B007TB5SP0 EBOK (19 page)

‘At the corner of Vigo Street,’ she confessed, ‘my
ear
began to burn, so frightfully.’

‘Are you going anywhere, dear?’

‘I was in the act,’ she said, shivering, and growing strangely spiritual, ‘of paying a little bill.’

‘Then—’

He looked up. Overhead the sky was so pale that it appeared to have been powdered completely with poudre-de-riz.

‘The proper place,’ he said, ‘to feel the first hint of autumn, I always think, is the angle of Regent Street, close to the Piccadilly Hotel.’

‘How splendidly sequestered, dear, it sounds!’

And already, quite perceptibly, there was a touch of autumn in the air.

In the shops the chrysanthemums mingled with the golden leaves of beech. Baskets of rough green pears lay smothered beneath blue heather.

‘How sweet, child, you look!’

‘I’m so glad. Have I changed since yesterday? Sunday in town leaves such scars … Have I my profile still?’

‘You’ve got it. Just!’ he assured her.

For the dread of Miss Thumbler’s life was that one day she should find herself without it.

‘And do you like me, dearest, so! Mamma considers me quite ghastly in
crêpe
; she seems to fancy it may somehow cause an earthquake in Cremona, and bring down a doom upon papa …’

‘You’re wonderful. You should never, never, wear anything else.’

‘And it’s scarcely a second since I commanded a muslin sprinkled with showers of tiny multi-coloured spots like handfuls of confetti flung all over it!’

‘Darling!’

‘Dearest?’

Now that George Calvally had lifted Mira up into the sun, she had become more melodious perhaps.

Continually she would be tying things round her forehead, to her mother’s absolute astonishment, or perusing, diligently, the lives of such characters as Saskia, Hélène Fourment, Mrs Blake …

Sometimes, when the mood would seize her, she would wander, for hours, through the slow, deep streets of the capital, in a stiff, shelving mantle, with long, unfashionable folds. At other times, too, she would meet George Calvally, swathed like an idol, and they would drive together in a taxi, full of twilight, holding each other’s hands. Oh, the mad amusement of Piccadilly … the charm, unspeakable, of the Strand … the intoxication of the Embankment towards St Paul’s.

‘Darling, what would you care to do?’

‘At the Coliseum,’ she said, ‘they’re giving
Georges Dandin
, with the music of Lully. Shall we go?’

He laughed.

‘On such a glorious afternoon, it would be ungrateful to stay indoors.’

‘But Professor Inglepin, dear, has designed the dresses, and his sense of costume is simply …’

‘Angelic one, he’s getting …’

‘Though, certain busts of Bernini, George!’

‘Oh, mind … There’s weariness!’

Holding a pink-purple flower to her nose, her eyes closed, Miss Compostella swept by them, in some jewelled hades of her own.

‘How magnificent she looked!’

Mira turned, serpentine.

‘Was that the first sign of autumn, do you suppose?’

‘Listen. I’ve something to ask you, child.’

With her scroll of music she caressed, sympathetically, his arm.

‘It’s about the church your father’s setting up.’

‘Dearest, he says
it’s the last he ever means to build
.’

‘Mrs Henedge has asked me to undertake the frescoes …’

‘That’s joy!’

‘But you must help.’

‘You mean … give me time, dear, I’ll see.’

‘Darling! Decide.’

‘Wouldn’t Rosamund—?’

‘Impossible. Every five minutes she needs a rest! Besides—’

‘Rubbish, besides!’

‘But I need
you
.’

‘What will Mary say?’

‘What difference can it make to her?’

‘I suppose not. She left, just now, the sweetest note, with tickets for the Queen’s Hall.’

‘She’s very fond of you, I know.’

‘Oh, George, it makes me miserable to think of her.’

He hailed a taxi.

‘How would the Wallace be?’

‘The Collection?’ she exclaimed. ‘Isn’t it indoors … dear! And surely it’s the most stagnant place on earth?’

‘Wierus, Furiel, Charpon, Charmias!’

The very air seemed charged with tragic thoughts. The play of colour from her aura was so bright, it lit the room.

‘Charmias!’ she called, compellingly.

Stretched out upon an Anne settle, watching her, Lady Castleyard lay, in a rather beautiful heap.

‘Can you see anything?’ she inquired. With a bottle of pact-ink overturned upon the dressing-table, she had retreated to the background, to be ‘out of the way’.

‘Selah! …’

Lady Castleyard took up a mirror.

‘If the devil won’t come,’ she said, ‘we can’t force him.’

