B007TB5SP0 EBOK (11 page)

‘Good heavens,’ he exclaimed, startled, ‘what is the matter?’

But she had moved away.

‘No, something of your own.’ Mrs Asp was begging Winsome rather imprudently.

‘I will play through the first act of my
Justinian
, if you think it wouldn’t be too long.’

‘A few of the leading themes, perhaps,’ Mrs Henedge suggested.

‘Very well, I will begin with the folk-song of the Paralytics.’

‘That will be delightful.’

‘You must imagine them,’ Winsome explained to Lady Listless, who was sitting next to the piano, ‘grouped invalidishly
about the great doorway of San Sopphia. The libretto directions will say that there is a heavy violet moon, and that it is a warm June night.’

Whilst listening to music Lady Listless would allow her aspirations to pass unrestrainedly across her face. They passed now, like a flight of birds.

‘And here,’ Winsome murmured airily, without ceasing, and playing with delightful crispness of touch, ‘is the
pas
of the Barefooted Nuns.’

Lady Listless became rhapsodical. ‘It’s almost as delicious,’ she breathed, ‘as the Shuggar-Plum-Fairies Dance from
Casse Noisette
.’

Mrs Asp also nodded her approbation. ‘The finale was distinctly curious,’ she exclaimed, ‘just like the falling of a silver tray!’

‘And this,’ Winsome explained, folding his arms and drooping back shyly, ‘is the motive for Theodora.’

‘My dear young man,’ Lady Listless objected, ‘but I hear nothing … nothing at all.’

‘The orchestra ceases. There’s audible only the movement of her dress—’

And, suddenly irresponsible, he began to play ‘Summer Palace – Tea at Therapia’, which seemed to break away quite naturally into an exciting Czardas of Liszt.

‘But how amusing!’

Mrs Henedge, slightly anxious now, judged that the moment had come to ask Mrs Shamefoot to sing. Winsome was hardly serious. It was perhaps a pity, she reflected, though it couldn’t be helped, that her dear Mrs Shamefoot cared only for the extremely exalted music of the modern French school. Just then,
a dose of Brahms
, she felt, would have done them all more good, but doubtless Mrs Rienzi might be relied upon to bring the evening to a calmer close with some of her drowsy gipsy dances.

‘And when she died she left everything for the Capucin Fathers,’ Mrs Shamefoot was telling Monsignor Parr as Mrs Henedge approached.

‘Sing, dear …?’ she said.

‘Oh, I don’t really know if I can … The room is so hot. And there are so many roses! I don’t know which look the redder, ourselves or the roses. And I have been chatting all the evening. And my voice is just the least bit tired. But if you simply insist, and Dirce will play my accompaniment; and if—’

And ultimately, as was to be hoped, she rose and fluttered over the many prayer rugs to the piano.

Seldom, George Calvally thought, watching her, had he seen a more captivating creature.

‘Do you think her as graceful as she passes for?’ He could hear Winsome Brookes inquire.

‘Graceful? the camel lady answered. ‘No, really! She’s like a sack of coals.’

‘Ah! je suis fatiguée à mourir!’ Mrs Shamefoot sang. ‘Tous ces hommes ne sont qu’indifférence et brutalité. Les femmes sont méchantes et les heures pesantes! J’ai l’âme vide … Où trouver le repos? … Et comment fixer le bonheur! O mon miroir fidèle, rassure-moi; dis-moi que je suis toujours belle, que je serai belle éternellement; que rien ne flétrira les roses de mes lèvres, que rien ne ternira l’or pur de mes cheveux; dis-moi que je suis belle, et que je serai belle éternellement! éternellement!

‘Ah! tais-toi, voix impitoyable! voix qui me dis: “Thaïs ne serai plus Thaïs! … Non, je n’y puis croire; et s’il n’est point pour garder la beauté de secrets souverains, de pratiques magiques, toi, Vénus, réponds-moi de son éternité! Vénus, invisible et présente!” … Vénus, enchantement de l’ombre! réponds-moi! Dis-moi que je suis belle, et que je serai belle éternellement! Que rien ne flétrira les roses de mes lèvres, que rien ne ternira l’or pur de mes cheveux; dis-moi que je suis belle et que je serai belle éternellement! éternellement! éternellement!’

‘Exquisite, dear; thanks!’

‘Oh, she’s heavenly!’

‘Edwina never sang so!’

‘If she becomes invocatory again,’ Mrs Asp whispered, beating applause with a finger upon a fan, ‘I shall have my doze – like Brunnhilde.’

