B007TB5SP0 EBOK (23 page)

‘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.

‘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.’

‘But surely the Thames—’

‘Bless you, no!’

‘And you saw nothing of the Bishop?’

‘His pinched white face frightened me. It gave me such a turn …

‘Weep, willow, weep,

Willow, willow, weep,

For the cross that’s mine is difficult to bear.’

Miss Compostella interposed.

‘You needn’t pack up everything,’ she remarked.

‘It’s my impatience! I could sing when I think we’re returning home to-morrow. If it’s only to escape the housekeeper here. For we had quite a quarrel just now … “Where’s your wedding ring?” she says. “I never wear it,” I replied. “It makes one’s hand look so bourgeoise … And don’t you go flinging your nasty aspersions over me,” I said, “for I won’t have it.” ’

‘Quite right.’

‘My word. I was very carefully brought up. My mother was most tyrannical, especially with us girls. Why, I wasn’t even allowed to read
The Vicar of Wakefield
until after I was married … Not that I didn’t belong to a Rabelais-lovers-Society by the time I was twelve.’

‘What, in Stratford?’ Miss Compostella wondered, taking up with lassitude the manuscript of a play left with her by Mrs Shamefoot (before the accident), in the expectation of obtaining an interest at the Palace by overwhelming Miss Hospice by an eternal and delicate debt of thanks.

It was a
Tristram and Isolde
.

‘
Brangane and Isolde
,’ she read, ‘
Deck chairs. Isolde making lace. Soft music.
’

BR
. But what makes you think he’s so fond of you, my dear?

IS
. He presses my hand so beautifully.

BR
. You know he does that to
everybody
.

IS
. O – h?

BR
. Take my advice.
I
should never marry him.

IS
. Really? Why not?

BR
. He would leave you.

IS
. Nonsense!

BR
. He has ears like wings …

IS
. Is that all?

‘Not such a bad beginning,’ Miss Compostella commented. ‘But why must Isolde be so impatient to confide to the waves her age? “I’m exactly nine-and-twenty.” I cannot see that helps. And why, oh, why,’ she murmured, rising to her feet, ‘when Tristram inquires for her, should Brangane lose her head so, and say: “She’s out, she’s not at home, she isn’t there.” Were she to reply quite calmly, almost like a butler: “The family’s away”, or, “I expect them home in about a fortnight”, it should be amply sufficient.’

A lazy ripple of strings surprised her.

‘What is that—?’

‘I don’t know, miss, I’m sure. It sounds like
Pippa Passes
.’

‘Well, go and see.’

‘It brings back to me the reading Mrs Steeple gave at the Caxton Hall when I, Miss Falconhall, and her fiancé received Press tickets … Coming away, foolish fellow, he slipped on a piece of cabbage-stalk and snapped his coledge bone.’

‘Can you make out who is serenading us?’

‘It’s the Honourable Mrs Shamefoot,’ Sumph informed. Pacing beneath a magnificence of autumnal trees, Mrs Shamefoot was strolling slowly up and down with a guitar.

‘She’s been on stilts all day,’ Sumph said.

Miss Compostella coiled an arm across her head.

‘Give me a phenacetin powder,’ she exclaimed, ‘at once. For what with the crash the Cathedral made in falling, and your silly jabber, and her guitar … !’

Monday.

Day Dawn.

The little turquoise flower you admired, my beloved, on Wednesday, is known as
Fragment of Happiness
. You will find it again in some of Dürer’s drawings. Oh, George … On my desk there is an orange-tree. How it makes me yearn, dear, for the South! I count my oranges. Eight poor, pale, crabbed oranges. Like slum cripples. I think of Seville now. Yes. To-morrow. Absolutely. But, dearest,
downstairs
, Rosalba Roggers sometimes sallies up. She saw us together last time and begged so to be told who my wonderful big child was with the tragic face. Five o’clock, dear. And don’t be late as you usually are. M.

P.S. – I will carry some of your troubles, if you will send them to me with your thoughts.

P.P.S. – You say I blush! When, I wonder, shall I learn to have a mask of my own?’

‘Minx!’ Mrs Calvally exclaimed. ‘The snake …’

She seemed stupefied, stunned.

‘I merely opened his paint-box,’ she began, stammering to herself.

