his exile had the Count’s been so arrested.
From the garden Peter’s voice rose questingly; but the Count was too
wonder-struck, far, to heed it.
Caught in the scarlet radiance of the afterglow, the becalmed boat, for
one brief and most memorable second, was his to gaze on.
In certain lands with what diplomacy falls the night, and how
discreetly is the daylight gone: Those dimmer-and-dimmer,
darker-and-lighter twilights of the North, so disconcerting in their
playfulness, were unknown altogether in Pisuerga. There, Night pursued
Day, as though she meant it. No lingering, or arctic sentiment! No
concertinaishness.... Hard on the sun’s heels, pressed Night. And the
wherefore of her haste; Sun-attraction? Impatience to inherit? An
answer to such riddles as these may doubtless be found by turning to
the scientists’ theories on Time and Relativity.
Effaced in the blue air of evening became everything, and with the
darkness returned the wind.
“Sir, sir?... Ho, Hi, hiiiiiiiiiiii!!” Peter’s voice came again.
But transfixed, and loath just then for company, the Count made no
reply.
A green-lanterned barge passed slowly, coming from the sea, and on the
mountain-side a village light winked wanly here and there.
“Oh, why was I not _sooner_?” he murmured distractedly aloud.
* * * * *
“Oh Olga!”
“Oh Vi!”
“... I hope you’ve enough money for the boat, dear? ...?”
“...!!?”
“Tell me, Olga: Is my hat all sideways?”
“................”
The long windows of the Summer-Palace were staring white to the moon,
as the Countess of Tolga, her aigrettes casting _heroic_ shadows and
hugging still her heath, re-entered the Court’s precincts on the arm of
her friend.
XII
One evening, as Mrs Montgomery was reading _Vanity Fair_ for the
fifteenth time, there came a tap at the door. It was not the first
interruption since opening the cherished green-bound book, and Mrs
Montgomery seemed disinclined to stir. With the Court about to return
to winter quarters, and the Summer-Palace upside down, the royal
governess was still able to command her habitual British phlegm. It had
been decided, moreover, that she should remain behind in the forsaken
palace with the little prince, the better to “prepare” him for his
forthcoming Eton exam.
Still, with disputes as to the precedence of trunks and dress-baskets
simmering in the corridors without, it was easier to enjoy the
Barley-sugar stick in one’s mouth, than the Novel in one’s hand.
“Thank God I’m not touchy!” Mrs Montgomery reflected, rolling her eyes
lazily about the little white wainscoted room.
It was as if something of her native land had crept in through the
doorway with her, so successfully had she inculcated its tendencies, or
spiritual Ideals, upon everything around.
A solitary teapot, on a bracket, above the door, two _Jubilee_
plates, some peacocks’ feathers, an image of a little Fisher-boy in
bathing-drawers and a broken hand;--“a work of delicate beauty!” A
mezzotint: _The Coiffing of Maria_--these were some of the treasures
which the room contained.
“A blessing to be sure when the Court has gone!” she reflected
half-rising to drop a curtsy to Prince Olaf who had entered.
“Word from your country,” sententiously he broke out: “My brother’s
betrothed! So need I go on with my preparation?”
“Put your tie straight! And just look at your socks all tumbling down.
Such great jambons of knees!... What will become of you, I ask myself,
when you’re a lower boy at Eton.”
“How can I be a lower boy when I’m a Prince?”
“Probably, the Rev. Ruggles-White, when you enter his House, will be
able to explain.”
“I won’t be a lower boy! I will _not_!”
“Cs, Cs.”
“Damn the democracy.”
“Fie, sir.”
“Down with it.”
“For shame.”
“Revenge.”
“That will do: and now, let me hear your lessons: I should like,”
Mrs Montgomery murmured, her eyes set in detachment upon the floor;
“the present-indicative tense of the Verb _To be_! Adding the words,
Political h-Hostess;--more for the sake of the pronunciation than for
anything else.”
