“I am a Political Hostess,Thou art a Political Hostess,He is a Political Hostess,We are Political Hostesses,Ye are Political Hostesses,They are Political Hostesses.”
“I am a Political Hostess,Thou art a Political Hostess,He is a Political Hostess,We are Political Hostesses,Ye are Political Hostesses,They are Political Hostesses.”
“Very good, dear, and only one mistake.Heis a Political h-Hostess: Can you correct yourself? The error is so slight....”
But alas the prince was in no mood for study; and Mrs Montgomery very soon afterwards was obliged to let him go.
Moving a little anxiously about the room, her meditations turned upon the future.
With the advent of Elsie a new régime would be established: increasing Britishers would wish to visit Pisuerga; and it seemed a propitious moment to abandon teaching, and to inaugurate in Kairoulla an English hotel.
“I have no more rooms. I am quite full up!” she smiled, addressing the silver andirons in the grate.
And what a deliverance to have done with instructing unruly children, shereflected, going towards the glass mail-box attached to her vestibule door. Sometimes about this hour there would be a letter in it, but this evening there was only a picture postcard of a field mouse in a bonnet, from her old friend Mrs Bedley.
“We haveValmouthat last,” she read, “and was it you, my dear, who asked forThe Beard Throughout the Ages? It is in much demand, but I am keeping it back anticipating areply. Several of the plates are missing I see, among them, those of the late King Edward, and of Assur Bani Pal; I only mention it, that, you may know I shan’t blame you! We are having wonderful weather, and I am keeping pretty well, although poor Mrs Barleymoon, I fear, will not see through another winter. Trusting you are benefiting by the beautiful country air: your obedient servant to command,
Ann Bedley.
“P.S.—Man, and All About Him, is rebinding. Ready I expect soon.”
“Ah! Cunnie, Cunnie ...?” Mrs Montgomery murmured, laying the carddown near a photograph of the Court-physician with a sigh: “Ah! Arthur Amos Cuncliffe Babcock ...?” she invoked his name dulcetly in full: and as though in telepathic response, there came a tap at the door, and the doctor himself looked in.
He had been attending, it seemed, the young wife of the Comptroller of the Household at the extremity of the corridor; a creature, who, after two brief weeks of marriage, imagined herself to be in an interesting state: “I believe baby’s coming!” she would cry out every few hours.
“Do I intrude?” he demanded, in his forceful, virile voice, that ladies knew and liked: “pray say so if I do.”
“Does he intrude!” Mrs Montgomery flashed an arch glance towards the cornice.
“Well, and how are you keeping?” the doctor asked, dropping on to a rep causeuse that stood before the fire.
“I’m only semi-well, doctor, thanks!”
“Why, what’s the trouble?”
“You know my organism is not a very strong one, Dr Cuncliffe ...” Mrs Montgomery replied, drawing up a chair, andsettling a cushion with a sigh of resignation at her back.
“Imagination!”
“If only it were!”
“Imagination,” he repeated, fixing a steady eye on the short train of her black brocaded robe that all but brushed his feet.
“If that’s your explanation for continuous broken sleep ...” she gently snapped.
“Try mescal.”
“I’m trying Dr Fritz Millar’s treatment,” the lady stated, desiring to deal a slightscratchto his masculineamour propre.
“Millar’s an Ass.”
“I don’t agree at all!” she incisively returned, smiling covertly at his touch of pique.
“What is it?”
“Oh it’s horrid. You first of all lie down; and then you drink cold water in the sun.”
“Cold what? I neverheardof such a thing: It’s enough to kill you.”
Mrs Montgomery took a deep-drawn breath of languor.
“And would you care, doctor, soverymuch if it did?” she asked, as a page made his appearance with an ice-bucket and champagne.
“To toast our young Princess!”
“Oh, oh, Dr Cuncliffe? What a wicked man you are:” And for a solemn moment their thoughts went out in unison to the sea-girt land of their birth—Barkers’, Selfridges’, Brighton-pier, the Zoological gardens on a Sunday afternoon.
“Here’s to the good old country!” the doctor quaffed.
“The Bride, and,” Mrs Montgomery raised her glass, “the Old Folks at h-home.”
“The Old Folks at home!” he vaguely echoed.
“Bollinger, you naughty man,” the lady murmured, amiably seating herself on the causeuse at his side.
“You’ll find it dull here all alone after the Court has gone,” he observed, smiling down, a little despotically, on to her bright, abundant hair.
Mrs Montgomery sipped her wine.
“When the wind goes whistling up anddown under the colonnades: oh, then!” she shivered.
“You’ll wish for a fine, bold Pisuergian husband; shan’t you?” he answered, his foot drawing closer to hers.
“Often of an evening, I feel I need fostering,” she owned, glancing up yearningly into his face.
“Fostering, eh?” he chuckled, refilling with exuberance her glass.
“Why is it that wine always makes me feelso good?”
“Probably, because it fills you with affection for your neighbour!”
“It’s true; I feel I could be very affectionate: I’m what they call an ‘amoureuse’ I suppose, and there it is....”
There fell a busy silence between them.
“It’s almost too warm for a fire,” she murmured, repairing towards the window; “but I like to hear the crackle!”
“Company, eh?” he returned, following her (a trifle unsteadily) across the room.
“The night is so clear the moon looks to be almost transparent,” she languorously observed, with a long tugging sigh.
“And so it does,” he absently agreed.
“I adore the Pigeons in my wee court towards night, when they sink down like living sapphires upon the stones,” she sentimentally said, sighing languorously again.
“Ours,” he assured her; “since the surgery looks on to it, too....”
“Did you ever see anything so ducky-wucky, so completely twee!” she inconsequently chirruped.
“Allow me to fill this empty glass.”
“I want to go out on all that gold floating water!” she murmured listlessly, pointing towards the lake.
“Alone?”
