A smart, plain sky stretched starless above St Dorothy. The night was sultry, sweet and scented.
Miss Thumbler shrugged her pretty, crippled shoulders and pressed volcanically her hands.
‘Beautiful!’ she murmured. ‘But how walled in!’
‘Answer me!’ he said.
‘Oh, George … haven’t I enough already? Of course, I cannot recall all the trifling ins and outs. Although, I believe, he kissed me, once, in the Vermeer Room at the National Gallery!’
She turned away.
These continual jealous scenes …
Only a few hours back there had been an aria from Tosca, in St John’s.
There came a babel of voices.
On the lawn and in the lighted loggia the total town was waiting for Mrs Shamefoot to pass. And as usual everyone was turning on the hose.
‘Vanna! Mrs Nythisdene got a palm there … ages ago. She said … she could see her … plainly … in the little room behind the shop … tearing the white lilac out of a wreath … and wiring it up for …’
‘Her dull, white face seems to have no connection with her chestnut hair!’
‘… with him to Palestine last spring. Oh, dear me, I thought I should have died at Joppa!’
‘You mix them with olives and a drop of cognac.’
‘What could be more tiresome than a wife that bleats?’
‘His denunciation of the Government nearly brought the lustres down.’
‘I can’t get him to come with me. He doesn’t like the pendant lamps.’
‘… above-board, when one can!’
‘… Half the profits.’
‘Ce gros Monsignor Parr!’
‘… A day together.’
‘… Rabbits.’
‘… As tall as Iss’y.’
‘… Precedence!’
‘… A regular peruke.’
‘… An interesting trio!’
‘A tiara swamps her.’
‘She will become florid in time. Just like her mother.’
‘Don’t!’
‘For him a tête-à-tête would be a viva voce …’
‘… glare.’
‘… lonely!’
‘… no sympathy for—’
‘… Idolatry.’
‘… a top!’
‘I heard a noise. A sound. But country servants are so rough. Aren’t they? Breaking, dropping, chipping things. I’ve scarcely a dish that isn’t cracked …’
‘… escape!’
‘… is such a duck in his …’
‘The only genuine one was Jane.’
‘… poison.’
‘… fuss …’
‘My husband was always shy. He is shy of everybody. He even runs away from me!’
‘Let us sell the house, dear,’ she said, ‘but keep the car! We can drive round and round the park in it at night. And it looks so charming for the day.’
Lady Anne trailed slowly up and down. She seemed worn-out.
‘I’ll go on,’ Hypolita said. ‘Life’s too short to walk so slow.’
‘As you please. But there’s no escape from Eternity,’ Mr Pet’s voice came, unexpectedly booming out.
At which vision, of continual middle age, the younger Miss Flowerman fainted.
On a litter, in the garden, where the stairs streamed up towards the house Miss Spruce surveyed the scene with watchful wondering eyes. It was cruel to be an invalid with her energetic mind …
Still, a good deal came her way.
‘Come now, and meet him, and get it over!’ Mrs Henedge was exhorting Winsome Brookes.
It was her first appearance anywhere since the change.
Attended by George Calvally, Mira Thumbler, Winsome and Monsignor Parr, she would have responded willingly to an attack.
From beneath a black bandeau sparkling with brilliants and an aigrette breaking several ways she seemed to Miss Spruce like some radiant Queen of Night.
‘Anybody born in 1855 I’ve no desire to meet,’ Winsome declared.
‘Hush. Remember your future!’ the relentless woman murmured, dragging him towards Lord Brassknocker to be introduced.
‘… Belongs to the Junior Carlton, the Arts, and to several night cabarets.’
‘Sir Caper Frisk was explaining to me that cocktails …’
By the great gold gates that closed at dusk the choir was waiting to give three cheers.
‘Poor mites! I hear they’ve been told to give four,’ Mrs Wookie said.
‘What are we waiting for?’
‘I haven’t a notion.’
‘The moon—’
‘It must have been the year that Drowsy-Dreamy-Dora won the Derby …’
‘The old Duke begins to look a bit hipped.’
‘One tooth missing. And only half rouged. On one side only. I’d not call her pretty.’
‘… descended from a waiter.’
