B007TB5SP0 EBOK (15 page)

‘But he takes them off sometimes—?’

‘That’s just what I don’t know.’

‘Then, as you will hardly need me,’ Aurelia said, ‘I’ll go over to the Cresswell Arms and see Chloe. Poor dear, it’s very dull for her all alone.’

‘How is Miss Valley getting on?’

‘So well. She asks if she can come up one afternoon to examine the tapestries when Walter’s out.’

‘By all means, but the tapestries are too fantastic, I should imagine, to be of any service to her. Historically, they’re quite … untrustworthy.’

‘Does it matter? Besides, the Archdeacon believes that Mrs Cresswell was an Ely anchoress and not an Ashringford anchoress at all.’

‘That’s nonsense,’ Lady Anne said; ‘she belongs to us.’

‘I don’t know why you should be so keen on her,’ Miss Pantry purred. ‘Of course, she
may
have been a saint, but from some of the little things I’ve heard, I fancy you might ransack heaven to find her—’

‘I won’t hear anything against Mrs Cresswell. Her career here was an exquisite example to us all.’

‘Well, I’m sure I hope so, dear.’

‘And perhaps, Aurelia,’ Lady Anne said gently, ‘if you’re going to the Cresswell Arms you’ll call at the workhouse on your way, and find out what actually took place. I won’t ask you to stop in Priest Street with a pudding … And if you should see Miss Hospice in the garden will you send her up to me?’

For some time after Aurelia had left her, Lady Anne stood in the window looking out upon the Cathedral. There was usually a little scaffolding about it … If she had a voice in the matter it should never be allowed to come away. Her spirit shrank
from the peculiar oppressiveness of perfection. And the Cathedral was very perfect indeed. How admirable, through the just sufficient drapery of the trees, were the great glazed windows that flashed like black diamonds in the sun. The glass, indeed, at Ashringford was so wonderful that sticks and umbrellas were left (by order) at the door …

Lady Anne looked up at the large contented towers and fetched a sigh.

They were lovely.

Without veiling her eyes, they were as near perfection as she could conveniently bear. Placed at the end of the tennis lawn too, they had saved her from many a run.

Miss Missingham, in her
Sacerdotalism and Satanism
, has called the whole thing heavy. ‘
Very weighty indeed
’, although she willingly admits that at twilight the towers, with their many pinnacles, become utterly fantastic,
like the helmets of eunuchs in carnival time
. But then, if there was not much spontaneity about them on the whole, they had taken so long to build. Stone towers cannot be dashed off like Fragonard’s
Inspiration
.

Solid equally was the vast rambling Palace. Built around two sides of a quadrangle, it was, according to local taste, an ugly, forlorn affair, remarkable chiefly for its stately Tudor balcony.

It was here, recumbent upon a deck-chair, propped up by piles of brilliant cushions, that Mrs Henedge, in her day, preferred to drink afternoon tea, surrounded by the most notable Church dignitaries that she could find.

It was told that at one of these courts she had had as many as three bishops simultaneously handing her toast.

What wonder was it that persons should linger in delighted amazement at the wrought-iron gates until they formed a substantial crowd?

Carts would draw up, motorists stop, pedestrians sit down.

Lady Anne, on the contrary, preferred to hold her receptions out of sight.

To many, unquestionably it was a blow.

She preferred, when not indoors, her tennis lawn, with its high clipped hedges, behind which the Cathedral rose inscrutably,
a soft grey pile elongating itself above the trees, from whence would fall, fitfully, the saintly caw-cawing of the rooks.

Lady Anne’s eyes fell from the wise old towers.

Framed in the expiring windows of the china-cupboard, the glimpse of Ashringford was entrancing quite. Across the meadows could be seen the struggling silver of the broad river, as it curled about Crawbery, invariably with some enthusiast, rod in hand, waiting quietly upon the bank. Nearer, hither and thither, appeared a few sleepy spires of churches, too sensible to compete with the Cathedral, but nevertheless possibly more personal; like the minor characters in repertoire that support the
star
.

She turned as her secretary, Miss Hospice, entered.

With a rather cruel yellow at her neck, waist and feet, and a poem of fifty sheets, on
Verlaine at Bournemouth
, at her back. What is there left to say—

Lady Anne was fond of her secretary because of her wild, beautiful handwriting, that seemed to fly, and because she really did enjoy to snub the Bishop’s sisters. And others, too, liked her. Perpetually, she would make those pleasant little pampered remarks, such as, on a sultry August night: ‘B-r-r-r! it’s cold enough to light a fire!’ Now that Aurelia was at the Palace, she should have been away on holiday, but somehow, this year, she wasn’t.