“Drive me towards the sweet seaside,” she begged, taking appealingly his hand.
“Aggie?”
“Arthur—Arthur, for God’s sake!” she shrilled, as with something between a snarl and a roar, he impulsively whipped out the light.
“H-Help! Oh Arth——”
Thus did they celebrate the “Royal engagement.”
Behindthe heavy moucharabi in the little dark shop of Haboubet of Egypt all was song,fêteand preparation. Additional work, had brought additional hands, and be-tarbouched boys in burnooses, and baskets of blossoms, lay strewn all over the floor.
“Sweet is the musk-rose of the Land of Punt!Sweet are the dates from Khorassân ...But bringme(O wandering Djinns) the English rose, the English apple!O sweet is the land of the Princess Elsie,Sweet indeed is England——”
“Sweet is the musk-rose of the Land of Punt!Sweet are the dates from Khorassân ...But bringme(O wandering Djinns) the English rose, the English apple!O sweet is the land of the Princess Elsie,Sweet indeed is England——”
Bachir’s voice soared, in improvisation, to a long-drawn, strident, wail.
“Pass me the scissors, O Bachir ben Ahmed, for the love of Allah,” a young man with large lucent eyes, and an untroubledface, like a flower, exclaimed, extending a slender, keef-stained hand.
“Sidi took them,” the superintendent of the Duchess of Varna replied, turning towards an olive-skinned Armenian youth, who, seated on an empty hamper, was reading to a small, rapt group, theKairoulla Intelligencealoud.
“‘Attended by Lady Canon-of-Noon and by Lady Bertha Chamberlayne (she is a daughter of Lord Frollo’s9) the Princess was seen to alight from her saloon, in achictoque of primrose paille, stabbed with the quill of a nasturtium-coloured bird, and, darting forward, like the Bird of Paradise that sheis, embraced her future Parents-in-law with considerable affection....’”
“Scissors, for the love of Allah!”
“‘And soon I heard the roll of drums! And saw the bobbing plumes in the jangling browbands of the horses: it was a moment I shall never forget. She passed ... andas our Future Sovereign turned smiling to bow her acknowledgments to the crowd, I saw a happy tear...!’”
“Ah Allah.”
“Pass me two purple pinks.”
“‘Visibly gratified at the cordial ovation to her Virgin Daughter was Queen Glory, a striking and impressive figure, all a-glitter in a splendid dark dress of nacre and nigger tissue, her many Orders of Merit almost bearing her down.’”
“Thy scissors, O Sidi, for the love of Muhammed?”
“‘It seemed as if Kairoulla had gone wild with joy. Led by the first Life-Guards and a corps of ladies of great fashion disguised as peasants, the cortège proceeded amid the whole-hearted plaudits of the people towards Constitutional Square, where, with the sweetest of smiles and thanks the princess received an exquisite sheaf of Deflas (they are the hybrids of slipper-orchids crossed with maidens-rue, and are all the mode at present), tendered her by little Paula Exelmans, the Lord Mayor’s tiny daughter. Driving on, amid showersof confetti, the procession passed up the Chausée, which presented a scene of rare animation; boys, and even quite elderly dames swarming up the trees to obtain a better view of their new Princess. But it was not until Lilianthal Street and the Cathedral Square were reached, that the climax reached its height! Here, a short standstill was called, and after an appropriate address from the Archbishop of Pisuerga, the stirring strains of the National Anthem, superbly rendered by Madame Marguerite Astorra of the State Theatre (she is in perfect voice this season), arose on the air. At that moment a black cat and its kitties rushed across the road, and I saw the Princess smile.’”
“Thy scissors, O Sidi, in the Name of the Prophet!”
“‘A touching incident,’” Sidi with equanimity pursued, “‘was just before the English Tea Rooms, where the English Colony had mustered together in force....’”
But alack for those interested. Owing to the clamour about him much of the recital was lost: “‘Cheers and tears....... Life’s benison.... Honiton lace.... If I live to beforty, it was a moment I shall never forget.... Panic ... congestion.... Police.’”
But it was scarcely needful to peruse the paper, when on the boulevards outside, the festivities were everywhere in full swing. The arrival of the princess for her wedding had brought to Kairoulla unprecedented crowds from all parts of the kingdom, as much eager to see the princess, as to catch a glimpse of the fine pack of beagles, that it was said had been brought over with her, and which had taken an half eerie hold of the public mind. Gilderoy, Beausire, Audrey, many of the dogs’ names were known pleasantly to the crowd already; and anecdotes of Audrey, picture-postcards of Audrey, were sold as rapidly almost as those even of the princess. Indeed mothers among the people had begun to threaten their disobedient offspring with Audrey, whose silky, thickset frame was supported, it appeared, daily on troublesome little boys and tiresome little girls....
“Erri, erri, get on with thy bouquet, oh Lazari Demitraki!” Bachir exclaimed in plaintive tones, addressing a blonde boy with a skin of amber, who was “charming” an earwig with a reed of grass.
“She dance theBoussadillajust like in the street of Halfaouine in Gardaïa my town any Ouled Nail!” he rapturously gurgled.
“Get on with thy work, oh Lazari Demitraki,” Bachir besought him, “and leave the earwigs alone for the clients to find.”
“What with the heat, the smell of the flowers, the noise of you boys, and with filthy earwigs Boussadillaing all over one, I feel I couldswoon,” the voice, cracked yet cloying, was Peter Passer’s.
He had come to Kairoulla for the “celebrations,” and also, perhaps, aspiring to advance his fortunes, in ways known best to himself. With Bachir, his connection dated from long ago, when as a Cathedral choir-boy it had been his habit to pin a shoulder, or bosom-blossom to his surplice, destroying it with coquettish, ring-ladenfingers in the course of an anthem, and scattering the petals from the choir-loft, leaf by leaf, on to the grey heads of the monsignori below.