‘If anything takes him to town it’s the cattle-show.’
‘I loathe London.’
‘ “Sable, sable, indeed!” I said. There’s no depth to the skin. Nothing to fathom. It might be crocodiles.’
Monsignor Parr drew in his feet. He had been so very nearly asleep. All his life he had waited for something attractive to happen. Usually, now he would sit huddled up like a Canopic jar saying nothing at all.
‘… too tired to make converts …’
‘… totter from party to party …’
‘How do you do?’
‘… sorry.’
‘If my father marries again it will be to some sweet soul to stir the fire.’
‘… does enjoy a rubber!’
‘The lanes round Dawn are so narrow. And Sir Sirly and Lady James … Well, there’s hardly any room for us all …’
‘Only Miss Knowle and Mrs Lloyd!’
‘… sheet-lightning?’
‘Naturally, for the moment,’ Mrs Shamefoot was confessing, ‘it’s the least bit gorgeous, perhaps. But one has to look ahead. Posterity!’
‘Such a pity not to have gone halves. You and Lady Castleyard together. A Beaumont-and-Fletcher—’
‘So actually, you’ve come!’
‘What a wonderful wrap. My dear, what skins!’
‘In case you should feel faint at all in the night you’ll find a lobster mayonnaise and some champagne in the vestry!’
‘Dear Lady Anne, how could you dream of such a thing?’
‘In the grey of dawn, when a thousand grinning fiends peer down on you, you may be very glad of a little something …’
Above the toppling timber, and the long, low vineries, towered St Dorothy. Urging each quivering leaf, and every blade of grass, to strain higher, higher.
‘I hope you’ve a nice warm pair of stockings?’ Mrs Wookie wailed.
Mrs Shamefoot stretched wearily above her head some starry spangled stuff.
‘The mornings,’ she observed, ‘are still quite chilly!’
‘I’m looking everywhere for Kate. It’s like searching for a needle in a bundle of hay.’
‘It ought not to be!’
‘You’ll find Miss Wookie in the drawing-room, playing Siegfried’s Journey.’
‘I must make sure she’s ordered our fly.’
‘A representative of the Chronicle would so much like to know—’
‘Not now. Just when my spirit cries to be alone everything that’s earthly seems to pass between!’
‘He merely desires to ask you how you are.’
‘How I am?’
‘How you feel.’
‘I feel such a strange sadness. You might tell him.’
She moved away.
Miss Thumbler had apparently consented to dance.
Stiffening her fingers and thrusting out her chin, she began slightly to sway, as though pursuing an invisible ideal.
‘Sartorious always said she had a horrid mind!’
‘I’m delighted she’s so busy.’
‘Really—’
‘She’s been doing her utmost to will the tower down upon us this last half-hour.’
‘You mean—’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘Could anyone be so rough?’
‘No, I haven’t yet finished,’ Miss Valley was saying. ‘Alas, a little fame! One buys it at such a price …’
Beneath the big blue Persia-tree, the Miss Chalfonts lay quite still. They had attained their calm.
‘It might be almost the Hesperides!’ Lady Georgia declared.
‘… foot’s on the wane!’
‘In a gloomy corner she is still quite pretty.’
Mrs Shamefoot held up her fan.
‘… the crops!’
‘Ah, here comes our dreadsome friend!’
‘Leave him to me,’ Miss Valley said. ‘I’ll undertake to tame him.’
‘Use some of your long writing words to him, my dear!’
‘Shall I? Would you like me to?’
‘Few people are worth untidying one’s hair for,’ Winsome Brookes observed.
‘Mrs Shamefoot!’
‘Yes, my angel.’
Master Guy Fox was staring at her with great goo-goo eyes like a morning in May.
‘Mr Pet says you’ve done something to be ashamed of.’
‘I? … Oh, good heavens!’ Mrs Shamefoot began to laugh.
‘We’ve such trouble,’ his mother said, ‘to get him to close his mouth. He gapes. But at Eton, probably, there are instructors who will attend to that.’
‘There are certain to be classes—’
‘Perhaps even oftener than any other!’
And the Dean smiled sheepishly and tried to look less like a wolf. It was a favourite expression of his when addressing youth.