And after considerable persuasion, prompting, and “bribing,” with
various sorts of sweets:
“I am a Political Hostess,
Thou art a Political Hostess,
He is a Political Hostess,
We are Political Hostesses,
Ye are Political Hostesses,
They are Political Hostesses.”
“Very good, dear, and only one mistake. _He_ is a Political h-Hostess:
Can you correct yourself? The error is so slight....”
But alas the prince was in no mood for study; and Mrs Montgomery very
soon afterwards was obliged to let him go.
Moving a little anxiously about the room, her meditations turned upon
the future.
With the advent of Elsie a new régime would be established: increasing
Britishers would wish to visit Pisuerga; and it seemed a propitious
moment to abandon teaching, and to inaugurate in Kairoulla an English
hotel.
“I have no more rooms. I am quite full up!” she smiled, addressing the
silver andirons in the grate.
And what a deliverance to have done with instructing unruly children,
she reflected, going towards the glass mail-box attached to her
vestibule door. Sometimes about this hour there would be a letter in
it, but this evening there was only a picture postcard of a field mouse
in a bonnet, from her old friend Mrs Bedley.
* * * * *
“We have _Valmouth_ at last,” she read, “and was it you, my dear, who
asked for _The Beard Throughout the Ages_? It is in much demand, but I
am keeping it back anticipating a _reply_. Several of the plates are
missing I see, among them, those of the late King Edward, and of Assur
Bani Pal; I only mention it, that, you may know I shan’t blame you! We
are having wonderful weather, and I am keeping pretty well, although
poor Mrs Barleymoon, I fear, will not see through another winter.
Trusting you are benefiting by the beautiful country air: your obedient
servant to command,
ANN BEDLEY.
“P.S.--_Man, and All About Him_, is rebinding. Ready I expect soon.”
* * * * *
“Ah! Cunnie, Cunnie ...?” Mrs Montgomery murmured, laying the card down
near a photograph of the Court-physician with a sigh: “Ah! Arthur Amos
Cuncliffe Babcock ...?” she invoked his name dulcetly in full: and as
though in telepathic response, there came a tap at the door, and the
doctor himself looked in.
He had been attending, it seemed, the young wife of the Comptroller of
the Household at the extremity of the corridor; a creature, who, after
two brief weeks of marriage, imagined herself to be in an interesting
state: “_I believe baby’s coming!_” she would cry out every few hours.
“Do I intrude?” he demanded, in his forceful, virile voice, that ladies
knew and liked: “pray say so if I do.”
“Does he intrude!” Mrs Montgomery flashed an arch glance towards the
cornice.
“Well, and how are you keeping?” the doctor asked, dropping on to a rep
causeuse that stood before the fire.
“I’m only semi-well, doctor, thanks!”
“Why, what’s the trouble?”
“You know my organism is not a very strong one, Dr Cuncliffe ...” Mrs
Montgomery replied, drawing up a chair, and settling a cushion with a
sigh of resignation at her back.
“Imagination!”
“If only it were!”
“Imagination,” he repeated, fixing a steady eye on the short train of
her black brocaded robe that all but brushed his feet.
“If that’s your explanation for continuous broken sleep ...” she gently
snapped.
“Try mescal.”
“I’m trying Dr Fritz Millar’s treatment,” the lady stated, desiring to
deal a slight _scratch_ to his masculine _amour propre_.
“Millar’s an Ass.”
“I don’t agree at all!” she incisively returned, smiling covertly at
his touch of pique.
“What is it?”
“Oh it’s horrid. You first of all lie down; and then you drink cold
water in the sun.”
“Cold what? I never _heard_ of such a thing: It’s enough to kill you.”
Mrs Montgomery took a deep-drawn breath of languor.
“And would you care, doctor, so _very_ much if it did?” she asked, as a
page made his appearance with an ice-bucket and champagne.
“To toast our young Princess!”
