Just at the beginning of Sloane Street, under the name of Monna Vanna, Mrs Shamefoot kept a shop.
It was her happiness to slap, delicately, at monotony by selling flowers.
Oh, the relief of running away, now and then, from her clever husband, or from the fatiguing brilliance of her mother-in-law, to sit in the mystery of her own back parlour, with the interesting Dina, or with Jordan, her boy!
She found in this by-life a mode of expression, too, for which her nature craved. It amused her to arrange marvellous sheaves of flowers to perish in the window before a stolid public eye; and some of her discords in colour were extremely curious. Often she would signal to her friends by her flowers, and when, for some reason, at the last Birthday Mr Shamefoot had been carefully overlooked, in a freakish mood she had decked the window entirely with black iris.
But, notwithstanding politics, it was declared that in all England nobody could wire Neapolitan violets more skilfully than she.
It was her triumph.
In a whole loose bouquet she would allow a single violet, perhaps, to skim above the rest – so lightly!
On her walls hung charming flower studies by Vincent Van Gough, and by Nicholson, intermingled with some graceful efforts of her own – impressions, mostly, of roses; in which it might be observed that she made always a great point of the thorns. And when there was nobody much in town these furnished the shop.
This morning, however, Mrs Shamefoot sat down to make a wreath – she hardly knew for whom; but since to-day was only Monday, she had a presentiment that one might be needed …
With her dark eyes full of soul she commanded Dina to fetch her one. She fancied she might make ready a lyre, with some orchids and pink lilies, and numberless streaming ribands; something suitable for a disappointed débutante, and hardly had she commenced her work when Mrs Henedge came into the shop.
‘My dear Birdie, who ever expected to see you!’ she exclaimed: ‘I thought you fluttered in only now and then, to see how everything was getting on—’
She seemed embarrassed.
Mrs Henedge had looked in early indeed solely to implore Dina to persuade her mistress to take back some of the palms from her last night’s party, but now, as she put it, they were face-to-face, her heart failed her.
‘What is the cost of those catkins?’ she inquired, pointing, in her agitation, at something very fabulous-looking indeed.
They might go, she reflected, to Winsome Brookes. Often she would thank him for music by a cake or a small shrub, and Rumpelmeyer’s to-day was not in her direction.
Mrs Shamefoot became vaguely flurried.
‘I don’t know, dear,’ she replied. ‘When I try to do arithmetic clouds come down upon me like they do in Tannhäuser.’
With a gasp, Dina crossed over to a book – she seemed to be suffering still from lack of breath. The pretty creature lived in a settlement, William Morris, some paradise on the confines of the Tube, from whence she would appear breathless each morning, and would stay so, usually, until the guards went by. When this occurred she would commence her duties by flying to the window to sprinkle water from a Dresden can over the grateful flowers, admiring, meantime, the charms of the cavalcade through the handle of one of Mrs Shamefoot’s psychological baskets, or whatever else might be in stock.
After this, she would calm down slightly for the day. But unfortunately, even so, Dina lacked sense. Even in the afternoon she would say: ‘The roses this morning are two shillings each.’
‘I did so enjoy last night,’ Mrs Shamefoot said to Mrs Henedge, ‘though, when I got back, for no reason … Soco simply stormed at me; but I was splendidly cool. I said nothing, I just looked at him.’
‘You poor darling,’ Mrs Henedge said sympathetically: ‘What an unhappy life!’
In silence Mrs Shamefoot stuck a lily in her lyre.
‘It is sometimes,’ she said, ‘rather unpleasant …’ She began suddenly to cry.
‘They are not catkins at all,’ Dina observed, apparently herself somewhat surprised. ‘They’re orchids.’
But Mrs Henedge ignored her. She was determined to have nothing to do with them.
‘There,’ she exclaimed, ‘went poor little Scantilla stalking along. Did you notice her? She had on a black jacket and a vermilion-magenta skirt—’
‘Half-mourning!’
‘Exactly.’