“Itchiata wa?” Bachir grumbled, playing his eyes distractedly around the shop. And it might have been better for the numerous orders there were to attend to had he called fewer of his acquaintance to assist him. Sunk in torpor, a cigarette smouldering at his ear, a Levantine Greek known as “Effendi darling” was listening to a dark-cheeked Tunisian engaged at the Count of Tolga’s private Hammam Baths—a young man, who, as he spoke, would make mazy gestures of the hands as though his master’s ribs, or those of some illustrious guest, lay under him. But by no means all of those assembled in the little shop, bore the seal of Islam. An American who had grown too splendid for the copper “Ganymede” or Soda-fountain of a Café bar and had taken to teaching the hectic dance-steps of his native land in the night-halls where Bachir sold, was achieving wonders with some wires and Eucharistlilies, while discussing with a shy-mannered youth the many difficulties that beset the foreigner in Kairoulla.
“Young chaps that come out here, don’t know what they’re coming to,” he sapiently remarked, using his incomparable teeth in place of scissors. “Gosh! Talk of advancement,” he growled.
“There’s few can mix as I can, yet I don’t never get no rise!” the shy youth exclaimed, producing a card that was engraved:Harry Cummings, Salad-Dresser to the King: “I expect I’ve arrived,” he murmured, turning to hide a modest blush towards a pale young man who looked on life through heavy horn glasses.
“Salad dressing? I’d sooner it was hair! You do get tips there anyway,” the Yankee reasoned.
“I wishIwere—arrived,” the young man with the glasses, by name Guy Thin, declared. He had come out but recently from England to establish a “British Grocery,” and was the owner of what is sometimes called an expensive voice, his sedulously clear articulation missing outno syllable or letter of anything he might happen to be saying, as though he were tasting each word, like the Pure tea, or the Pure marmalade, or any other of the so very Pure goods he proposed so exclusively to sell.
“If Allah wish it then you arrive,” Lazari Demitraki assured him with a dazzling smile, catching his hand in order to construe the lines.
“Finish thy bouquet, O Lazari Demitraki,” Bachir faintly moaned.
“It finished—arranged: it with Abou!” he announced, pointing to an aged negro with haunted sin-sick eyes who appeared to be making strange grimaces at the wall. A straw hat of splendid dimensions was on his head, flaunting bravely the insignia of the Firm.
But the old man seemed resolved to run no more errands:
“Nsa, nsa,” he mumbled: “Me walk enough for one day! Me no go out any more. Old Abou too tired to take another single step! As soon would me cross the street again dis night as the Sahara!...”
And it was only after the promise of a small gift of Opium that he consented to leave a débutante’s bouquet at the Théâtre Diana.10
“In future,” Bachir rose remarking, “I only employ the women; I keep only girls,” he repeated, for the benefit of “Effendi darling” who appeared to be attaining Nirvâna.
“And next I suppose you keep a Harem?” “Effendi darling” somnolently returned.
Most of the city shops had closed their shutters for the day, when Bachir shouldering a pannier bright with blooms, stepped with his companions forth into the street.
Along the Boulevards thousands were pressing towards the Regina Gardens to view the Fireworks, all agog to witness the pack of beagles wrought in brilliant lights due to course a stag across the sky, and which would change, if newspaper reports might be believed, at the critical moment,into “‘something of the nature of a surprise.’”
Pausing before a plate-glass window that adjoined the shop to adjust the flowing folds of his gandourah, and to hoist his flower tray to his small scornful head, Bachir allowed his auxiliaries to drift, mostly two by two, away among the crowd. Only the royal salad-dresser, Harry Cummings, expressed a demure inclination (when the pushing young grocer caressed his arm), to “be alone”; but Guy Thin, who had private designs upon him, was loath to hear of it! He wished to persuade him to buy a bottle of Vinegar from his Store, when he would print on his paper-bagsAs supplied to his Majesty the King.
“Grant us, O Allah, each good Fortunes,” Bachir beseeched, looking up through his eyelashes towards the moon, that drooped like a silver amulet in the firmament above: in the blue nocturnal air he looked like a purple poppy. “A toute à l’heure mes amis!” he murmured as he moved away.
And in the little closed shop behind the heavy moucharabi, now that they all hadgone, the exhalations of theflowersarose; pungent, concerted odours, expressive of natural antipathies and feuds, suave alliances, suffering, pride, and joy.... Only the shining moon through the moucharabi, illumining here a lily, there a leaf, may have guessed what they were saying:
“My wires are hurting me: my wires are hurting me.”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“They have pushed me head down into the bottom of the bowl.”
“I’m glad I’m in a Basket! No one will hurlmefrom a window to be bruised under foot by the callous crowd.”
“It’s uncomfy, isn’t it, without one’s roots?”
“You Weed you! You, you, you ...buttercup! How dare you toan Orchid!”
“I shouldn’t object to sharing the same water with him, dear.... Ordinary as he is! Ifonlyhe wouldn’t smell....”
“She’s nothing but a piece of common grass and so I tell her!”
When upon the tense pent atmosphere surged a breath of cooler air, and through the street-door slipped the Duchess of Varna.
Overturning a jar of great heavy-headed Gladioli with a crash, she sailed, with a purposeful step, towards the till.
Garbed in black and sleepy citrons, she seemed, indeed, to be equipped for a long, long Voyage, and was clutching, in her arms, a pet Poodle dog, and a levant-covered case, in which, doubtless, reposed her jewels.
