“From Princess Elsie....”
“They say she’s stupid, but I do not know that intellect is always a blessing!” the King declared, drooping his eyes to his abdomen, with an air of pensive modesty.
“Poor child, she writes she is tied to the shore, so that I suppose she is unable to leave dear England.”
“Tied to it?”
“And bound till goodness knows.”
“As was Andromeda!” the King sententiously exclaimed.... “She would have little, or maybe nothing, to wear,” heclairvoyantly went on: “I see her standing shivering, waiting for Yousef.... Chained by the leg, perhaps, exposed to the howling winds.”3
“Nonsense. She means to say she can’t get away yet on account of her engagements: that’s all.”
“After Cowes-week,” Lady Something put in, “she is due to pay a round of visits before joining her parents in the North.”
“How I envy her,” the Archduchess sighed, “amid that entrancing scene....”
Lady Something lookedattendrie.
“Your royal highness is attached to England?” she asked.
“I fear I was never there.... But I shall always remember I put my hair up when I was twelve years old because of the Prince of Wales.”
“Oh? And ... which of the Georges?” Lady Something gasped.
“It’s so long ago now that I really forget.”
“And pray, ma’am, what was the point of it?”
The Archduchess chuckled:
“Why, so as to look eligible of course!” she replied, returning to her knitting.
Amid the general flutter following the King’s appearance, it was easy enough for the Duchess of Varna to slip away. Knowing the palace inside out it was unnecessary to make any fuss. Passing through a long room, where a hundred holland-covered chairs stood grouped, Congresswise, around a vast table, she attained the Orangery, that gave access to the drive. The mellay of vehicles had considerably increased, and the Duchess paused a moment to consider which she should borrow, when recollecting she wished to question one of the royal gardeners on a little matter of mixing manure, she decided to return through the castle grounds instead. Taking a path that descended between rhododendrons and grim old cannons towards the town, she was comparing the capriciousness of certain bulbs to that of certain people, when she heard her name called from behind, and glancing round perceived the charming silhouette of the Countess of Tolga.
“I couldn’t stand it inside: Could you?”
“Mydear, what a honeymoon hat!”
“It was made by me!”
“Oh, Violet....” the Duchess murmured, her face taking on a look of wonder.
“Don’t forget, dear, Sunday.”
“Is it a party?”
“I’ve asked Grim-lips and Ladybird, Hairy and Fluffy, Hardylegs and Bluewings, Spindleshanks, and Our Lady of Furs.”
“Not Nanny-goat?”
“Luckily ...” the Countess replied, raising to her nose the heliotropes in her hand.
“Is he no better?”
“You little know, dear, what it is to be all alone with him chez soi when he thinks and sneers into the woodwork.”
“Into the woodwork?”
“He addresses the ceiling, the walls, the floor—me never!”
“Dear dove.”
“All I can I’m plastic.”
“Can one be plastic ever enough, dear?”
“Often but for Olga ...” the Countess murmured, considering a little rosy ladybird on her arm.
“I consider her ever so compelling, ever so wistful—” the Duchess of Varna averred.
“Sweet girl—! She’s just my consolation.”
“She reminds me, does she you, of thatMiss Hobartin de Grammont’sMemoirs.”
“C’est une ame exquise!”
“Well au revoir, dear: We shall meet again at the Princess Leucippe’s later on,” the duchess said, detecting her gardener in the offing.
By the time she had obtained her recipe and cajoled a few special shoots from various exotic plants, the sun had begun to decline. Emerging from the palace by a postern-gate, where lounged a sentry, she found herself almost directly beneath the great acacias on the Promenade. Under the lofty leafage of the trees, as usual towards this hour, society, in its varying grades had congregated to be gazed upon. Mounted on an eager-headed little horse his Weariness (who loved being seen) was plying up and down, while in his wake a “screen artiste,” on an Arabian mare with powdered withers and eyes made up with kohl, was creatinga sensation. Every time she used her whip the powder rose in clouds. Wending her way through the throng the duchess recognised the rose-harnessed horses of Countess Medusa Rappa—the Countess bolt upright, her head carried stiffly staring with a pathetic expression of deadjoie-de-viebetween her coachman’s and footman’s waists. But the intention of calling at the Café Cleopatra caused the duchess to hasten. The possibility of learning something beneficial to herself was a lure not to be resisted. Pausing to allow the marvellous blue automobile of Count Ann-Jules to pass (with the dancer Kalpurnia inside), she crossed the Avenue, where there seemed, on the whole, to be fewer people. Here she remarked a little ahead of her the masculine form of the Countess Yvorra, taking a quiet stroll beforeSalutin the company of her Confessor. In the street she usually walked with her hands clasped behind her back, huddled up like a statesman: “Des choses abominables!... Des choses hors nature!” she was saying, in tones of evident relish, as the duchess passed.
Meanwhile Madame Wetme was seated anxiously by the samovar in her drawing-room. To receive the duchess, she had assumed a mashlak à la mode, whitened her face and rouged her ears, and set a small, but costly aigrette at an insinuating angle in the edifice of her hair. As the hour of Angelus approached, the tension of waiting grew more and more acute, and beneath the strain of expectation even the little iced-sugar cakes upon the tea-table looked green with worry.
Suppose, after all, she shouldn’t come? Suppose she had already left? Suppose she were in prison? Only the other day a woman of the highest fashion, a leader of “society” with anA, had served six months as a consequence of her extravagance....
In agitation Madame Wetme helped herself to a small glassful ofCointreau, (her favourite liqueur) when, feeling calmer for the consommation, she was moved to take a peep out of Antoine.
But nobody chic at all met her eye.
Between the oleanders upon the curb,that rose up darkly against a flame-pink sky, two young men dressed “as Poets” were arguing and gesticulating freely over a bottle of beer. Near them, a sailor with a blue drooping collar and dusty boots (had he walked, poor wretch, to see his mother?) was gazing stupidly at the large evening gnats that revolved like things bewitched about the café lamps. While below the window a lean soul in glasses, evidently an impresario, was loudly exclaiming: “London has robbed me of my throat, sir!! It has deprived me of my voice.”
