Part 6

“He is very popular ... too popular, perhaps ...” the Countess admitted. “I remember on one occasion in the Blue Jesus, witnessing the Duchess of Quaranta and Madame Ferdinand Fishbacher, fight like wild cats as to which should gain his ear--(any girl might envy Father Geordie his ear)--at Confession next. The odds seemed fairly equal, until the Duchess gave the Fishbacher-woman, such a violent push--(well down from behind, in the crick of the joints)--that she overturned The Confessional Box, with Father Picpus within: and when we scared ladies, standing by, had succeeded in dragging him out, he was too shaken, naturally as you can gather, to absolve anyone else _that_ day.”

“He has been the object of so many unseemly incidents, that one can scarcely recall them all,” Father Nostradamus exclaimed, stooping to pick up a dropped pocket-handkerchief with “remembrance” knots tied to three of the corners.

“Alas.... Court life is not uplifting,” the Countess said again, contemplating her muff of _self-made_ lace, with a half-vexed forehead. What that muff contained was a constant problem for conjecture; but it was believed by more than one of the maids-in-waiting to harbour “goody” books and martyrs’ bones.

“By generous deeds and Brotherly love,” Father Nostradamus exclaimed, “we should endeavour to rise above it!”

With the deftness of a virtuoso, the Countess seized, and crushed with her muff, a pale-winged passing gnat.

“Before Life,” she murmured, “that saddest thing of all, was thrust upon us, I believe I was an angel....”

Father Nostradamus passed a musing hand across his brow.

“It may be,” he replied, “and it very well may be,” he went on, “that our ante-nativity was a little more brilliant, a little more _h--m_ ...; and there is nothing unorthodox in thinking so.”

“O what did I do then to lose my wings?? What did I ever say to Them?! Father, Father. How did I annoy God? Why did He put me here?”

“My dear child, you ask me things I do not know; but it may be you were the instrument appointed above to lead back to Him our neighbour yonder,” Father Nostradamus answered, pointing with his breviary in the direction of St Helena.

“Never speak to me of that wretched old man.”

For despite the ablest tactics, the most diplomatic angling, Count Cabinet had refused to rally.

“We followed the sails of your skiff to-day,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi sighed, “until the hazes hid them!”

“I had a lilac passage.”

“You delivered the books?”

The Countess shrugged.

“I shall never forget this afternoon,” she said. “He was sitting in the window over a decanter of wine when I floated down upon him; but no sooner did he see me, than he gave a sound, like a bleat of a goat, and disappeared: I was determined however to call! There is no bell to the villa, but two bronze door-knockers, well out of reach, are attached to the front-door. These with the ferrule of my parasol I tossed and I rattled, until an adolescent, with Bougainvillea at his ear, came and looked out with an insolent grin, and I recognised Peter Passer from the Blue Jesus grown quite fat.”

“Eh mon Dieu!” Father Nostradamus half-audibly sighed.

“Eh mon Dieu ...” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi echoed, her gaze roving over the palace, whose long window-panes in the setting sun gleamed like sumptuous tissues.

“So that,” the Countess added, “I hardly propose to venture again.”

“What a site for a Calvary!” Father Nostradamus replied, indicating with a detached and pensive air the cleft in the White Mountain’s distant peaks.

“I adore the light the hills take on when the sun drops down,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi declared.

“It must be close on _Salut_....”

It was beneath the dark colonnades by the Court Chapel door that they received the news from the lips of a pair of vivacious dowagers that the Prince was to leave the Summer-Palace on the morrow to attend “the Manœuvres,” after which it was expected his Royal Highness would proceed “_to England_.”

X

And meanwhile the representatives of the Court of St James were enjoying the revivifying country air and outdoor-life of the Villa Clement. It was almost exquisite how rapidly the casual mode of existence adopted during the summer villeggiatura by their Excellencies, drew themselves and their personnel together, until soon they were as united and as _sans gêne_ as the proverbial family party. No mother, in the “acclimatization” period, could have dosed her offspring more assiduously than did her Excellency the attachés in her charge; flavouring her little inventions frequently with rum or gin until they resembled cocktails. But it was Sir Somebody himself if anyone that required a tonic. Lady Something’s pending litigation, involving as it did the crown, was fretting the Ambassador more than he cared to admit, and the Hon. Mrs Chilleywater, ever alert, told “Harold” that the injudicious chatter of the Ambassadress (who even now notwithstanding her writ, would say to every other visitor that came to the villa: “Have you heard about the Ritz?? The other night we were dining at the Palace, and I heard the King,” _etc._) was wearing their old Chief out.