“Oh, oh, Dr Cuncliffe? What a wicked man you are:” And for a solemn
moment their thoughts went out in unison to the sea-girt land of their
birth--Barkers’, Selfridges’, Brighton-pier, the Zoological gardens on
a Sunday afternoon.
“Here’s to the good old country!” the doctor quaffed.
“The Bride, and,” Mrs Montgomery raised her glass, “the Old Folks at
h-home.”
“The Old Folks at home!” he vaguely echoed.
“Bollinger, you naughty man,” the lady murmured, amiably seating
herself on the causeuse at his side.
“You’ll find it dull here all alone after the Court has gone,” he
observed, smiling down, a little despotically, on to her bright,
abundant hair.
Mrs Montgomery sipped her wine.
“When the wind goes whistling up and down under the colonnades: oh,
then!” she shivered.
“You’ll wish for a fine, bold Pisuergian husband; shan’t you?” he
answered, his foot drawing closer to hers.
“Often of an evening, I feel I need fostering,” she owned, glancing up
yearningly into his face.
“Fostering, eh?” he chuckled, refilling with exuberance her glass.
“Why is it that wine always makes me feel _so good_?”
“Probably, because it fills you with affection for your neighbour!”
“It’s true; I feel I could be very affectionate: I’m what they call an
‘amoureuse’ I suppose, and there it is....”
There fell a busy silence between them.
“It’s almost too warm for a fire,” she murmured, repairing towards the
window; “but I like to hear the crackle!”
“Company, eh?” he returned, following her (a trifle unsteadily) across
the room.
“The night is so clear the moon looks to be almost transparent,” she
languorously observed, with a long tugging sigh.
“And so it does,” he absently agreed.
“I adore the Pigeons in my wee court towards night, when they sink down
like living sapphires upon the stones,” she sentimentally said, sighing
languorously again.
“Ours,” he assured her; “since the surgery looks on to it, too....”
“Did you ever see anything so ducky-wucky, so completely twee!” she
inconsequently chirruped.
“Allow me to fill this empty glass.”
“I want to go out on all that gold floating water!” she murmured
listlessly, pointing towards the lake.
“Alone?”
“Drive me towards the sweet seaside,” she begged, taking appealingly
his hand.
“Aggie?”
“Arthur--Arthur, for God’s sake!” she shrilled, as with something
between a snarl and a roar, he impulsively whipped out the light.
“H-Help! Oh Arth----”
Thus did they celebrate the “Royal engagement.”
XIII
Behind the heavy moucharabi in the little dark shop of Haboubet of
Egypt all was song, _fête_ and preparation. Additional work, had
brought additional hands, and be-tarbouched boys in burnooses, and
baskets of blossoms, lay strewn all over the floor.
“Sweet is the musk-rose of the Land of Punt!
Sweet are the dates from Khorassân ...
But bring _me_ (O wandering Djinns) the English rose, the English apple!
O sweet is the land of the Princess Elsie,
Sweet indeed is England----”
Bachir’s voice soared, in improvisation, to a long-drawn, strident,
wail.
“Pass me the scissors, O Bachir ben Ahmed, for the love of Allah,”
a young man with large lucent eyes, and an untroubled face, like a
flower, exclaimed, extending a slender, keef-stained hand.
“Sidi took them,” the superintendent of the Duchess of Varna replied,
turning towards an olive-skinned Armenian youth, who, seated on an
empty hamper, was reading to a small, rapt group, the _Kairoulla
Intelligence_ aloud.
“‘Attended by Lady Canon-of-Noon and by Lady Bertha Chamberlayne (she
is a daughter of Lord Frollo’s[9]) the Princess was seen to alight from
her saloon, in a _chic_ toque of primrose paille, stabbed with the
quill of a nasturtium-coloured bird, and, darting forward, like the
Bird of Paradise that she _is_, embraced her future Parents-in-law with
considerable affection....’”
“Scissors, for the love of Allah!”
