to the prince’s door, where he just lay down and whined.”
“And what does that prove, Mrs Bedley?”
“I really don’t know, Mrs Montgomery. But the press seemed to find it
significant,’” Mrs Bedley replied as a Nun of the Flaming-Hood with a
jolly face all gold with freckles entered the shop:
“Have you _Valmouth_ by Ronald Firbank or _Inclinations_ by the same
author?” she asked.
“Neither I’m sorry--both are out!”
“Maladetta ✠✠✠✠! But I’ll be passing soon again,” the Sister answered
as she twinklingly withdrew.
“You’d not think now by the look of her she had been at Girton!” Mrs
Bedley remarked.
“Once a Girton girl always a Girton girl, Mrs Bedley.”
“It seems a curate drove her to it....”
“I’m scarcely astonished. Looking back I remember the average curate at
home as something between a eunuch and a snigger.”
“Still, dear, I could never renounce my religion. As I said to the dear
Chaplain only the other day (while he was having some tea), Oh, if only
I were a man, I said! Wouldn’t I like to _denounce_ the disgraceful
goings on every Sabbath down the street at the church of the Blue
Jesus.”
“And I assure you it’s positively _nothing_, Mrs Bedley, at the Jesus,
to what it is at the church of St Mary the Fair! I was at the wedding
of one of the equerries lately, and never saw anything like it.”
“It’s about time there was an English wedding, in _my_ opinion, Mrs
Montgomery!”
“There’s not been one in the Colony indeed for some time.”
Mrs Bedley smiled undaunted.
“I trust I may be spared to dance before long at Dr and Mrs Babcock’s!”
she exclaimed.
“Kindly leave Cunnie out of it, Mrs Bedley,” Mrs Montgomery begged.
“So it’s Cunnie already you call him!”
“Dr Cuncliffe and I scarcely meet.”
“People talk of the immense sameness of marriage, Mrs Montgomery; but
all the same, my dear, a widow’s not much to be envied.”
“There are times, it’s true, Mrs Bedley, when a woman feels she needs
fostering; but it’s a feeling she should try to fight against.”
“Ah my dear, I never could resist _a mon_!” Mrs Bedley exclaimed.
Mrs Montgomery sighed.
“Once,” she murmured meditatively, “men (those procurers of delights)
engaged me utterly.... I was their _slave_.... Now.... One does not
burn one’s fingers twice, Mrs Bedley.”
Mrs Bedley grew introspective.
“My poor husband sometimes would be a little frightening, a little
fierce ... at night, my dear, especially. Yet how often now I miss him!”
“You’re better off as you are, Mrs Bedley, believe me,” Mrs Montgomery
declared, looking round for the little prince who was amusing himself
on the library-steps.
“You must find him a handful to educate, my dear.”
“It will be a relief _indeed_, Mrs Bedley, when he goes to Eton!”
“I’m told so long as a boy is grounded....”
“His English accent is excellent, Mrs Bedley, and he shews quite a
talent for languages,” Mrs Montgomery assured.
“I’m delighted, I’m sure, to hear it!”
“Well, Mrs Bedley, I mustn’t stand dawdling: I’ve to ’ave my ’air
shampooed and waved for the Embassy party to-night you know!” And
taking the little prince by the hand, the Royal Governess withdrew.
V
Among those attached to the Chedorlahomor expedition was a young--if
thirty-five be young--eccentric Englishman from Wales, the Hon. ‘Eddy’
Monteith, a son of Lord Intriguer. Attached first to one thing and
then another, without ever being attached to any, his life had been a
gentle series of attachments all along. But this new attachment was
surely something better than a temporary secretaryship to a minister,
or “aiding” an ungrateful general, or waiting in through draughts
(so affecting to the constitution) in the anterooms of hard-worked
royalty, in the purlieus of Pall Mall. Secured by the courtesy of his
ex-chief, Sir Somebody Something, an old varsity friend of his father,
the billet of “surveyor and occasional help” to the Chedorlahomorian
excavation party had been waywardly accepted by the Hon. ‘Eddy’ just
as he had been upon the point of attaching himself, to the terror of
his relatives and the amusement of his friends, to a monastery of the
Jesuit Order, as a likely candidate for the cowl.