‘What would you like to do eventually if you live to be a man?’
Almost nervously St Dorothy chimed the hour.
‘I would like to hang in a large gold bird cage in the window.’
‘Is that all?’
‘And be a bird!’
‘And not a wild one?’
‘Supported?’
‘Kept!’
‘Oh, you lazy little thing.’
‘I wish my boy had his quiet tastes,’ the Duchess said. ‘A child in the Life Guards runs away with so much money!’
‘O-o-o-h … When that Miss Thumbler bends so far it makes me quite afraid.’
‘I long to see La Taxeira in a new set of attitudes.’
‘Has she fresh ones?’
‘Oh, she’s unearthly!’
‘They say she never dances without her Pompeian pavement!’
‘Dear Lady Barrow, I’ve had no opportunity before! … We seem, now, surrounded by water as we are … quite to be floating. The Castle is my yacht.’
‘I do so love a wreck.’
‘From our upper stories, I must tell you, the Asz has almost a look of the sea! One has an impression of chestnut-trees and swans, and perfectly pink roses.’
‘Some day, perhaps—’
‘Unfortunately from my room, sir, there is really nothing to admire … A view over tiresome chimney pots. And that is all.’
‘I adore tiresome chimney pots.’
‘Where is everybody going?’
‘Indoors. There’s such an absorbing …’
Through the wide windows of the drawing-room someone could be heard to say:
‘Town Eclogues! … Epistle from Arthur Grey the Footman. Words by Lady Mary Wortley. Music by Chab-bon-nière.’
‘Delightful!’
‘So suitable!’
‘Ingenious!’
‘Ingeniousness is so rare!’
‘And so enchanting!’
‘Prevent the Pets—’
‘Dear Peter,’ Mrs Pet murmured, tapping her husband lightly, ‘he is everything I admire, and like and love.’
‘I wonder I’m not in strong hysterics,’ Lady Anne confessed.
‘Before the Monsignor wakes wouldn’t it be well to uncover the piano?’
‘Uncover it? …’
‘Remove that cope!’
‘How can I, while—?’
A. G. declared:
‘ “Though bid to go, I quite forgot to move;
You know not that stupidity was love!” ’
‘Afterwards, then! …’
‘You have the sweetest heart!’
‘Should you hear the organ sounding in the night,’ Mrs Shamefoot remarked, ‘you realize it’s me.’
‘How piqued!’
‘An over-sensitive person in the country is always a strain.’
‘Try!’
‘Oh, I’m sure I never could—’
‘I should never, never, no never, have believed it to be so difficult to enlist a prima donna.’
‘Flatterer!’
‘You wouldn’t fail us!’
‘My poor repertoire,’ Mrs Henedge explained. ‘If I sing anything now it’s Divinities du Styx.’
‘Gluck!’
‘Jeanne Grannier en vacances couldn’t equal her!’ Lady Georgia affirmed.
Up the steps, from the garden, clitter-clatter, with the agility of an antelope, came Mrs Budd, whose claim to being the oldest woman in Ashringford nobody seemed likely to dispute.
The piano had lured her from beneath the shadow of the trees. She stood mumbling and blinking in the light, leaning on the arm of Reggie Cresswell of the choir.
‘Her son is sexton here!’
Mrs Shamefoot held out a hand.
‘I’m so happy—’
‘Here, Reggie,’ Winsome said.
‘Oh, what a darling!’
‘We want him to sing.’
‘Sing?’
‘Come away, Death, or something.’
‘Shakespeare is all very well in his way – and in his place.’
Reggie looked shy.
‘He’s been crying!’
‘Tears!’
‘What is the matter?’
‘Mr Pet—’
‘What did he do, dear?’
‘I aroused his provocation.’
‘You aroused his … that surely was very indiscreet.’
‘Reggie’s all feelings. Aren’t you, Reggie?’
‘Yes, miss.’
‘Reggie will do anything for sixpence,’ Mrs Budd said. ‘He’s a true Cresswell.’
‘She introduced the parlour or salon,’ Miss Valley observed. ‘She’s helped, too, to give afternoon-tea its vogue: the French five-o’clock. She was also one of our original vegetarians. Oh, my dear, she took the silliest things. Her adoration for apricots is well known. She would tin them. And sometimes, she would sleep for days on days together—’
‘So sensible.’
