B007TB5SP0 EBOK (18 page)

Doctor Pantry smiled.

‘What a charming book!’

‘I love it too. It’s a book that I adore.’

‘I have the 1540 edition.’

‘Have you; how rare!’

‘Indeed, it’s a possession that I prize.’

‘I should say so. I can repeat, almost by heart, the chapter that commences: “What can be more melancholy than Stonehenge at sunset.” Her cry of astonishment on beholding it from the window of Lord Ismore’s coach is the earliest impressionary criticism that we have. She was asleep, wasn’t she, when a
sudden jolt awoke her. “The stones,” she said to little Miss Ismore, whom she was piloting to Court, “the stones are like immense sarcophagi suspended in the air …” ’

‘Admirable!’ the Bishop exclaimed.

‘And Miss Ismore in her way was interesting too. Eventually she married Prince Schara, and retired to Russia with him. And kept a diary. Each night she would write down the commonplaces of the Czarina, with the intention of one day revealing them in a book; as if she hadn’t sufficient incidents without! Before her death in Moscow, where she was poisoned, one gathers that the influences of childhood, although most likely smothered, were not entirely put out. And she would wear her heavenly tiara at the opera as if it were a garland of thorns. Really, the Princess was one of the very first persons to get Russiaphobia.’

‘Russiaphobia; what is that?’

‘Wearing one’s rubies and emeralds at the same time,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, in a hushed voice.

The Bishop waved aside a hanging.

‘There is usually,’ he explained, ‘a slight charge asked for entrance to the Coronna Chapel. But to-day you’re with me!’

She stood awed.

‘How seductive she is; though, somehow, I should call her inclined to be too rotund for a saint! A saint should be slim and flexible as a bulrush …’

‘The effect, no doubt of her fine gaiety! Her exuberance was wonderful. She was as gay as a patch of poppies to the last.’

‘I suppose in her time, there were a few flower faces, but the majority of persons seem to have been quite appallingly coarse.’

‘It has often been remarked that she resembles Madame de Warens …’

Mrs Shamefoot became regretful.

‘If only Rembrandt might have painted Madame de Warens!’ she said.

‘You have not yet been to our small gallery in the town?’

‘I didn’t know there was one.’

‘Oh, but you must go—’

‘I will, but not before my own affair’s arranged! Wait; a
lancet did you say? or a Wheel-window, or a Chancel-light – I’ll be confused.’

‘Before I can make any definite promises,’ the Bishop said, ‘an unworthy world is sure to demand a few credentials.’

‘Dear Doctor Pantry, were I to proclaim myself a saint you’d probably not believe it—’

‘Indeed, I assure you I’ve no misgivings.’

‘I cannot conceive, why, then, there should be any fuss.’

‘You have never yet come across our
Parish Magazine
?’

‘I dare say if I stayed here long enough I’d get horrid too.’

‘No; I think you never would.’

‘I might!’

‘I assure you every time it appears I find myself wishing I were lying in the sanctity of my own sarcophagus.’

‘Dear Doctor Pantry, don’t say such shocking things! I will not allow it. Besides, I could compose the notice myself.’

‘Indeed, I fear you’d have to.’

‘Behind a white mask and a dark cloak. Quite in the manner of Longhi. Thus: “A Dame, who, (for the next few weeks) prefers to remain unknown wishes to remove from St Dorothy one of those white windows (which resemble prose), and replace it by,” etc. etc. etc. Or, to slip away the west window altogether …’

‘But the west window, the war window …’

‘It’s a blot to the Cathedral. I cannot make out what is written beneath; but isn’t it to say, that in the end the King marries the kitchen-maid, and they lived happily ever after?’

‘To remove the war window,’ the Bishop said, ‘when everyone is alive that subscribed for it, I fear would be impossible.’

Mrs Shamefoot peered about her. Once only, long ago, in the Pyrenees, could she recall a similar absence of accommodation.

‘Perhaps,’ she said, half shyly, ‘I might share the Coronna.’

‘Share the Coronna!’

Doctor Pantry turned pale at the impiety.

‘Why not? Two triangles when they cut can make a star …’

‘I fear your Niccolo in Ashringford might be unapprehended.’

‘After all, what is the Dorothy window but a wonderful splash of colour?’

‘Have you tried the Abbey?’ Doctor Pantry asked.

‘What, Westminster?’

‘With a husband in the Cabinet …’

Mrs Shamefoot smiled sedately.

‘But I’m not a public person,’ she said. ‘An actress. Although, of course, I do sell flowers.’