Since her rupture with Madame Wetme (both the King and Queen had refused to receive her), the moneyennuisof the Duchess had become increasingly acute. Tormented by tradespeople, dunned and bullied by creditors, menaced, mortified, insulted—an offer to “star” in therôleofA Society Thieffor the cinematograph had particularly shocked her—the inevitable hour to quit the Court so long foreseen had come. And now with her departure definitely determined upon, the Duchess experienced an insouciance of heart unknown to her assuredly for many a year. Replenishing her reticule with quite awelcome sheaf of the elegant little banknotes of Pisuerga, one thing only remained to do, and taking pen and paper, she addressed to the Editor of theIntelligencethe supreme announcement:—“The Duchess of Varna has left for Dateland.”
Eight light words! But enough to settoutKairoulla in a rustle.
“I only so regret I didn’t go sooner,” she murmured to herself aloud, breaking herself a rose to match her gown from an arrangement in the window.
Many of the flowers had been newly christened, “Elsie,” “Audrey,” “London-Madonnas” (black Arums these), while the Roses from the “Land of Punt” had been renamed “Mrs Lloyd George”—and priced accordingly. A basket of Odontoglossums eked out with Gypsophila seemed to anticipate the end, when supplies from Punt must necessarily cease. However, bright boys, like Bachir, seldom lacked patrons, and the duchess recalled glimpsing him one evening from her private sitting-room at the Ritz Hotel, seated on a garden bench in the Regina Gardens beside thePrime Minister himself; both, to all seeming, on the most cordial terms, and to have reached a perfect understanding as regards the Eastern Question. Ah, the Eastern Question! It was said that, in the Land of Dates, one might study it well. In Djezira, the chief town, beneath the great golden sun, people, they said, might grow wise. In the simoon that scatters the silver sand, in the words of the nomads, in the fairy mornings beneath the palms, society with its foolishcliché... the duchess smiled.
“But for that poisonous woman, I should have, gone last year,” she told herself, interrupted in her cogitations by the appearance of her maid.
“The train your Grace we shall miss it....”
“Nonsense!” the duchess answered following, leaving the flowers alone again to their subtle exhalations.
“I’m gladI’min a Basket!”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“Life’s bound to be uncertain when you haven’t got your roots!”
Ona long-chair with tired, closed eyes lay the Queen. Although spared from henceforth the anxiety of her son’s morganatic marriage, yet, now that his destiny was sealed, she could not help feeling perhaps he might have done better. The bride’s lineage was nothing to boast of—over her great-great-grandparents, indeed, in the year 17—it were gentler to draw a veil—while, for the rest, disingenuous, undistinguished, more at home in the stables than in a drawing-room, the Queen much feared that she and her future daughter-in-law would scarcely get on.
Yes, the little princess was none too engaging, she reflected, and her poor sacrificed child if not actually trapped....
The silken swish of a fan, breaking the silence, induced the Queen to look up.
In waiting at present was the CountessOlivia d’Omptyda, a person of both excellent principles and birth, if lacking, somewhat, in social boldness. Whenever she entered the royal presence she would begin visibly to tremble, which considerably flattered the Queen. Her Father, Count “Freddie” d’Omptyda, an infantile and charming old man, appointed in a moment of unusual vagary Pisuergan Ambassador to the Court of St James’, had lately married a child wife scarcely turned thirteen, whose frivolity, and numerous pranks on the high dames of London, were already the scandal of theCorps Diplomatique.
“Sssh! Noise is the last vulgarity,” the Queen commented, raising a cushion embroidered with raging lions and white uncanny unicorns higher behind her head.
Unstrung from the numerousfêtes, she had retired to a distant boudoir to relax, and, having partly disrobed, was feeling remotely Venus of Miloey with her arms half-hidden in a plain white cape.
The Countess d’Omptyda furled her fan.
“In this Age of push and shriek ...” she said and sighed.
“It seems that neither King Geo, nor Queen Glory,everlie down of a day!” her Dreaminess declared.
“Since his last appointment, neither does Papa.”
“The affair of your step-mother and Lady Diana Duff Semour,” the Queen remarked, “appears to be assuming the proportions of an Incident!”
The Countess dismally smiled. The subject of her step-mother, mistaken frequently for her grand-daughter, was a painful one: “I hear she’s like a colt broke loose!” she murmured, dropping her eyes fearfully to her costume.
She was wearing an apron of Parma-violets, and the Order of the Holy Ghost.
“It’s a little a pity she can’t be more sensible,” the Queen returned, fingering listlessly some papers at her side. Among them was theArchæological Society’sinitial report relating to the recent finds among the Ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. From Chedorlahomor came the good news that anamphorahad been found, from which it seemed that men, in those days, rode sideways, andwomen straddle-legs, with their heads to the horses’ tails, while a dainty cup, ravished from a rock-tomb in the Vale of Akko, ornamented with naked boys and goblets of flowers, encouraged a yet more extensive research.
“You may advance, Countess, with the Archæologists’ report,” the Queen commanded. “Omitting (skipping, I say) the death of the son of Lord Intriguer.”11
“‘It was in the Vale of Akko, about two miles from Sââda,” the Countess tremblingly began, “that we laid bare a superb tear-bottle, a unique specimen ingrisaille, severely adorned with a matron’s head. From the inscription, there can be no doubt whatever that we have here an authentic portrait of Lot’s disobedient, though unfortunate wife. Ample and statuesque (as the salten image she was afterwards to become), the shawl-draped, masklike features are by no means beautiful. It is a face that you may often see to-day, indown-town ‘Dancings,’ or in the bars of the dockyards, or wharfs, of our own modern cities, Tilbury, ’Frisco, Vera Cruz—a sodden, gin-soaked face, that helps to vindicate, if not, perhaps, excuse, the conduct of Lot.... With this highly interesting example of the Potters’ Art, was found a novel object, of an unknown nature, likely to arouse, in scientific circles, considerable controversy....”
And just as the lectrice was growing hesitant, and embarrassed, the Countess of Tolga, who had theentrée, unobtrusively entered the room.
She was looking particularly well in one of the new standing-out skirts ruched with rosebuds, and was showing more of her stockings than she usually did.