No, an “off” night certainly!
Through a slow, sun-flower of a door (that kept on revolving long after it had been pushed) a few military men bent on a game of billiards, or an earlyfille de joie(only the discreetestdes filles “serieuses”were supposed to be admitted)—came and went.
“To-night they’re fit for church,” Madame Wetme complacently smiled as the door swung round again: “Navy-blue and silver-fox looks the goods,” she reflected, “upon any occasion! It suggests something sly—like a Nurse’s uniform.”
“A lady in the drawing-room, Madame, desires to speak to you,” a chasseur tunefully announced, and fingering nervously her aigrette Madame Wetme followed.
The Duchess of Varna was inspecting a portrait with her back to the door as her hostess entered.
“I see you’re looking at my Murillo!” Madame Wetme began.
“Oh.... Is it o-ri-gi-nal?” the duchess drawled.
“No.”
“Ithoughtnot.”
“To judge by the Bankruptcy-sales of late (and it’s curious how many there’ve been ...) it would seem from the indifferent figure he makes, that he is no longer accounted chic,” Madame Wetme observed as she drew towards the duchess a chair.
“I consider the chic to be such a very false religion!...” the duchess said, accepting the seat which was offered her.
“Well, I come of an old Huguenot family myself!”
“——...?”
“Ah my early home.... Now, I hear, it’s nothing but a weed-crowned ruin.”
The duchess considered the ivory cat handle of her parasol: “You wrote to me?” she asked.
“Yes: about the coming court.”
“About it?”
“Every woman has her dream, duchess! And mine’s to be presented.”
“The odd ambition!” the duchess crooned.
“I admit we live in the valley. AlthoughIhave a great sense of the hills!” Madame Wetme declared demurely.
“Indeed?”
“My husband you see ...”
“...............”
“Ah! well!”
“Of course.”
“If I’m not asked this time, I shall die of grief.”
“Have you made the request before?”
“I have attempted!”
“Well?”
“When the Lord Chamberlain refusedme, I shed tears of blood,” Madame Wetme wanly retailed.
“It would have been easier, no doubt, in the late king’s time!”
Madame Wetme took a long sighing breath.
“I only once saw him in my life,” she said, “and then he was standing against a tree, in an attitude offensive to modesty.”
“Tell me ... as a public man, what has your husband done——”
“His money helped to avert, I always contend, the noisy misery of a War!”
“He’s open-handed?”
“Ah ... as you would find....”
The duchess considered: “Imight,” she said, “get you cards for a State concert....”
“A State concert, duchess? That’s no good to me!”
“A drawing-room you know is a very dull affair.”
“I will liven it!”
“Or an invitation perhaps to begin with to one of the Embassies—the English for instance might lead....”
“Nowhere...! You can’t depend on that: people have asked me to lunch, and left me to pay for them...! There is so much trickery in Society....” Madame Wetme laughed.
The duchess smiled quizzically: “I forget if you know the Tolgas,” she said.
“By ‘name’!”
“The Countess is more about the throne at present than I.”
“Possibly—but ohyouwho doeverything, duchess?” Madame Wetme entreated.
“I suppose there are things still one wouldn’t do however——!” the duchess took offence.
“The Tolgas are so hard.”
“You want a misfortune and they’re sweet to you. Successful persons they’re positively hateful to!”
“These women of the Bedchamber are all alike, so glorified. You would never credit they were Chambermaids at all! I often smile to myself when I see one of them at apremièreat the Opera, gorged with pickings, and think that, most likely, but an hour before she wasstumbling along a corridor with a pailful of slops!”
“You’re fond of music, Madame?” the duchess asked.
“It’s my joy: I could go again and again toThe Blue Banana!”
“I’ve not been.”
“Pom-pom, pompity-pom! We might go one night, perhaps, together.”
“...”
“Doudja Degdeg is always a draw, although naturally now she is getting on!”
“And I fear so must I”—the duchess rose remarking.
“So soon?”
“I’m only so sorry I can’t stay longer——!”
“Then it’s all decided,” Madame Wetme murmured archly as she pressed the bell.
“Oh I’d not say that.”
“If I’m not asked, remember this time, I shall die with grief.”
“To-night the duke and I are dining with the Leucippes, and possibly ...” the duchess broke off to listen to the orchestra in the café below, which was playing the waltz-air fromDer Rosenkavalier.
“They play well!” she commented.
“People often tell me so.”
“It must make one restless, dissatisfied, that yearning, yearning music continually at the door?”
Madame Wetme sighed.
“It makes you often long,” she said, “to begin your life again!”
“Again?”
“Really it’s queer I came to yoke myself with a man so little fine....”
“Still——! If he’s open-handed,” the duchess murmured as she left the room.
Onegrey, unsettled morning (it was the first of June) the English Colony of Kairoulla4awoke in arms. It usually did when the Embassy entertained. But the omissions of the Ambassador, were, as old Mr Ladboyson the longest-established member of the colony declared, “not to be fathomed,” and many of those overlooked declared they should go all the same. Why should Mrs Montgomery (who, when all was said and done, was nothing but a governess) be invited and not Mrs Barleymoon who was “nothing” (in the most distinguished sense of the word) at all? Mrs Barleymoon’s position, as a captain’s widow with means, unquestionably came before Mrs Montgomery’s, who drew a salary, and hadn’t often an h.
Miss Grizel Hopkins, too—the cousin of an Earl, and Mrs Bedley the “Mother” ofthe English Colony, both had been ignored. It was true Ann Bedley kept a circulating library and a tea-room combined and gave “Information” to tourists as well (a thing she had done these forty years), but was that a sufficient reason why she should be totally taboo?No, in old Lord Clanlubber’s time all had been made welcome, and there had been none of these heartburnings at all. Even the Irish coachman of the Archduchess was known to have been received—although it had been outside of course upon the lawn. Only gross carelessness, it was felt, on the part of those attachés could account for the extraordinary present neglect.
