VIII
MARY LODGE, or Maryland, as it was more familiarly known, stood quite at the end of Gardingore Gate, facing the Park.
Half-way down the row, on the Knightsbridge side, you caught a glimpse of it set well back in its strip of garden with a curtain of rustling aspen-trees before the door.
Erected towards the close of the eighteenth century as a retreat for a fallen minister, it had, on his demise, become the residence of a minor member of the reigning Royal House, from whose executors, it had, in due course, passed into the hands of the first histrionic couple in the land.
A gravel sweep leading between a pair of grotesquely attenuated sphinxes conducted, via a fountain, to the plain, sober façade in the Grecian style.
Moving demurely up this approach some few minutes prior to the hour telegraphicallyspecified by the mistress of the house, Miss Sinquier, clad in a light summer dress, with a bow like a great gold butterfly under her chin, pulled the bell of Mary Lodge.
Some day others would be standing at her own front gate, their hearts a-hammer....
A trim manservant answered the door.
“Is Mrs. Mary...?”
“Please to come this way.”
Miss Sinquier followed him in.
The entrance hall bare but for a porphyry sarcophagus containing visiting cards, and a few stiff chairs, clung obviously to royal tradition still.
To right and left of the broad stairway two colossal battle-pictures, by Uccelli, were narrowly divided by a pedestalled recess in which a frowning bust of Mrs. Mary as Medusa was enshrined.
Miss Sinquier, following closely, was shown into a compartment whose windows faced the Park.
“Mrs. Mary has not yet risen from lunch,” the man said as he went away. “But she won’t be many minutes.”
Selecting herself a chair with a back suited to the occasion, Miss Sinquier prepared to wait.
It was an irregular planned, rather lofty room, connected by a wide arch with other rooms beyond. From the painted boiseries hung glowing Eastern carpets, on which warriors astride fleet-legged fantastic horses were seen to pursue wild animals, that fled helter-skelter through transparent thickets of may. A number of fragile French chairs formed a broken ring about a Louis XVI bed—all fretted, massive pillars of twisted, gilded wood—converted now to be a seat. Persian and Pesaro pottery conserving “eternal” grasses, fans of feathers, strange sea-shells, bits of Blue-John, blocks of malachite, morsels of coral, images of jade littered theguéridonsandétagères.A portrait of Mrs. Mary, byWatts, was suspended above the chimney-place, from whence came the momentous ticking of a clock.
“The old girl’s lair, no doubt!” Miss Sinquier reflected, lifting her eyes towards a carved mythological ceiling describing the Zodiac and the Milky Way.
Tongue protruding, face upturned, it was something to mortify her for ever that Mrs. Mary, entering quietly, should so get her unawares.
“Look on your left.”
“Oh?”
“And you’ll see it; in trine of Mars. The Seventh House. The House ofMarriage.The House of Happiness.”
“Oh! Mrs. Mary!”
“You’re fond of astrology?”
“I know very little about the heavenly bodies.”
“Ah!Don’tbe too impatient there.”
Miss Sinquier stared.
Mrs. Mary was large and robust, with commanding features and an upright carriage. She had a Redfern gown of “navy” blue stuff infinitely laced. One white, long hand, curved and jewelled, clung as if paralysed above her breast.
Seating herself majestically, with a glance of invitation to Miss Sinquier to do the same, the eminent actress appraised her visitor slowly with a cold, dry eye.
“And so you’re his ‘little mouse’...!”
“Whose?”
“Sir Oliver’s ‘second Siddons.’”
“Indeed——”
“Well, and what is your forte?”
“My forte, Mrs. Mary?”
“Comedy? Tragedy?”
“Either. Both come easy.”
“You’ve no bent?”
“So long as the part is good.”
“‘Sarah’! Are you of Jewish stock?—Sarahs sometimes are!”
“Oh dear, no.”
“Tell me something of the home circle. Have you brothers, sisters?”
“Neither.”
“Is your heart free?”
“Quite.”
“The Boards, I believe, are new to you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Kindly stand.”
“I’m five full feet.”