Indeed he had already gone so far as to sit to an artist for his
portrait in the habit of a monk, gazing ardently at what looked to
be the Escurial itself, but in reality was nothing other than an
“impression” from the kitchen garden of Intriguer Park. And now this
sudden change, this call to the East instead. There had been no time,
unfortunately, before setting out to sit again in the picturesque
“sombrero” of an explorer, but a ready camera had performed miracles,
and the relatives of the Hon. ‘Eddy’ were relieved to behold his
smiling countenance in the illustrated-weeklies, pick in hand, or
with one foot resting on his spade while examining a broken jar, with
just below the various editors’ comments: _To join the Expedition to
Chedorlahomor--the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, only son of Lord Intriguer_;
or, _Off to Chedorlahomor!_ or, _Bon Voyage_...!
Yes, the temptation of the expedition was not to be withstood, and
for vows and renunciations there was always time!... And now leaning
idly on his window ledge in a spare room of the Embassy, while his man
unpacked, he felt, as he surveyed the distant dome of the Blue Jesus
above the dwarf-palm trees before the house, half-way to the East
already. He was suffering a little in his dignity from the contretemps
of his reception, for having arrived at the Embassy among a jobbed
troop of serfs engaged for the night, Lady Something had at first
mistaken him for one: “The cloak-room will be in the Smoking-room!” she
had said, and in spite of her laughing excuses and ample apologies,
he could not easily forget it. What was there in his appearance that
could conceivably recall a cloak-room attendant--? _He_ who had been
assured he had the profile of a “Rameses”! And going to a mirror he
scanned, with less perhaps than his habitual contentment, the light,
liver-tinted hair, grey narrow eyes, hollow cheeks, and pale mouth like
a broken moon. He was looking just a little fatigued he fancied from
his journey, and really, it was all his hostess deserved, if he didn’t
go down.
“I have a headache, Mario,” he told his man (a Neapolitan who had been
attached to almost as many professions as his master). “I shall not
leave my room! Give me a kimono: I will take a bath.”
Undressing slowly, he felt as the garments dropped away, he was acting
properly in refraining from attending the soirée, and only hoped the
lesson would not be “lost” on Lady Something, whom he feared must be
incurably dense.
Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his man-servant deftly
bathed him, he fell into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance.
Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed with _Kiki_, he was St Sebastian,
and as the water became cloudier and the crystals evaporated amid the
steam, he was Teresa ... and he would have been, most likely, the
Blessed Virgin herself, but that the bath grew gradually cold.
“You’re looking a little pale, sir, about the gills!” the valet
solicitously observed, as he gently dried him.
The Hon. ‘Eddy’ winced: “I forbid you ever to employ the word gill,
Mario,” he exclaimed. “It is inharmonious, and in English it jars;
whatever it may do in Italian.”
“Overtired, sir, was what I meant to say.”
“Basta!” his master replied, with all the brilliant glibness of the
Berlitz-school.
Swathed in towels, it was delicious to relax his powder-blanched limbs
upon a comfy couch, while Mario went for dinner: “I don’t care what it
is! So long as it isn’t--”(naming several dishes that he particularly
abhorred, or might be “better,” perhaps, without)--” And be sure, fool,
not to come back without Champagne.”
He could not choose but pray that the Ambassadress had nothing whatever
to do with the Embassy cellar, for from what he had seen of her
already, he had only a slight opinion of her discernment.
Really he might have been excused had he taken her to be the cook
instead of the social representative of the Court of St James, and he
was unable to repress a caustic smile on recollecting her appearance
that afternoon, with her hat awry, crammed with _Maréchal Niel_ roses,
hot, and decoiffed, flourishing a pair of garden-gauntlets as she
issued her commands. What a contrast to his own Mamma--“so different,”
... and his thoughts returned to Intriguer--“dear Intriguer, ...” that
if only to vex his father’s ghost, he would one day turn into a Jesuit
college! The Confessional should be fitted in the paternal study, and
engravings of the Inquisition, or the sweet faces of Lippi and Fra
Angelico, replace the Agrarian certificates and tiresome trophies
of the chase; while the crack of the discipline in Lent would echo
throughout the house! How “useful” his friend Robbie Renard would have
been; but alas poor Robbie. He had passed through life at a rapid
canter, having died at nineteen....
Musingly he lit a cigarette.
Through the open window a bee droned in on the blue air of evening and
closing his eyes he fell to considering whether the bee of one country
would understand the remarks of that of another. The effect of the
soil of a nation, had it consequences upon its Flora? Were plants
influenced at their roots? People sometimes spoke (and especially
ladies) of the language of flowers ... the pollen therefore of an
English rose would probably vary, not inconsiderably, from that of a
French, and a bee born and bred at home (at _Intriguer_ for instance)
would be at a loss to understand (it clearly followed) the conversation
of one born and bred, here, abroad. A bee’s idiom varied then, as did
man’s! And he wondered, this being proved the case, where the best
bees’ accents were generally acquired....