Mrs Shamefoot seemed piqued.

‘Not come? Why, he’s taken all the wave out of my hair.’

‘It certainly
is
less successful, from the side.’

‘What would you advise?’

‘I should take what the Bishop offers you. Don’t break adrift again.’

‘You’d accept Ashringford?’

‘Well … One may as well as not!’

She collapsed, disheartened.

‘I’m like a loose leaf,’ she moaned, ‘tossed about the world.’

‘Don’t be so foolish; probably it’s more amusing for the loose leaf than for the rooted tree.’

‘And you no longer care to join?’

‘Birdie, when I’ve squared my card losses, and my race losses, and my dressmaker, and re-decorated our new house a little, I’ll have nothing over.’

‘There’s Lionel! …’

‘Oh, he’s so prodigal; I know I’ll die in a ditch.’

‘Then it’s clear, of course, you mustn’t.’

‘Besides, Biddy, you couldn’t expect me to climb away into the tracery lights; it would be like singing Souzouki in
Butterfly
.’

‘And you forgive me?’

‘I bear no bitterness.’

Mrs Shamefoot moved towards the window.

The gardens looked almost heroic in the evening light. If the statues, that lit the sombre ever-greens of the walks, did
not
suggest Phidias, they did, at least, their duty.

‘When the birds fly low, and the insects turn, and turn,’ she said, ‘there’s rain!’

Lady Castleyard closed her eyes.

‘I like a storm,’ she murmured, ‘particularly at night. Sometimes one can catch a face in it – somebody one’s been wondering about, perhaps, or who’s been wondering of you. And one meets in the explosion.’

With a string of pearls Mrs Shamefoot flicked at a passing bat.

‘We should dress,’ she observed, ‘for dinner.’

‘Sir Isaac is strolling about outside still, isn’t he?’

Mrs Shamefoot peered out.

Already the sun had dipped below the hills, using, above Ashringford, the golds and purples of Poussin that suggested Rome. In the twilight the old, partly disused, stables looked strangely mysterious and aloof.

‘And Sir Isaac?’

‘Yes, he’s there still; like a tourist without a guide-book. But he’s not going to be stitched into a Vionnet model by eight; nor has his head been ruffled recently by the devil.’

‘Is that a Vionnet shimmering across the bed … What does Soco say?’

‘My dear, he never looks. In the spring he goes striding past the first violet; and it’s always the same.’

‘I wish he’d take up Lionel until my ballroom’s done. His idea of decoration never varies, and it’s becoming so wearisome. Horns at intervals! …’

‘How appalling!’

‘We shall be all spears and antlers, when you come.’

‘Have you that same artistic footman still?’

‘Oh, heavens; yes!’

‘I adored him. He would clap his hand to his forehead whenever he forgot the … potatoes in an attitude altogether
Age d’Airain
.’

‘Biddy, see who it is; there’s somebody at the door.’

‘It’s me!’

‘Who’s me?’

‘It’s Sumph.’

‘Who’s Sumph?’

‘It’s me.’

‘I know.’

‘I’m Miss Compostella’s maid.’

‘So Julia’s
here
.’

‘Opst!’

‘And when did she arrive?’

Sumph smiled. ‘I’ve been buzzing about the house,’ she said, ‘this last
half
-hour.’

‘Indeed!’

‘Miss Compostella sent me downstairs after a cucumber. Travelling disorients her so. And I must have missed my way.’

‘I believe she’s in the Round Tower.’

‘The housekeeper did say. But had she been the mother of Roxolana, Duchess of Dublin, she could hardly have been more brief.’

Mrs Shamefoot became concerned.

‘When you find your way again,’ she said, ‘give your mistress these, with my love; they’re certain to cure her.’

‘The poor soul was stretched out like some dead thing that breathes,’ Sumph murmured, ‘as I came away.’

Nevertheless, at dinner, nobody could have guessed Miss Compostella’s recent critical condition. Had she returned that moment from a month at Mürren one would have wondered still what she had employed.

‘It’s only now and then,’ she informed Lord Blueharnis, inclining towards him, ‘that I ever venture; wine has to be utterly exquisite, or I make a face!’

Falling between Dean Manly and Mr Guy Fox, she resembled a piece of Venice glass between two strong schoolroom mugs.

‘I expect he’ll fall in love some day with somebody,’ Lady Georgia exclaimed, injuring a silence, ‘and marry; or don’t you think he will?’

‘Marry; who?’

‘Claud Harvester.’

‘Why should he? If Claud can be the Gaby Deslys of literature now, he doesn’t seem to mind.’