“You bring the sun with you!” the Queen graciously exclaimed.
“Indeed,” the Countess answered, “I ought to apologise for the interruption, but thepoor little thingis leaving now.”
“What? has the Abbess come?”
“She has sent Sister Irene of the Incarnation, instead....”
“I had forgotten it was to-day.”
With an innate aversion for all farewells, yet the Queen was accustomed to perform a score of irksome acts daily that she cordially disliked, and when, shortly afterwards, Mademoiselle de Nazianzi accompanied by a Sister from the Flaming-Hood were announced, they found her quite prepared.
Touched, and reassured at the ex-maid’s appearance, the Queen judged, at last, it was safe to unbend. Already very remote and unworldly in her novice’s dress, she had ceased, indeed, to be a being there was need any more to either circumvent, humour, or suppress; and now that the threatened danger was gone, her Majesty glanced, half-lachrymosely, about among her personal belongings for some slight token of “esteem” orsouvenir. Skimming from cabinet to cabinet, in a sort of hectic dance, she began to fear, as she passed her bibelots in review, that beyond a Chinese Buddha that she believed to be ill-omened, and which for a nun seemed hardly suitable, she could spare nothing about her after all, and in some dilemma, she raised her eyes, as though for a crucifix, towards the wall.Above the long-chair a sombre study of a strangled negress in a ditch by Gauguin conjured up to-day with poignant force a vivid vision of the Tropics.
“The poor Duchess!” she involuntarily sighed, going off into a train of speculation of her own.
Too tongue-tied, or, perhaps, too discreet, to inform the Queen that anything she might select would immediately be confiscated by the Abbess, Sister Irene, while professing her rosary, appraised her surroundings with furtive eyes, crossing herself frequently with a speed, and facility due to practice whenever her glance chanced to alight on some nude shape in stone. Keen, meagre, and perhaps slightly malicious, hers was a curiously pinched face—like a cold violet.
“The Abbess is still in retreat; but sends her duty,” she ventured as the Queen approached a gueridon near which she was standing.
“Indeed? How I envy her,” the Queen wistfully said, selecting, as suited to the requirements of the occasion, a little volume of a mystic trend, theCries of LoveofFather Surin,12bound in grey velvet, which she pressed upon the reluctant novice, with a brief, but cordial, kiss of farewell.
“She looked quite pretty!” she exclaimed, sinking to the long-chair as soon as the nuns had gone.
“So like the Cimabue in the long corridor ...” the Countess of Tolga murmured chillily; It was her present policy that her adored ally, Olga Blumenghast, should benefit by Mademoiselle de Nazianzi’s retirement from Court, by becoming nearer to the Queen, when they would work all the wires between them.
“I’d have willingly followed her,” the Queen weariedly declared, “at any rate, until after the wedding.”
“It seems that I and Lord Derbyfield are to share the same closed carriage in the wake of the bridal coach,” the Countess of Tolga said, considering with a supercilious air her rosesuèdeslipper on the dark carpet.
“He’s like some great Bull. What do you suppose he talks about?”
The Countess d’Omptyda repressed a giggle.
“They tell me Don Juan was nothingnothingto him.... He cannot see, he cannot be, oh every hour. It seems he can’t help it, and that he simplyhasto!”
“Fortunately Lady Lavinia Lee-Strange will be in the landau as well!”
The Queen laid her cheek to her hands.
“I all but died, dear Violet,” she crooned, “listening to an account of her Ancestor, who fell, fighting Scotland, at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh.”
“These well-bred, but detestably insular women, how they bore one.”
“They are not to be appraised by any ordinary standards. Crossing the state saloon while coming here what should I see, ma’am, but Lady Canon of Noon on her hands and knees (all fours!) peeping below the loose-covers of the chairs in order to examine the Gobelins-tapestries beneath....”
“Oh——”
“‘Absolutely authentic’ I said! as I passed on, leaving her looking like a pick-pocket caught in the act.”
“I suppose she was told to make a quiet survey....”
“Like their beagles and deer-hounds,that their Landseer so loved to paint, I fear the British character is, at bottom,nothingif not rapacious!”
“It’s said, I believe, to behold the Englishman at hisbest, one should watch him play at tip-and-run.”
“You mean of course at cricket?”
The Queen looked doubtful: She had retained of a cricket-match at Lord’s a memory of hatless giants waving wooden sticks.
“I only wish it could have been a long engagement,” she abstrusely murmured, fastening her attention on the fountains whitely spurting in the gardens below.
Valets in cotton-jackets and light blue aprons bearing baskets of crockery andargenterie, were making ready beneath the tall Tuba trees, a supperbuffetfor the evening’s Ball.
“Flap your wings, little birdO flap your wings——”
“Flap your wings, little birdO flap your wings——”
A lad’s fresh voice, sweet as a robin’s, came piping up.
“These wretched workpeople——! There’s not a peaceful corner,” the Queen complained, as her husband’s shapeappeared at the door. He was followed by his first secretary—a simple commoner, yet, with the air, and manner, peculiar to the husband of a Countess.
“Yes, Willie? I’ve a hundred head-aches. What is it?”
“Both King Geo and Queen Glory, are wondering where you are.”
“Oh, really, Willie?”
“And dear Elsie’s asking after you too.”
“Very likely,” the Queen returned with quiet complaisance, “but unfortunately, I have neither her energy, or,” she murmured with a slightly sardonic laugh, “her appetite!”
The Countess of Tolga tittered.
“She called for fried-eggs and butcher’s-meat, this morning, about the quarter before eight,” she averred.
“An excellent augury for our dynasty,” the King declared, reposing the eyes of an adoring grandparent upon an alabaster head of a Boy attributed to Donatello.
“She’s terribly foreign, Willie...! Imagine ham and eggs ...” the Queen dropped her face to her hand.