Opening his eyes, he perceived his former school chum, Lionel
Limpness--Lord Tiredstock’s third (and perhaps most gifted) son, who
was an honorary attaché at the Embassy, standing over him, his spare
figure already arrayed in an evening suit.
“Sorry to hear you’re off colour, Old Dear!” he exclaimed, sinking down
upon the couch beside his friend.
“I’m only a little shaken, Lionel...: have a cigarette.”
“And so you’re off to Chedorlahomor, Old Darling?” Lord Tiredstock’s
third son said.
“I suppose so ...” the only son of Lord Intriguer replied.
“Well, I wish I was going too!”
“It would be charming, Lionel, of course to have you: but they might
appoint you Vice-Consul at Sodom, or something?”
“Why _Vice_? Besides...! There’s no consulate there yet,” Lord
Tiredstock’s third son said, examining the objects upon the portable
altar, draped in prelatial purple of his friend.
“Turn over, Old Dear, while I chastise you!” he exclaimed, waving what
looked to be a tortoiseshell lorgnon to which had been attached three
threads of “cerulean” floss silk.
“Put it down, Lionel, and don’t be absurd.”
“Over we go. Come on.”
“Really, Lionel.”
“Penitence! To thy knees, Sir!”
And just as it seemed that the only son of Lord Intriguer was to be
deprived of all his towels, the Ambassadress mercifully entered.
“_Poor_ Mr Monteith!” she exclaimed in tones of concern bustling
forward with a tablespoon and a bottle containing physic, “_so_
unfortunate.... Taken ill at the moment you arrive! But Life is like
that!”
Clad in the flowing circumstance of an oyster satin ball dress, and
all a-glitter like a Christmas tree (with jewels), her arrival perhaps
saved her guest a “whipping.”
“Had I known, Lady Something, I was going to be ill, I would have gone
to the Ritz!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ gasped.
“And you’d have been bitten all over!” Lady Something replied.
“Bitten all over?”
“The other evening we were dining at the Palace, and I heard the dear
King say--but I oughtn’t to talk and excite you----”
“By the way, Lady Something,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked: “what
is the etiquette for the Queen of Dateland’s eunuch?”
“It’s all according; but you had better ask Sir Somebody, Air
Limpness,” Lady Something replied, glancing with interest at the
portable altar.
“I’ve done so, and he declared he’d be jiggered!”
“I recollect in Pera when we occupied the Porte, they seemed (those of
the old Grand Vizier--oh what a good-looking man he was--! such eyes--!
and such a _way_ with him--! _Despot!!_) only too thankful to crouch in
corners.”
“Attention with that castor-oil...!”
“It’s not castor-oil; it’s a little decoction of my own,--aloes,
gregory, a dash of liquorice. And the rest is buckthorn!”
“Euh!”
“It’s not so bad, though it mayn’t be very nice.... Toss it off like a
brave man, Mr Monteith (nip his nostrils, Mr Limpness), and while he
takes it, I’ll offer a silent prayer for him at that duck of an altar,”
and as good as her word, the Ambassadress made towards it.
“You’re altogether too kind,” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ murmured seeking refuge
in a book--a volume of _Juvenalia_ published for him by “Blackwood
of Oxford,” and becoming absorbed in its contents: “Ah Doris”--“Lines
to Doris”--“Lines to Doris: written under the influence of wine, sun
and fever”--“Ode to Swinburne”--“Sad Tamarisks”--“Rejection”--“Doigts
Obscènes”--“They Call me _Lily_!”--“Land of Titian! Land of Verdi! Oh
Italy!”--“I heard the Clock:
I heard the clock strike seven,
Seven strokes I heard it strike!
His Lordship’s gone to London
And won’t be back to-night.”
He had written it at Intriguer, after a poignant domestic disagreement,
his Papa,--the “his lordship” of the poem--had stayed away however
considerably longer.... And here was a sweet thing suggested by an old
Nursery Rhyme, “Loves, have you Heard”:
“Loves, have you heard about the rabbits??
They have such odd fantastic habits....
Oh, Children...! I daren’t disclose to You
The licentious things _some_ rabbits do.”
It had “come to him” quite suddenly out ferreting one day with the
footman....
But a loud crash as the portable altar collapsed beneath the weight of
the Ambassadress aroused him unpleasantly from his thoughts.
“Horrid dangerous thing!” she exclaimed as Lord Tiredstock’s third son
assisted her to rise from her “Silent” prayer: “I had no idea it wasn’t
solid! But Life is like that ...” she added somewhat wildly.
