B007TB5SP0 EBOK (20 page)

‘How admirable, ’Orgy, it is!’

‘Though to my idea,’ Lady Georgia said, ‘the hills would undoubtedly gain if some sorrowful creature could be induced to take to them. I often long for a bent, slim figure, to trail slowly along the ridge, at sundown, in an agony of regret.’

Mrs Guy Fox drew on a glove.

‘I’m quite certain,’ she remarked, ‘that Sir Victor would not require much pressing.’

Lady Georgia made her gentlest grimace.

‘I wish,’ she said, ‘he would, for his figure’s sake. He is getting exactly like that preposterous effigy of King Edward the Last in the Public Gardens.’

‘Mrs Barrow of Dawn vows it produces a romantic effect on her.’

‘Poor Violet! Cooped up half the year with an old man and seven staid servants, it cannot be very gay.’

‘They say if she’s absent, even an hour together,’ Mrs Guy Fox said, ‘he sends a search party after her. And he’s so miserably mean. Why the collar of pearls he gave his first wife strangled her!’

‘I heard she died in torment; but I didn’t know from what.’

Mrs Shamefoot held the filmy feathers of her fan slantwise across the night. It pleased her to watch whole planets gleam between the fragile sticks.

‘Nobody,’ she exclaimed, ‘would do for me the things that I would do for them!’

‘… One can never be sure
what
a person will do unless one has tried.’

Lady Georgia drew a scarf devotionally about her head.

‘Julia has offered to speak some scenes from tragedies to us,’ she said.

‘Gladly, Georgia, I will, when we’re full numbers.’

‘Here come our husbands now!’

‘At the risk of seeming sentimental,’ Sir Isaac declared, ‘I want to tell you how good your dinner was; it was excellent.’

‘All millionaires love a baked apple,’ Lady Georgia murmured, as she led the way with him towards the Greek theatre.

‘ “Que ton âme est bien née Fille d’Agamemnon,” ’ Miss Compostella declaimed dispassionately, by way of tuning up.

In sympathetic silence Mrs Shamefoot followed with the Dean.

The statues stood like towers above the low dwarf trees, dark, now, against the night. Across the gardens, from the town, the Cathedral bells chimed ten. Ten silver strokes, like the petals falling from a rose.

She sighed. She sought support. She swayed …

Alas, that conviviality should need excuse! While Miss Compostella, somewhat tardily, raised the Keen for Iphigenia, Lady Anne conducted a dinner conference, for women alone.

A less hospitable nature, no doubt, would have managed (quite charmingly), upon tea. But Lady Anne scorned the trickle.

Nor was it before the invitations were consigned to the pillar-box in the Palace wall, that she decided, in deference to the Bishop, who was in Sintrap, to add the disarming nuance. To append which, with a hairpin, she had forced the postman’s lock.

For indeed excess is usually the grandparent to deceit. And now, with a calm mind beneath a small tiara, she leaned an elbow, conferentially, upon a table, decorated altogether recklessly by Aurelia, with acacia leaves and apostle spoons.

She had scarcely set her spark.

‘No, really! … I can’t think
why
she should have it,’ Miss Wardle exclaimed, leaping instantly into a blaze.

‘She’s very handsome, isn’t she? And that’s always something. And when you’re next in Sloane Street, you’ll observe she has a certain wayward taste for arranging flowers.’

‘If those are her chief credentials, I shall not interfere …’

‘Nobody denies her taste for flowers,’ Mrs Pontypool exclaimed. ‘Though, from her manner of dress, one wouldn’t perhaps take her to be a Christian. But handsome! I must say, I don’t think so. Such a little pinched, hard, cold, shrivelled face. With a profile like the shadow of a doubt. And with a phantom husband too, whom nobody has ever seen.’

‘To be fair to her, one has read his ridiculous speeches.’

‘If a window is allowed at all, surely Miss Brice should have it?’

‘But why should the Cathedral be touched? It’s far too light as it is. Often, I assure you, we all of us look quite old … The sun streams in on one in such a manner.’

‘Besides, when she has already nibbled at Perch, why must she come to us?’

‘Nibbled! One fancies her to have stormed Overcares, Carnage, Sintrap, Whetstone, Cowby, Mawling, Marrow and Marrowby, besides beseeching Perch.’

‘If she could only bring herself to wait,’ Mrs Wookie wailed, ‘Mrs Henedge might cater for her at St John’s …’

‘St John’s! From what one hears, it will be a perfect Mosque.’

Lady Anne refused a peach.

‘I’ve begged the Dean to propose something smaller to her,’ she said, ‘than St Dorothy, where she can put up a window and be as whimsical as she likes.’