‘Mamma! …’

And, as if to demonstrate that domestic drama is not entirely tired of its rather limited tricks, her little son Raphael entered the room at that same minute and rushed right into her arms.

He came …

She stooped …

‘My dear!’

And now she was calm again, complacent, with all her old tranquillity of gardens.

‘Oh, how ugly! …’

‘Where, my precious?’

‘And is it a present, too?’

For the artist’s anniversary Miss Thumbler had despatched a door-knocker, wrought in bronze, that represented a woe-begone, wan Amour.

‘By all means,’ Mrs Calvally had said, ‘let us put it up. I will call a carpenter. And some of the mirrors, as well, need glueing …’

And the gift decidedly had eclipsed her own humble offering of the Hundred Best Pictures, in photogravure, that did not appear to have aroused in him all the interest that they might.

‘Mrs Asp and Mrs Thumbler are in the drawing-room.’

‘Are they, my pet?’

‘And Mrs Asp is concealing such a lovely-looking thing. All wrapped up. It must be something for papa.’

‘Come along and let us see.’

‘Don’t sigh, mamma. It bores me to hear you sigh.’

‘I’m so sorry George isn’t in,’ Mrs Calvally said, as she lounged leisurely round the huge Ming screen that began her drawing-room. ‘But he went out, quite early, almost before it was light, to make a Canaletto of the space before White Hall.’

‘I believe he’s unusually busy … So I hear!’ Mrs Asp announced.

‘No. Not so very … He’s making Mrs Jeffreys at present in all her jewels; or, at any rate, more than he usually likes. And the old Duke of Spitalfields. And the cartoons of a country church …’

Mrs Thumbler began to purr.

‘And he obliges Mira,’ she said, ‘nearly every day. And in such varieties of poses! Even as Absalom, swinging from a tree.’

‘I know. He raves about her. He told me he looked upon her almost as an inspiration,’ Mrs Calvally replied, confident that the ‘almost’ would be repeated to haunt Miss Thumbler for days.

‘All the same, quite between ourselves, I confess, I wish he didn’t. It’s making her so vain! Lately (I’m ashamed to tell you),
she’s taken to wear a
patch
. A crescent-moon-shaped affair above the lip, that gives her such an o-ri-gi-nal expression. Really, sometimes in the street … Well, I won’t go out with her again. I let her take the dog.’

Mrs Asp untied an ermine stole.

‘My dear,’ she exclaimed, ‘do be careful. When it comes to dragging a dumb animal about as a chaperon one gets generally misunderstood.’

‘But what am I to do! Mira’s so sensitive. I dare hardly say a word. Although those pen-and-ink embroideries Mr Calvally made for her, charming as they are, are only fit for the house.’

‘I wasn’t aware he had ever made her any,’ Mrs Calvally said. ‘I’m sure he never made pen-and ink embroideries for me!’

‘Occupation,’ Mrs Asp reflected airily, ‘is an admirable thing, especially for a man. It restricts restlessness as a rule.’

‘How you comfort me! He talks of a farm-house now near Rome.’

Mrs Thumbler shuddered.

‘I should hate to keep an Italian cow,’ she said. ‘I should be afraid of it!’

‘But
we
should be Byzantine. Just peacocks, stags and sheep …’

‘The danger of Italy,’ Mrs Asp observed, ‘is, it tends to make one florid. One expands there so … Personally, I go all to poppy-seed directly. I cannot keep
pace
with my ideas. And then I fall ill, and have to have a nurse. Shall I ever forget the creature I had last year! My dear Mrs Calvally, she looked just about as stable as the young woman on the cover of a valse. Unfortunately, I was too exhausted to object. But I simply couldn’t endure her. She made me so uneasy. A habit of staring vaguely into space whenever she spoke to me would make me shiver; I began to believe she must be in a league with the doctor; that she was hiding something, keeping something back … At last, one day I collected all my strength together and sat up in my bed and pointed towards the door. After that, I took a nun, who was quite rapacious for martyrdom. But all that was ever allowed to her was, sometimes, to get cold feet.’

‘And what are you doing now?’

Mrs Asp relaxed.

‘At present,’ she said, ‘I’m preparing a
Women Queens of England
.’

‘Isn’t it idle – to insist?’

‘Not as euphony.
The Queens
of England, somehow, sound so bleak. And, really, rather a brigade … More like history!’