“Pity oh my God! Deliver me!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ breathed, but the hour of
_deliverance_ it seemed was not just yet; for at that instant the Hon.
Mrs Chilleywater, the “literary” wife of the first attaché, thrust her
head in at the door.
“How are you?” she asked. “I thought perhaps I might find _Harold_....”
“He’s with Sir Somebody.”
“Such mysteries!” Lady Something said.
“This betrothal of Princess Elsie’s is simply wearing him out,”
Mrs Chilleywater declared, sweeping the room with half-closed,
expressionless eyes.
“It’s a pity you can’t pull the strings for us,” Lady Something
ventured: “I was saying so lately to Sir Somebody.”
“I wish I could, dear Lady Something: I wouldn’t mind wagering I’d soon
bring it off!”
“Have you fixed up Grace Gillstow yet, Mrs Chilleywater?” Lord
Tiredstock’s third son asked.
“She shall marry Baldwin: but not before she has been seduced first by
Barnaby....”
“What are you talking about?” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ queried.
“Of Mrs Chilleywater’s forthcoming book.”
“Why should Barnaby get Grace--? Why not Tex!”
But Mrs Chilleywater refused to enter into reasons.
“She is looking for cowslips,” she said, “and oh I’ve such a wonderful
description of a field of cowslips.... They make quite a darling
setting for a powerful scene of lust.”
“So Grace loses her virtue!..!” Lord Tiredstock’s third son exclaimed.
“Even so she’s far too good for Baldwin: after the underhand shabby way
he behaved to Charlotte, Kate, and Millicent!”
“Life is like that, dear,” the Ambassadress blandly observed.
“It ought not to be, Lady Something!” Mrs Chilleywater looked
vindictive.
_Née_ Victoria Gellybore Frinton, and the sole heir of Lord Seafairer
of Sevenelms, Kent, Mrs Harold Chilleywater, since her marriage “for
Love,” had developed a disconcerting taste for fiction--a taste that
was regarded at the Foreign Office with disapproving forbearance....
So far her efforts (written under her maiden name in full with her
husband’s as well appended) had been confined to lurid studies of
low life (of which she knew nothing at all), but the Hon. Harold
Chilleywater had been gently warned, that if he was not to remain at
Kairoulla until the close of his career, the style of his wife must
really grow less _virile_.
“I agree with V.G.F.,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness murmured fondling
meditatively his “Charlie Chaplin” moustache--“Life ought not to be.”
“It’s a mistake to bother oneself over matters that can’t be remedied.”
Mrs Chilleywater acquiesced: “You’re right indeed, Lady Something,” she
said, “but I’m so sensitive.... I seem to _know_ when I talk to a man,
the colour of his braces...! I say to myself: ‘Yours are violet....’
‘Yours are blue....’ ‘His are red....’”
“I’ll bet you anything, Mrs Chilleywater, you like, you won’t guess
what mine are,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness said.
“I should say, Mr Limpness, that they were _multihued_--like Jacob’s,”
Mrs Chilleywater replied, as she withdrew her head.
The Ambassadress prepared to follow:
“Come, Mr Limpness,” she exclaimed, “we’ve exhausted the poor fellow
quite enough--and besides, here comes his dinner.”
“Open the champagne, Mario,” his master commanded immediately they were
alone.
“‘Small’ beer is all the butler would allow, sir.”
“Damn the b... butler!”
“What he calls a _demi-brune_, sir. In Naples we say _spumenti_!”
“To ---- with it.”
“Non é tanto amarro, sir; it’s more sharp, as you’d say, than
bitter....”
“......!!!!!!”
And language _unmonastic_ far into the night reigned supreme.
Standing beneath the portraits of King Geo and Queen Glory, Lady
Something, behind a large sheaf of mauve malmaisons, was growing
stiff. Already, for the most part, the guests were welcomed, and it
was only the Archduchess now, who as usual was late, that kept their
Excellencies lingering at the head of the stairs. Her Majesty Queen
Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates had just arrived, but seemed loath to
leave the stairs, while her hostess, whom she addressed affectionately
as her _dear gazelle_, remained upon them-- “Let us go away by and by,
my dear gazelle,” she exclaimed with a primitive smile, “and remove our
corsets and talk.”
“Unhappily Pisuerga is not the East, ma’am!” Lady Something replied.
“Never mind, my dear; we will introduce this innovation....”
But the arrival of the Archduchess Elizabeth spared the Ambassadress
from what might too easily have become an “incident.”