‘That’s common-sense. It wouldn’t matter much what she did at Crawbery.’

‘Or even in the town. So many of the smaller churches are falling into dilapidation. It’s quite sad. Only this evening Miss Critchett was complaining bitterly of the draught at St Mary’s. Her life, she says, is one ceaseless cold. A window there, that would shut, would be such a blessing.’

‘And the building, I believe, is distinctly Norman.’

‘Call it Byzantine to her …’

‘It’s a pity she won’t do something useful with her money. Repair a clock that wanders, for instance, or pension off some bells. Whenever those bells near us begin to ring they sound such bargains.’

‘Or fence in St Cyriac, where my poor Percy is,’ Mrs Wookie said pathetically. ‘It really isn’t nice the way the cows get in and loll among the tombs. If it’s only for the milk—’

‘What is your vote, Mrs Pontypool?’

‘Oh, my dear, don’t ask me! I mean to be passive. I mean to be neutral. I shan’t interfere.’

‘But isn’t it one’s duty?’

‘Well, I’m always glad of any change,’ Mrs Barrow said. ‘Any little brightness. Nothing ever happens here.’

Miss Wookie became clairvoyant. ‘If I’m not much mistaken,’ she said, ‘it’s an expiatory window she intends us to admire.’

‘That’s perfectly possible.’

‘Indeed, it’s more than likely.’

‘For some imprudence, perhaps. Some foolish step …’

‘Ah, poor thing …!’

‘And in any case, the window, for her, will be a kind of osprey!’

‘One could understand a window in moderation, but apparently she’s quite insatiable.’

‘When my hour comes,’ Mrs Wookie said, ‘I shall hope to lie in the dear kitchen-garden.’

Miss Wardle groped about her, and shivered slightly.

‘I’d like my cloak,’ she murmured, ‘please, if you don’t mind.’

And indeed, it was a matter of surprise, and a sign of success, that she had not sent for it before.

For any gathering that might detain her beyond her own gate after dark it was her plan to assume a cloak of gold galloon that had hidden, once, the shoulders of the Infanta Maria Isabella.

How the garment had reached Miss Wardle’s wardrobe was unknown; but that she did not disown it was clear; since frequently she would send a footman for it midway during dinner. It was like the whistle that sounded half-time at a football match, bucolic neighbours said.

‘What is the feeling about it in the town?’ Lady Anne inquired.

‘Until the decision is final, people hardly know which way to object. But Mr Dyce says if she has the window, he’ll show up the Cathedral.’

‘Really! Horrid old man! What can he mean?’

‘Insolency!’

‘And Mr Pet … But, my dear, fortunately he’s such a rapid preacher. One misses half he says.’

‘The text he took on Sunday was Self-Idolatry, the Golden Calf …’

‘I thought it was to be green!’

‘What, the calf?’

‘No, the window.’

‘Perhaps he’ll go before it’s all arranged.’

‘Very likely. I hear he finds Ashringford so expensive …’

Mrs Pontypool scratched her smooth, fair fringe.

‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘poor young man, with exactly twopence a year, he’d find everywhere ruinous.’

‘And then, I wonder, who will take his place?’

‘Oh, surely Mr Olney will.’

‘He’s such a boy …’

‘My dear, age is no obstacle. And his maiden sermon came as a complete surprise! Of course, he was a trifle nervous. He shook in his shoes till his teeth rattled. And his hair stood on end. But, all the same, he was very brilliant.’

‘Oh, don’t!’ Miss Pontypool murmured.

And indeed, notwithstanding a certain analogy between her home circle with that of the Cenci, she was almost an Ingenious. She would say, ‘Don’t!’ ‘Oh, don’t!’ ‘My dear, don’t!’ apropos of nothing at all.

‘Oh, don’t!’ she murmured.

‘I recall a song of his about a kangaroo,’ Mrs Wookie said, ‘once. At a hunt ball.’

‘ “Garoo-garoo-garoo”, wasn’t it?’ Aurelia asked. ‘Disgraceful.’

‘My dear. Don’t …’

‘How fortunate for that little Miss Farthing if he should come. Although she’d have to change her ways. As I’ve so often tried to tell her, one should wear tailor-mades in the country, instead of going about like a manicure on her holiday.’

‘I don’t believe there is anything in that,’ Miss Hospice said.

‘I’m not at all sure. Whenever they meet he gives such funny little gasps …’

‘Mr Olney needs a wife who could pay
at least
her own expenses.’

‘What has he a year?’

‘He owns to a thousand. But he has quite fifteen hundred.’

‘Besides, he’s too pale, and his face lacks purpose.’

Lady Anne rapped her fan with pathos.

‘Any side issues,’ she said, ‘might be settled later.’