“I don’t myself mind much,” Mrs Bedley said, who was seated over a glass of morning milk and “a plate of fingers” in theCirculatingend of the shop: “going out at night upsets me. And the last time Dr Babcock was in he warned me not.”
“What is the Embassy there for but to be hospitable?” Mrs Barleymoon demanded from the summit of a ladder, from where she was choosing herself a book.
“You’re shewing your petticoat, dear—excuse me telling you,” Mrs Bedley observed.
“When will you have something new, Mrs Bedley?”
“Soon, dear ... soon.”
“It’s always ‘soon,’” Mrs Barleymoon complained.
“Are you looking for anything, Bessie, in particular?” a girl, with loose blue eyes that did not seem quite firm in her head, and a literary face enquired.
“No, only something,” Mrs Barleymoon replied, “I’ve not had before and before and before.”
“By the way, Miss Hopkins,” Mrs Bedley said, “I’ve to fine you for pouring tea overMy Stormy Past.”
“It was coffee, Mrs Bedley—not tea.”
“Never mind, dear, what it was the charge for a stain is the same as you know,” Mrs Bedley remarked, turning to attend to Mrs Montgomery who, with his Lankiness, Prince Olaf, had entered the Library.
“Is it in?” Mrs Montgomery mysteriously asked.
Mrs Bedley assumed her glasses.
“Mmnops,” she replied, peering with an air of secretiveness in her private drawer where she would sometimes reserve or ‘hold back’ a volume for a subscriber who happened to be in her special good graces.
“I’ve often said,” Mrs Barleymoon from her ladder sarcastically let fall, “that Mrs Bedley has her pets!”
“You are all my pets, my dear,” Mrs Bedley softly cooed.
“Have you readMen—my Delight, Bessie?” Miss Hopkins asked, “by Cora Velasquez.”
“No!”
“It’s not perhaps a very.... It’s about two dark, and three fair, men,” she added vaguely.
“Most women’s novels seem to run off the rails before they reach the end, and I’m not very fond of them,” Mrs Barleymoon said.
“And anyway, dear, it’s out,” Mrs Bedley asserted.
“The Passing of RoseI read the other day,” Mrs Montgomery said, “andsoenjoyed it.”
“Isn’t that one of Ronald Firbank’s books?”
“No, dear, I don’t think it is. But I never remember an author’s name and I don’t think it matters!”
“I suppose I’m getting squeamish! But this Ronald Firbank I can’t take to at all.Valmouth!Was there ever a novel more coarse. I assure you I hadn’t gone very far when I had to put it down.”
“It’sout,” Mrs Bedley suavely said, “as well,” she added, “as the rest of them.”
“I once met him,” Miss Hopkins said, dilating slightly theretinæof her eyes: “He told me writing books was by no means easy!”
Mrs Barleymoon shrugged.
“Have you nothing more enthralling, Mrs Bedley,” she persuasively asked, “tucked away?”
“TryThe Call of the Stage, dear,” Mrs Bedley suggested.
“You forget, Mrs Bedley,” Mrs Barleymoon replied, regarding solemnly hercrêpe.
“OrMary of the Manse, dear.”
“I’ve readMary of the Mansetwice, Mrs Bedley—and I don’t propose to read it again.”
“..........?”
“..........!”
Mrs Bedley became abstruse.
“It’s dreadful how many poets take to drink,” she reflected.
A sentiment to which her subscribers unanimously assented.
“I’m takingMen are Animals, by the Hon. Mrs Victor Smythe, andWhat Every Soldier Ought to Know, Mrs Bedley,” Miss Hopkins breathed.
“And IThe East is Whispering,” Mrs Barleymoon in hopeless tones affirmed.
“Robert Hitchinson! He’s a good author.”
“Do you think so? I feel his books are all written in hotels with the bed unmade at the back of the chair.”
“And I daresay you’re right, my dear.”
“Well, Mrs Bedley, I must go—if I want to walk to my husband’s grave,” Mrs Barleymoon declared.
“Poor Bessie Barleymoon,” Mrs Bedleysighed, after Mrs Barleymoon and Miss Hopkins had gone: “I fear she frets!”
“We all have our trials, Mrs Bedley.”
“And some more than others.”
“Court life, Mrs Bedley, it’s a funny thing.”
“It looks as though we may have an English Queen, Mrs Montgomery.”
“I don’t believe it!”
“Most of the daily prints I see are devoting leaders to the little dog the Princess Elsie sent out the other day.”
“Odious, ill-mannered, horrid little beast....”
“It seems, dear, he ran from room to room looking for her until he came to the prince’s door, where he just lay down and whined.”
“And what does that prove, Mrs Bedley?”
“I really don’t know, Mrs Montgomery. But the press seemed to find it significant,’” Mrs Bedley replied as a Nun of the Flaming-Hood with a jolly face all gold with freckles entered the shop:
“Have youValmouthby Ronald Firbank orInclinationsby the same author?” she asked.
“Neither I’m sorry—both are out!”
“Maladetta ✠✠✠✠! But I’ll be passing soon again,” the Sister answered as she twinklingly withdrew.
“You’d not think now by the look of her she had been at Girton!” Mrs Bedley remarked.
“Once a Girton girl always a Girton girl, Mrs Bedley.”
“It seems a curate drove her to it....”
“I’m scarcely astonished. Looking back I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger.”
“Still, dear, I could never renounce my religion. As I said to the dear Chaplain only the other day (while he was having some tea), Oh, if only I were a man, I said! Wouldn’t I like todenouncethe disgraceful goings on every Sabbath down the street at the church of the Blue Jesus.”
“And I assure you it’s positivelynothing, Mrs Bedley, at the Jesus, to what it is at the church of St Mary the Fair! I was at the wedding of one of the equerries lately, and never saw anything like it.”
“It’s about time there was an English wedding, inmyopinion, Mrs Montgomery!”
“There’s not been one in the Colony indeed for some time.”
Mrs Bedley smiled undaunted.
“I trust I may be spared to dance before long at Dr and Mrs Babcock’s!” she exclaimed.