In the beautiful chandeliered apartments several young couples were
pirouetting to the inevitable waltz from the Blue Banana, but most of
the guests seemed to prefer exploring the conservatories and Winter
Garden, or elbowing their way into a little room where a new portrait
of Princess Elsie had been discreetly placed....
“One feels, of course, there _was_ a sitting--; but still, it isn’t
like her!” those that had seen her said.
“The artist has attributed to her at least the pale spent eyes of
her father!” the Duchess of Cavaljos remarked to her niece, who was
standing quite silent against a rose-red curtain.
Mademoiselle de Nazianzi made no reply. Attaching not the faintest
importance to the rumours afloat, still, she could not but feel, at
times, a little heartshaken....
The duchess plied her fan.
“She will become florid in time like her mother!” she cheerfully
predicted turning away just as the Archduchess approached herself to
inspect the painting.
Swathed in furs, on account of a troublesome cough contracted paddling,
she seemed nevertheless in charming spirits.
“Have you been to my new _Pipi_?” she asked.
“Not yet----”
“Oh but you must!”
“I’m told it’s even finer than the one at the Railway Station. Ah,
from musing too long on that Hellenic frieze, how often I’ve missed my
train!” the Duchess of Cavaljos murmured, with a little fat deep laugh.
“I have a heavenly idea for another--Yellow tiles with Thistles....”
“Your Royal Highness never repeats herself!”
“Nothing will satisfy me this time,” the Archduchess declared, “but
files of state-documents in all the dear little boxes: In secret,
secrets!” she added archly fixing her eyes on the assembly.
“It’s positively pitiable,” the Duchess of Cavaljos commented, “how the
Countess of Tolga is losing her good-looks: She has the air to-night of
a tired business-woman!”
“She looks at other women as though she would inhale them,” the
Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb
grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was
scribbling busily away behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the
head. For _noblesse oblige_ the correspondent of the _Jaw-Waw_, the
illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied.
“Among the many balls of a brilliant season,” the diarist, with her
accustomed fluency, wrote: “none surpassed that which I witnessed at
the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden
and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and
jewels. The Ambassadress Lady Something was looking really regal in
dawn-white draperies, holding a bouquet of the new mauve malmaisons
(which are all the vogue just now), but no one, I thought, looked
better than the _Archduchess_, etc.... Helping the hostess, I noticed
Mrs Harold Chilleywater, in an ‘æsthetic’ gown of flame-hued Kanitra
silk edged with Armousky fur (to possess a dear woolly Armousk as
a pet, is considered _chic_ this season), while over her brain--an
intellectual caprice, I wonder?--I saw a tinsel bow.... She is a
daughter of the fortieth Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms-Park (so famous
for its treasures) and is very artistic and literary having written
several novels of English life under her maiden name of Victoria
Gellybore-Frinton:--She inherits considerable cleverness _also_ from
her Mother. Dancing indefatigably (as she always does!) Miss Ivy
Something seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her Father’s ball: I hear
on _excellent authority_ there is no foundation in the story of her
engagement to a certain young Englishman, said to be bound ere long for
the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Among the late arrivals were the Duke
and Duchess of Varna--_she_ all in golden tissues: they came together
with Madame Wetme, who is one of the new hostesses of the season you
know, and they say has bought the Duke of Varna’s palatial town-house
in Samaden Square----”
“There,” the Archduchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a
sneeze: “she has said quite enough now I think about my _toilette_!”
But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her
notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire.
VI
And suddenly the Angel of Death passed by and the brilliant season
waned. In the Archduchess’ bed-chamber, watching the antics of priests
and doctors, he sat there unmoved. Propped high, by many bolsters, in
a vast blue canopied bed, the Archduchess lay staring laconically at a
diminutive model of a flight of steps, leading to what appeared to be
intended, perhaps, as a hall of Attent, off which opened quite a lot of
little doors, most of which bore the word: “Engaged.” A doll, with a
ruddy face, in charge, smiled indolently as she sat feigning knitting,
suggesting vague “fleshly thoughts,” whenever he looked up, in the
Archduchess’ spiritual adviser.
And the mind of the sinking woman, as her thoughts wandered, appeared
to be tinged with “matter” too: “I recollect the first time I heard the
_Blue-Danube_ played!” she broke out: “it was at Schonnbrunn--schönes
Schonnbrunn--My cousin Ludwig of Bavaria came--I wore--the Emperor
said----”
“If your royal highness would swallow this!” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock
started forward with a glass.
“Trinquons, trinquons et vive l’amour! Schneider sang that----”
“If your royal highness----”
“Ah my dear Vienna. Where’s Teddywegs?”