And so through the agreeable vacation life there twitched the grim vein of tension.

One day disturbed by her daughter’s persistent trilling of the latest coster song _When I sees ’im I topple giddy_, Lady Something gathered up her morning letters and stepped out upon the lawn.

Oh so formal, oh so slender towered the Cypress-trees against the rose-farded hills and diamantine waters of the lake. The first hint of Autumn was in the air; and over the gravel paths, and in the basins of the fountains, a few shed leaves lay hectically strewn already.

Besides an under-stamped missive, with a foreign postmark, from her Majesty the Queen of the Land of Dates beginning “My dear Gazel,” there was a line from the eloquent, and moderately-victorious, young barrister, engaged in the approaching suit with the Ritz: He had spared himself no pains he assured his client in preparing the defence, which was he said to be _the respectability of Claridge’s_.

“Why bring in Claridge’s? ...?” the Ambassadress murmured, prodding with the tip of her shoe a decaying tortoiseshell leaf; “but anyway,” she reflected, “I’m glad the proceedings fall in winter, as I always look well in furs.”

And mentally she was wrapped in leopard skins and gazing round the crowded court saluting with a bunch of violets an acquaintance here and there, as her eyes fell on Mrs Chilleywater seated in the act of composition beneath a cedar-tree.

Mrs Chilleywater extended a painful smile of welcome which revealed her pointed teeth and pale-hued gums, repressing, simultaneously, an almost irresistible inclination to murder.

“What!... Another writ?” she suavely asked.

“No, dear; but these legal men _will_ write....”

“I love your defender. He has an air of d’Alembert sympathetic soul.”

“He proposes pleading Claridge’s.”

“Claridge’s?”

“Its respectability.”

“Are hotels ever respectable,--I ask you. Though, possibly, the horridest are.”

“Aren’t they all horrid!”

“_Natürlich_; but do you know those cheap hotels where the guests are treated like naughty children?”

“No. I must confess I don’t,” the Ambassadress laughed.

“Ah, there you are....”

Lady Something considered a moment a distant gardener employed in tying Chrysanthemum blooms to little sticks.

“I’m bothered about a cook,” she said.

“And I, about a maid! I dismissed Ffoliott this morning--well I simply _had_ to--for a figure salient.”

“So awkward out here to replace anyone; I’m sure I don’t know....” the Ambassadress replied, her eyes hovering tragically over the pantaloons strained to _splitting_ point, of the stooping gardener.

“It’s a pretty prospect....”

“Life is a compound!” Lady Something defined it at last.

Mrs Chilleywater turned surprised. “Not even Socrates,” she declared, “said anything truer than that.”

“A compound!” Lady Something twittered again.

“I should like to put that into the lips of Delitsiosa.”

“Who’s Delitsiosa?” the Ambassadress asked as a smothered laugh broke out beside her.

Mrs Chilleywater looked up.

“I’d forgotten you were there. Strange thing among the cedar-boughs,” she said.

The Hon. Lionel Limpness tossed a slippered foot flexibly from his hammock.

“You may well ask ‘who’s Delitsiosa’!” he exclaimed.

“She is my new heroine,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, after a few quick little clutches at her hair.

“I trust you won’t treat her, dear, quite so shamefully as your last.”

The Authoress tittered.

“Delitsiosa is the wife of Marsden Didcote,” she said, “the manager of a pawn-shop in the district of Maida Vale, and in the novel he seduces an innocent seamstress, Iris Drummond, who comes in one day to redeem her petticoat (and really I don’t know how I did succeed in drawing the portrait of a little fool!) ... and when Delitsiosa, her suspicions aroused, can no longer doubt or ignore her husband’s intimacy with Iris, already engaged to a lusty young farmer in Kent--(some boy)--she decides to yield herself to the entreaties of her brother-in-law Percy, a junior partner in the firm, which brings about the great tussle between the two brothers on the edge of the Kentish cliffs. Iris and Delitsiosa--Iris is anticipating a babelet soon--are watching them from a cornfield, where they’re boiling a kettle for afternoon tea; and oh, I’ve such a darling description of a cornfield. I make you _feel_ England!”

“No really, my dear,” Lady Something exclaimed.

“Harold pretends it would be wonderful, arranged as an Opera ... with duos and things and a _Liebestod_ for Delitzi towards the close.”