“Kindly leave Cunnie out of it, Mrs Bedley,” Mrs Montgomery begged.
“So it’s Cunnie already you call him!”
“Dr Cuncliffe and I scarcely meet.”
“People talk of the immense sameness of marriage, Mrs Montgomery; but all the same, my dear, a widow’s not much to be envied.”
“There are times, it’s true, Mrs Bedley, when a woman feels she needs fostering; but it’s a feeling she should try to fight against.”
“Ah my dear, I never could resista mon!” Mrs Bedley exclaimed.
Mrs Montgomery sighed.
“Once,” she murmured meditatively, “men (those procurers of delights) engaged me utterly.... I was theirslave....Now.... One does not burn one’s fingers twice, Mrs Bedley.”
Mrs Bedley grew introspective.
“My poor husband sometimes would be a little frightening, a little fierce ... at night, my dear, especially. Yet how often now I miss him!”
“You’re better off as you are, Mrs Bedley, believe me,” Mrs Montgomery declared, looking round for the little prince who was amusing himself on the library-steps.
“You must find him a handful to educate, my dear.”
“It will be a reliefindeed, Mrs Bedley, when he goes to Eton!”
“I’m told so long as a boy is grounded....”
“His English accent is excellent, Mrs Bedley, and he shews quite a talent for languages,” Mrs Montgomery assured.
“I’m delighted, I’m sure, to hear it!”
“Well, Mrs Bedley, I mustn’t stand dawdling: I’ve to ’ave my ’air shampooed and waved for the Embassy party to-night you know!” And taking the little prince by the hand, the Royal Governess withdrew.
Amongthose attached to the Chedorlahomor expedition was a young—if thirty-five be young—eccentric Englishman from Wales, the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, a son of Lord Intriguer. Attached first to one thing and then another, without ever being attached to any, his life had been a gentle series of attachments all along. But this new attachment was surely something better than a temporary secretaryship to a minister, or “aiding” an ungrateful general, or waiting in through draughts (so affecting to the constitution) in the anterooms of hard-worked royalty, in the purlieus of Pall Mall. Secured by the courtesy of his ex-chief, Sir Somebody Something, an old varsity friend of his father, the billet of “surveyor and occasional help” to the Chedorlahomorian excavation party had been waywardly accepted by the Hon. ‘Eddy’ just as he had been upon the pointof attaching himself, to the terror of his relatives and the amusement of his friends, to a monastery of the Jesuit Order, as a likely candidate for the cowl.
Indeed he had already gone so far as to sit to an artist for his portrait in the habit of a monk, gazing ardently at what looked to be the Escurial itself, but in reality was nothing other than an “impression” from the kitchen garden of Intriguer Park. And now this sudden change, this call to the East instead. There had been no time, unfortunately, before setting out to sit again in the picturesque “sombrero” of an explorer, but a ready camera had performed miracles, and the relatives of the Hon. ‘Eddy’ were relieved to behold his smiling countenance in the illustrated-weeklies, pick in hand, or with one foot resting on his spade while examining a broken jar, with just below the various editors’ comments:To join the Expedition to Chedorlahomor—the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, only son of Lord Intriguer; or,Off to Chedorlahomor!or,Bon Voyage...!
Yes, the temptation of the expeditionwas not to be withstood, and for vows and renunciations there was always time!... And now leaning idly on his window ledge in a spare room of the Embassy, while his man unpacked, he felt, as he surveyed the distant dome of the Blue Jesus above the dwarf-palm trees before the house, half-way to the East already. He was suffering a little in his dignity from the contretemps of his reception, for having arrived at the Embassy among a jobbed troop of serfs engaged for the night, Lady Something had at first mistaken him for one: “The cloak-room will be in the Smoking-room!” she had said, and in spite of her laughing excuses and ample apologies, he could not easily forget it. What was there in his appearance that could conceivably recall a cloak-room attendant—?Hewho had been assured he had the profile of a “Rameses”! And going to a mirror he scanned, with less perhaps than his habitual contentment, the light, liver-tinted hair, grey narrow eyes, hollow cheeks, and pale mouth like a broken moon. He was looking just a little fatigued he fancied from his journey, and really, itwas all his hostess deserved, if he didn’t go down.
“I have a headache, Mario,” he told his man (a Neapolitan who had been attached to almost as many professions as his master). “I shall not leave my room! Give me a kimono: I will take a bath.”
Undressing slowly, he felt as the garments dropped away, he was acting properly in refraining from attending the soirée, and only hoped the lesson would not be “lost” on Lady Something, whom he feared must be incurably dense.
Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his man-servant deftly bathed him, he fell into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance. Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed withKiki, he was St Sebastian, and as the water became cloudier and the crystals evaporated amid the steam, he was Teresa ... and he would have been, most likely, the Blessed Virgin herself, but that the bath grew gradually cold.
“You’re looking a little pale, sir, about the gills!” the valet solicitously observed, as he gently dried him.
The Hon. ‘Eddy’ winced: “I forbid you ever to employ the word gill, Mario,” he exclaimed. “It is inharmonious, and in English it jars; whatever it may do in Italian.”
“Overtired, sir, was what I meant to say.”
“Basta!” his master replied, with all the brilliant glibness of the Berlitz-school.
Swathed in towels, it was delicious to relax his powder-blanched limbs upon a comfy couch, while Mario went for dinner: “I don’t care what it is! So long as it isn’t—”(naming several dishes that he particularly abhorred, or might be “better,” perhaps, without)—” And be sure, fool, not to come back without Champagne.”
He could not choose but pray that the Ambassadress had nothing whatever to do with the Embassy cellar, for from what he had seen of her already, he had only a slight opinion of her discernment.