“‘And soon I heard the roll of drums! And saw the bobbing plumes in the
jangling browbands of the horses: it was a moment I shall never forget.
She passed ... and as our Future Sovereign turned smiling to bow her
acknowledgments to the crowd, I saw a happy tear...!’”
“Ah Allah.”
“Pass me two purple pinks.”
“‘Visibly gratified at the cordial ovation to her Virgin Daughter
was Queen Glory, a striking and impressive figure, all a-glitter in
a splendid dark dress of nacre and nigger tissue, her many Orders of
Merit almost bearing her down.’”
“Thy scissors, O Sidi, for the love of Muhammed?”
“‘It seemed as if Kairoulla had gone wild with joy. Led by the first
Life-Guards and a corps of ladies of great fashion disguised as
peasants, the cortège proceeded amid the whole-hearted plaudits of
the people towards Constitutional Square, where, with the sweetest of
smiles and thanks the princess received an exquisite sheaf of Deflas
(they are the hybrids of slipper-orchids crossed with maidens-rue, and
are all the mode at present), tendered her by little Paula Exelmans,
the Lord Mayor’s tiny daughter. Driving on, amid showers of confetti,
the procession passed up the Chausée, which presented a scene of rare
animation; boys, and even quite elderly dames swarming up the trees
to obtain a better view of their new Princess. But it was not until
Lilianthal Street and the Cathedral Square were reached, that the
climax reached its height! Here, a short standstill was called, and
after an appropriate address from the Archbishop of Pisuerga, the
stirring strains of the National Anthem, superbly rendered by Madame
Marguerite Astorra of the State Theatre (she is in perfect voice this
season), arose on the air. At that moment a black cat and its kitties
rushed across the road, and I saw the Princess smile.’”
“Thy scissors, O Sidi, in the Name of the Prophet!”
“‘A touching incident,’” Sidi with equanimity pursued, “‘was just
before the English Tea Rooms, where the English Colony had mustered
together in force....’”
But alack for those interested. Owing to the clamour about him much of
the recital was lost: “‘Cheers and tears.... ... Life’s benison....
Honiton lace.... If I live to be _forty_, it was a moment I shall never
forget.... Panic ... congestion.... Police.’”
But it was scarcely needful to peruse the paper, when on the boulevards
outside, the festivities were everywhere in full swing. The arrival of
the princess for her wedding had brought to Kairoulla unprecedented
crowds from all parts of the kingdom, as much eager to see the
princess, as to catch a glimpse of the fine pack of beagles, that it
was said had been brought over with her, and which had taken an half
eerie hold of the public mind. Gilderoy, Beausire, Audrey, many of the
dogs’ names were known pleasantly to the crowd already; and anecdotes
of Audrey, picture-postcards of Audrey, were sold as rapidly almost as
those even of the princess. Indeed mothers among the people had begun
to threaten their disobedient offspring with Audrey, whose silky,
thickset frame was supported, it appeared, daily on troublesome little
boys and tiresome little girls....
“Erri, erri, get on with thy bouquet, oh Lazari Demitraki!” Bachir
exclaimed in plaintive tones, addressing a blonde boy with a skin of
amber, who was “charming” an earwig with a reed of grass.
“She dance the _Boussadilla_ just like in the street of Halfaouine in
Gardaïa my town any Ouled Nail!” he rapturously gurgled.
“Get on with thy work, oh Lazari Demitraki,” Bachir besought him, “and
leave the earwigs alone for the clients to find.”
“What with the heat, the smell of the flowers, the noise of you boys,
and with filthy earwigs Boussadillaing all over one, I feel I could
_swoon_,” the voice, cracked yet cloying, was Peter Passer’s.
He had come to Kairoulla for the “celebrations,” and also, perhaps,
aspiring to advance his fortunes, in ways known best to himself.
With Bachir, his connection dated from long ago, when as a Cathedral
choir-boy it had been his habit to pin a shoulder, or bosom-blossom to
his surplice, destroying it with coquettish, ring-laden fingers in the
course of an anthem, and scattering the petals from the choir-loft,
leaf by leaf, on to the grey heads of the monsignori below.
