Part 8

“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.

“But for that poisonous woman, I should have, gone last year,” she told herself, interrupted in her cogitations by the appearance of her maid.

“The train your Grace we shall miss it....”

“Nonsense!” the duchess answered following, leaving the flowers alone again to their subtle exhalations.

“I’m glad _I’m_ in a Basket!”

“I have no water. I cannot reach the water.”

“Life’s bound to be uncertain when you haven’t got your roots!”

XIV

On a long-chair with tired, closed eyes lay the Queen. Although spared from henceforth the anxiety of her son’s morganatic marriage, yet, now that his destiny was sealed, she could not help feeling perhaps he might have done better. The bride’s lineage was nothing to boast of--over her great-great-grandparents, indeed, in the year 17--it were gentler to draw a veil--while, for the rest, disingenuous, undistinguished, more at home in the stables than in a drawing-room, the Queen much feared that she and her future daughter-in-law would scarcely get on.

Yes, the little princess was none too engaging, she reflected, and her poor sacrificed child if not actually trapped....

The silken swish of a fan, breaking the silence, induced the Queen to look up.

In waiting at present was the Countess Olivia d’Omptyda, a person of both excellent principles and birth, if lacking, somewhat, in social boldness. Whenever she entered the royal presence she would begin visibly to tremble, which considerably flattered the Queen. Her Father, Count “Freddie” d’Omptyda, an infantile and charming old man, appointed in a moment of unusual vagary Pisuergan Ambassador to the Court of St James’, had lately married a child wife scarcely turned thirteen, whose frivolity, and numerous pranks on the high dames of London, were already the scandal of the _Corps Diplomatique_.

“Sssh! Noise is the last vulgarity,” the Queen commented, raising a cushion embroidered with raging lions and white uncanny unicorns higher behind her head.

Unstrung from the numerous _fêtes_, she had retired to a distant boudoir to relax, and, having partly disrobed, was feeling remotely Venus of Miloey with her arms half-hidden in a plain white cape.

The Countess d’Omptyda furled her fan.

“In this Age of push and shriek ...” she said and sighed.

“It seems that neither King Geo, nor Queen Glory, _ever_ lie down of a day!” her Dreaminess declared.

“Since his last appointment, neither does Papa.”

“The affair of your step-mother and Lady Diana Duff Semour,” the Queen remarked, “appears to be assuming the proportions of an Incident!”

The Countess dismally smiled. The subject of her step-mother, mistaken frequently for her grand-daughter, was a painful one: “I hear she’s like a colt broke loose!” she murmured, dropping her eyes fearfully to her costume.

She was wearing an apron of Parma-violets, and the Order of the Holy Ghost.

“It’s a little a pity she can’t be more sensible,” the Queen returned, fingering listlessly some papers at her side. Among them was the _Archæological Society’s_ initial report relating to the recent finds among the Ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. From Chedorlahomor came the good news that an _amphora_ had been found, from which it seemed that men, in those days, rode sideways, and women straddle-legs, with their heads to the horses’ tails, while a dainty cup, ravished from a rock-tomb in the Vale of Akko, ornamented with naked boys and goblets of flowers, encouraged a yet more extensive research.

“You may advance, Countess, with the Archæologists’ report,” the Queen commanded. “Omitting (skipping, I say) the death of the son of Lord Intriguer.”[11]

“‘It was in the Vale of Akko, about two miles from Sââda,” the Countess tremblingly began, “that we laid bare a superb tear-bottle, a unique specimen in _grisaille_, severely adorned with a matron’s head. From the inscription, there can be no doubt whatever that we have here an authentic portrait of Lot’s disobedient, though unfortunate wife. Ample and statuesque (as the salten image she was afterwards to become), the shawl-draped, masklike features are by no means beautiful. It is a face that you may often see to-day, in down-town ‘Dancings,’ or in the bars of the dockyards, or wharfs, of our own modern cities, Tilbury, ’Frisco, Vera Cruz--a sodden, gin-soaked face, that helps to vindicate, if not, perhaps, excuse, the conduct of Lot.... With this highly interesting example of the Potters’ Art, was found a novel object, of an unknown nature, likely to arouse, in scientific circles, considerable controversy....”