“Say, ‘Abyssinia.’”
“Abyssinia!”
“As I guessed....”
“I was never there.”
“Now say ‘Joan.’”
“Joan!”
“You’re Comedy, my dear. Distinctly! And now sit down.”
Miss Sinquier gasped.
“You know with us it’s Repertoire, I suppose?”
“Of course.”
“In parts such as one would cast Jane Jacks you should score.”
“Is she giving up?”
“Unfortunately she’s obliged. She’s just had another babelet, poor dear.”
“What were her parts?”
“InBashful Miss Bardinethe governess was one of them.”
“Oh!”
“And inLara, she was the orphan. That part should suit you well,” Mrs. Mary murmured, rising and taking from a cabinet a bundle of printed sheets.
“Is it rags?”
“Rags?”
“May she——; is she allowed Evening dress?”
“Never mind about her dress. Let me hear how you’d deliver her lines,” Mrs. Mary tartly said, placing in Miss Sinquier’s hands a brochure of the play.
“I should like to know my cue.”
“A twitter of birds is all. You are now in Lord and Lady Lara’s garden—near Nice. Begin.”
“How full the hedges are of roses!”
“Speak up.”
“How full the hedges are of roses! What perfume to be sure.”
“And don’t do that.”
“The directions are: ‘she stoops.’”
“Continue!”
“What’s next?”
“A start.”
“Oh! Sir Harry!”
“Proceed.”
Miss Sinquier lodged a complaint.
“How can I when I don’t know the plot?”
“What does it matter—the plot?”
“Besides, I feel up to something stronger.”
Mrs. Mary caressed the backs of her books.
“Then take the slave inArsinoeand I’ll read out the queen.”
“These little legs, Mrs. Mary, would look queerly in tights.”
“Think less of your costume, dear, do; and learn to do what you’re told. Begin!”
“Arsinoe opens.”
“Arsi——? So she does. You should understand we’re in Egypt, in the halls of Ptolemy Philadelphus, on the banks of the River Nile. I will begin.
Cease.... Cease your song. Arisba! Lotos! THANKS.
And for thy pains accept this ivory pin....
Shall it be said in many-gated Thebes
That Arsinoe’s mean?
The desert wind....
Hark to’t!
Methinks ’twill blow all night;
Lashing the lebbek trees anent Great Cheops’ Pyre;
Tracing sombre shadows o’er its stony walls.
Within the wombats wail
Tearing the scarabs from Prince Kamphé’s tomb.
His end was sudden ... strangely so;
Osiris stalks our land. Kamphé and little Ti (his daughter—wife)
Both dead within a week. Ah me, I fear
Some priestly treachery; but see! What crouching shape is this?... Peace, fool!”
“I did not speak.... Oh, Queen.”
“ENOUGH. Thou weariest me.”
“I go!”
“Yet stay! Where is thy Lord?”
“Alas! I do not know.”
“Then get ye gone—from hence!”
“I shall obey.”
“... Wail it!” Mrs. Mary rested.
“Wail what, Mrs. Mary?”
“Let me hear thatbey: O-bey. Sound your menace.”
“I shall o-bey.”
“O beating heart, Mrs. Mary paced stormily the room,Tumultuous throbbing breast. Alas! how art thou laden?...”
She turned.
“Slave!...”
“Me, Mrs. Mary?”
“Come on. Come on.”
“Slave’s off.”
“Pst, girl. Then takethe Duke!”
“Fairest——”
“High Horus!... What! Back from Ethiopia and the Nubean Army! Is’t indeed Ismenias...?”
“Listen.”
“Hast desertedPtolemy?”
“Fairest——”
“O Gods of Egypt——”
“Someone wants you, Mrs. Mary.”
“Wants me?”
“Your chauffeur, I think.”
“The car, M’m,” a servant announced.
“Ah!” she broke off, “An engagement, I fear. But come and see me again. Come one day to the theatre. Our stage-door is in Sloop Street, animpasseoff the Strand.” And Mrs. Mary, gathering up her skirts, nodded and withdrew.