Really he might have been excused had he taken her to be the cook instead of the social representative of the Court of St James, and he was unable to repress acaustic smile on recollecting her appearance that afternoon, with her hat awry, crammed withMaréchal Nielroses, hot, and decoiffed, flourishing a pair of garden-gauntlets as she issued her commands. What a contrast to his own Mamma—“so different,” ... and his thoughts returned to Intriguer—“dear Intriguer, ...” that if only to vex his father’s ghost, he would one day turn into a Jesuit college! The Confessional should be fitted in the paternal study, and engravings of the Inquisition, or the sweet faces of Lippi and Fra Angelico, replace the Agrarian certificates and tiresome trophies of the chase; while the crack of the discipline in Lent would echo throughout the house! How “useful” his friend Robbie Renard would have been; but alas poor Robbie. He had passed through life at a rapid canter, having died at nineteen....
Musingly he lit a cigarette.
Through the open window a bee droned in on the blue air of evening and closing his eyes he fell to considering whether the bee of one country would understand theremarks of that of another. The effect of the soil of a nation, had it consequences upon its Flora? Were plants influenced at their roots? People sometimes spoke (and especially ladies) of the language of flowers ... the pollen therefore of an English rose would probably vary, not inconsiderably, from that of a French, and a bee born and bred at home (atIntriguerfor instance) would be at a loss to understand (it clearly followed) the conversation of one born and bred, here, abroad. A bee’s idiom varied then, as did man’s! And he wondered, this being proved the case, where the best bees’ accents were generally acquired....
Opening his eyes, he perceived his former school chum, Lionel Limpness—Lord Tiredstock’s third (and perhaps most gifted) son, who was an honorary attaché at the Embassy, standing over him, his spare figure already arrayed in an evening suit.
“Sorry to hear you’re off colour, Old Dear!” he exclaimed, sinking down upon the couch beside his friend.
“I’m only a little shaken, Lionel...: have a cigarette.”
“And so you’re off to Chedorlahomor, Old Darling?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said.
“I suppose so ...” the only son of Lord Intriguer replied.
“Well, I wish I was going too!”
“It would be charming, Lionel, of course to have you: but they might appoint you Vice-Consul at Sodom, or something?”
“WhyVice? Besides...! There’s no consulate there yet,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said, examining the objects upon the portable altar, draped in prelatial purple of his friend.
“Turn over, Old Dear, while I chastise you!” he exclaimed, waving what looked to be a tortoiseshell lorgnon to which had been attached three threads of “cerulean” floss silk.
“Put it down, Lionel, and don’t be absurd.”
“Over we go. Come on.”
“Really, Lionel.”
“Penitence! To thy knees, Sir!”
And just as it seemed that the only son of Lord Intriguer was to be deprived of allhis towels, the Ambassadress mercifully entered.
“PoorMr Monteith!” she exclaimed in tones of concern bustling forward with a tablespoon and a bottle containing physic, “sounfortunate.... Taken ill at the moment you arrive! But Life is like that!”
Clad in the flowing circumstance of an oyster satin ball dress, and all a-glitter like a Christmas tree (with jewels), her arrival perhaps saved her guest a “whipping.”
“Had I known, Lady Something, I was going to be ill, I would have gone to the Ritz!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ gasped.
“And you’d have been bitten all over!” Lady Something replied.
“Bitten all over?”
“The other evening we were dining at the Palace, and I heard the dear King say—but I oughtn’t to talk and excite you——”
“By the way, Lady Something,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked: “what is the etiquette for the Queen of Dateland’s eunuch?”
“It’s all according; but you had betterask Sir Somebody, Air Limpness,” Lady Something replied, glancing with interest at the portable altar.
“I’ve done so, and he declared he’d be jiggered!”
“I recollect in Pera when we occupied the Porte, they seemed (those of the old Grand Vizier—oh what a good-looking man he was—! such eyes—! and such awaywith him—!Despot!!) only too thankful to crouch in corners.”
“Attention with that castor-oil...!”
“It’s not castor-oil; it’s a little decoction of my own,—aloes, gregory, a dash of liquorice. And the rest is buckthorn!”
“Euh!”
“It’s not so bad, though it mayn’t be very nice.... Toss it off like a brave man, Mr Monteith (nip his nostrils, Mr Limpness), and while he takes it, I’ll offer a silent prayer for him at that duck of an altar,” and as good as her word, the Ambassadress made towards it.
“You’re altogether too kind,” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ murmured seeking refuge in a book—a volume ofJuvenaliapublished for himby “Blackwood of Oxford,” and becoming absorbed in its contents: “Ah Doris”—“Lines to Doris”—“Lines to Doris: written under the influence of wine, sun and fever”—“Ode to Swinburne”—“Sad Tamarisks”—“Rejection”—“Doigts Obscènes”—“They Call meLily!”—“Land of Titian! Land of Verdi! Oh Italy!”—“I heard the Clock:I heard the clock strike seven,Seven strokes I heard it strike!His Lordship’s gone to LondonAnd won’t be back to-night.”He had written it at Intriguer, after a poignant domestic disagreement, his Papa,—the “his lordship” of the poem—had stayed away however considerably longer.... And here was a sweet thing suggested by an old Nursery Rhyme, “Loves, have you Heard”:“Loves, have you heard about the rabbits??They have such odd fantastic habits....Oh, Children...! I daren’t disclose to YouThe licentious thingssomerabbits do.”It had “come to him” quite suddenly out ferreting one day with the footman....
But a loud crash as the portable altar collapsed beneath the weight of the Ambassadress aroused him unpleasantly from his thoughts.
“Horrid dangerous thing!” she exclaimed as Lord Tiredstock’s third son assisted her to rise from her “Silent” prayer: “I had no idea it wasn’t solid! But Life is like that ...” she added somewhat wildly.
“Pity oh my God! Deliver me!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ breathed, but the hour ofdeliveranceit seemed was not just yet; for at that instant the Hon. Mrs Chilleywater, the “literary” wife of the first attaché, thrust her head in at the door.
“How are you?” she asked. “I thought perhaps I might findHarold....”
“He’s with Sir Somebody.”
“Such mysteries!” Lady Something said.
“This betrothal of Princess Elsie’s is simply wearing him out,” Mrs Chilleywater declared, sweeping the room with half-closed, expressionless eyes.