And just as the lectrice was growing hesitant, and embarrassed, the Countess of Tolga, who had the _entrée_, unobtrusively entered the room.

She was looking particularly well in one of the new standing-out skirts ruched with rosebuds, and was showing more of her stockings than she usually did.

“You bring the sun with you!” the Queen graciously exclaimed.

“Indeed,” the Countess answered, “I ought to apologise for the interruption, but the _poor little thing_ is leaving now.”

“What? has the Abbess come?”

“She has sent Sister Irene of the Incarnation, instead....”

“I had forgotten it was to-day.”

With an innate aversion for all farewells, yet the Queen was accustomed to perform a score of irksome acts daily that she cordially disliked, and when, shortly afterwards, Mademoiselle de Nazianzi accompanied by a Sister from the Flaming-Hood were announced, they found her quite prepared.

Touched, and reassured at the ex-maid’s appearance, the Queen judged, at last, it was safe to unbend. Already very remote and unworldly in her novice’s dress, she had ceased, indeed, to be a being there was need any more to either circumvent, humour, or suppress; and now that the threatened danger was gone, her Majesty glanced, half-lachrymosely, about among her personal belongings for some slight token of “esteem” or _souvenir_. Skimming from cabinet to cabinet, in a sort of hectic dance, she began to fear, as she passed her bibelots in review, that beyond a Chinese Buddha that she believed to be ill-omened, and which for a nun seemed hardly suitable, she could spare nothing about her after all, and in some dilemma, she raised her eyes, as though for a crucifix, towards the wall. Above the long-chair a sombre study of a strangled negress in a ditch by Gauguin conjured up to-day with poignant force a vivid vision of the Tropics.

“The poor Duchess!” she involuntarily sighed, going off into a train of speculation of her own.

Too tongue-tied, or, perhaps, too discreet, to inform the Queen that anything she might select would immediately be confiscated by the Abbess, Sister Irene, while professing her rosary, appraised her surroundings with furtive eyes, crossing herself frequently with a speed, and facility due to practice whenever her glance chanced to alight on some nude shape in stone. Keen, meagre, and perhaps slightly malicious, hers was a curiously pinched face--like a cold violet.

“The Abbess is still in retreat; but sends her duty,” she ventured as the Queen approached a gueridon near which she was standing.

“Indeed? How I envy her,” the Queen wistfully said, selecting, as suited to the requirements of the occasion, a little volume of a mystic trend, the _Cries of Love_ of Father Surin,[12] bound in grey velvet, which she pressed upon the reluctant novice, with a brief, but cordial, kiss of farewell.

“She looked quite pretty!” she exclaimed, sinking to the long-chair as soon as the nuns had gone.

“So like the Cimabue in the long corridor ...” the Countess of Tolga murmured chillily; It was her present policy that her adored ally, Olga Blumenghast, should benefit by Mademoiselle de Nazianzi’s retirement from Court, by becoming nearer to the Queen, when they would work all the wires between them.

“I’d have willingly followed her,” the Queen weariedly declared, “at any rate, until after the wedding.”

“It seems that I and Lord Derbyfield are to share the same closed carriage in the wake of the bridal coach,” the Countess of Tolga said, considering with a supercilious air her rose _suède_ slipper on the dark carpet.

“He’s like some great Bull. What do you suppose he talks about?”

The Countess d’Omptyda repressed a giggle.

“They tell me Don Juan was nothing _nothing_ to him.... He cannot see, he cannot be, oh every hour. It seems he can’t help it, and that he simply _has_ to!”

“Fortunately Lady Lavinia Lee-Strange will be in the landau as well!”

The Queen laid her cheek to her hands.

“I all but died, dear Violet,” she crooned, “listening to an account of her Ancestor, who fell, fighting Scotland, at the battle of Pinkie Cleugh.”

“These well-bred, but detestably insular women, how they bore one.”

“They are not to be appraised by any ordinary standards. Crossing the state saloon while coming here what should I see, ma’am, but Lady Canon of Noon on her hands and knees (all fours!) peeping below the loose-covers of the chairs in order to examine the Gobelins-tapestries beneath....”

“Oh----”

“‘Absolutely authentic’ I said! as I passed on, leaving her looking like a pick-pocket caught in the act.”