Lady Anne, indeed, had discovered Miss Hospice some years since, lost in the advertisements of
The Spectator
, seeking, (as she had explained), the position of guardian angel to some elderly literary man. Intelligent and sympathetic, nature had appeared to indicate the way. The short hair, the long wavy nose
à la
Lucca Signorelli, that seemed scarcely willing to sustain the heavy gold glasses, the figure, as flat as Lower Egypt, and the dazzling eyes like Mrs Aphra Behn – for a really ticklish post, all was right. With complete clairvoyance Lady Anne had secured this treasure for her own, whose secretarial uses had now quite reached their zenith. Miss Madge Hospice was Lady Anne’s barbed wire.

‘I was wondering what had become of you,’ Lady Anne said to her as she came in. ‘Where on earth have you been?’

‘… Wading through fields of violet vetch. It’s so delicious out.’

‘Had you forgotten to-day?’

‘I don’t think so: I’ve told Gripper again to sponge the stretchers, but he’s so lazy, you know he never will.’

The bi-weekly Ambulance classes at the Palace, (so popular socially), were, it must be owned, on a parallel with the butter-making at Trianon.

‘That’s thoughtful,’ Lady Anne said. ‘And now, here are so many letters to answer, I really don’t know where to begin.’

When a few minutes later the Reverend Peter Pet was announced they were entirely engrossed.

‘Savonarola!’ Lady Anne exclaimed. Miss Hospice continued conscientiously to write.

‘Is it possible that anybody cares a straw what he says?’ she queried.

‘A curate should be quiescent; that’s the first thing.’

‘But tactlessness is such a common complaint.’

‘He has referred to the Bishop as
a Faun crowned with roses
,’ Lady Anne said severely.

‘I
heard
it was
Satyr
.’

‘And his encounter with Miss Wookie … Well, not since the last election have I heard anything so scurrilous.’

‘And is he absolutely charming?’

Lady Anne arranged her descriptions; when the introductions came about there was often some confusion.

‘He’s fair,’ she said, ‘with bright green eyes. And such gay, attractive teeth.’

‘You make me curious to see him.’

‘I should hate to shake his faith in his vocation,’ Lady Anne murmured, ‘but—’

‘Have you dropped anything?’

‘Only my little bit of lace …’

And although very likely Lady Anne was the most sensible woman alive, she would scarcely have had the claim had she not crossed first to the mirror and—

But oh, Vanity! is there any necessity to explain?

‘How fond I am of this sleepy magic place!’

‘In town,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘the trees so seldom forget themselves into expressive shapes.’

‘Well … You haven’t answered my question yet.’

‘Because I don’t know how!’

Sir Victor Blueharnis looked bored.

‘Is it grey,’ Lady Castleyard wondered, chiming in, ‘or white; or would it be blue?’

She settled herself reposefully, as if for ever.

‘That Sacharissa style,’ Atalanta remarked, bending forward, ‘of rolling your hair is so enslaving.’

‘I wish you would
not
look down my neck like an archer of Carpaccio.’

‘Tell me what you’re guessing.’

‘The colour of the cuckoo’s egg …’

‘If I recollect, it’s a mystic medley of mauves.’

Mrs Shamefoot prepared to rise. ‘We shall get appendicitis,’ she exclaimed, ‘if we sit here long.’

Sir Victor prevented her: ‘Oh, what charming hands … Don’t move.’

‘If you admire them now,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, sinking back, ‘you would worship them when I’m really worn out. My hands never look quite so marvellous as when I’m tired.’

‘But … fresh as you are; mayn’t I see?’

‘How perfectly idiotic you are.’

‘For years,’ Lady Georgia’s voice came falling to them through the dusk, ‘she couldn’t get rid of it. In the end, quite in
despair, and simply prostrate, she exchanged it for a string of pearls.’

‘Might one learn what?’ Sir Victor inquired, half turning.

‘Number 39 … Her great, comfortless house.’

‘Darling Georgia! Why will she always withdraw to the gladiators’ seats?’

‘Away, too, in all the dew.’

‘Up in those tracts with her, it was the peace of utter light and silence.’

‘How fascinating your
cabochon
tips look, dear, against the night.’