‘With such an object in view, heaven forfend you should become one.’

Mrs Shamefoot closed her eyes.

‘To be an actress,’ she said; ‘to ruin one’s life before a room full of people … What fun!’

‘Every good preacher,’ Doctor Pantry observed, ‘has a dash of the comedian too.’

‘Do you go often to the play?’

‘The last time,’ his lordship confessed, ‘I went was to see Mrs Kendall, in
The Elder Miss Blossom
.’

‘Oh, she’s perfect.’

‘Although Lady Anne saw Yvette Guilbert only the other day.’

Mrs Shamefoot looked sympathetic.

‘I can imagine nothing more sinister,’ she said, ‘than Yvette Guilbert singing “Where-are-you-going-to-my-pretty-maid”. It will haunt me always.’ And she paused meditatively to admire a stone effigy of the first Lady Blueharnis, stretched out upon a pillow like a dead swan.

‘How entirely charming the memorials are.’

‘I’m so glad that you like them.’

‘Somehow, some people are so utterly of this world,’ she mused, ‘that one cannot conceive of them being grafted into any other.’

But a sound of unselfconscious respiration from behind the Blueharnis monument startled her.

‘Macabre person! … Fiend!’ she said.

Winsome looked up sleepily.

‘I came,’ he explained, ‘to collect a few books for Mrs Henedge.’

Mrs Shamefoot blinked.

‘That looks,’ she observed, ‘like going.’

‘I don’t want to be too hard on her,’ the Bishop said, ‘but I think she might have told me first.’

‘I cannot say,’ Winsome said. ‘In the country one is always grateful to find anything to do.’

‘Have you been here long?’

‘Since yesterday. Already, I could howl for staleness.’

Mrs Shamefoot glanced at the Bishop.

‘Very likely,’ she said; ‘but to run away the moment you arrive, just because it’s the most appealing place on earth … I should call it decadent!’

And, indeed, after a few hours nearer Nature, perpetually it was the same with him. A
nostalgie du pavé
began to set in. He would miss the confidential ‘Things is very bad, sir,’ of the newspaper boy at the corner; the lights, the twinkling advertisements of the Artistic Theatre … the crack of the revolver so audible those nights that the heroine killed herself, the suspense, the subsequent sickening silence; while the interest, on lighter evenings, would be varied by the ‘Call me my biplane,’ of Indignation as it flew hurriedly away.

Mrs Shamefoot picked up a rich, red-topped hymn-book.

‘And so,’ she said, ‘the aloe, apparently, has bloomed!’

‘No; not yet. But there’s nothing like being ready.’

‘And when do you think it’s to be?’

‘I hardly care to say. Though, when the change is made, you can be certain it will be done quite quietly.’

‘In Ashringford,’ the Bishop said, ‘nothing is ever done quite quietly.’

‘But that’s so silly of Ashringford!’ Mrs Shamefoot exclaimed. ‘When my sister ’verted, I assure you nobody took the slightest notice. But then, of course, she was always going backwards and forwards … She made excursions into three different religions. And she always came back dissatisfied and grumbling.’

‘The world is disgracefully managed, one hardly knows to whom to complain.’

‘Many people,’ the Bishop remarked, ‘are very easily influenced. They have only to look at a peacock’s tail to think of Brahma.’

Mrs Shamefoot turned her eyes towards the entrancing glass.

How mysterious it was! Like the luminous carpets that veil a dream.

She became abstracted a moment, lost in mental measurements, unhappy and elaborate-looking, in her mourning, as a wasted columbine.

‘Well, since you’re here, Mr Brookes,’ she said, ‘you must absolutely try the organ. And Doctor Pantry has never heard me sing.’

From a choice of vivid cushions she placed the least likely behind her head.

‘I’m ready!’ And with a tired, distrustful smile, she looked away towards the house as if it were a hospital.

At her feet crouched an animal who, hourly, was assuming an expression as becoming, and as interesting, she believed, as the wolf of St Francis. Her hands full of dark clematis, clutched and crowned …

‘There’ll be the funnel of the jam factory, and a few chimney-pots for background,’ Winsome said. ‘Do you mind?’

‘My dear, what can I do? In the end, these horrid encroaching shapes will drive me out.’

‘One, two, three; do smile … less. I’d rather work a water-wheel than be a photographer.’

Mrs Henedge relaxed.

‘I wish,’ she murmured, ‘instead, you’d decide about being Rose.’