“So long as the Royal-House——” The King broke off, turning gallantly to raise the Countess d’Omptyda, who had sunk with a gesture of exquisite allegiance to the floor.
“Sir ... Sir!” she faltered in confusion, seeking with fervent lips her Sovereign’s hand.
“What is she doing, Willie?”
“Begging for Strawberry-leaves!” the Countess of Tolga brilliantly commented.
“Apropos of Honours ... it appears King Geo has signified his intention of raising his present representative in Pisuerga to the peerage.”
“After her recentCause, Lady Something should be not a little consoled.”
“She was at the début of the new diva, little Miss Hellvellyn (the foreign invasion has indeed begun!), at the Opera-House last night, so radiant....”
“When she cranes forward out of her own box to smile at someone into the next, I can’t explain ... but one feels she ought to hatch,” the Queen murmured, repairing capriciously from one couch to another.
“We neglect our guests, my dear,” theKing expostulatingly exclaimed, bending over his consort anxiously from behind.
“Tell me, Willie,” she cooed, caressing the medals upon his breast, and drawing him gently down: “tell me? Didst thou enjoy thy cigar, dear, with King Geo?”
“I can recall in my time, Child, a suaver flavour....”
“Thy little chat, though, dearest, was well enough?”
“I would not call him crafty, but I should say he was a man of considerable subtlety ...” the King evasively replied.
“One does not need, my dearest nectarine, a prodigy of intelligence however to take him in!”
“Before the proposed Loan, love, can be brought about, he may wish to question thee as to thy political opinions.”
The Queen gave a little light laugh.
“No one knows what my political opinions are; I don’t myself!”
“And I’m quite confident of it: But, indeed, my dear, we neglect our functions.”
“I only wish it could have been alongengagement, Willie....”
Inthe cloister eaves, the birds were just awakening, and all the spider scales, in the gargoyled gables, glanced fresh with dew. Above the Pietà, on the porter’s gate, slow-speeding clouds, like knots of pink roses, came blowing across the sky, sailing away in titanic bouquets towards the clear horizon. All virginal in the early sunrise what enchantment the world possessed! The rhythmic sway-sway of the trees, the exhalations of the flowers, the ethereal candour of this early hour,—these raised the heart up to their Creator.
Kneeling at the casement of a postulant’s cell, Laura de Nazianzi recalled that serene, and just thus had she often planned must dawn her bridal day!
Beyond the cruciform flower-beds, and the cloister wall, soared the Blue Jesus, the storied windows of its lofty galleries aglow with light.
“Most gracious Jesus. Help me to forget. For my heart aches. Uphold me now.”
But to forget to-day, was well-nigh she knew impossible....
Once it seemed she caught the sound of splendid music from the direction of the Park, but it was too early for music yet. Away in the palace, the Princess Elsie must be already astir ... in her peignoir, perhaps? The bridal-garment unfolded upon the bed: But no; it was said the bed indeed was where usually her Royal-Highness’ dogs....
With a long and very involuntary sigh, she began to sweep, and put in some order, her room.
How forlorn her cornette looked upon herprie-Dieu! And, oh, how stern, and “old”!
Would an impulse to bend it slightly but only so,soslightly, to an angle to suit her face, be attended, later, by remorse?
“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper vergini, beato Michaeli Archangelo (ettibiPater), quia peccavinimis cogitatione, verbo et opere,” she entreated, reposing her chin in meditation, upon the handle of her broom.
The bluish shadow of a cypress-tree, on the empty wall, fascinated her as few pictures had.
“Grant my soul Eyes,” she prayed, cheerfully completing her task.
In the corridor, being a general holiday, all was yet quite still. A sound, as of gentle snoring, came indeed from behind more than one closed door, and the newpensionnairewas preparing to beat a retreat, when she perceived, in the cloister, the dumpish form of Old Jane.
Seated in the sun by the convent well, the Porteress was sharing a scrap of breakfast with the birds.
“You’re soonish for Mass, love,” she broke out, her large archaic features surcharged with smiles.
“It’s such a perfect morning, I felt I must come down.”
“I’ve seen many a more promising sunrise before now, my dear, turn to storm and blast! An orange sky overhead,brings back to me the morning that I was received; ah, I shall never forget, as I was taking my Vows, a flash of forked lightning, and a clap of Thunder (Glory be to God!) followed by a water-spout (Mercy save us!) bursting all over my Frinch lace veil....”
“What is your book, Old Jane?”
“Something light, love, as it’s a holiday.”
“Pascal....”
“Though it’s mostly aFêteday I’ve extra to do!” the Porteress averred, dropping her eyes to the great, glistening spits, upon the Cloister flags. It was her boast she could distinguish Monsignor Potts’ round splash from Father Geordie Picpus’ more dapper fine one, and again the Abbess’ from Mother Martinez de la Rosa’s—although these indeed shared a certain opaque sameness.
“Of course it’s a day for private visits.”
“Since the affair of Sister Dorothea and Brother Bernard Soult, private visits are no longer allowed,” the Porteress returned, reproving modestly, with the cord of her discipline, a pert little lizard, that seemedto be proposing to penetrate between the nude toes of her sandalled foot.
But on such a radiant morning it was preposterous to hint at “Rules.”
Beneath the clement sun a thousand cicadas were insouciantly chirping, while birds, skimming about without thoughts of money, floated lightly from tree to tree.
“Jesus—Mary—Joseph!” the Porteress purred, as a Nun, with her face all muffled up in wool, crossed the Cloister, glancing neither to right nor left, and sharply slammed a door: for, already, the Convent was beginning to give signs of animation. Deep in a book of Our Lady’s Hours, a biretta’d priest was slowly rounding a garden path, while repairing from aGrotto-sepulchre, to which was attached a handsome indulgence, Mother Martinez de la Rosa appeared, all heavily leaning on her stick.