“No, no,” Mr Limpness protested: “What would become of our modern fiction at all if Victoria Gellybore Frinton gave herself up to the stage?”

“That’s quite true, strange thing among the cedar-boughs,” Mrs Chilleywater returned fingering the floating strings of the bandelette at her brow: “It’s lamentable; yet who is there doing anything at present for English Letters ...? Who among us to-day,” she went on peering up at him, “is carrying on the tradition of Fielding? Who really cares? I know _I_ do what I can ... and there’s Madam Adrian Bloater, of course. But I can think of no one else;--we two.”

Mr Limpness rocked, critically.

“I can’t bear Bloater’s books,” he demurred.

“To be frank, neither can I. I’m very fond of Lilian Bloater, I adore her _welt-bürgerliche_ nature, but I feel like you about her books; I _cannot_ read them. If only she would forget Adrian; but she will thrust him headlong into all her work. Have _I_ ever drawn Harold? No. (Although many of the public seem to think so!) And please heaven, however _great_ my provocation at times may be, I never shall!”

“And there I think you’re right,” the Ambassadress answered, frowning a little as the refrain that her daughter was singing caught her ear.

“And when I sees ’im My heart goes BOOM!... And I topple over; I topple over, over, over, All for Love!”

“I dreamt last night my child was on the Halls.”

“There’s no doubt, she’d dearly like to be.”

“Her Father would never hear of it!”

“And when she sees me O, when she sees me--

(_The voice slightly false was Harold’s_)

Her heart goes BOOM!... And she topples over; She topples over, over, over, All for Love!”

“There; they’ve routed Sir Somebody....”

“And when anything vexes him,” Lady Something murmured, appraising the Ambassador’s approaching form with a glassy eye, “he always, you know, blames me!”

Shorn of the sombre, betailed attire, so indispensable for the town-duties of a functionary, Sir Somebody, while rusticating, usually wore a white-twill jacket, and black multi-pleated pantaloons; while for headgear, he would favour a Mexican sugar-loaf, or green-draped pugaree: “He looks half-Irish,” Lady Something would sometimes say.

“Infernal Bedlam,” he broke out: “the house is sheer pandemonium.”

“I found it so too, dear,” Lady Something agreed; “and so,” she added, removing a fallen tree-bug tranquilly from her hair, “I’ve been digesting my letters out here upon the lawn.”

“And no doubt,” Sir Somebody murmured, fixing the placid person of his wife, with a keen psychological glance: “you succeed, my dear, in digesting them?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

“...” the Ambassador displayed discretion.

“We’re asked to a Lion hunt in the Land of Dates; quite an _entreating_ invitation from the dear Queen--; really most pressing and affectionate, but Princess Elsie’s nuptial negotiations and this pending Procès with the Ritz, may tie us here for some time.”

“Ah Rosa.”

“Why these constant moans? ...? A clairvoyant once told me I’d ‘the bump of Litigation’--a _cause célèbre_ unmistakably defined; so it’s as well, on the whole, to have it over.”

“And quite probably; had your statement been correct----”

The Ambassadress gently glowed

“I’m told it’s simply swarming!” she impenitently said.

“Oh Rosa, Rosa....”

“And if you doubt it at all, here is an account direct from the Ritz itself,” her Excellency replied, singling out a letter from among the rest: “It is from dear old General Sir Trotter-Stormer. He says: ‘I am the only guest here. I must say, however, the attendance is beyond all praise, more _soigné_ and better than I’ve ever known it to be, but after what you told me, dear friend, I feel _distinctly uncomfortable_ when the hour for bye-bye comes!’”

“Pish; what evidence, pray, is that?”

“I regard it as of the very first importance! Sir Trotter admits--a distinguished soldier admits, his uneasiness; and who knows, he is so brave about concealing his woes--his two wives left him!--what he may not have patiently and stoically endured?”

“Less I am sure, my dear, than I of late in listening sometimes to you.”

“I will write I think and press him for a more detailed report....”

The Ambassador turned away.

“She should no more be trusted with ink than a child with firearms!” he declared, addressing himself with studious indirectness to a garden-snail.

Lady Something blinked.

“Life is a compound,” she murmured again.

“Particularly for women!” the Authoress agreed.

“Ah, well,” the Ambassadress majestically rose: “I must be off and issue household orders; although I derive hardly my usual amount of enjoyment at present, I regret to say, from my morning consultations with the cook....”