‘I will. But in these wilds the very notion of a début makes one shiver.’

‘My dear Mr Brookes, when you give your first concert, I will lead you on to the platform, and stay by you all the time!’

‘Well, I’m vacillating. I only need a push.’

‘Oh, be careful of the tail.’

And, indeed, an animal who had bitten a poet, worried a politician, amused a famous actress and harried a dancer, was not to be ignored.

How was it possible, it may be asked, for anything in Ashringford to have come in contact with such celebrities? By what
accident had these Illustrious crossed his path? Incidentally, St Dorothy was responsible for all.

And now that Miss Compostella was awaited at Stockingham, and with a Rose de Tivoli within reach, there appeared every likelihood of lengthening the list – a poet, a politician, a pianist,
two
famous actresses, etc. in anticipation – he counted them over upon his paws, surveying, meanwhile, the newly painted scene; for his lady cared only for those airier sorts of trees, larches, poplars, willows, so that, in the spring, the garden looked extraordinarily inexperienced and green.

‘I shall have to chloroform him,’ Mrs Henedge said, ‘if he does it again.’

‘He might be grateful. One can never tell.’

‘Why, what’s wrong?’

‘I’ve so many moods. You cannot like ’em all … I’m never characteristic!’

‘Poor Mr Vane! Never mind if you’re bored. Relax! Recoup! The country’s very good for you.’

‘That’s what everyone says. Mrs Shamefoot said the same to me this morning.’

‘Oh, have you seen her?’

‘In the Cathedral. Do you know, if I stopped here long, I’d start a Satanic colony in your midst just to share the monotony.’

‘My dear, there’s one already.’

‘Direct me—’

‘No; stay here and be good. I’ve something to tell you that will please you.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. Old Mrs Felix said to my maid: “I think Mr Brookes so beautiful. He has such a young, romantic face!” ’

‘What else did she say?’

‘She said nothing more.’

‘Hooray!’

Mrs Henedge raised a finger. ‘S-S-S-Sh! or you’ll disturb Monsignor Parr. He’s half asleep in a rocking chair making his soul.’

‘According to Monsignor Parr, heaven will be a perpetual concert. Do you think that true?’

‘I believe he has been
favoured
… In fact, in the little powdering closet, before it became my Oratory, something picked him up, and danced him round …’

‘Oh! When?’

‘Only the other day. My dear, yes! And
twice
in the month of Mary!’

‘Zoom – zoom!’

‘Read to me.’

‘What shall I read?’

‘Get the Lascelles Abercrombie, or the Francis Jammes—’

‘ “La maison serait pleine de roses et de guêpes” – that’s adorable.’

‘It makes one dormative too.’

‘Let’s talk of it.’

She sighed shortly.

‘With so many tiresome cats about, it ought to be protected.’

‘Still, with a bronze-green door at night and a violet curtain in the day—’

‘I know!’

‘And what is it to be?’

‘I suppose we shall adhere to the original plan, after all, and call it John the Baptist.’

‘Oh, don’t!’

‘And why not, pray?’

‘For lack of humour,’ Winsome said, ‘I know of nothing in the world to compare with the Prophet’s music in
Salomé
. It’s the quintessence of Villadom. It suggests the Salvation Army, and General Booth. It—’

‘You don’t like it?’ she interrupted him.

‘Not very much.’

‘If you’re going to be childish, I propose you should take a walk.’

‘There is nowhere attractive to go.’

‘My dear, there are the walls. They are not Roman walls, but they are very nice walls.’

‘I find it rather boring, the merely picturesque.’

‘Then I’m sure I hardly know—’

‘I’ve an irresistible inclination to attend Mrs Featherstonehaugh’s fête in the Close –
admittance a shilling
.’

‘Keep your money, my dear boy, or look through the fence.’

‘Ah, Rome! …’

‘Well, I’m going indoors. I’ve letters … Perhaps you want to write to Andrew, too? I expect he must miss you.’

‘Poor Andrew! He goes stumbling along towards some ideal; it’s difficult to say quite what.’

‘The more reason, then, to write to him.’

‘Oh, stay; another minute, please; and I’ll be g-good—’

‘Then put your tie straight, my dear Rose … And,
mind Balthasar’s tail
!’

‘Hail, angel!’

‘Darling!’

‘Dearest!’

‘I’ve been thinking about you so much, dear, all day.’

‘Well, I find myself thinking of you too …’

George Calvally had collided with Miss Thumbler, holding ‘a marvellous bargain’, a score of music and a parasol.