“Itchiata wa?” Bachir grumbled, playing his eyes distractedly around
the shop. And it might have been better for the numerous orders there
were to attend to had he called fewer of his acquaintance to assist
him. Sunk in torpor, a cigarette smouldering at his ear, a Levantine
Greek known as “Effendi darling” was listening to a dark-cheeked
Tunisian engaged at the Count of Tolga’s private Hammam Baths--a young
man, who, as he spoke, would make mazy gestures of the hands as though
his master’s ribs, or those of some illustrious guest, lay under him.
But by no means all of those assembled in the little shop, bore the
seal of Islam. An American who had grown too splendid for the copper
“Ganymede” or Soda-fountain of a Café bar and had taken to teaching the
hectic dance-steps of his native land in the night-halls where Bachir
sold, was achieving wonders with some wires and Eucharist lilies,
while discussing with a shy-mannered youth the many difficulties that
beset the foreigner in Kairoulla.
“Young chaps that come out here, don’t know what they’re coming to,” he
sapiently remarked, using his incomparable teeth in place of scissors.
“Gosh! Talk of advancement,” he growled.
“There’s few can mix as I can, yet I don’t never get no rise!” the shy
youth exclaimed, producing a card that was engraved: _Harry Cummings,
Salad-Dresser to the King_: “I expect I’ve arrived,” he murmured,
turning to hide a modest blush towards a pale young man who looked on
life through heavy horn glasses.
“Salad dressing? I’d sooner it was hair! You do get tips there anyway,”
the Yankee reasoned.
“I wish _I_ were--arrived,” the young man with the glasses, by name Guy
Thin, declared. He had come out but recently from England to establish
a “British Grocery,” and was the owner of what is sometimes called an
expensive voice, his sedulously clear articulation missing out no
syllable or letter of anything he might happen to be saying, as though
he were tasting each word, like the Pure tea, or the Pure marmalade, or
any other of the so very Pure goods he proposed so exclusively to sell.
“If Allah wish it then you arrive,” Lazari Demitraki assured him with a
dazzling smile, catching his hand in order to construe the lines.
“Finish thy bouquet, O Lazari Demitraki,” Bachir faintly moaned.
“It finished--arranged: it with Abou!” he announced, pointing to an
aged negro with haunted sin-sick eyes who appeared to be making strange
grimaces at the wall. A straw hat of splendid dimensions was on his
head, flaunting bravely the insignia of the Firm.
But the old man seemed resolved to run no more errands:
“Nsa, nsa,” he mumbled: “Me walk enough for one day! Me no go out any
more. Old Abou too tired to take another single step! As soon would me
cross the street again dis night as the Sahara!...”
And it was only after the promise of a small gift of Opium that he
consented to leave a débutante’s bouquet at the Théâtre Diana.[10]
“In future,” Bachir rose remarking, “I only employ the women; I keep
only girls,” he repeated, for the benefit of “Effendi darling” who
appeared to be attaining Nirvâna.
“And next I suppose you keep a Harem?” “Effendi darling” somnolently
returned.
Most of the city shops had closed their shutters for the day, when
Bachir shouldering a pannier bright with blooms, stepped with his
companions forth into the street.
Along the Boulevards thousands were pressing towards the Regina Gardens
to view the Fireworks, all agog to witness the pack of beagles wrought
in brilliant lights due to course a stag across the sky, and which
would change, if newspaper reports might be believed, at the critical
moment, into “‘something of the nature of a surprise.’”
Pausing before a plate-glass window that adjoined the shop to adjust
the flowing folds of his gandourah, and to hoist his flower tray to his
small scornful head, Bachir allowed his auxiliaries to drift, mostly
two by two, away among the crowd. Only the royal salad-dresser, Harry
Cummings, expressed a demure inclination (when the pushing young grocer
caressed his arm), to “be alone”; but Guy Thin, who had private designs
upon him, was loath to hear of it! He wished to persuade him to buy a
bottle of Vinegar from his Store, when he would print on his paper-bags
_As supplied to his Majesty the King_.
