B007TB5SP0 EBOK (24 page)

At the portentous word Master Raphael rolled down upon the floor.

Mrs Asp considered him. She was old-fashioned enough to believe it necessary for a young thing, when it gaped, to know exactly where to place its hand.

‘Does he take after his papa?’ she asked.

‘I hardly know. He loves to flick his tongue up and down the rough paint of a picture, and to cool his cheek along the shrubberies on my fans.’

‘He promises!’ Mrs Asp declared.

‘But so wicked. Yesterday Princess Schara came to show George a fan. You know her husband used to paint the most wonderful fans. Poor man, in the end he became so decorative that he died! His last fan – would you care to see it? – is such a muddle that very few people can discover what it means. And now Raphael has made it utterly impossible.’

‘Most modern fans are so ill and sickly,’ Mrs Thumbler observed, ‘I hope nothing will happen to your courageous little boy.’

Mrs Calvally lit – one of those …

It was a caprice of hers that could still charm, thrill and fascinate a wayward husband.

He had studied her too, thus, at three different angles on a single canvas. More vagabond, possibly, than the Charles, or the Richelieu, or the Lady Alice Gordon of Reynolds, but, nevertheless, with not one whit less style.

‘How stately the studio is,’ Mrs Asp said, a little confused. ‘A perfect paradise!’

‘I regret I’ve nothing to show you much that’s new. You’ve seen his joy-child for the top of a fountain, I expect, before?’

But Mrs Thumbler did not seem cast down.

‘I admire your plain black curtains,’ she said, ‘and, oh, where did you get these?’

Continually, Mrs Calvally would design an eccentric frame for her husband’s pictures. It was a pathetic attempt, perhaps, on her side, to identify herself in his career.

For, indeed, she was notoriously indifferent to art.

She was one of those destined to get mixed over Monet and Manet all their life.

The exhibition of some ‘lost’ masterpiece, in Bond Street, was what she most enjoyed, when, if not too crowded, she could recline upon a sofa and turn out the lining to her purse.

‘I’m such a wretched, wicked housekeeper,’ she would say. ‘And were it not for an occasional missing Gainsborough, George, I should never know what I had.’

‘Bristling with intellect,’ Mrs Asp announced, laying down the fan, ‘and I seem to catch a face in it, too. Little Mrs Steeple’s! …’

‘Oh, quite—’

‘Poor thing. She says Sir Samuel has become so vigorous lately. It nearly kills her every evening waiting for his slap.’

‘We were at Smith Square on Sunday,’ Mrs Calvally said, ‘and sitting at her feet found Julia’s new man – Charley Chalmers!’

‘And I suppose a god?’ Mrs Asp inquired.

‘Not at all. It’s a doll-like, childlike, Adam’y sort of face, and very healthy.’

‘Dear Julia, I’ve seen nothing of her since the Sappho supper-party Mrs Henedge gave in the spring.’

‘I hear she’s been safely landed now about a week.’

‘One can hardly credit it!’

‘She sent us a jar of Ashringford honey,’ Mrs Thumbler said, ‘recently. Perfectly packed, in half-a-field of hay.’

‘She takes a kind of passionate pleasure in her bees. And Mr Brookes helps her in them, muffled up in all the newest veils.’

‘He’s been away now so long. He might be almost learning to be a priest,’ Mrs Asp remarked, as Lady Listless came in.

‘I heard a thrush singing in the park,’ she said. ‘It was so attractive. I don’t know what came over me! Are my eyes wet still with tears? I held back one to bring your husband (I saw the many-happy-returns in
The World
), but I lost it. It rolled, unluckily, under the wheels of a miserable motor bus. But I
managed to get another! So I carried myself as if I were Lily, Lady Ismore, and got nearly safe with it, when it fell down as the lift stopped.’

‘You should have warned the boy!’

‘I did …’

‘The incredible thrush!’ Mrs Asp exclaimed.

‘Very likely it wasn’t totally the thrush. I won’t be positive. It may have been merely the reaction after Mr Hurreycomer’s Private View. His
Suzannah
! … Have you seen it? … A young woman (my dear, his wife), splashing herself in some perfectly lilac water … And the Elders … Oh, they are all portraits …’

‘Tell me about the Elders,’ Mrs Calvally begged.

‘Your husband. Most prominent.’

‘But George isn’t forty!’

‘Are you sure?’

‘It’s incredible, in any case, that an insignificant stupid thing like Carla could interest even Elders,’ Mrs Asp remarked, getting up. ‘Moreover,’ she continued, drawing on a glove, ‘she revels in making herself needlessly hideous; it appeals to her sense of truth. Added to which,’ she rambled on, ‘his candid studies of women are simply hateful …’

‘Brutal!’ Mrs Thumbler opined.