‘Little horrid – owl – thing, I wonder you can see them at all.’

‘How astonishingly acoustic it is.’

‘These marble tiers are very cold.’

‘I don’t suppose the Greeks wore any more than we do.’

‘Though, possibly, not less.’

‘Aren’t you coming down to recite?’

‘Oh, no, when Miss Compostella comes, we’ll get her to do it instead.’

‘I shall come up and fetch you,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘if Mr Aston will lend me a hand.’

And, with the indifference of Madame Valpy about to climb the scaffold, she rose.

She was wearing an imaginative plain white dress that made her appear like a broken statue.

‘Good-bye,’ she murmured, ‘Dirce’, her voice harking to the period of her heels – Louis XV.

‘Be very careful. I’ve had Aase’s Death Music running in my head all day …’

And now beneath her lay the Greek theatre like an open fan. All around the glimmering sweeps of steps the sullen elms gave a piquant English touch.

‘How perfectly fairy!’ she exclaimed, falling breathless at the top.

Like some thin archangel, Lady Georgia stooped to help her rise.

‘I adore the end of summer,’ she said, ‘when a new haystack appears on every hill.’

Beyond the dark proscenium and the clustering chimneys of the house stretched the faint far fields. No lofty peaks, or Himalayas, but quiet, modest hills, a model of restraint.

‘Isn’t it soothing?’ Mrs Shamefoot said.

‘I suppose so; but it quite makes me cry to think of you fastened up over there in Ashringford, with a stiff neck, till the day of doom.’

‘I always respond,’ Mrs Shamefoot replied, ‘to the sun.’

Lady Georgia opened wide, liquid eyes. ‘I shall hardly ever dare to come and look at you,’ she said.

‘But I should be entirely flattering, dear, for you.’

‘Would you? Many people are so thoughtless about their lights.’

Mrs Shamefoot wound an arm about the neck of an architectural figure.

‘Don’t you agree,’ she said, ‘that there’s something quite irresistible about stained-glass caught in a brutality of stone?’

Lady Georgia seated herself stiffly. ‘Caught,’ she exclaimed. ‘When I die, I should prefer to leave no trace.’

‘But you follow, darling, don’t you, what I mean?’

‘For anyone that needed a perpetual retreat,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘Ashringford, I should say, would be quite ideal. The choir’s so good. Such peaceful voices … And there’s nothing about the Cathedral in any way forbidding! One could really hardly wish for anything
nicer
. The late Bishop often used to say it suggested to him
Siena
, with none of the sickening scent of hides.’

Mrs Shamefoot became ecstatic.

‘We must make Dr Pantry promise a two-tier window,’ she said, ‘and Dirce can take the top.’

‘Sharing a window,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘in my opinion, is such a mistake. One might just as well erect a Jesse-window and invite a whole multitude to join. It may be egotistical, but if I were going down the centuries at all, I should want to go alone.’

‘Unfortunately,’ Mrs Shamefoot murmured, ‘it’s too late to alter things, without behaving badly …’

‘That could be arranged. There’s not the same rush now for monuments that there used to be.’

‘Just at present, it seems there’s almost a revival … There are so many Art Schools about, aren’t there? Everybody one meets appears to be commemorating themselves in one way or another. It’s become a craze. Only the other day my mother-in-law had designed for Soco a tiny triptych of herself as a kind of Madonna, with a napkin drawn far down over her eyes.’

‘Really?’

‘Of course it’s only a firescreen; it’s
certain
to get scorched.’

‘But still—’

‘And with some scraps of old Flemish glass Lady Faningay has set up a sort of tortoise-shell window to a friend; so pretty … She would have it.’

‘Oh, that dreadful
réchauffé
of fragments; I’ve seen it.’

‘But you understand, don’t you, dearest, it’s something far rarer with me …’

‘I should be disappointed,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘if you did not, with Mrs Cresswell, become the glory of the town.’ And with a sorrowful, sidelong smile she turned towards Ashringford, admirable in a gay glitter of lights.

Faint as rubbed-out charcoal where it touched the sky, loomed the Cathedral, very wise and very old, and very vigilant and very detached – like a diplomat in disgrace – its towers, against the orange dusk, swelling saliently towards their base, inflated, so the guide-books said, by the sweet music of Palestrina. Between them, an exquisite specimen of irony, careered the short spire, which was perhaps an infelicity that would grow all long and regretful-looking towards the night.