‘And her love for animals! Even as a girl she would say: “And I shall have a doll and a bird to talk to it.” ’
‘Why not them?’
‘Because she prefers a solecism! And then, her fondness for flowers … “How beautiful violets are,” she says, “in a room, just as the day is closing. I know of no other flower quite so intense.” ’
‘There’s a sensuousness, a concreteness in her ideas. Isn’t there?’
‘She was so human. So practical. An artist in the finest sense.’
‘You’ll quite miss her when you’ve done.’
‘I dare say I shall.’
‘And afterwards, who will take her place?’
‘I’ve scarcely settled yet. I never care to arrange anything at all ahead. I dislike a definite programme. Perhaps, a Judas-Iscariot—’
‘ “Vapours of vanity and strong champagne,” ’ Arthur was beginning to drawl.
Mrs Shamefoot glanced about her.
The moon shone out now high above the trees. In smoke-like, dreamy spirals, streamed the elms, breaking towards their zeniths into incredible ich diens.
‘Between us all,’ the Bishop said, ‘I was afraid we should lose the key!’
She took it, seizing it slightly.
There were ribands attached, countless streaming strings.
‘It has been circulating about like one of those romances of Mrs—’
‘Am I to lead the way?’
‘A coterie of ladies, first, expect a little prayer.’
‘A prayer!’
‘Lady Victoria Webster Smith insists on something of the kind.’
‘You know she has never really got over her mésalliance …’
‘What am I to do?’
Mrs Shamefoot raised her face.
Above her, silver-white, a rose dangled deep asleep.
‘There’s one thing I’ve done,’ she said, ‘I’ve sent to the Inn for a hat.’
‘Indeed!’
‘One feels securer, somehow, beneath a few fierce feathers.’
‘You’re not afraid.’
‘Certainly not.’
‘Permit me to say you look bewitching.’
‘This unfinished rag—’
‘Has teased—’
‘When she comes it will be as if a Doge espoused the Adriatic!’
‘Hark … to your soulless flock! …’
‘In Ashringford, if souls are rare, we’ve at least some healthy spirits.’
‘Dear Dr Pantry, everybody’s wondering where you are!’
‘You seem upset.’
‘Lady Anne is over-tired, I fear. These warm, airless nights … Just as Miss Pontypool was commencing her second encore—’
Mrs Shamefoot slipped away.
In the garden all was dim.
Along a walk laced with weeping violet fuchsias she skimmed, glancing apprehensively from side to side.
There appears to be a good deal going on.
In the Chiaroscuro of the shrubberies marriages were being arranged …
On a garden-bench in a shower of moonlight an Ashringford matron was comparing shadows with her child.
‘And why not, pray?’ she seemed to ask.
‘Marry … Have a substantial husband? Oh no, I couldn’t, I couldn’t, I really couldn’t.’
‘Well, dear, there’s no need to get so agitated. It wouldn’t be – just yet.’
Round and round a great gloomy bush of thorn Miss Thumbler was circling in the oblivion of a dance, while, threading here and there, Lady Barrow annulled a thousand awkward calls … ‘Your poor husband.’ ‘Your interesting son.’ ‘Your gifted girl.’ ‘Your delightful wife.’
Observing her the Miss Chalfonts were assailed again. Monsignor Parr, revealing his mind, moved a finger from forehead to chin, and from ear to ear. And through the gilded gates that closed at dusk Mrs Henedge’s dog had found a way and was questing inscrutably about …
‘He ought to be muzzled!’ Mrs Wookie declared.
‘Come now. Just once more!’ Mrs Henedge was entreating still.
‘But I’m so tired,’ Winsome said, ‘of meeting other people. I want other people to meet me.’
‘Really, and what should you say to them?’
‘Nothing; I don’t know.’
Mrs Shamefoot hurried on.
A dark cloud like an immense wild bird had drifted across the moon.
Were the gods, she wondered, taking any interest in her affair?
‘Oh, don’t spoil it,’ someone she did not recognize, implored. ‘I think Alice and Dick are holy. They’re each eighteen. And they’re in love! …’
Mrs Shamefoot turned aside.