“It’s a pity you can’t pull the strings for us,” Lady Something ventured: “I was saying so lately to Sir Somebody.”
“I wish I could, dear Lady Something: I wouldn’t mind wagering I’d soon bring it off!”
“Have you fixed up Grace Gillstow yet, Mrs Chilleywater?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked.
“She shall marry Baldwin: but not before she has been seduced first by Barnaby....”
“What are you talking about?” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ queried.
“Of Mrs Chilleywater’s forthcoming book.”
“Why should Barnaby get Grace—? Why not Tex!”
But Mrs Chilleywater refused to enter into reasons.
“She is looking for cowslips,” she said, “and oh I’ve such a wonderful description of a field of cowslips.... They make quite a darling setting for a powerful scene of lust.”
“So Grace loses her virtue!..!” Lord Tiredstock’s third son exclaimed.
“Even so she’s far too good for Baldwin: after the underhand shabby way he behaved to Charlotte, Kate, and Millicent!”
“Life is like that, dear,” the Ambassadress blandly observed.
“It ought not to be, Lady Something!” Mrs Chilleywater looked vindictive.
NéeVictoria Gellybore Frinton, and the sole heir of Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms, Kent, Mrs Harold Chilleywater, since her marriage “for Love,” had developed a disconcerting taste for fiction—a taste that was regarded at the Foreign Office with disapproving forbearance.... So far her efforts (written under her maiden name in full with her husband’s as well appended) had been confined to lurid studies of low life (of which she knew nothing at all), but the Hon. Harold Chilleywater had been gently warned, that if he was not to remain at Kairoulla until the close of his career, the style of his wife must really grow lessvirile.
“I agree with V.G.F.,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness murmured fondling meditatively his “Charlie Chaplin” moustache—“Life ought not to be.”
“It’s a mistake to bother oneself over matters that can’t be remedied.”
Mrs Chilleywater acquiesced: “You’re right indeed, Lady Something,” she said, “but I’m so sensitive.... I seem toknowwhen I talk to a man, the colour of his braces...! I say to myself: ‘Yours are violet....’ ‘Yours are blue....’ ‘His are red....’”
“I’ll bet you anything, Mrs Chilleywater, you like, you won’t guess what mine are,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness said.
“I should say, Mr Limpness, that they weremultihued—like Jacob’s,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, as she withdrew her head.
The Ambassadress prepared to follow:
“Come, Mr Limpness,” she exclaimed, “we’ve exhausted the poor fellow quite enough—and besides, here comes his dinner.”
“Open the champagne, Mario,” his master commanded immediately they were alone.
“‘Small’ beer is all the butler would allow, sir.”
“Damn the b... butler!”
“What he calls ademi-brune, sir. In Naples we sayspumenti!”
“To —— with it.”
“Non é tanto amarro, sir; it’s more sharp, as you’d say, than bitter....”
“......!!!!!!”
And languageunmonasticfar into the night reigned supreme.
Standing beneath the portraits of King Geo and Queen Glory, Lady Something, behind a large sheaf of mauve malmaisons, was growing stiff. Already, for the most part, the guests were welcomed, and it was only the Archduchess now, who as usual was late, that kept their Excellencies lingering at the head of the stairs. Her Majesty Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates had just arrived, but seemed loath to leave the stairs, while her hostess, whom she addressed affectionately as herdear gazelle, remained upon them— “Let us go away by and by, my dear gazelle,” she exclaimed with a primitive smile, “and remove our corsets and talk.”
“Unhappily Pisuerga is not the East, ma’am!” Lady Something replied.
“Never mind, my dear; we will introduce this innovation....”
But the arrival of the Archduchess Elizabeth spared the Ambassadress from what might too easily have become an “incident.”
In the beautiful chandeliered apartments several young couples were pirouetting to the inevitable waltz from the Blue Banana, but most of the guests seemed to prefer exploring the conservatories and Winter Garden, or elbowing their way into a little room where a new portrait of Princess Elsie had been discreetly placed....
“One feels, of course, therewasa sitting—; but still, it isn’t like her!” those that had seen her said.
“The artist has attributed to her at least the pale spent eyes of her father!” the Duchess of Cavaljos remarked to her niece, who was standing quite silent against a rose-red curtain.
Mademoiselle de Nazianzi made no reply. Attaching not the faintest importance to the rumours afloat, still, she could not but feel, at times, a little heartshaken....
The duchess plied her fan.
“She will become florid in time like her mother!” she cheerfully predicted turning away just as the Archduchess approached herself to inspect the painting.
Swathed in furs, on account of a troublesome cough contracted paddling, she seemed nevertheless in charming spirits.
“Have you been to my newPipi?” she asked.
“Not yet——”
“Oh but you must!”
“I’m told it’s even finer than the one at the Railway Station. Ah, from musing too long on that Hellenic frieze, how often I’ve missed my train!” the Duchess of Cavaljos murmured, with a little fat deep laugh.
“I have a heavenly idea for another—Yellow tiles with Thistles....”
“Your Royal Highness never repeats herself!”
“Nothing will satisfy me this time,” the Archduchess declared, “but files of state-documents in all the dear little boxes: In secret, secrets!” she added archly fixing her eyes on the assembly.
“It’s positively pitiable,” the Duchess of Cavaljos commented, “how the Countess of Tolga is losing her good-looks: She has the air to-night of a tired business-woman!”
“She looks at other women as though she would inhale them,” the Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was scribbling busily away behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the head. Fornoblesse obligethe correspondent of theJaw-Waw, the illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied.
