, in any case, he never tells me much. I approach Greece by way of the Renaissance, and I don’t pretend to know anything about either.’

  Miss O’Brookomore bowed amicably.

  ‘Mrs Arbanel to-night is really an Eastern dream …’

  ‘Her husband, it seems, is incredibly inattentive to her, poor dear.’

  ‘It seems a little soon.’

  ‘There’s a boy in the porch selling strings and strings of amber,’ the lady murmured as she ambled by.

  ‘Miss O’Brookomore has just been saying you could scarcely be more Zara
or Turkish if you tried.’

  ‘How suggestive that is of chains!’

  Miss O’Brookomore protested.

  ‘With you,’ she said, ‘I only see the beads.’

  ‘We were wedded at St Margaret’s almost a month ago!’

  ‘I read of your little adventure in the Morning Post.’

  ‘I forget if you know Gilbert at all …’

  ‘I can hardly say I know him, but I think we sat together once upon the same settee.’

  ‘Would it be lately?’

  Mrs Cowsend smiled urbanely.

  ‘Absence or surfeit,’ she observed, ‘it seems there’s nothing between.’

  ‘Although it is my honeymoon I’m not at all exacting.’

  Miss O’Brookomore used her fan.

  ‘It’s been such a heavenly day!’

  ‘I spent most of it in a wood on the Marathon Road,’ Mrs Arbanel said, ‘with A Midsummer Night’s Dream …’

  ‘Hermia! Lysander! Oberon! Titania! Oh dear!’

  Miss Collins showed her culture.

  ‘Bottom,’ she added.

  ‘… I hate to sight-see. However, to-morrow, I’m told I must. Mr Arbanel has engaged an open coach … But, as I said to him, it would no longer be a coach. It would be a waggon …’

  ‘You should take a cab and drive to Eleusis … On Sunday, I believe, it’s the only thing to do.’

  Mrs Arbanel looked bored.

  ‘I’ve seen nothing here quite as delicate,’ she confessed, ‘as the Little Trianon in a shower of April rain.’

  Mrs Cowsend twinkled.

  ‘You should tell that to the Professor presently when he comes in.’

  ‘Where do the men tide through the evening? They invariably disappear.’

  ‘In the covered passage behind the hotel,’ Miss Collins said, ‘there’s a Viennese beer hall and a picture palace. Oh, Gerald!’

  ‘Mr Cowsend after dinner usually goes to a café in the Rue d’Hèrmes and does dominoes.’

  ‘All alone!’

  ‘Or with Professor Pappas – who’s apt, on the whole, to be dull. When he was introduced he started off about the county of Warwick. Or the Countess of Warwick. And then he referred to Shakespeare.’

  Miss Arne turned.

  ‘What is that about the stage?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Miss Collins said.

  ‘One of these days, Marianne, you should arrange a Lysistrata matinée upon the Acropolis.’

  ‘Boxes full. Stalls full. Gallery full. Pit full. Standing-room only!’

  ‘Don’t people stand at concerts? They promenade …’