B007TB5SP0 EBOK (38 page)

‘Very good, miss.’

‘And, Queen—!’

‘Fie, miss.’

‘Bashful?’

‘I’m surprised.’

The Yew-tree walk, the cause of so much gloom, ran ring-like about the house, to meet again before the drawing-room windows above the main road, where a marble nymph with a worn flat face dispensed water, rather meanly, out of a cornucopia into a trough full of green scum.

On a garden swing near by the Countess was swaying fitfully to and fro.

‘Units, tens, hundreds, thousands … Tens of thousands … Hundreds of thousands!
Units
—’ she was murmuring cryptically to herself with half rapt looks.

‘Shall I push you, Mabs?’

‘No. Ta.’

‘To prevent the perspiration? …’

The Countess sighed.

‘I’d sell my soul for an ice.’

‘A strawberry …’

‘Or vanilla.’

‘I told Queen we’d be in.’

‘Where’s mum?’

‘Upstairs. Trying on. It’s the armpits again …’

‘Goodness!’

‘Do you know the new snook, Mab?’

‘Is there one?’

‘A beauty.’

‘Not before Bianca.’

‘It’s a pity the child’s so young …’

‘Carissima!’

‘Her little amours. Tell me about them … Has she many?’

‘She makes new conquests from day to day.’

‘Tell me things, Mabel.’

‘What things?’

‘All sorts of things.’

‘Really!’

‘In Italy have they Brussels sprouts – like we have?’

‘In Italy they’ve everything,’ the Countess replied.

‘Can
he
speak English?’

‘Fluently. Oh! …’

‘Swear?’

‘Certainly.’

‘A foreign husband wouldn’t suit me – not if he stayed abroad.’

‘No?’

‘Mabsey!’

‘What is it?’

‘Nothing. In the afternoon the yew-trees turn quite blue.’

‘The quietness … You can almost hear the clouds go by.’

‘Let’s all lie down on the grass as if we were dead.’

‘It’s too hot for rough games.’

‘I shouldn’t wonder if it rained.’

‘Pitter-patter!’

‘Every now and then she turns her great beseeching eyes at me and whispers “Aunt”. Aunt! she says, come back with me to Rome. Come! And let me have no nonsense now. Oh, Blanche, I reply … it’s my poverty, dear. But what can one do on a penny a week?’

‘Papa, poor-old-gentleman, was saying how you should be going to school.’

‘To school?’

‘That was what he said.’

‘He can’t force me to if I choose to remain unlettered.’

‘It’s for the companionship there’d be.’

‘Never.’

‘School isn’t so dreadful, Daisy.’

‘Nothing would induce me to go.’

The Countess rocked drowsily.

‘At York Hill,’ she said, ‘looking back on it all, I seem to have enjoyed everything. Even the walks! Oh … Often we’d go round the city walls … or along the Ouse perhaps out to Bishopsthorpe and there we’d take the ferry. All we screaming girls and governesses in mid-river … Oh, good gracious!’

‘I remember the letters you sent from there. And the complaints that were in them!’

‘And in the evening of course there’d be Preparation … Oh—! That was always a time for mischief … One of us, Annie Oldport perhaps (“Any-Old-Port” we used to call her), would give her next neighbour a squeeze, with orders to pass it on. How we did thrill when little Evelyn Rise, one of the new kids, took hold of the Principal herself. “What are you doing to me, Evelyn?” “I’m pinching you, Mrs Whewell.” “Are you indeed! Well, then—” And she dealt her a blow on the ears before us all … Oh, Evelyn Rise! She was a little silly … She hadn’t any brains at all.’

‘No brains, Mabsey?’

‘No,’ the Countess crooned. ‘She hadn’t any.’

‘There! Queen’s beckoning …’

‘Imbecile.’

‘It may be him.’

‘Who, him?’

‘Your husband.’

‘Hardly.’

‘Your Excellency …’

‘Here I am.’

‘There’s a person at the gate.’

‘Open it then.’

‘I fear it’s a trouble.’

‘Why, who is it?’

‘A stranger.’

‘It’s perhaps the Count.’

‘It looks to be like a woman.’

‘The Sisters have gone away, Queen …’

‘Does she refuse her name?’

‘Quite.’

‘A foreigner?’

‘And
so
suspicious.’

‘The Aunt’s away from home …’

‘I’ve often heard of the Black Hand, your Excellence, and lately I’ve noticed chalk-marks on the gate.’

‘
Ah, Dio!
’

‘Is there no gentleman, Queen?’

‘No, miss.’

‘It may be Jocaster Gisman.’

‘What Gisman?’

