‘To-day I’ll have threepennyworth!’
In a flowing gown tinged with melancholy and a soupçon rouged Mrs Shamefoot stood ethereal at her gate.
She laughed lightly.
‘And, perhaps, I’ll have some cream …’
With the movement of a princess she handed him a jar.
‘That jar,’ she said, ‘belonged, once, to … So mind it doesn’t break.’
And while the lad ladled she studied with insouciance the tops of the chimneys across the way.
The sky was full of little birds. Just at her gate a sycamore-tree seemed to have an occult fascination of its own.
Whole troops of birds would congregate there, flattening down each twig and spray, perpetually outpouring.
‘Before I came here,’ she inquired, ‘were the birds so many?’
He shook his head.
‘There was only an owl.’
‘It’s extraordinary.’
‘Shall I book the cream?’
‘What is the matter with the bells?’
‘They’re sounding for the Sisters.’
‘Are they ill? Again?’
‘They died last night – of laughter.’
‘What amused them, do you know?’
‘They were on the golf links …’
‘Death, sometimes, is really a remedy.’
‘Soon there’ll be no call for a dairy. What with the river—’
‘Indeed, it’s more like somewhere in Norway now!’
‘Crazes change so, don’t they?’
‘A nice deep pail of—’
‘Since yesterday, has anyone else … ?’
‘It’s a pretty jar,’ he said, in a subdued voice. ‘What is it?’
‘That’s Saxe,’ she said, as she carefully closed the door.
The long flaying room was flooded by the evening sun.
‘One needs an awning!’ she murmured, setting down the cream.
Before the house stretched a strip of faint blue sand. There were times when it brought to mind the Asz.
Only last night she had trailed towards the window, and with the tip of her toe …
She turned, half charmed, away. There could still be seen the trace …
‘I think the house will be the greatest success!’
Of course, the walls were rather carpeted with pictures—
There was the Primitive, that made the room, somehow, seem so calm. And the Blessed Damozel – that fat white thing. And a Giorgione, so silky and sweet. And a Parma angel. And the ‘study-of-me-which-is-such-an-infamy!’
‘I must have blinds,’ she exclaimed.
It was tiresome there were none now since Georgia was coming in to tea.
How prim the cups were upon their china tray!
She had placed them there herself …
In a bowl beside them floated a few green daisies with heavy citron hearts.
And if they chose to make eyes at the cherries, what did it matter, since the background was so plain?
She glanced at her reflection.
‘O mon miroir, rassure-moi; dis moi que je suis belle, qui je serai belle éternellement!’
She paused, causelessly sad.
Even here, the world, why … one was still in it—
‘We should pray for those who do not comprehend us!’ she murmured. And, of course, that would end in having a chaplain. Or begin by having one.
A camera study of her sister, Mrs Roy Richards, a woman whose whims would have made the theme of a book, or a comedy en famille, with her seven children standing round her nearly naked, had arrived, only lately, as if to recall her to herself.
‘Not since the last famine …’ she murmured, tucking it into a drawer.
‘Ah, there!’ One could hardly mistake that horn …
She lifted the wooden pin in the door and peered through the grill.
‘Who knocks?’
‘A sinner.’
‘A couple,’ Lady Castleyard corrected, ‘of the very worst. Regular devils.’
‘Come in. Unfortunately, my Gretchen has gone out.’
‘I hear you are achieving sainthood by leaps and bounds!’
Mrs Shamefoot embraced her guests.
‘I fear … it’s far more gradual.’
‘It must be so desolate for you, dear, here all alone, cut off from everybody.’
‘I love my solitude.’
‘Whatever do you find to do, in the long evenings?’
‘I’m studying Dante—’
Lady Georgia rolled her eyes:
‘I imagine you keep a parakeet,’ she said. ‘Where is it?’
Mrs Shamefoot busied herself with the tea.
‘Have you noticed the birds?’ she asked. ‘Such battalions … And before I came there was only an owl!’
‘I admire your garden. Those tragic thickets of thorns—’
‘I think the autumn here should be simply sublime.’
‘I will witness it, I hope, from my roof-top! I’m like an Oriental when I get up there. I’m sure I was one, once.’
‘How, dear?’
‘Oh, don’t expect me to explain.’
‘Victor would still insist that you had saved the country.’
‘Locally, of course.’
‘He’s so enchanted with the window. He has got me to change our pew.’
‘When the sunlight comes it is too superb!’
‘Yes; and never a glare, dear – ; always tempered.’
‘Several young men in town seem struck by it too. They like to sit before it. I believe they even kneel … So annoying! Often, just when I want to be there myself—’
‘I’m glad you go somewhere. It’s wrong to withdraw yourself too completely. Without a servant even!’
‘My servant, Gretchen, ran, silly child, to the post-office about a week ago.’
‘I wonder you let her …’
‘I needed stamps.’
‘Stamps!’
‘Soco had scribbled …’
‘What are his views?’
‘He speaks of a visit. He has never seen St Dorothy. I received such a volume from him this morning, quires and quires and quires, all about nothing.’
‘You must bring him to Stockingham when he comes. We’re giving The Playboy of the Western World in the Greek Theatre … I don’t know how it will be!’
‘Julia’s Pegeen—’
‘I see she’s reviving Magda.’
‘So she is. But you know nothing lasts her long.’
‘And her strange maid, apparently, is going on the stage. She is to take a part of a duchess.’
Lady Castleyard yawned.
‘I love your room,’ she said. ‘It’s so uncommon.’
‘I want to show you my mourner’s lamps.’
‘Where are they?’
‘In my bedroom.’
‘Your bedroom, Biddy. I expect it’s only a cell.’
‘It overlooks the grave-ground.’
‘Oh, how unpleasant!’
‘I don’t mind it. I like to sit in the window and watch the moon rise until the brass weather-cock on the belfry turns slowly silver above the trees … or, in the early dawn, perhaps, when it rains, and the whole world seems so melancholy and desolate and personal and quite intensely sad – and life an utter hoax—’
Lady Georgia rubbed away a tear.
‘I don’t know!’ she said.
‘A hoax! You wonder I can isolate myself so completely. Dear Georgia, just because I want so much, it’s extraordinary how little I require.’
‘Don’t the neighbours tire you?’
‘I hardly ever see them! I am afraid I frighten Lady Anne … Old Mrs Wookie made me some advances with a face-cloth she had worked me for my demise … And I’ve become quite friendly with the Pets. He has such character. Force. I am leaving him a lock of my hair.’
‘S-s-sh! How morbid! Shall we explore the cell? I’ve never seen one yet.’
‘I’d sooner not be over-chastened,’ Lady Castleyard confessed. ‘It might spoil me for the antiquarians … and the last time I was here I unearthed such a sweet old chair with hoofs.’
‘Poor Mrs Frobisher found four Boucher panels there once.’
‘I’m quite sure it was once!’
Mrs Shamefoot slid aside some folding doors.
Ashringford, all towers, turrets, walls, spires, steeples and slanting silver slates, stretched before her in the evening sun.
‘I’ll come as far as St Dorothy with you,’ she murmured, ‘if you like. It’s just the time I go for my quiet half-hour.’