‘You would be most uncomf’y,’ Mr Sophax observed, ‘and
then who would finish your serial for
The Star
… No one else could.’

It was too true … Nobody else could draw an unadulterated villain with the same nicety as Mrs Asp. How she would dab on her colours, and then, with what relish would she unmask her man; her high spirits during the process were remarked by all her friends.

But there was to be another song, it seemed, for with her back to the room and a glow of light flooding her perfectly whitened shoulders, it was unlikely that Lady Castleyard would yield immediately to Mrs Rienzi her chair. With her head slightly inclined, it was permitted to admire the enchanting fold of her neck and the luxuriant bundles of silvered hair wound loosely about her head, from whence there flew an aigrette like a puff of steam.

‘An aigrette,’ Mrs Asp calculated, ‘at least sixteen inches long!’ No; there would be at least two more songs, she felt sure.

‘They tell me,’ she said to Mr Sophax, shaking long tearful earrings at him, ‘that the concert at Jarlington House, the other night, was a complete success, and that Lady Castleyard played so well that someone in the audience climbed over a great many poor toes and tried to kiss her hands … Atossa says that he received quite a large cheque to do it!’

But a troublesome valse, that smouldered and smouldered, and flickered and smouldered, until it broke into a flame, before leaping into something else, and which was perhaps the French way of saying that ‘still waters run deep’, cast for an instant its spell, and when it was over, Mrs Henedge decided that she would ask Mira Thumbler to dance.

Not unlikely it would be giving an old maid her chance. Indeed, at seventeen, the wicked mite was far too retiring. Nobody ever noticed her. So many people had said so! And her poor mother with nothing but daughters; her only child a girl …

She found Mira lolling beneath a capacious lampshade looking inexpressibly bored. Her hostess gathered by her silhouette that the temptation to poke a finger through a Chinese vellum-screen, painted with water-lilies and fantastic swooping birds, was almost
more
than she could endure.

‘My dear, won’t you dance for us?’ she asked.

Mira looked up.

‘Oh, forgive me, please,’ she exclaimed, ‘but I should feel far too like …
you know
!’

She raised white, shielding arms.

‘The daughter of Herodias?’ Mrs Henedge said. ‘Nonsense! Don’t be shy.’

‘Anything you might ask for …’ George Calvally murmured kindly, who was standing near.

‘Do you mean that?’

‘Of course I mean it!’

She considered his offer:

‘Then,’ she said, ‘I’m going to sit to you for my portrait. Oh, it’s stupid and dull of me, I suppose, to have so few features – just a plain nose, two eyes and a mouth – still!’ She flung a hand up into the air to be admired. She smiled. She looked quite pretty.

‘I shall be immensely flattered,’ the painter said.

And so – after what seemed to be endless preliminaries – Mira danced.

On their way home he spoke of her lovely Byzantine feet.

Mrs Calvally yawned. ‘It’s extraordinary that a little skimped thing like Miss Thumbler should fascinate you!’ she said.

Just at the beginning of Sloane Street, under the name of Monna Vanna, Mrs Shamefoot kept a shop.

It was her happiness to slap, delicately, at monotony by selling flowers.

Oh, the relief of running away, now and then, from her clever husband, or from the fatiguing brilliance of her mother-in-law, to sit in the mystery of her own back parlour, with the interesting Dina, or with Jordan, her boy!

She found in this by-life a mode of expression, too, for which her nature craved. It amused her to arrange marvellous sheaves of flowers to perish in the window before a stolid public eye; and some of her discords in colour were extremely curious. Often she would signal to her friends by her flowers, and when, for some reason, at the last Birthday Mr Shamefoot had been carefully overlooked, in a freakish mood she had decked the window entirely with black iris.

But, notwithstanding politics, it was declared that in all England nobody could wire Neapolitan violets more skilfully than she.

It was her triumph.

In a whole loose bouquet she would allow a single violet, perhaps, to skim above the rest – so lightly!

On her walls hung charming flower studies by Vincent Van Gough, and by Nicholson, intermingled with some graceful efforts of her own – impressions, mostly, of roses; in which it might be observed that she made always a great point of the thorns. And when there was nobody much in town these furnished the shop.

This morning, however, Mrs Shamefoot sat down to make a wreath – she hardly knew for whom; but since to-day was only Monday, she had a presentiment that one might be needed …

With her dark eyes full of soul she commanded Dina to fetch her one. She fancied she might make ready a lyre, with some orchids and pink lilies, and numberless streaming ribands; something suitable for a disappointed débutante, and hardly had she commenced her work when Mrs Henedge came into the shop.