“Grant us, O Allah, each good Fortunes,” Bachir beseeched, looking up
through his eyelashes towards the moon, that drooped like a silver
amulet in the firmament above: in the blue nocturnal air he looked like
a purple poppy. “A toute à l’heure mes amis!” he murmured as he moved
away.
And in the little closed shop behind the heavy moucharabi, now that
they all had gone, the exhalations of the _flowers_ arose; pungent,
concerted odours, expressive of natural antipathies and feuds, suave
alliances, suffering, pride, and joy.... Only the shining moon through
the moucharabi, illumining here a lily, there a leaf, may have guessed
what they were saying:
“My wires are hurting me: my wires are hurting me.”
“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”
“They have pushed me head down into the bottom of the bowl.”
“I’m glad I’m in a Basket! No one will hurl _me_ from a window to be
bruised under foot by the callous crowd.”
“It’s uncomfy, isn’t it, without one’s roots?”
“You Weed you! You, you, you ... _buttercup_! How dare you to _an
Orchid_!”
“I shouldn’t object to sharing the same water with him, dear....
Ordinary as he is! If _only_ he wouldn’t smell....”
“She’s nothing but a piece of common grass and so I tell her!”
When upon the tense pent atmosphere surged a breath of cooler air, and
through the street-door slipped the Duchess of Varna.
Overturning a jar of great heavy-headed Gladioli with a crash, she
sailed, with a purposeful step, towards the till.
Garbed in black and sleepy citrons, she seemed, indeed, to be equipped
for a long, long Voyage, and was clutching, in her arms, a pet Poodle
dog, and a levant-covered case, in which, doubtless, reposed her jewels.
Since her rupture with Madame Wetme (both the King and Queen had
refused to receive her), the money _ennuis_ of the Duchess had become
increasingly acute. Tormented by tradespeople, dunned and bullied by
creditors, menaced, mortified, insulted--an offer to “star” in the
_rôle_ of _A Society Thief_ for the cinematograph had particularly
shocked her--the inevitable hour to quit the Court so long foreseen
had come. And now with her departure definitely determined upon, the
Duchess experienced an insouciance of heart unknown to her assuredly
for many a year. Replenishing her reticule with quite a welcome sheaf
of the elegant little banknotes of Pisuerga, one thing only remained
to do, and taking pen and paper, she addressed to the Editor of the
_Intelligence_ the supreme announcement:--“_The Duchess of Varna has
left for Dateland_.”
Eight light words! But enough to set _tout_ Kairoulla in a rustle.
“I only so regret I didn’t go sooner,” she murmured to herself aloud,
breaking herself a rose to match her gown from an arrangement in the
window.
Many of the flowers had been newly christened, “Elsie,” “Audrey,”
“London-Madonnas” (black Arums these), while the Roses from the “Land
of Punt” had been renamed “Mrs Lloyd George”--and priced accordingly. A
basket of Odontoglossums eked out with Gypsophila seemed to anticipate
the end, when supplies from Punt must necessarily cease. However,
bright boys, like Bachir, seldom lacked patrons, and the duchess
recalled glimpsing him one evening from her private sitting-room at
the Ritz Hotel, seated on a garden bench in the Regina Gardens beside
the Prime Minister himself; both, to all seeming, on the most cordial
terms, and to have reached a perfect understanding as regards the
Eastern Question. Ah, the Eastern Question! It was said that, in the
Land of Dates, one might study it well. In Djezira, the chief town,
beneath the great golden sun, people, they said, might grow wise. In
the simoon that scatters the silver sand, in the words of the nomads,
in the fairy mornings beneath the palms, society with its foolish
_cliché_ ... the duchess smiled.