XI

It had been once the whim, and was now the felicitous habit of the Countess of Tolga to present Count Cabinet annually with a bouquet of flowers. It was as if Venus-Anadyomene herself, standing[6] on a shell and wafted by all the piquant whispers of the town and court, would intrude upon the flattered exile (with her well-wired orchids, and malicious, soulless, laughter), to awaken delicate, pagan images, of a trecento, Tuscan Greece.

But upon this occasion desirous of introducing some new features, the Countess decided on presenting the fallen senator with a pannier of well-grown, early pears, a small “heath,” and the Erotic Poems bound in half calf with tasteful tooling of a Schoolboy Poet, cherishable chiefly, perhaps, for the vignette frontispiece of the author. Moreover, acting on an impulse she was never able afterwards to explain, she had invited Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast to accompany her.

Never had summer shown a day more propitiously clement, than the afternoon in mid-Autumn they prepared to set out.

Fond of a compliment, when not too frankly racy,[7] and knowing how susceptible the exile was to clothes, the Countess had arrayed herself in a winter gown of kingfisher-tinted silk turning to turquoise, and stencilled in purple at the arms and neck with a crisp Greek-key design; while a voluminous violet veil, depending behind her to a point, half-concealed a tricorne turquoise toque from which arose a shaded lilac aigrette branching several ways.

“I shall probably die with heat, and of course it’s most unsuitable; but poor old man, he likes to recall the Capital!” the Countess panted, as, nursing heath, poems and pears, she followed Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast blindly towards the shore.

Oars, and swaying drying nets, a skyline lost in sun, a few moored craft beneath the little rickety wooden pier awaiting choice:-- “The boatmen, to-day, darling, seem all so ugly; let’s take a sailing-boat and go alone!”

“I suppose there’s no danger, darling?” the Countess replied, and scarcely had she time to make any slight objection, than the owner of a steady wide-bottomed boat--the _Calypso_--was helping them to embark.

The Island of St Helena, situated towards the lake’s bourne, lay distant some two miles or more, and within a short way of the open sea.

With sails distended to a languid breeze the shore eventually was left behind; and the demoiselle cranes, in mid-lake, were able to observe there were two court dames among them.

“Although he’s dark, Vi,” Mademoiselle Olga Blumenghast presently exclaimed, dropping her cheek to a frail hand upon the tiller, “although he’s dark, it’s odd how he gives one the impression somehow of perfect fairness!”

“Who’s that, darling?” the Countess murmured, appraising with fine eyes, faintly weary, the orchid-like style of beauty of her friend.

“Ann-Jules, of course.”

“I begin to wish, do you know, I’d brought Pomegranates, and worn something else!”

“What are those big burley-worleys?”

“Pears....”

“Give me one.”

“Catch, then.”

“Not that I could bear to be married; especially like _you_, Vi!”

“A marriage like ours, dear, was so utterly unworthwhile....”

“I’m not sure, dear, that I comprehend altogether?”

“Seagulls’ wings as they fan one’s face....”

“It’s vile and wrong to shoot them: but oh! How I wish your happiness depended, even ever so little, on me.”

The Countess averted her eyes.

Waterfowl, like sadness passing, hovered, and soared overhead, casting their dark, fleeting shadows to the white, drowned clouds, in the receptive waters of the lake.

“I begin to wish I’d brought grapes,” she breathed.

“Heavy stodgy pears. So do I.”

“Or a few special peaches,” the Countess murmured, taking up the volume of verse beside her, with a little, mirthless, half-hysterical laugh.

_To a Faithless Friend._

_To V.O.I. and S.C.P._

_For Stephen._

_When the Dormitory Lamp burns Low._

Her gaze travelled over the Index.

“Read something, dear,” Mademoiselle Blumenghast begged, toying with the red-shaded flower in her burnished curls.

“Gladly; but oh, Olga!” the Countess crooned.

“What!”

“Where’s the wind?”

It had gone.

“We must row.”

There was nothing for it.

To gain the long, white breakwater, with the immemorial willow-tree at its end, that was the most salient feature of the island’s approach, required, nevertheless, resolution.

“It’s so far, dear,” the Countess kept on saying. “I had no idea how far it was! Had you any conception at all it was so far?”

“Let us await the wind, then. It’s bound to rally.”

But no air swelled the sun-bleached sails, or disturbed the pearly patine of the paralysed waters.

“I shall never get this peace, I only realise it _exists_ ...” the Countess murmured with dream-glazed eyes.