“I suppose she was told to make a quiet survey....”

“Like their beagles and deer-hounds, that their Landseer so loved to paint, I fear the British character is, at bottom, _nothing_ if not rapacious!”

“It’s said, I believe, to behold the Englishman at his _best_, one should watch him play at tip-and-run.”

“You mean of course at cricket?”

The Queen looked doubtful: She had retained of a cricket-match at Lord’s a memory of hatless giants waving wooden sticks.

“I only wish it could have been a long engagement,” she abstrusely murmured, fastening her attention on the fountains whitely spurting in the gardens below.

Valets in cotton-jackets and light blue aprons bearing baskets of crockery and _argenterie_, were making ready beneath the tall Tuba trees, a supper _buffet_ for the evening’s Ball.

“Flap your wings, little bird O flap your wings----”

A lad’s fresh voice, sweet as a robin’s, came piping up.

“These wretched workpeople----! There’s not a peaceful corner,” the Queen complained, as her husband’s shape appeared at the door. He was followed by his first secretary--a simple commoner, yet, with the air, and manner, peculiar to the husband of a Countess.

“Yes, Willie? I’ve a hundred head-aches. What is it?”

“Both King Geo and Queen Glory, are wondering where you are.”

“Oh, really, Willie?”

“And dear Elsie’s asking after you too.”

“Very likely,” the Queen returned with quiet complaisance, “but unfortunately, I have neither her energy, or,” she murmured with a slightly sardonic laugh, “her appetite!”

The Countess of Tolga tittered.

“She called for fried-eggs and butcher’s-meat, this morning, about the quarter before eight,” she averred.

“An excellent augury for our dynasty,” the King declared, reposing the eyes of an adoring grandparent upon an alabaster head of a Boy attributed to Donatello.

“She’s terribly foreign, Willie...! Imagine ham and eggs ...” the Queen dropped her face to her hand.

“So long as the Royal-House----” The King broke off, turning gallantly to raise the Countess d’Omptyda, who had sunk with a gesture of exquisite allegiance to the floor.

“Sir ... Sir!” she faltered in confusion, seeking with fervent lips her Sovereign’s hand.

“What is she doing, Willie?”

“Begging for Strawberry-leaves!” the Countess of Tolga brilliantly commented.

“Apropos of Honours ... it appears King Geo has signified his intention of raising his present representative in Pisuerga to the peerage.”

“After her recent _Cause_, Lady Something should be not a little consoled.”

“She was at the début of the new diva, little Miss Hellvellyn (the foreign invasion has indeed begun!), at the Opera-House last night, so radiant....”

“When she cranes forward out of her own box to smile at someone into the next, I can’t explain ... but one feels she ought to hatch,” the Queen murmured, repairing capriciously from one couch to another.

“We neglect our guests, my dear,” the King expostulatingly exclaimed, bending over his consort anxiously from behind.

“Tell me, Willie,” she cooed, caressing the medals upon his breast, and drawing him gently down: “tell me? Didst thou enjoy thy cigar, dear, with King Geo?”

“I can recall in my time, Child, a suaver flavour....”

“Thy little chat, though, dearest, was well enough?”

“I would not call him crafty, but I should say he was a man of considerable subtlety ...” the King evasively replied.

“One does not need, my dearest nectarine, a prodigy of intelligence however to take him in!”

“Before the proposed Loan, love, can be brought about, he may wish to question thee as to thy political opinions.”

The Queen gave a little light laugh.

“No one knows what my political opinions are; I don’t myself!”

“And I’m quite confident of it: But, indeed, my dear, we neglect our functions.”

“I only wish it could have been a _long_ engagement, Willie....”

XV

In the cloister eaves, the birds were just awakening, and all the spider scales, in the gargoyled gables, glanced fresh with dew. Above the Pietà, on the porter’s gate, slow-speeding clouds, like knots of pink roses, came blowing across the sky, sailing away in titanic bouquets towards the clear horizon. All virginal in the early sunrise what enchantment the world possessed! The rhythmic sway-sway of the trees, the exhalations of the flowers, the ethereal candour of this early hour,--these raised the heart up to their Creator.

Kneeling at the casement of a postulant’s cell, Laura de Nazianzi recalled that serene, and just thus had she often planned must dawn her bridal day!