Before her, serene, soared St Dorothy.
It was a joy to admire such beautifully balanced towers.
‘No, I never once lost hope!’ she informed a grimacing, ghoulish gargoyle of a sprite.
Those demons, imps, fiends and fairies with horns like stalactites and indignant, scurrying angels and virgins trampling horrors beneath their firm, mysterious feet, and the winged lion of Mark and the winged ox of Luke and the rows and tiers of things enskied above the cavernous deep doors were part of her escort now!
And within, elusive, brittle, responsive to every mood, in every minute, and every year improving …
‘Shall we go?’
‘Certainly. Let’s.’
Figures flitted by.
She bolted in.
The utter void unnerved her.
‘A collier,’ she reflected, ‘would laugh at me. He would say … He would call it light! …’
She sank across a chair.
In the dark nothingness the flags drooped fearfully …
Imaginatively, she strove to hold her man.
‘Bill?’
She admired his full lips, his tip-tilted, inquisitive nose. She thought he had a soft Italian face …
Marble quarries!
Dirty, disgusting coal!
She recalled visiting marble quarries. Soco and she together. ‘Oh, dear! … That slow, sad drive. Up, and up, and up! And when the road turned, such a surprising view … Then the coachman invited somebody on to the box … I remember I said nothing!’
‘A footstool!’
She lay back on her chair … relieved.
How still it was … She could almost hear the worms nibbling the carved images of the Saints!
‘My poor maid must be searching everywhere for me in vain …’
Which little hat would she bring? Lately, she had become so revoltingly stupid … What had come over her at all? She was so changed …
She could make out the Ashringford Juliet now borne as though a leaf on a misty-shadowy sea. And, more massive, the Blueharnis monument, of course! Over the canopy crouched an occult, outrageous thing, phosphorescent in places. Beyond, an old statesman was reclining, his head resting upon a confused heap of facts.
He had a look of Soco.
Where would he be while she was vigiling here?
The club … Savoy …
Never in her life had she thought so much about him before. Twice in two minutes!
That pretty Miss Chance …
Oh, well … !
And in future, this was to be her home!
Had she chosen wisely … ? By waiting, perhaps …
Cupolas and minarets whizzed and whirled.
After all, Overcares had its points … It rose with brilliance from its hill. It made a deep impression from the train. One dropped one’s paper, one changed one’s place, chatter hung suspended in the air … Dear Dorothy was in a hollow rather. The trees shaded it so. Sintrap, too, had style. And Mawling … But, there, there was nothing to regret. Placed in the midst of the town. Stifled! All about it stood such fussy, frightful shops. Postcards, bibelots, toys for tourists … And a cab-stand and a horse-trough, and a pension. And, besides, the stone was changing yellow – almost as if it had jaundice. And Mrs Whooper had said …
Did such trifles matter now!
To be irrelevant at such a minute.
At the Inn to-night she had thought ten thousand thrilling things were taking place about her.
How long ago that seemed!
She had spent the day at the Flagellites in a corner of the orchard listening to the ecstasy of the bees. And then Pacca had come to rouse her. And she had returned to the Inn through the cornfields by the Asz. How clear the river ran! Every few yards she had paused to stand entranced. And a young man with a fishing-rod and in faint mourning had entreated her earnestly not. ‘I could not watch you do it,’ he had said. ‘Not that you would spoil my … At least!’ And his hands were quite hot and clammy. ‘What is a flaw more or less in an imperfect world?’ he had asked. And he had accompanied her back to the Inn. And she had wept a little while she dressed … And a white-winged moth had fluttered into the lamp. And she had gone to close the window. And everywhere the stars sprang out like castanets and then gone in again. And the sunset had been heroic.
And she had waited so anxiously for to-night!
Mortifications had paved the way to it.
Was it only to suffer aridity and disappointment?
Such emotions were experienced best at home.
And would vignettes give way to visions?
Bill again.
‘No, no!’
Or Satan …
With dismay she waved her fan.
She was aware once more of leering lips. A tip-tilted, inquisitive nose …
‘Then the coachman,’ she began, speaking in her agony aloud, ‘invited somebody on to the box. I remember I said nothing—’