‘Has anybody seen my stole?’

‘And remember, Rose,’ Mrs Calvally said, returning it to her, ‘for Friday, it’s
you
who’ve got the tickets!’

‘I shan’t forget. But since it’s likely to be a debate, don’t expect to see me smart. I shall simply wear my old, soiled, peach-charmeuse …’

‘My dear, don’t bother to dress!’

Mrs Asp hesitated.

‘I trust that nobody of yours,’ she said, ‘is ill or stricken, for there’s a strange old man seated on the stairs, with such a terrific bag of tools!’

Mrs Calvally rippled.

‘I conclude it’s only the carpenter,’ she explained, ‘who has come to pass a screw through Miss Mira’s charming consumptive Amour!’

‘Don’t the hills look soaked through and through with water?’

‘My dear, I don’t know!’

‘If you don’t object, I’ll go back, I think, to bed.’

‘What can you expect at the fall of the leaf?’

‘But except for the evergreens, all the leaves are down.’

‘Well, last winter, it rained so, and it rained so, that the drawing-room became a lake. All my beautiful blue silk chairs …: and a few gold fish I’m attached to were floated right out of their bowl, and swam upstairs into Thérèse’s room.’

‘Ashringford’s becoming dreadfully disagreeable.’

‘Patience. The sun will come up presently. Even now, it’s doing something behind the Cathedral. It usually takes its time to pick a path across St Dorothea.’

Now that she had actually abandoned it, St Dorothy, for Mrs Henedge, had become St Dorothea.

‘Hannah was telling us the night it fell she noticed devils sort-of-hobble-stepping beneath the trees.’

‘My dear, she tells such lies. One never can believe her. Only the other day she broke the child’s halo off my plaster Anthony and then declared she didn’t.’

‘The most wonderful name in all the world for any child,’ Winsome said, ‘is Diana. Don’t you agree? Your gardener intended to call his daughter Winifred, but I was just in time!’

‘There now, there’s a pretty motive for a walk. Save Mrs Drax’s baby. It’s to be christened Sobriety, to-day, at half-past-two. Such a shame!’

‘But I should miss Goosey.’

‘Winsome, lately, has taken quite a fancy to Goosey, while risking their necks together upon the scaffolding of St John’s.’

‘You see so much of him. The Miss Chalfonts, in comparison, aren’t to be compared.’

‘Don’t ever speak of them!’

‘Why not?’

‘I’ve such a shock in store.’

‘Yes, what is it?’

‘The Miss Chalfonts have scratched.’

‘Scratched! …’

‘Their Guardi.’

‘What does it matter if they have. I’ve really no need for any
more
pictures. People seem to think that St John’s is going to be a Gallery, or something of the kind.’

‘And I’ve something else to tell you.’

‘Sit down and tell me here.’

‘While we were leaning from the campanile an idea occurred to me. Another opera.’

‘Bravo! You shall kiss my hand.’

‘I start
fortissimo
! The effect of the Overture will be the steam whistle that summons the factory hands.
Such a hoot!
…’

‘But you’ll finish what you’re doing?’

Since his arrival in Ashringford he had been at work on a
Gilles de Rais
, an act of which already was complete. The sextet between Gilles and his youthful victims, bid fair, Mrs Henedge declared, to become the most moving thing in all opera. While the lofty theme for Anne de Bretagne, and the piteous Prière of the little Marcelle seemed destined, also, to be popular.

‘I’m so glad, for, naturally, while the building’s in progress I have to be on the spot. And I do so hate to be alone … I cannot bear it. I like to have you with me!’

‘Still, you’ve got Monsignor Parr …’

‘Dear, charming, delightful Monsignor Parr!’

‘Are there any more new designs?’

‘No. But Mr Calvally is constructing some confessionals for us utterly unlike the usual
cabins-de-bains
… And apropos of them, I’ve something serious to say to you. I’m sorry to have to say it …; for I’d really much rather not!’

‘I’m listening.’

‘It’s about
Andrew
. Those Degas
Danseuses
he sends to you … on letter cards … I know, I know,
I know
! And, perhaps, if he didn’t scribble over them … But – how very often have I said it! – I never liked him. That violet muffler. And the no-collar …’

‘Why, what?’

‘Here is a card that came for you. When I saw it, I assure you it made me feel quite quaint and queer.
I thought it was for me!
’

‘Oh, but you couldn’t!’