Simultaneously the matins bell rang out, calling all to prayer.
The Convent Chapel founded by the tender enthusiasm of a wealthy widow, the Countess d’Acunha, to perpetuate herearthly comradeship with the beautiful Andalusian, the Doña Dolores Baatz, was still but thinly peopled some few minutes later, although the warning bell had stopped.
Peering around, Laura was disappointed not to remark Sister Ursula in her habitual place, between the veiled fresco of the “Circumcision” and the stoup of holy-water by the door.
Beyond an offer to “exchange whippings” there had been a certain coolness in the greeting with her friend, that had both surprised and pained her.
“When those we rely on wound and betray us, to whom should we turn but Thee?” she breathed, addressing a crucifix, in ivory, contrived by love, that was a miracle of wonder.
Finished Mass, there was a general rush for the Refectory!
Preceded by Sister Clothilde, and followed, helter-skelter, by an exuberant bevy of nuns, even Mother Martinez, who being shortsighted would go feeling the ground with her cane, was propelled to the measure of a hop-and-skip.
Passing beneath an archway, labelled “Silence” (the injunction to-day being undoubtedly ignored), the company was welcomed by the mingled odours of tea,consommé, and fruit. It was a custom of the Convent for one of the Sisters during meal-time to read aloud from some standard work of fideism, and these edifying recitations, interspersed by such whispered questions as: “Tea, orConsommé?” “A Banana, or a Pomegranate?” gave to those at all foolishly, or hysterically inclined, a painful desire to giggle. Mounting the pulpit-lectern, a nun with an aristocratic, though gourmand little face, was about to resume the arid life of the Byzantine monk, Basilius Saturninus, when Mother Martinez de la Rosa took it upon herself, in a few patriotic words, to relax all rules for that day.
“We understand in the world now,” a little faded woman murmured to Laura upon her right: “that the latest craze among ladies is to gild their tongues; but I should be afraid,” she added diffidently, dipping her banana into her tea, “of poison, myself!”
Unhappy at her friend’s absence from the Refectory, Laura, however, was in no mood to entertain the nuns with stories of the present pagan tendencies of society.
Through the bare, blindless windows, framing a sky so bluely luminous, came the swelling clamour of the assembling crowds, tinging the languid air as with some sultry fever. From theChausée, music of an extraordinary intention—heated music, crude music, played with passionate élan to perfect time, conjured up, with vivid, heartrending prosaicness, the seething Boulevards beyond the high old creeper-covered walls.
“I forget now, Mother, which of the Queens it is that will wear a velvet train of a beautiful orchid shade: But one of them will!” Sister Irene of the Incarnation was holding forth.
“I must confess,” Mother Martinez remarked, who was peeling herself a peach, with an air of far attention: “I must confess, I should have liked to have cast my eye upon thelingerie....”
“I would rather have seen the ballwraps,Mother, or the shoes, and evening slippers!”
“Yes, or the fabulous jewels....”
“Of course Sister Laura saw thetrousseau?”
But Laura made feint not to hear.
Discipline relaxed, a number of nuns had collected provisions and were picnicking in the window, where Sister Innez (an ex-Repertoire actress) was giving some spirited renderings of her chief successful parts—Jane de Simerose,Frou-Frou,Sappho,Cigarette....
“My darling child! I always sleep all day and only revive when there’sa Man,” she was saying with an impudent look, sending the scandalised Sisters into delighted convulsions.
Unable to endure it any longer, Laura crept away.
A desire for air and solitude, led her towards the Recreation ground. After the hot refectory, sauntering in the silken shade of the old astounding cedars, was delightful quite. In the deserted alleys, the golden blossoms of the censia-trees,unable to resist the sun, littered in perfumed piles the ground, overcoming her before long with a sensation akin tovertige. Anxious to find her friend, Laura turned towards her cell.
She found Sister Ursula leaning on her window-ledge all crouched up—like a Duchess on “a First Night.”
“My dear, my dear, thecrowds!”
“Ursula?”
“Yes, what is it?”
“Perhaps I’ll go, since I’m in the way.”
“Touchy Goose,” Sister Ursula murmured wheeling round with a glance of complex sweetness.
“Ah, Ursula,” Laura sighed, smiling reproachfully at her friend.
She had long almond eyes, one longer and larger than the other, that gave to her narrow, etiolated face, an exalted, mystic air. Her hair, wholly concealed by her full coif, would be inclined to rich copper or chestnut: Indeed, below the pinched and sensitive nostrils, a moustache (so slight as to be scarcely discernible) proved this beyond all controversy to be so. Butperhaps the quality and beauty of her hands were her chief distinction.
“Do you believe it would cause an earthquake, if we climbed out, dear little one, upon the leads?” she asked.
“I had forgotten you overlooked the street by leaning out,” Laura answered, sinking fatigued to a little cane armchair.
“Listen, Laura...!”
“This cheering racks my heart....”
“Ah, Astaroth! There went a very ‘swell’ carriage.”
“Perhaps I’ll come back later: It’s less noisy in my cell.”
“Now you’re here, I shall ask you, I think, to whip me.”
“Oh, no....”
“Bad dear Little-One. Dear meek soul,” Sister Ursula softly laughed.
“This maddening cheering,” Laura breathed, rolling tormented eyes about her.
A crucifix, a text:I would lay Pansies at Jesus’ Feet, two fresh eggs in a blue paper bag, some ends of string, a breviary, and a birch, were the chamber’s individual, if meagre, contents.
“You usednotto have that text, Ursula,” Laura observed, her attention arrested by the preparation of a Cinematograph Company on the parapet of the Cathedral.
The Church had much need indeed of Reformation! The Times were incredibly low: A new crusade ... she ruminated, revolted at the sight of an old man holding dizzily to a stone-winged angel, with a wine-flask at his lips.
