B007TB5SP0 EBOK (10 page)

As a rule nobody ever noticed her (in spite of a few eccentricities, such as dancing singly at parties, etc., sufficiently manifest, possibly, to have excited attention). She was waiting to be found. Some day, perhaps, a poet or a painter would come along, and lift her up, high up, into the sun like a beautiful figurine, and she would become the fashion for a while … set, the New Beauty.

‘These apparent icebergs,’ Mrs Henedge thought, as she touched Mira’s charming, and sensitive hand, ‘one knows what they are!’

‘My dear, what a radiant frock!’ Lady Georgia exclaimed, fingering it.

‘The cupids,’ Mira explained, holding out the stiff Italian stuff of ruby and blue, ‘are imitated from a church frieze.’

‘I have seldom seen anything so splendidly hard!’ Lady Castleyard admired: ‘You’re like an angel in a summer landscape, reposing by the side of a well!’ And sinking to a small semi-circular settee, she surveyed the room, a bored magnificence.

‘There’s no plot,’ Mrs Asp, who seemed utterly unable for continuity, was confiding to a charmed few, ‘no plot exactly. It’s about two women who live all alone.’

‘You mean that they live just by themselves?’

Mrs Thumbler was unable to imagine a novel without a plot, and two women who lived so quietly! … She was afraid that poor, dear Rose was becoming dull.

‘I wonder you don’t collaborate!’ she said.

‘Oh no … Unless I were in love with a man, and
just as a pretext
, I should never dream of collaborating with anybody.’

‘You would need a sort of male Beatrice, I suppose?’

‘How amusing it would be to collaborate with Mr Harvester,’ Mrs Steeple murmured, glancing towards Miss Compostella, who just then was looking completely flattered, as she closed her eyes, smiled, and lifted, slightly, a hand.

‘Certainly I adore his work,’ Mrs Asp admitted. ‘He pounces down on those mysterious half-things … and sometimes he fixes them!’

‘Do you know Mr Harvester?’ Mira asked.

‘Of course I know Mr Harvester … He scoured Cairo for me once years ago, to find me a lotus. Why?’

‘I should so much like to meet him.’

‘My dear, what an extraordinary caprice!’ Mrs Henedge exclaimed, disengaging herself to receive a dowager of probable consequence, who, in spite of a crucifix and some celestial lace, possessed a certain poetry of her own, as might, for instance, a faded bacchante. It needed scarcely any imagination at all to picture her issuing at night from her cave on Mount Parnassus to watch the stars, or, with greater convenience, perhaps, strutting like the most perfect peacock, before some country house, over the rose-pale gravel; as charming as the
little stones
in the foreground of the Parnassus of Mantegna.

Lady Listless, or Atossa, as her friends respectfully called her, had the look of a person who had discovered something she ought not to know. This was probably brought about by being aware of most people’s family feuds, or by putting merely two and two together. In the year her mistakes came to thousands, but she never seemed to mind.

‘I’ve just been dining with the Barrows,’ she said solemnly to Mrs Henedge, keeping her by the hand. ‘Poor little Mrs Barrow has heard the Raven … She came up hurriedly last night from the country and has taken refuge at the Ritz Hotel.’

‘It’s hardly likely to follow her, I suppose?’ Mrs Henedge inquired anxiously.

‘I don’t know, I’m sure. The hotel, it appears, already is particularly full … The last time, you remember, they heard it croak, it was for old Sir Philidor.’ And, looking exceedingly stately, she trailed away to repeat to Mrs Shamefoot her news: ‘Violet has heard the Raven!’

‘To be painted once, and for all, by my husband, is much better than to be always getting photographed!’ Mrs Calvally was saying to a Goddess as the Professor came in.

‘I know,’ the Goddess answered; ‘some of his portraits are really
très Velasquez
, and they never remind you of Whistler.’

‘Oh, beware of Mr Calvally!’ murmured Mrs Asp, flitting
past to seize a chair. ‘He made poor Lady Georgia into a greyhound, and turned old General Montgomery into a ram – he twisted the hair into horns.’

An unwarrantable rush for places, however, announced that the critical moment had come.