‘The accomplice of Bessie Bleek that suffocated seven little boys and girls and was tried and executed for doing so …’

‘Oh, heavens!’

‘Jocasta got herself off at the last Assizes – there were extenuating circumstances the judge said – and so he forgave her.’

‘
Bô!
’

‘Mercy!’

‘My dear, it’s me,’ Miss Dawkins said, peering through the fence.

‘That is so,’ she added, with an impetuous bound.

‘Oh, the child!’

‘Her aversion – I should say it’s a flea,’ Miss Dawkins commented, subsiding upon the swing.

The Countess pushed it.

‘Of all the surprises!’ she said.

‘I refused to give my name because it makes me cry to say it. I break down …’

‘You’ve not found them then?’

‘No, dear.’

‘I imagined you in the I’s.’

‘I sail for India within a week.’

‘The cathedral cities bring you north?’

‘York and – they rhyme together … the first few letters. And I cling to every straw.’

‘Courage.’

‘Call me Ola.’

‘Ola.’

‘When I was in the Holy City I saw you one day.’

‘When was it?’

‘During Passion Week.’

‘Were you with friends?’

‘I scarcely knew anybody. I had an introduction to Countess Roderigos Samurez Dalmatia, but as I didn’t like the look of her I didn’t make use of it.’

‘I’ve heard of her often,’ the Countess said, ‘through the Grittis.’

‘Besides a letter to Princess Anna di Portici …’

‘Her house is occupied at present by the Marquesa Refoscosca!’

‘And a card for Monsignor Ferrol.’

‘Old
débauché
.’

‘Well … and how’s the pleasant husband?’

‘Oio? He’s in Orvieto still. It’s the Vintage …’

Miss Dawkins looked devout.

‘In my opinion,’ she said, ‘Orvieto wine is superior to the best Castelli.’

‘You should have a dozen, dear, of our Old-Old-Old – the
Certosa,
if I knew where it would find you.’

‘I’m at the “Wheat Sheaf”. ’

‘What?’

‘Yes. I thought I’d repose myself there until I start.’

‘If you’ve made no other plans you’ll just stay and rest with us until your ship sails.’

‘It’s kind of you to ask me, but what will your kindred say?’

‘My dear, they’ll love to have you. And mum will tell you so herself. She’s with the tailor now.’

‘It’s the arm-pits! …’

‘This is my little sister.’

‘And is that your babe?’

‘Isn’t she a darling!’

‘Tell me, Contessa – have I changed since Greece?’

‘I should say you’re a little stouter.’

‘Ireland makes one sloppy.’

‘And I? …’

‘My dear, you don’t look fifteen.’

‘She’s seventeen,’ Daisy said, ‘or thereabouts. And the child will soon be two.’

‘Were
I
to have a child I should be just like a lunatic,’ Miss Dawkins declared.

‘With your tender heart I wonder you don’t marry.’

‘Marriages are made in heaven, you know.’

‘Let me find you someone!’

‘You, my dear … I’ve a sprig of the real Chinduai charm-flower from the Malay. I’ve only to wear it!’

‘Why don’t you then?’

‘Voyagers lose their illusions somehow … They lose them …’

‘Take off your hat and really rest!’

‘Shall I?’

‘Do.’

‘It’s pretty peaceful here anyway,’ Miss Dawkins said, with a sigh, her eyes riveted upon the cornucopia of the niggardly nymph.

‘Is it iron?’ she inquired.

‘What, the water? It’s always rather brown …’

Miss Dawkins pressed a hand to her hip.

‘It looks like a stream of brandy,’ she said, going off into a laugh.

The ‘intimate’ dinner arranged by Mrs Collins in honour of her elder daughter promised to be a large one. Covers for twenty guests, at a table to hold eighteen, insured nevertheless a touch of welcome snugness. In the crepuscular double drawing-room, commanding the eternal moors,
*
county society, as it assembled, exchanged cheery greetings. It was indeed to all intents the Doncaster Meeting lot.

Discanting away from homely topics, Sir Harry Ortop had just seen a fox, it seemed, crossing Cockaway Common, while Miss Rosalba Roggers had passed a traction-engine in the Rectory lane. ‘Horrid thing; but the Scarboro’ road is really a disgrace,’ she pronounced, turning her attention to an angular beauty clad in sugary pink and a crown of birds’ feathers.

Holding forth in a quizzical, hoarse-sweet voice, she was arraigning her husband with indescribable archness: ‘He always gets into his carriage first, and then half shuts the door on you!’

Momentous in his butlerhood, Queen, supported by an extra footman, announced each new advent with an air of serene detachment.