“Come, dear, won’t you assist me now to mortify my senses?” Sister Ursula cajoled.
“No, really, no—!—!—!”
“Quite lightly: For I was scourged, by Sister Agnes, but yesterday, with a heavy bunch of keys, head downwards, hanging from a bar.”
“Oh....”
“This morning she sent me those pullets’ eggs. I perfectly was touched by her delicate sweet sympathy.”
Laura gasped.
“It must have hurt you?”
“I assure you I felt nothing—my spirit had travelled so far,” Sister Ursula replied,turning to throw an interested glance at the street.
It was close now upon the critical hour, and the plaudits of the crowd were becoming more and more uproarious, as “favourites” in Public life, and “celebrities” of all sorts, began to arrive in brisk succession at the allotted door of the Cathedral.
“I could almost envy the fleas in the Cardinal’s vestments,” Sister Ursula declared, overcome by the venal desire to see.
Gazing at the friend upon whom she had counted in some disillusion, Laura quietly left her.
The impulse to witness something of the spectacle outside was, nevertheless, infectious, and recollecting that from the grotto-sepulchre in the garden it was not impossible to attain the convent wall, she determined, moved by some wayward instinct, to do so. Frequently, as a child, had she scaled it, to survey the doings of the city streets beyond—the streets, named by the nuns often “Sinward-ho.” Crossing the cloisters, and through old gates crowned by vast fruit-baskets in stone, she followed,feverishly the ivy-masked bricks of the sheltering wall, and was relieved to reach the grotto without encountering anyone. Surrounded by heavy boskage, it marked a spot where, once, long ago, one of the Sisters, it was said, had received the mystic stigmata.... With a feline effort (her feet supported by the Grotto boulders), it needed but a bound to attain an incomparable post of vantage.
Beneath a blaze of bunting, the street seemed paved with heads. “Madonna,” she breathed, as an official on a white horse, its mane stained black, began authoritatively backing his steed into the patient faces of the mob, startling an infant in arms below, to a frantic fit of squalls.
“Just so shall we stand on the Day of Judgment,” she reflected, blinking at the glare.
Street boys vending programmes, ‘Lucky’ horseshoes, Saturnalian emblems—(these for gentlemen only), offering postcards of ‘Geo and Glory,’ etc., wedged their way however where it might have been deemed indeed impossible for anyone to pass.
Andhe, she wondered, her eyes following the wheeling pigeons, alarmed by the recurrent salutes of the signal guns, he must be there already: Under the dome! Restive a little beneath the busy scrutiny, his tongue like the point of a blade....
A burst of cheering seemed to announce the Queen. But no, it was only a lady, with a parasol sewn with diamonds, that was exciting the rah-rahs of the crowd. Followed by mingled cries of “Shame!” “Waste!” and sighs of envy, Madame Wetme was enjoying a belated triumph. And now a brief lull, as a brake containing various delegates and “representatives of English Culture,” rolled by at a stately trot—Lady Alexander, E. V. Lucas, Robert Hichens, Clutton Brock, etc.,—the ensemble the very apotheosis of worn-outcliché.
“There’s someone there wot’s got enough heron plumes on her head!” a young girl in the crowd remarked.
And nobody contradicted her.
Then troops and outriders, and at last the Queen.
She was looking charming in a Corinthianchlamyde, in a carriage lined in deep delphinium blue, behind six restive blue roan horses.
Finally, the bride and her father, bowing this way and that....
Cheers.
“Huzzas”—
A hushed suspense.
Below the wall the voice of a beggar arose, persistent, haunting: “For the Love of God.... In the Name of Pity ... of Pity.”
“Of Pity,” she echoed, addressing a frail, wind-sown harebell, blue as the sky: And leaning upon the shattered glass ends, that crowned the wall, she fell to considering the future—Obedience, Solitude—death.
The troublingvalsetheme fromDante in Parisinterrupted her meditations.
How often had they valsed it together, he and she ... sometimes as a two-step...! What souvenirs.... Yousef, Yousef.... Above the Cathedral, the crumbling clouds, had eclipsed the sun. In the intense meridian glare the throngedstreet seemed even as though half-hypnotised; occasionally only the angle of a parasol would change, or some bored soldier’s legs would give a little. When brusquely, from the belfry, burst a triumphant clash of bells.
Laura caught her breath.
Already?
A shaking of countless handkerchiefs in wild ovation: From roof-tops, and balconies, the air was thick with falling flowers—the bridal pair!
But only for the bridegroom had she eyes.
Oblivious of what she did, she began to beat her hands, until they streamed with blood, against the broken glass ends upon the wall: “Yousef, Yousef, Yousef....”
July 1921,May 1922.
Versailles,Montreux,Florence.
Carl Van Vechten, inThe Double Dealer:“It is high time that the world should know something of the works of Ronald Firbank. He is the Pierrot of the Minute.Plus chic que le futurisme. Aubrey Beardsley in a Rolls-Royce. Sacher-Masoch in Mayfair. ‘A Rebours’ à la mode.Aretino in Piccadilly. Jean Cocteau at the Savoy. The Oxford Tradition with a dash of the Parisbains de vapeurs.... Firbank plays Picasso’s violin.”
“A perpetual sparkle.”
“An incessant sparkle.”
“A very clever book.”
“Extraordinary clever.”
“The author of this book has a gift for trenchant satire ... one cannot help feeling that Mr Firbank must have gone straight to life for some of these people.”
“The book is pleasant, vivacious and stimulating throughout.”
“Marked by a certain bizarre lightness of treatment.”
“The scheme of his new book is novel.”
“Mr Ronald Firbank’s fiction bears a strong resemblance to the work of the Futurists in painting.”
“There is humour.”
“A quiet vein of humour.”
“Pleasant and clever,Inclinationsis a book that won’t tax the patience of any reader.”
“The result is amusing.”