‘But would he be literature?’

‘Why, of course!’

‘ “Love’s Arrears”,’ Dean Manly said, ‘was an amazing piece of work.’

Miss Compostella turned upon him:

‘I’m Maggie!’ she said.

But Mrs Shamefoot took compassion upon the Dean’s surprise.

‘He’s become almost
too
doll-like and
Dorothy
latterly,’ she inquired, ‘hasn’t he?’

‘Of course, Claud’s considered a cult, but everybody reads him!’

‘And Mr Garsaint’s comedy?’

‘With the exception of Maria Random, Anna’s maid, the cast is quite complete.’

‘I suppose Anna Comnena had a maid?’ Mr Guy Fox remarked.

Lady Georgia stiffened a candle that had begun to bend.

‘I want you to tell me, presently,’ she said, ‘about young Chalmers. I used to know his mother long ago. She was a great hypocrite, poor dear, but I was very fond of her, all the same!’

But Miss Compostella never put off anything.

‘Oh, well,’ she said, ‘of course he’s wonderfully good-looking and gifted, and rather a draw; but I dislike playing with him. Directly he comes on to the stage he begins to perspire.’

‘And that nice little Mr Williams?’

‘He joined the Persian Ballet.’

Mrs Guy Fox put up her Lorgnon. Her examination of the purple Sèvres dessert service and the James I spoons, she
intended, should last at least two minutes; her aversion to the word
perspire
was only equalled by her horror for the word flea …

And indeed Mrs Guy Fox was continually upon the alert.

Ever since her sisters-in-law had been carried off by peers, she had looked upon her husband as a confirmed stick-in-the-mud. It was unreasonable of her, Mr Guy Fox complained, when it was hardly to be hoped that Fortune would repeat herself with him.

‘No, really, I ask for nothing better,’ Mrs Shamefoot said to the Dean, ‘than to waste my sweetness on the desert air …’

‘And I see no reason why you should not,’ he replied. ‘The Bishop, I’m confident, doesn’t intend to be disobliging.’

‘Yes; but you know he is!’

‘I wish it were in my power to be of service to you. But you’re negotiating, I believe, with five or six cathedrals, at the present time?’

‘Not so many. I’ve Overcares in view, though, to be surrounded by that unpleasant Gala glass would be a continual strain. And then, there’s Carnage. But somehow the East Coast never appealed to me. It’s so stringy.’

‘Even Ely?’ he inquired.

‘Oh, Ely’s beautiful. But how sad!’

‘Ashringford, also, is sad. Sometimes, in winter, the clouds fall right down upon us. And the towers of St Dorothy remain lost in them for days.’

‘A
mariage mystique
would be just what I’d enjoy.’

‘Has it occurred to you to become identified with some small, some charming church, the surprisal of which, in an obscure alley, would amount almost to an adventure?’

‘But I’m so tired,’ she said, ‘of playing Bo-Peep.’

‘Still, some cosy gem!’

‘A cosy gem?’

‘St Lazarus, for instance—’

‘I’m told it leaks. There are forty-two holes in the roof.’

‘Or St Anastasia.’

‘St Anastasia is quite unsafe. Besides, I can’t endure a spire. It’s such a slope.’

‘St Mary Magdalen?’ he ventured.

‘I have her life upstairs! Did you know she was actually engaged to John the Baptist. Until Salome
broke it off
. It was only after the sad affair at the palace that Mary really buckled to and became what she afterwards became. But her church here is so pitch dark, and it’s built, throughout, with flints. I couldn’t bear it.’

‘Or Great St Helen’s!’

She shuddered.

‘There’s the graveyard,’ she said. ‘I’d never like it. I don’t understand the tombs. And I hope I never shall! Those urns with towels thrown over them cast shades like thirteenth-century women.’

‘It’s unaccountable to me,’ the Dean said, ‘that you should care to tie yourself to consecrated ground, when you might be an Independent. A Theodoric!’

‘I hope you’ll make it plain to Doctor Pantry,’ Lady Georgia said to him, as the ladies left the room, ‘that she’s fading fast away. She has scarcely tumbled a crumb between her lips now for weeks: it almost breaks my heart to look at her.’

Miss Compostella twined an arm about her friend.

‘If
I
worship anything,’ she confessed, ‘it’s trees …’

‘Come outside; the flowers smell so sweet in the dark.’

The tired cedars in the park had turned to blackened emerald, the air seemed smeared with bloom. Here and there, upon the incomparably soft grey hills, a light shone like a very clear star.