“Among the many balls of a brilliant season,” the diarist, with her accustomed fluency, wrote: “none surpassed that which I witnessed at the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and jewels. The Ambassadress Lady Something was looking really regal in dawn-white draperies, holding a bouquet of the new mauve malmaisons (which are all the vogue just now),but no one, I thought, looked better than theArchduchess, etc.... Helping the hostess, I noticed Mrs Harold Chilleywater, in an ‘æsthetic’ gown of flame-hued Kanitra silk edged with Armousky fur (to possess a dear woolly Armousk as a pet, is consideredchicthis season), while over her brain—an intellectual caprice, I wonder?—I saw a tinsel bow.... She is a daughter of the fortieth Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms-Park (so famous for its treasures) and is very artistic and literary having written several novels of English life under her maiden name of Victoria Gellybore-Frinton:—She inherits considerable clevernessalsofrom her Mother. Dancing indefatigably (as she always does!) Miss Ivy Something seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her Father’s ball: I hear onexcellent authoritythere is no foundation in the story of her engagement to a certain young Englishman, said to be bound ere long for the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Among the late arrivals were the Duke and Duchess of Varna—sheall in golden tissues: they came together with Madame Wetme, whois one of the new hostesses of the season you know, and they say has bought the Duke of Varna’s palatial town-house in Samaden Square——”
“There,” the Archduchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a sneeze: “she has said quite enough now I think about mytoilette!”
But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire.
Andsuddenly the Angel of Death passed by and the brilliant season waned. In the Archduchess’ bed-chamber, watching the antics of priests and doctors, he sat there unmoved. Propped high, by many bolsters, in a vast blue canopied bed, the Archduchess lay staring laconically at a diminutive model of a flight of steps, leading to what appeared to be intended, perhaps, as a hall of Attent, off which opened quite a lot of little doors, most of which bore the word: “Engaged.” A doll, with a ruddy face, in charge, smiled indolently as she sat feigning knitting, suggesting vague “fleshly thoughts,” whenever he looked up, in the Archduchess’ spiritual adviser.
And the mind of the sinking woman, as her thoughts wandered, appeared to be tinged with “matter” too: “I recollect the first time I heard theBlue-Danubeplayed!” she broke out: “it was atSchonnbrunn—schönes Schonnbrunn—My cousin Ludwig of Bavaria came—I wore—the Emperor said——”
“If your royal highness would swallow this!” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock started forward with a glass.
“Trinquons, trinquons et vive l’amour! Schneider sang that——”
“If your royal highness——”
“Ah my dear Vienna. Where’s Teddywegs?”
At the Archduchess’ little escritoire at the foot of the bed, her Dreaminess was making ready a few private telegrams, breaking without undue harshness the melancholy news: “Poor Lizzie has ceased articulating,” she did not think she could improve on it, and indeed had written it several times in her most temperamental hand, when the Archduchess had started suddenly cackling about Vienna.
“Ssssh, Lizzie—I never can write when people talk!”
“I want Teddywegs.”
“The Countess Yvorra took him for a run round the courtyard.”
“I think I must undertake a convenience next for dogs.... It is disgraceful they have not got one already, poor creatures,” the Archduchess crooned accepting the proffered glass.
“Yes, yes, dear,” the Queen exclaimed rising and crossing to the window.
The bitter odour of the oleander flowers outside oppressed the breathless air and filled the room as with a faint funereal music. So still a day. Tending the drooping sun-saturated flowers, a gardener with long ivory arms alone seemed animate.
“Pull up your skirt, Marquise! Pull it up.... It’s dragging, a little, in the water.”
“Judica me, Deus,” in imperious tones, the priest by the bedside besought: “et discerne causam meum de gente non sancta. Parce, Domine! Parce populo tuo—! ne in aeternum irascaris nobis.”
“A whale! A whale!”
“Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus speravit anima mea in Domino.”
“Elsie?” A look of wondrous happiness overspread the Archduchess’ face—She was wading—wading again amongthe irises and rushes; wading, her hand in Princess Elsie’s hand, through a glittering golden sea, towards the wide horizon.
The plangent cry of a peacock, rose disquietingly from the garden.
“I’m nothing but nerves, doctor,” her Dreaminess lamented, fidgeting with the crucifix that dangled at her neck upon a chain.Ultrafeminine, she disliked that another—evenin extremis—should absorballthe limelight.
“A change of scene, ma’am, would be probably beneficial,” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock replied, eyeing askance the Countess of Tolga who unobtrusively entered:
“The couturiers attend your pleasure, ma’am,” in impassive undertones she said: “to fit your mourning.”
“Oh tell them the Queen is too tired to try on now,” her Dreaminess answered repairing in agitation towards a glass.
“They would come here, ma’am,” the Countess said, pointing persuasively to the little anteroom of the Archduchess, where two nuns of the Flaming-Hood were industriously telling their beads.
“——I don’t know why, but this glass refuses to flatter me!”
“Benedicamus Domino! Ostende nobis Domine misericordiam tuam. Et salutare tuum da nobis!”
“Well just a toque,” the Queen sadly assented.
“Indulgentiam absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum nostrorum tribuat nobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus.”
“Guess who is at the Ritz, ma’am, this week!” the Countess demurely murmured.
“Who is at the Ritz this week, I can’t,” the Queen replied.
“Nobody!”
“Why how so?”
“The Ambassadress of England, it seems has alarmed the world away. I gather they mean to prosecute!”
The Archduchess sighed.
“I want mauve sweet-peas,” she listlessly said.
“Her spirit soars; her thoughts are in theChamps-Elysées,” the Countess exclaimed, withdrawing noiselessly to warn the milliners.
“Or in the garden,” the Queen reflected, returning to the window. And she was standing there, her eyes fixed half wistfully upon the long ivory arms of the kneeling gardener, when the Angel of Death (who had sat unmoved throughout the day) arose.
It was decided to fix a period of mourning of fourteen days for the late Archduchess.
Swansand sunlight. A little fishing boat with coral sails. A lake all grey and green. Beatitude intense. Consummate calm. It was nice to be at the Summer-Palace after all.
“The way the air will catch your cheek and make a rose of it,” the Countess of Tolga breathed. And as none of the company heeded her: “How sweetly the air takes one’s cheek,” she sighed again.
The post-prandial exercise of the members of the Court through the palace grounds was almost an institution.
The first half of the mourning prescribed, had as yet not run its course, but the tongues of the Queen’s ladies had long since made an end of it.