“It’s astonishing ... the stillness,” Mademoiselle Blumenghast murmured, with a faint tremor, peering round towards the shore.

On the banks young censia-trees raised their boughs like strong white whips towards the mountains, upon whose loftier heights lay, here and there, a little stray patch of snow.

“Come hither, ye winds, come hither!” she softly called.

“Oh, Olga! Do we really want it?” the Countess in agitation asked, discarding her hat and veil with a long, sighing breath.

“I don’t know, dear; no; not, not much.”

“Nor I,--at all.”

“Let us be patient then.”

“It’s all so beautiful it makes one want to cry.”

“Yes; it makes one want to cry,” Mademoiselle Blumenghast murmured, with a laugh that in brilliance vied with the October sun.

“Olga!”

“So,” as the _Calypso_ lurched: “lend me your hanky, dearest.”

“_Olga_--? --? Thou fragile, and exquisite thing!”

* * * * *

Meanwhile Count Cabinet was seated with rod-and-line at an open window, idly ogling a swan. Owing to the reluctance of tradespeople to call for orders, the banished statesman was often obliged to supplement the larder himself. But hardly had he been angling ten minutes to-day, when lo! a distinguished mauvish fish with vivid scarlet spots. Pondering on the mysteries of the deep, and of the subtle variety there is in Nature, the veteran ex-minister lit a cigar. Among the more orthodox types that stocked the lake, such as carp, cod, tench, eels, sprats, shrimps, etc., this exceptional fish must have known its trials and persecutions, its hours of superior difficulty ... and the Count, with a stoic smile recalled his own. Musing on the advantages and disadvantages of personality, of “party” viewpoints, and of morals in general, the Count was soon too self-absorbed to observe the approach of his “useful” secretary and amanuensis, Peter Passer.

More valet perhaps than secretary, and more errand-boy than either, the former chorister of the Blue Jesus had followed the fallen statesman into exile at a moment when the Authorities of Pisuerga were making minute enquiries for sundry missing articles,[8] from the _Trésor_ of the Cathedral, and since the strain of constant choir-practice is apt to be injurious for a youngster suffering from a delicate chest, the adolescent had been willing enough to accept, for a time, at least, a situation in the country.

“O, sir,” he exclaimed, and almost in his excitement forgetting altogether the insidious, lisping tones he preferred as a rule to employ: “O, sir, here comes that old piece of rubbish again with a fresh pack of tracts!”

“Collect yourself, Peter, pray do: what, lose our heads for a visit?” the Count said getting up and going to a glass.

“I’ve noticed, sir, it’s impossible to live on an island long without feeling its effects; you _can’t_ escape being insular!”

“Or insolent.”

“Insular, sir!”

“No matter much, but if it’s the Countess Yvorra, you might shew her round the garden this time, perhaps, for a change,” the Count replied, adjusting a demure-looking fly, of indeterminate sex, to his line.

And brooding on life and baits, and what _A_ will come for while _B_ won’t, the Count’s thoughts grew almost humorous as the afternoon wore on.

Evening was approaching, when weary of the airs of a common carp, he drew in, at length, his tackle.

Like a shawl of turquoise silk the lake seemed to vie, in serenity and radiance, with the bluest day in June, and it was no surprise, on descending presently for a restricted ramble--(the island, in all, amounted to scarcely one acre)--to descry the invaluable Peter enjoying a pleasant swim.

When not boating or reading or feeding his swans, to watch Peter’s fancy-diving off the terrace end, was perhaps the favourite pastime of the veteran _viveur_: to behold the lad trip along the riven breakwater, as naked as a statue, shoot out his arms and spring, the _Flying-head-leap_ or the _Backsadilla_, was a beautiful sight, looking up now and again--but more often _now_--from a volume of old Greek verse; while to hear him warbling in the water with his clear alto voice--of Kyries and Anthems he knew no end--would often stir the old man to the point of tears. Frequently the swans themselves would paddle up to listen, expressing by the charmed or rapturous motions of their necks (recalling to the exile the ecstasies of certain musical, or “artistic” dames at Concert-halls, or the Opera House, long ago) their mute appreciation, their touched delight....

“Old goody Two-shoes never came, sir,” Peter archly lisped, admiring his adventurous shadow upon the breakwater wall.

“How is that?”

“Becalmed, sir,” Peter answered, culling languidly a small, nodding rose, that was clinging to the wall:

“O becalmed is my soul I rejoice in the Lord!”