‘Well, darling,’ Mrs Thumbler, triumphant, explained to her daughter, excusing herself for a sharp little skirmish with Monsignor Parr, ‘I was scarcely going to have him on my knee!’ And with emotion she fluttered a somewhat frantic fan.

‘I think your
young musician
so handsome,’ Mrs Asp whispered to Mrs Henedge, giving a few deft touches to a bandeau and some audacious violet paste. ‘With a little trouble, really, he could look quite Greek.’

‘Is your serial in
The Star
, my dear Rose, ever to be discontinued?’ Mr Sophax, who stood close behind her, stooped to inquire.

‘Don’t question me,’ she replied, without turning round. ‘I make it a rule never to be interviewed at night.’

Next her, Lady Listless, perched uncomfortably on Claud Harvester’s
New Poems
, sat eyeing the Professor with her most complacent smile. She knew hardly anything of Sappho, except that her brother, she believed, had been a wine merchant – which, in those times, was probably even better than being a brewer.

‘But if they had meant to murder me,’ the camel lady was mysteriously murmuring to Monsignor Parr, ‘they would not have put chocolate in the luncheon-basket; my courage returned to me at that!’ when a marvellous hiss from Mrs Asp stimulated Miss Compostella to expand.

‘My dear,
when an angel
like Sabine Watson …’ she was heard to exclaim vaguely above everyone else.

Julia, just then, was in high feather. George Calvally had promised to design for her a beautiful poster, by the time that Eysoldt should arrive, with cypress trees and handfuls of stars …

But the Professor was becoming impatient.

It would be utterly disgusting, Mrs Henedge reflected, if he should get desperate and retire. It was
like
Julia to expatiate at
such a time upon the heavenliness of Sabine Watson, who was only
one
, it seemed, of quite a troop of angels.

To conceal her misgivings she waved a sultry yellow fan. There was a forest painted upon it of Arden, in indigo, in violet, in sapphire, in turquoise, and in common blue. The fan, by Conder, was known perversely as
The Pink Woods
.

‘I’m not going to inflict upon you a speech,’ the Professor said, breaking in like a piccolo to Miss Compostella’s harp.

‘Hear, hear!’ Mr Sophax approved.

‘You have heard, of course, how, while surveying the ruins of Crocodileopolis Arsinoë, my donkey having—’

And then, after what may have become an anguishing obligato, the Professor declaimed impressively the imperishable line.

‘Oh, delicious!’ Lady Listless exclaimed, looking quite perplexed. ‘Very charming indeed!’

‘Will anyone tell me what it means,’ Mrs Thumbler queried, ‘in plain English! Unfortunately, my Greek—’

‘In plain English,’ the Professor said, with some reluctance, ‘it means: “Could not” (he wagged a finger) “Could not, for the fury of her feet!” ’

‘Do you mean she ran away?’

‘Apparently!’

‘O-h!’ Mrs Thumbler seemed inclined to faint.

The Professor riveted her with his curious nut-coloured eyes.

‘Could not …’ she murmured helplessly, as though clinging to an alpenstock, and not quite sure of her guide. Below her, so to speak, were the roof-tops, pots and pans: Chamonix twinkling in the snow.

‘But no doubt there is a
sous-entendu
?’ Monsignor Parr suspiciously inquired.

‘Indeed, no!’ the Professor answered. ‘It is probable, indeed, that Sappho did not even mean to be caustic! Here is an adventurous line, separated (alas!) from its full context. Decorative, useless, as you will; a water-colour on silk!’

‘Just such a Sapphic piece,’ Mrs Asp observed, with authority, ‘just such a Sapphic piece as the
And down I set the cushion
, or the
, or again the
Foolish woman, pride not thyself on a ring
.’

‘I don’t know why,’ Lady Georgia confessed, ‘it thrills me, but it does!’

‘Do you suppose she refers to—’

‘Nothing of the kind!’ the Professor interrupted. ‘As Mrs Asp explains, we have, at most, a broken piece, a rarity of phrase … as the poet’s
With lofty poles
, or
With water dripped the napkin
, or
Scythian Wood
… or the (I fear me, spurious),
Carrying long rods, capped with the Pods of Poppies
.’