‘I dare say she’s off to the wedding,’ Mrs Shamefoot said. ‘Lady Georgia and At’y are coming in, I believe, on their way. The wedding is at Holy Trinity.’
Mrs Henedge looked out at the stream of carriages through the flowers. The seldom coarse or unspiritual faces of the passing crowd … veiled by plum-blossom, had an effect, she thought, of Chinese embroidery.
‘I can’t quite forgive Nils for getting married,’ Mrs Shamefoot murmured, twirling in the air a pale rose with almost crimson leaves. ‘I used to like to talk nonsense with him. He talked agreeable nonsense better than anyone I ever knew.’
‘I am more concerned for Isolde,’ Mrs Henedge said. ‘I pity her, poor child, married to a charming little vain, fickle thing like that!’
‘Oh, what does it matter?’ Mrs Shamefoot queried. ‘When I took Soco I married him for certain qualities, which, now, alas! I see he can have never had.’
‘That’s just what’s so bad! I mean, I’m afraid you did something commonplace after all.’
Mrs Shamefoot became discomposed.
‘Oh, well!’ she said, ‘when I got engaged I was unconscious, or very nearly. I had fallen, sound asleep, I remember, off an iron chair in the park. The next day he had put it in the paper; and we none of us could raise the guinea to contradict …’
‘Have you sent Isolde the—?’
‘No …’ Mrs Shamefoot confessed.
To nine brides out of ten she would make the same gift – a small piece of Italian gauze.
When the recipient, holding it to the light, would catch a glimpse of her fiancé through it, she began to realize something of its significance.
‘What did you send?’ Mrs Henedge wondered.
A tenth bride invariably was interesting.
‘I sent her,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘a Flemish crucifix, with ruby nails for the hands and feet …’
‘Dear Biddy … I ran only to a pack of cards; supposed once to have belonged to Deirdre. I got them in Chelsea.’
But Dina at the telephone was becoming distressing.
‘Hullo! Yes! No! To whom am I speaking?’
The ‘To whom am I speaking?’ characterized, as a rule, her manner.
‘An order,’ she said, ‘for a shower of puff-puffs for Mrs Hanover, to be at Curzon Street to-morrow morning by nine o’clock. If the flowers are not delivered by then she will expect them at the Law Courts.’
‘Poor thing!’ Mrs Shamefoot murmured; ‘send her a lovely spray, and tell Jordan to be there by eight.’
Jordan lately had been imported from the country, only to exclaim, the first time it rained: ‘It’s too-wet-for-to-go-far!’
It had been very disheartening.
Mrs Shamefoot considered her lyre; in its way, it was going to be as wonderful as the anchor of peonies she had made for the late Lord Mayor.
‘Do you remember it, dear?’ she said, beginning to laugh. ‘It was so huge, so perfectly huge, that it had to be tilted sideways to get it out of the shop.’
But Mrs Henedge was considering an amazingly elegant landaulette; a landaulette that seemed to her to positively whistle with smartness.
‘Here come Lady Georgia, now,’ she exclaimed, ‘and Mrs Mountjulian, “Emily”, is with her—’
‘Oh, she’s getting sinister and passée.’
‘Perhaps; but only sometimes! It’s not so long ago that she was tinting her toes with blackberries to be a nymph! You’d never credit it, dear, but we were the same age once!’
‘I shall hide behind the counter,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘if she comes in.’
‘For the love of heaven, mind the lyre!’ Mrs Henedge screamed as Mrs Mountjulian entered.
Mrs Mountjulian was long and slender, like an Imari vase, with a pretty, lingering manner which many thought tiresome.
As Miss Emma Harris the world had found her distinctly aloof. As the Duchess of Overcares, however, she had been very simple indeed; it had been a new form, perhaps of pride. And now, as Mrs Mountjulian, she was becoming ‘aloof’ again. To add a dash of picturesqueness to her career, her husband, it was said, was doing his utmost to get rid of her, and, although she had been in an aeroplane disaster, a fatal gala performance, two railway accidents and a shipwreck, she always came back – smiling.
