‘Ever since the accident,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘she has been going about in such heavens of joy. I’ve seldom seen anyone so happy.’
Mrs Guy Fox passed a hand across her eyes.
‘It fell,’ she remarked, ‘so suddenly; I was in my bath.’
Miss Compostella helped herself to honey.
‘I fear St Dorothy’s badly damaged.’
‘Half of it is down.’
‘Oh no, dear; not half.’
‘It’s as if the gods granted it to her,’ Lady Georgia declared; ‘she’s been so brave.’
‘Such gusts of wind! The way they pulled the bushes—’
‘How did it happen, exactly?’
‘A pair of scissors, it appears, was left upon the scaffolding, and caught the lightning’s eye.’
‘What a dreadful thing!’
Mrs Fox shuddered.
‘That the Cathedral should submit to be struck,’ she said, ‘strikes me as being so strange. It never has before.’
‘Lady Anne has twice ’phoned.’
‘… Surely not already?’
‘Before breakfast, too!’
‘Polite …’
Lady Georgia rolled her eyes.
‘What is one to do with a person,’ she demanded, ‘who cannot feel the spell of a beautiful supreme thing like Tintoretto’s Crucifixion?’
‘And where is she now?’
‘Oh, my dear, she’s wandering exultant about the house. She’s been doing it since six.’
‘Leave her,’ Mr Guy Fox advised. ‘Perhaps presently she’ll come down and have a good cry.’
‘Darling Biddy, she’s been divinely patient. But the strain was becoming too much for her. It was undermining her health.’
‘Holding ten cathedrals at arm’s-length must have been terribly tiring.’
‘I had an idea it was quite the other way. In any case, thank heaven, the wrangling’s over. Done.’
‘I wouldn’t say that. But clearly a difficulty is removed. They’re sure to secure her for the Restorations.’
‘My maid has asked if she can go over and see the ruins,’ Miss Compostella said.
‘She should take the bridle-path through the fields,’ Lady Georgia murmured, rising to welcome Mrs Shamefoot as she came in.
Over a rug that suggested a summer morning, Mrs Shamefoot skimmed, pale in cloud-white laces, her hands buried beneath the flimsy plumage of a muff, like some soul who (after a tirade or two), would evaporate and take flight.
‘You may kiss me,’ she murmured wistfully, ‘but kiss me carefully.’
‘I heard you at the telephone as I crossed the hall.’
‘Lady Anne ra-rang.’
‘I hope she was pleasant.’
‘No. She was only half-charming, if you know; she was nice, without being nice … But one feels she’s climbing down. Of course, I told her, without the approbation of all Ashringford, I wouldn’t for the world … and on her side, she spoke of making a ragout with the remains.’
‘She’s so tasteless,’ Lady Georgia exclaimed. ‘But there it is, many people seem to imagine that a stained-glass window is nothing of the kind unless some over-good-looking young saint is depicted in bathing drawers and half-an-inch of water.’
Mrs Shamefoot raised her muff beneath her chin.
‘Soco’s so silly,’ she said. ‘He’d fire at anything like that with his revolver. And, oh, Mr Guy Fox … I’ve got to scold you. Standing beneath my window and calling me by my name millions and millions of times was fearfully indiscreet …’
‘I thought you’d be interested to know.’
‘ “It’s down,” you said, “it’s down.” The servants must have wondered what you meant! Though it’s really rather odd; when your voice disturbed me, I was having such a curious-funny dream. People were digging me up for reliques …’
‘Here’s your coffee, dear.’
‘All I need, darling, is a Railway Guide. I must return at once to town; I’m so busy!’
‘Remain until to-morrow,’ Miss Compostella said, ‘and travel back with me.’
‘But, Julia, you’re not leaving us so soon!’
‘I must. You know I’m in despair with my helmet for the Garsaint piece. I do not care about myself in it at all; it’s too stiff. And the crown; I’m sure the crown’s too timid.’
But Mrs Guy Fox was reading aloud some extracts of a letter from her son, a dutiful diplomat who, even when fast asleep, it was said, suggested the Court of St James.
‘Just now,’ she read, ‘the Judas trees along the banks of the Bosphorus are coming into flower. The colour of these trees is extraordinary. They are neither red nor violet, and at evening they turn a sort of agony of rose.’
‘Delicious!’ Lady Georgia said, staring at Atalanta in dismay. There were moments, especially in the early morning, when she alarmed her mother. Moments when she looked remotely Japanese …
‘No; there’s nothing in the paper at all, except that the Wirewells have arrived,’ Lady Castleyard said, stepping out upon the lawn.
Mrs Shamefoot joined her.
After the gale a yellow branch lay loose beneath each tree, making the park appear to be carpeted by some quite formal silk. The morning was fine with courageous crazy clouds.
‘You’re tired?’
‘A little,’ Lady Castleyard confessed. ‘All this death makes me melancholy.’
‘I expect it’s merely Lionel!’
‘Lionel? But I’m not tired of Lionel. Only, now and then, I long rather for a new aspect …’
‘Do you suppose, if there were no men in the world, that women would frightfully mind?’
‘I don’t know, really … What a pity to leave that gloriously bound book out all night!’
They turned aside through a wicket-gate into an incidental garden.
At periods, upon the enclosing walls, stood worn lead figures of cupid gardeners, in cavalier hats and high, loose boots, and cunning gloves, leaning languidly upon their rakes, smiling seraphically over the gay rings of flowers that broke the grass.
‘Age holds no horrors for me,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘now, any more. Some day I’ll have a house here and I’ll grow old, quite gracefully.’
‘Surely with age one’s attractions should increase. One should be irresistible at ninety.’
‘A few of us, perhaps, may. You, dear Dirce, will—’
‘But in Ashringford! You used always to say it would be at Versailles, or Vallombrosa, or Verona, or Venice; a palladio palace on the Grand Canal. Somewhere with a V!’
‘I remember … ; although I was tempted too rather, wasn’t I, towards Arcachon. And that’s an A!’
‘Poor Soco. He’ll be so surprised …’
‘It’s a pity, whenever he speaks, he’s so very disappointing.’
‘Still, there’ll be the bill …’
‘Well, he could scarcely have seriously supposed I’d throw myself away upon a lancet! Besides, I believe I’ll be desired somehow more when I’m gone. What good am I here?’
‘My dear, you compose in flowers. You adorn life. You have not lived in vain.’
They were in the dogs’ cemetery.
Lady Castleyard tapped a little crooked cross.
‘One fears,’ she said, ‘that Georgia must have poisoned them all for the sake of their epitaphs.’
‘Here come the children!’
‘And remember, Frank,’ Fräulein was warning Master Fox, in her own wonderful Hanoverian way, ‘not to pursue Mirabel too much towards the end. It makes her hot.’
They were preparing to play at Pelléas.
Lady Georgia insisted that her children should practise only purely poetic games. She desired to develop their souls and bodies harmoniously at the same time.
‘Remember the chill she caught as Nora!’ Fräulein said. ‘And, Dawna, must I re-implore you not to pick up the sun-money with your hands? Misericordia! One might think your father was a banker.’
‘I do so love the sun!’
‘Do you, dear?’
Obviously, it was an occasion to kiss and form a group.