‘And isn’t there just one little tiny wee word of hers which says:
A tortoise-shell
?’ Mrs Calvally murmured, fingering the huge winged pin in the back of her hair.

‘I should say that Sappho’s powers were decidedly in declension when she wrote the Professor’s “water-colour”,’ Mrs Steeple said disparagingly.

‘I’m sure I don’t see why!’

‘Do you remember the divine Ode to Aphrodite?’ she asked, and rapidly, occult, archaic, before anybody could stop her, she began to declaim:

‘Zeus-begotten, weaver of arts deceitful,

From thy throne of various hues behold me,

Queen immortal, spare me relentless anguish;

                            Spare, I beseech thee.

Hither haste, if ever of old my sighing

Moved thy soul, O Goddess, awhile to hear me,

From thy Father’s house to repair with golden

                            Chariot harnessed.

Lovely birds fleet winged from Olympus holy

Fluttering multitudinous o’er the darksome

Breast of Earth their heavenly mistress hastened

                            Through the mid ether;

Soon they brought the beautiful Aphrodite;

Softly beamed celestial eyes upon me;

And I heard her ask with a smile my trouble,

                            Wherefore I called her.

What of all things most may appease thy frenzy?

Whom (she said) would Sappho beguile to love her?

Whom by suasion bring to heart adoring?

                            Who hath aggrieved her?

Whoso flies thee, soon shall he turn to woo thee;

Who, receives no gifts, shall anon bestow them;

If he love not, soon shall he love, tho’ Sappho

                            Turneth against him!

Lady now, too, come to allay my torment;

All my soul desireth, I prithee grant me;

Be thyself my champion and my helper,

                            Lovely Dione!’

‘Exquisite, dear; thanks.’

‘Christianity, no doubt,’ the Professor observed, with some ferocity, to Monsignor Parr, ‘has invented many admirable things, but it has destroyed more than it has created!’ The old pagan in him was moved.

‘You have been stirring our antenatal memories, Mrs Steeple,’ Claud Harvester said.

‘Have I?’ she laughed.

‘Mr Brookes has promised to play to us,’ Mrs Henedge said hurriedly, with sufficient presence of mind.

‘Can he play
Après Midi sous les Pins
?’ the camel lady wondered.

‘Certainly,’ Winsome snapped, lifting from the piano a photograph of two terrified-looking little boys that somehow had been forgotten. ‘I can play anything when I have the music!’

‘Poor Mr Calvally … he looks always so atrociously sad!’ Lady Listless murmured, staring about her.

‘It’s unfortunate,’ Mrs Rienzi-Smith said to her, ‘that the Professor seems so displeased.’

‘Well, what more could he want? We were all on footstools before him.’

‘What am I to play to you?’ Winsome asked of Mrs Henedge. ‘A fanfare? A requiem?’

‘Oh, play us something of your own. Play your “Oakapple”, from
The Suite in Green
.’

But, ‘to break the ice’, as he put it, he preferred the exciting
Capriccio Espagnol
of Rimsky-Korsakoff to anything of his own.

‘But didn’t you hate waiting for Othello to press the pillow?’ Lady Castleyard was questioning Miss Compostella. ‘I should have got up and screamed, or rang the bell, I’m sure I should!’

‘Really? I think it’s almost the only moment in the play that gives an actress an opportunity to see where are her friends,’ Julia replied.

‘Just as I’ve observed,’ Mira Thumbler murmured maliciously to Claud Harvester, ‘that a person who begins by playing the Prelude of Rachmaninoff seldom plays anything else—’

‘Oh, no,’ he said. ‘When Winsome plays like that, I want to live in a land where there’d be eternal summer.’

Mira looked amused.

‘All places, really,’ she said, ‘have glamour solely in essence, didn’t you know, like a drop of scent!’

She paused a moment to listen to her neighbour.

‘So appallingly badly kept,’ the Goddess was describing Valhalla. ‘In the throne-room, for instance, the candles leaning in all directions … and everything else the same!’

‘Tell me,’ Mira said, turning towards Claud Harvester abruptly, and speaking with sudden passion, ‘why are you so
genial
with everyone? Why? It’s such – a pity!’