‘ “My dear old Sin, do ask me not to write to you again. Or answer my letters properly.” ’

‘I wish Andrew wouldn’t correspond with you in that coarse way. Ever! At least not while you’re at the Closed House. What must the postman think?’

‘That’s nerves! You mustn’t begin to worry like Lady Brassknocker. Her apprehension of the servants is a disease.’

‘But a postman isn’t a simple servant. One doesn’t dismiss him. I like my letters. Here is one from Atossa Listless. She says Lady Castleyard and Mrs Shamefoot are going to Cannes. And there’s another difficulty apparently: whether the window shall open, or
not
.’

‘How capricious the Palace is.’

‘Mrs Shamefoot is ill with strain. Lady Listless says she speaks of nothing now but death. She says it’s almost shocking to hear her. Nothing else amuses her at all … And it gets so gloomy and monotonous.’

‘Probably the casino—’

‘That’s what they try to hope. At present she’s continually cabling to India about her pall. After the coffin she says she’ll have violins – four: Kubelik, Zimbalist, Kreisler, and Melsa … And no doubt Dina will send a splendid sheaf of something from the shop.’

Winsome tossed back his hair and half clouded his eyes. He glazed them.

‘Wait!’ he murmured, moving to the piano.

Mrs Henedge obeyed, expectant, upright, upon the tip of
her chair. She knew the signs … Her finger-tips hovering at her heart caged an Enchantress Satin Rose.

‘Lillilly-là lillilly-là,

Là, là, là.

Lillilly, lillilly, lillilly-là,

Lillilly-là lillilly-là,

Lillilly, Lillilly, lillilly-là,

L-à-à-à …’

‘Well; really! …’

‘I couldn’t help it. It just broke from me. It’s
The Song of the Embalmers
…’

‘… I call it lovely! Poor Mrs Shamefoot. That lillilly, lillilly, lillilly. One feels they really are doing something to the corpse. It’s sitting up! And the long final l-à-à-à. It’s dreadful. Don’t they fling it down?’ And with finger rigid she pointed towards the floor.

‘It’s good of you to like it,’ Winsome said, with some emotion. ‘And here’s Goosey!’

‘Never lend your name, or your money, or your books, or your umbrella, or anything, to anybody – if you’re wise,’ Goosey Pontypool remarked over his shoulder to Winsome as he pressed Mrs Henedge’s hand.

‘But it isn’t raining!’

‘It doesn’t matter. Here, they pour down dust upon you as you go by.’

‘It’s a sign,’ Mrs Henedge said, ‘that the houses are tenanted. Thérèse will sometimes say to me that that melancholy Miss Wintermoon must have gone away
at last
when suddenly up flies her window and a hand shakes a duster into the street.’

‘In Ashringford there’s chatter enough indoors. You’d be surprised!’

‘Well, I never know what goes on, except when the sow gets into the Dean’s garden. And then I hear the screams.’

‘I hear everything.’

‘Whisper what you’ve heard.’

‘That Mr Pet is to marry Miss Wardle and Mr Barrow’s to be made a peer.’

‘Upon what grounds?’

‘For doctoring the Asz. You know it used always to ooze away; he’s just discovered where. While she was watering her rhododendrons he noticed … Anyway, he’s going to Egypt officially soon to do something to the Nile.’

‘How delightful for her!’

‘She’s advertising for a cottage at Bubastis, a bungalow, a villa …’

Mrs Henedge became staid.

‘I suppose she’ll get like Salabaccha now,’ she said. ‘Ah, well!’

‘Even so, it’s much more wonderful for Jane …’

‘I’m at a loss to conceive any one …’

‘I don’t know. Miss Wardle isn’t perhaps what you’d expect. When I called at Wormwood she said: “I was so sure we should find plenty in common.
I could feel it through the window.
I’ve often watched you pass.” ’

‘Those complicated curls of hers remind me of the codicils to my poor dear Leslie’s will.’

‘Who arranged the match?’

‘St Dorothy. She was expatiating on her escape … “I heard a noise,” she said, “a sound. But country servants are so rough. Aren’t they? Breaking, dropping, chipping things … I haven’t a dish that isn’t cracked … So, if I didn’t hurry immediately to look out, it was because … because … because … Because I was in the middle of my prayers.”

‘ “Had it fallen a
leetle
more your way,” he said, “there would have been an end of them.”

‘ “Oh, Mr Pet,” she said, “what difference could that have made to you?” ’

‘So simple!’

‘Well, if it’s true, it’s the best thing possible. Now, perhaps, we shall get rid of them
both
.’