‘Well, I don’t see why she should have it,’ Miss Wardle repeated. ‘To the glory of Mrs Shamefoot,
and
of the Almighty … No, really I can’t see why!’

‘Had she been a saint,’ Mrs Wookie observed, ‘it would have been another matter.’

‘There’s not much, my dear, to choose between women. Things are done on a different scale. That’s all.’

‘Hush, Aurelia. How can you be such a cynic!’

‘All the same,’ Miss Pantry said, ‘trotting to the Cathedral solely of a Sunday, and caring about oneself, solely, all the week, is like crawling into heaven, by weekly instalments …’

‘Indeed, that’s charitable,’ Miss Chimney, who was dining at the Palace as a ‘silent protest’, was constrained to say.

‘But it’s such a commonplace thing to do, to condemn a person one knows next to nothing of!’

‘Mrs Shamefoot was at St Dorothy, for the Thanksgiving, wasn’t she?’

‘I believe so. But Miss Middling sat immediately before me. And with all that yellow wheat in her hat I couldn’t see a thing.’

‘I remarked her rouging her lips very busily, during a long Amen.’

‘Well, I couldn’t quite make out what she had on. But she looked very foreign from behind.’

‘That was Lady Castleyard. Mrs Shamefoot’s little jacket was plainer than any cerecloth. And on her head there was the saddest slouch …’

‘Then she shall have my vote. For counting the pin-holes in it made me positively dizzy.’

‘And you may add mine.’

‘And mine …’

‘I forbid anything of the kind, Kate,’ her mother said. ‘Lady Anne will return it to me, I’m sure.’ And extending a withered hand in the direction of the vote she slipped some salted almonds into her bosom.

‘Oh, Tatty!’

‘I shall put your vote with mine, Kate,’ she said, ‘for it grieves me to see you are such an arrant fool.’

‘
Don’t!
’

‘Where’s the good of stirring up Karma for nothing?’ Aurelia wondered.

Mrs Barrow shook her head sceptically.

‘I’ve too little confidence,’ she said, ‘in straws and smoke, as it is, to credit the pin-marks of a bonnet. It was her maid’s.’

‘How agnostic, Violet, you are! I shall have you going over to Mrs Henedge before you’ve done.’

‘Why, she wears the Cathedral even now.’

‘I thought she had dropped it. She is getting so tawdry.’

‘There’s a powder-puff and a bottle of Jordan water, or Eau Jeunesse, of hers here still,’ Aurelia said. ‘
Besides
a blotting-book.’

‘I’m not surprised. She appears to have entirely lost her head. The last time I called upon her, the cards
In
and
Out
, on the hall table, were both equally in evidence.’

‘It’s safer to keep away from her,’ Mrs Wookie murmured. ‘I’ve maintained it all along.’

‘No doubt, in our time, most of us have flirted with Rome,’ Mrs Pontypool remarked, ‘but, poor dear, she never knew where to stop.’

Lady Anne accepted a conferential cigarette from Mrs Barrow of Dawn.

‘Since the affair appears a decided deadlock,’ she pronounced, ‘I move that we adjourn.’

Miss Valley manoeuvred, slightly, her chair.

‘I’m so eager to examine those Mortlake tapestries of Mrs Cresswell,’ she said, ‘if they’re not away on loan.’

‘They’re on the Ponte di Sospiri,’ Lady Anne replied, ‘that connects us to the cloisters. But at night, I fear, it’s usually rather dark.’

‘Impressions I adore. And there’s quite a useful little moon.’

Aurelia appeared amused.

‘Even with a young moon,’ she said, ‘like a broken banana, and Lady Anne’s crown, and my carved celluloid combs, and all the phosphorescent beetles there may be (and there are),
trooping in beastly battalions through the corridors of the Palace, and the fireflies in the garden and the flickerings in the cemetery, and, indeed, the entire infinity of stars besides, without a little artificial light of our own, one might just as well stop here.’

Lady Anne looked at her:

‘Don’t be so ridiculous, my dear, but lead the way!’

‘If the electric isn’t in repair I refuse to stir.’

‘I’m taking the Historian to inspect some curtains,’ Lady Anne announced, ‘if anyone would care to come.’

‘Historian? …’

Mrs Pontypool revealed her Orders.

Quite perceptibly she became the patroness of seven hospitals, two convalescent homes, with shares in a
maison de santé
.

‘We must have a little chat,’ she exclaimed, ‘together you and I! All my own family had talent. Only, money, alas, came between them and it.’

‘My dear, don’t!’

‘Indeed, it was getting on for genius. And even still my brother (her uncle), will sometimes sit down and write the most unwinking lies. Of course, novels—’