‘We’ve come to rifle you of your nicest flowers,’ Mrs Mountjulian said.
‘Oh, I need nothing,’ Atalanta explained. ‘Only to smooth my hair.’
In a muslin frock with a broad blue sash, and a bridesmaid’s bouquet of honeysuckle and meadowsweet, she was looking engagingly pronounced. Indeed she needed only a mop and a pail to be altogether delightful.
‘Isn’t she voyou?’ Lady Georgia said nervously. ‘I’m really afraid to be seen with her.’
‘My dear, you look a dove!’ Mrs Henedge murmured.
‘Properly managed, nothing need ever clash,’ Mrs Mountjulian assured Dina, singling out for herself a savage, multi-coloured leaf.
But Lady Georgia appeared transfixed.
‘For whom,’ she asked, ‘is that heavenly lyre?’
‘ “For Time sleeps not, but ever passes like the wind …” ’ Mrs Shamefoot replied vaguely.
‘To the Queen of … Naples.’
They smiled.
‘Oh, do choose,’ Atalanta said, glueing down her hair inventively, with a perfect sense of style.
‘There’s sure to be a struggle at the church. And Isolde will have a crise des nerfs, or something if we aren’t there soon. Besides, Viola’s getting impatient: I can see her dangling a long leg from the car into the street.’
‘It was too bad really of Mrs Fox foisting her on to us,’ Lady Georgia said. ‘Prevent her, do, from getting out.’
She was looking, perhaps, annoyed in arsenic green with a hat full of wan white flowers.
‘Victor insists that you come to us for the Ashringford races,’ she said to Mrs Shamefoot, as she said good-bye, ‘and stay at Stockingham for as long as you can.’
‘How sweet you are! If only to lie in the garden, I’ll come.’
‘At present I’m revolving a Tragic Garden,’ Lady Georgia told her, ‘with cypress trees, and flights of stairs.’
‘I’m admiring your pictures,’ Mrs Mountjulian said, dawdling. ‘Those clouds – so stationary – surely are Cézanne? And the Monticelli … ! And that alluring Nicholson … Only last night I was talking to Sir Valerian Hanway; you know whom I mean! And he said … “It’s an anxiety for a poor man to own beautiful things. Where would be the pleasure of possessing a Velasquez, and having to hold a pocket handkerchief all the time to the roof to keep out the rain?” ’
‘If she thought to embarrass me,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, as soon as they were gone, ‘I’m afraid she failed!’
‘Poor woman!’ Mrs Henedge considered it diplomatic to say. ‘Either she is growing old, or her maid is getting clumsy …’
‘I should imagine both,’ Mrs Shamefoot observed, returning to her lyre.
‘I’m delighted at any rate,’ Mrs Henedge rose remarking, ‘that we shall see something of each other in Ashringford, when we must contrive to conquer all difficulties to gain possession of a window.’
‘Otherwise,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘I shall try Overcares!’
‘It’s not so obvious, of course!’
‘And the Bishop, I know, is not unfavourably disposed … But somehow, dear, a manufacturing town is not the same.’
‘Indeed it isn’t!’
‘Besides, there were so many sickening stipulations—’
‘The Bishop of Overcares is the most paralysing man I know,’ Mrs Henedge said, ‘and she … Mrs Whooper—’
‘A terror!’
‘And might a tiny nosegay be left for Mr Brookes? Lilies he likes … Just five or six; I’m making, unavoidably, in the opposite direction, or I’d drop them on his doorstep myself.’
Mrs Shamefoot stood a moment pensively watching Dina remove the dark hearts that stained from Winsome’s lilies before continuing her wreath.
It would be quite too extravagant, she feared, when finished, for the penniless young man for whom her débutante had died: he could never afford to buy it.
What should be done?
Remove a few of the orchids? No!
Allow the father it? Certainly not.
Die, and use it herself? Soco was so dilatory …
She remained dreaming.
‘Be so good,’ she called to Dina presently, ‘as to fetch me the scissors.’
And, shaking her head sadly, under her heavy hat, she cut a string to the lyre.