‘My dear Birdie, who ever expected to see you!’ she exclaimed: ‘I thought you fluttered in only now and then, to see how everything was getting on—’

She seemed embarrassed.

Mrs Henedge had looked in early indeed solely to implore Dina to persuade her mistress to take back some of the palms from her last night’s party, but now, as she put it, they were face-to-face, her heart
failed
her.

‘What is the cost of those catkins?’ she inquired, pointing, in her agitation, at something very fabulous-looking indeed.

They might go, she reflected, to Winsome Brookes. Often she would thank him for music by a cake or a small shrub, and Rumpelmeyer’s to-day was not in her direction.

Mrs Shamefoot became vaguely flurried.

‘I don’t know, dear,’ she replied. ‘When I try to do arithmetic clouds come down upon me like they do in
Tannhäuser
.’

With a gasp, Dina crossed over to a book – she seemed to be suffering still from lack of breath. The pretty creature lived in a settlement, William Morris, some paradise on the confines of the Tube, from whence she would appear breathless each morning, and would stay so, usually, until the guards went by. When this occurred she would commence her duties by flying to the window to sprinkle water from a Dresden can over the grateful flowers, admiring, meantime, the charms of the cavalcade through the handle of one of Mrs Shamefoot’s psychological baskets, or whatever else might be in stock.

After this, she would calm down slightly for the day. But unfortunately, even so, Dina lacked sense. Even in the afternoon she would say: ‘The roses this morning are two shillings each.’

‘I did so enjoy last night,’ Mrs Shamefoot said to Mrs Henedge,
‘though, when I got back, for no reason … Soco simply stormed at me; but I was splendidly cool. I said nothing, I just
looked
at him.’

‘You poor darling,’ Mrs Henedge said sympathetically: ‘What an unhappy life!’

In silence Mrs Shamefoot stuck a lily in her lyre.

‘It is sometimes,’ she said, ‘rather unpleasant …’ She began suddenly to cry.

‘They are not catkins at all,’ Dina observed, apparently herself somewhat surprised. ‘They’re orchids.’

But Mrs Henedge ignored her. She was determined to have nothing to do with them.

‘There,’ she exclaimed, ‘went poor little Scantilla stalking along. Did you notice her? She had on a black jacket and a vermilion-magenta skirt—’

‘Half-mourning!’

‘Exactly.’

‘I dare say she’s off to the wedding,’ Mrs Shamefoot said. ‘Lady Georgia and At’y are coming in, I believe, on their way. The wedding is at Holy Trinity.’

Mrs Henedge looked out at the stream of carriages through the flowers. The seldom coarse or unspiritual faces of the passing crowd … veiled by plum-blossom, had an effect, she thought, of Chinese embroidery.

‘I can’t quite forgive Nils for getting married,’ Mrs Shamefoot murmured, twirling in the air a pale rose with almost crimson leaves. ‘I used to like to talk nonsense with him. He talked agreeable nonsense better than anyone I ever knew.’

‘I am more concerned for Isolde,’ Mrs Henedge said. ‘I pity her, poor child, married to a charming little vain, fickle thing like that!’

‘Oh, what does it matter?’ Mrs Shamefoot queried. ‘When I took Soco I married him for certain qualities, which, now, alas! I see he can have never had.’

‘That’s just what’s so bad! I mean, I’m afraid you did something commonplace after all.’

Mrs Shamefoot became discomposed.

‘Oh, well!’ she said, ‘when I got engaged I was unconscious,
or very nearly. I had fallen, sound asleep, I remember, off an iron chair in the park. The next day he had put it in the paper; and we none of us could raise the guinea to contradict …’

‘Have you sent Isolde the—?’

‘No …’ Mrs Shamefoot confessed.

To nine brides out of ten she would make the same gift – a small piece of Italian gauze.

When the recipient, holding it to the light, would catch a glimpse of her fiancé through it, she began to realize something of its significance.

‘What did you send?’ Mrs Henedge wondered.

A tenth bride invariably was interesting.

‘I sent her,’ Mrs Shamefoot said, ‘a Flemish crucifix, with ruby nails for the hands and feet …’

‘Dear Biddy … I ran only to a pack of cards; supposed once to have belonged to Deirdre. I got them in Chelsea.’

But Dina at the telephone was becoming distressing.

‘Hullo! Yes! No! To whom am I speaking?’

The ‘To whom am I speaking?’ characterized, as a rule, her manner.

‘An order,’ she said, ‘for a shower of puff-puffs for Mrs Hanover, to be at Curzon Street to-morrow morning by nine o’clock. If the flowers are not delivered by then she will expect them at the Law Courts.’