Mr Napier Fairmile, Miss Nespole—

Entering on the heels of the former inamorato of the Countess sailed a mite of a woman enveloped fancifully in a fairy-hued cashmere shawl. The Cyclopean chatelaine of Cupingforth Castle, and one of the wealthiest women in the Riding, she was held, by local opinion, to be eccentric for preferring to live all
alone, which may possibly have had its dangers for a person of her condition and sex; nevertheless, on occasion, to convince an intrusive stranger she had a male in the house, she would discharge a cartridge out of window, and knot her hair across her chin in front in a thick cascade to imitate
a beard
.

Lady Watercarriage, The Hon. Viola West-Wind, Captain Margaret-Baker—

Quite re-vitalized, performing her duties, Mrs Collins circulated smilingly here and there. Throwing a veil of glamour upon each guest, she had introduced Miss Dawkins twice as ‘The Great Traveller’.

‘I ain’t going back to Australia not yet awhile. That is so!’ Miss Dawkins declared, recognizing across the Rector’s shoulder in the damp-stained mezzotints upon the walls some views of popular thoroughfares her foot had trodden – Trafalgar Square, the Place de la Concorde, the Piazza Colonna, the Puerta del Sol. ‘If I don’t just spit at them!’ she commented, idly opening and closing her fan.

The Farquhar of Farquhar, Mrs Lampsacus of Gisborough Park—

Already a full quarter-of-an-hour late, they were yet not the last.

Masticating, chewing the air, Mr Collins appeared to have become involved against his will in the esoteric confidences of a pair of expansive matrons: ‘In York I saw some very pretty … I inquired the price … Would you believe …
Need
I say I bought them!’

Delivered from their effusive unbosoming by The Farquhar of Farquhar, Mr Collins turned away.

Advancing like some marvellous automaton, The Farquhar, known as ‘Lulu’ to all frequenters of the Turf, brought with him an atmosphere of one who had supplied a daughter, or at least a filly, to a Prince of the Blood. Excusing his wife Serafima (a woman for whom undergraduates had shot themselves), he inquired, with a leer, for ‘la petite Comtesse’.

She was looking summery and semi-Southern in an imaginative gown in every shade of white.

‘Precious darling! She’s only eight months; it’s a critical age,’ she was exclaiming; apropos, doubtless, of her child.

Chatting to a bottle-nosed dowager in garnets and goose-flesh, she appeared indeed even prettier than she was.

Descending on her, The Farquhar was circumvented by Miss Viola West-Wind, a young girl of the County with a little Tatlertainted face. She was supplying blocks of tickets, it seemed, for
The League of Patriots
ball … ‘
Fancy dress! Everyone to go as animals
.’

Dr Dee—

It was as much as to say dinner; but an announcement, breathed from Queen, was to fill Mrs Collins with apprehension.

‘There’s been a little catastrophe, ’m.’

‘What, not …? …! …? ?’

‘To a cinder, ’m.’

In the long low-ceiled dining-room, all in the robust mid-Victorian style, the failure of an
entrée
seemed a more or less trivial thing; in such an environment it is the haunch that matters, it is the loin that tells …

‘Even so,’ Mrs Collins heard herself murmuring (almost callously) as she gained a chair on The Farquhar’s arm – ‘Even so. The mornings begin to be frosty.’

A random word wafting the talk naturally to the subject of foxes.

‘Count Pastorelli is fond of hunting?’

But Mrs Collins presumed a prudent deafness.

Adorned with foreign spring flowers, smart jonquils and early tulips, the table-arrangements left nothing to be desired.

‘I could never go to Russia; I turn quite green in the snow,’ Miss Dawkins was telling Sir Harry Ortop of her Odyssey.

‘I take it you’ve tried clairvoyance?’ he asked.

‘Indeed. And palmistry, and phrenology, and cards, and sand …’

‘Well?’

‘Oh well …’ she replied, regarding a scar on his third blue chin; ‘I was warned I’d marry a septuagenarian within the
forbidden degrees and never know it … Helios, Mene, Tetragrammaton!’

‘According to my experience, it’s a mistake to find people. I don’t want to find anybody …’

Miss Dawkins used her fan.

‘I’ve a presentiment they’re in India,’ she said. ‘Somehow I connect my mother’s fair hair with Bombay …’

Owing to the absence of a guest, it was agreeable to find the Countess in juxtaposition. With the Member for Bovon on her right, her tongue tripped heedlessly from Mussolini to Miss Arne: ‘Poor soul, she was interred in her lace, with a coin of Greece in her mouth, and a flask of Chalkis wine, and a tambourine.’