“I hate dancing with a fat man,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi was saying: “for if you dance at all near him, his stomach hits you, while if you pull away, you catcheither the scent of his breath or the hair of his beard.”
“But, you innocent baby,allbig men haven’t beards,” Countess Medusa Rappa remarked.
“Haven’t they? Never mind. Everything’s so beautiful,” the young girl inconsequently exclaimed: “Look at that Thistle! and that Bee! O, you darling!”
“Ah, how one’s face unbends in gardens!” the Countess of Tolga said, regarding the scene before her, with a faraway pensive glance.
Along the lake’s shore, sheltered from the winds by a ring of wooded hills, shewed many a proud retreat, mirroring its marble terraces to the waveless waters of the lake.
Beneath a twin-peaked crag (known locally as the White Mountain whose slopes frequently would burst forth into patches of garlic that from the valley resembled snow) nestled the Villa Clement, rented each season by the Ambassador of the Court of St James, while half-screened by conifers and rhododendrons, and in the lake itself, was St Helena—the home andplace of retirement of a “fallen” minister of the Crown.
Countess Medusa Rappa cocked her sunshade; “Whose boat is that,” she asked, “with the azure oars?”
“It looks nothing but a pea-pod!” the Countess of Tolga declared.
“It belongs to a darling, with delicious lips and eyes like brown chestnuts,” Mademoiselle de Lambèse informed.
“Ah!... Ah!... Ah!... Ah!...” her colleagues crooned.
“A sailor?”
The Queen’s maid nodded: “There’s a partner, though,” she added, “A blue-eyed, gashed-cheeked angel....”
Mademoiselle de Nazianzi looked away.
“I love the lake with the white wandering ships,” she sentimentally stated, descrying in the distance the prince.
It was usually towards this time, the hour of the siesta, that the lovers would meet and taste their happiness, but, to-day, it seemed ordained otherwise.
Before the heir apparent had determined whether to advance or retreat, hisfather and mother were upon him, attended by two dowagers newly lunched.
“The song of the pilgrim women, how it haunts me,” one of the dowagers was holding forth: “I could never tire of that beautiful, beautiful music! Never tire of it. Ne-ver....”
“Ta, ta, ta, ta,” the Queen vociferated girlishly, slipping her arm affectionately through that of her son’s.
“How spent you look, my boy.... Those eyes....”
His Weariness grimaced.
“They’ve just been rubbing in Elsie!” he said.
“Who?”
“‘Vasleine’ and ‘Nanny-goat’!”
“Well?”
“Nothing will shake me.”
“What are your objections?”
“She’s so extraordinarily uninteresting!”
“Oh Yousef!” his mother faltered: “Do you wish to break my heart?”
“We had always thought you too lacking in initiative,” King William said(tucking a few long hairs back into his nose) “to marry against our wishes.”
“They say she walks too wonderfully,” the Queen courageously pursued.
“What? Well?”
“Yes.”
“Thank God for it.”
“And can handle a horse as few others can!”
Prince Yousef closed his eyes.
He had not forgotten how as an undergraduate in England he had come upon the princess once while out with the hounds. And it was only by a consummate effort that he was able to efface the sinister impression she had made—her lank hair falling beneath a man’s felt-hat, her habit skirt torn to tatters, her full cheeks smeared in blood; the blood, so it seemed, of her “first” fox.
A shudder seized him.
“No, nothing can possibly shake me,” he murmured again.
With a detached, cold face, the Queen paused to inhale a rose.
(Oh you gardens of Palaces...! Howoften have you witnessed agitation and disappointment? You smooth, adorned paths...! How often have you known the extremes of care...?)
“It would be better to do away I think next year with that bed of cinerarias altogether,” the Queen of Pisuerga remarked, “since persons won’t go round it.”
Traversing the flower plat now, with the air of a black-beetle with a purpose, was the Countess Yvorra.
“We had supposed you higher-principled, Countess,” her sovereign admonished.
The Countess slightly flushed.
“I’m looking for groundsel for my birds, Sire,” she said—“for my little dickies!”
“We understand your boudoir is a sort of menagerie,” His Majesty affirmed.
The Countess tittered.
“Animals love me,” she archly professed. “Birds perch on my breast if only I wave.... The other day a sweet red robin came and stayed for hours...!”
“The Court looks to you to set a high example,” the Queen declared, focusing quizzically a marble shape of Leda greenwith moss, for whose time-corroded plinth the late Archduchess’ toy-terrier was just then shewing a certain contempt.
The Countess’ long, slightly pulpy fingers strayed nervously towards the rosary at her thigh.
“With your majesty’s consent,” she said, “I propose a campaign to the Island.”
“What? And beard the Count?”
“The salvation of one so fallen, in my estimation should be worth hereafter (at the present rate of exchange, but the values vary) ... a Plenary perpetual-indulgence: I therefore,” the Countess said, with an upward fleeting glance (and doubtless guileless of intention of irony), “feel it mydutyto do what I can.”
“I trust you will take a bodyguard when you go to St Helena?”
“And pray tell Count Cabinet from us,” the King looked implacable: “we forbid him to serenade the Court this year! or to throw himself into the Lake again or to make himself a nuisance!”
“He was over early this morning, Willie,” the Queen retailed: “I saw himfrom a window. Fishing, or feigning to! And with white kid gloves, and a red carnation.”
“Let us catch him stepping ashore!” the King displayed displeasure.
“And as usual the same mignon youth had the charge of the tiller.”
“I could tell a singular story of that young man,” the Countess said: “for he was once a choir-boy at the Blue Jesus. But, perhaps, I would do better to spare your ears....”
“You would do better, a good deal, to spare my cinerarias,” her Dreaminess murmured, sauntering slowly on.
Sun so bright, trees so green, it was a perfect day. Through the glittering fronds of the palms shone the lake like a floor of silver glass strewn with white sails.
“It’s odd,” the King observed, giving the dog Teddywegs a sly prod with his cane, “how he follows Yousef.”
“He seems to know!” the Queen replied.
A remark that so annoyed the Prince that he curtly left the garden.