Beyond the cruciform flower-beds, and the cloister wall, soared the Blue Jesus, the storied windows of its lofty galleries aglow with light.

“Most gracious Jesus. Help me to forget. For my heart aches. Uphold me now.”

But to forget to-day, was well-nigh she knew impossible....

Once it seemed she caught the sound of splendid music from the direction of the Park, but it was too early for music yet. Away in the palace, the Princess Elsie must be already astir ... in her peignoir, perhaps? The bridal-garment unfolded upon the bed: But no; it was said the bed indeed was where usually her Royal-Highness’ dogs....

With a long and very involuntary sigh, she began to sweep, and put in some order, her room.

How forlorn her cornette looked upon her _prie-Dieu_! And, oh, how stern, and “old”!

Would an impulse to bend it slightly but only so, _so_ slightly, to an angle to suit her face, be attended, later, by remorse?

“Confiteor Deo omnipotenti, beatae Mariae semper vergini, beato Michaeli Archangelo (et _tibi_ Pater), quia peccavi nimis cogitatione, verbo et opere,” she entreated, reposing her chin in meditation, upon the handle of her broom.

The bluish shadow of a cypress-tree, on the empty wall, fascinated her as few pictures had.

“Grant my soul Eyes,” she prayed, cheerfully completing her task.

In the corridor, being a general holiday, all was yet quite still. A sound, as of gentle snoring, came indeed from behind more than one closed door, and the new _pensionnaire_ was preparing to beat a retreat, when she perceived, in the cloister, the dumpish form of Old Jane.

Seated in the sun by the convent well, the Porteress was sharing a scrap of breakfast with the birds.

“You’re soonish for Mass, love,” she broke out, her large archaic features surcharged with smiles.

“It’s such a perfect morning, I felt I must come down.”

“I’ve seen many a more promising sunrise before now, my dear, turn to storm and blast! An orange sky overhead, brings back to me the morning that I was received; ah, I shall never forget, as I was taking my Vows, a flash of forked lightning, and a clap of Thunder (Glory be to God!) followed by a water-spout (Mercy save us!) bursting all over my Frinch lace veil....”

“What is your book, Old Jane?”

“Something light, love, as it’s a holiday.”

“_Pascal_....”

“Though it’s mostly a _Fête_ day I’ve extra to do!” the Porteress averred, dropping her eyes to the great, glistening spits, upon the Cloister flags. It was her boast she could distinguish Monsignor Potts’ round splash from Father Geordie Picpus’ more dapper fine one, and again the Abbess’ from Mother Martinez de la Rosa’s--although these indeed shared a certain opaque sameness.

“Of course it’s a day for private visits.”

“Since the affair of Sister Dorothea and Brother Bernard Soult, private visits are no longer allowed,” the Porteress returned, reproving modestly, with the cord of her discipline, a pert little lizard, that seemed to be proposing to penetrate between the nude toes of her sandalled foot.

But on such a radiant morning it was preposterous to hint at “Rules.”

Beneath the clement sun a thousand cicadas were insouciantly chirping, while birds, skimming about without thoughts of money, floated lightly from tree to tree.

“Jesus--Mary--Joseph!” the Porteress purred, as a Nun, with her face all muffled up in wool, crossed the Cloister, glancing neither to right nor left, and sharply slammed a door: for, already, the Convent was beginning to give signs of animation. Deep in a book of Our Lady’s Hours, a biretta’d priest was slowly rounding a garden path, while repairing from a _Grotto-sepulchre_, to which was attached a handsome indulgence, Mother Martinez de la Rosa appeared, all heavily leaning on her stick.

Simultaneously the matins bell rang out, calling all to prayer.

The Convent Chapel founded by the tender enthusiasm of a wealthy widow, the Countess d’Acunha, to perpetuate her earthly comradeship with the beautiful Andalusian, the Doña Dolores Baatz, was still but thinly peopled some few minutes later, although the warning bell had stopped.

Peering around, Laura was disappointed not to remark Sister Ursula in her habitual place, between the veiled fresco of the “Circumcision” and the stoup of holy-water by the door.

Beyond an offer to “exchange whippings” there had been a certain coolness in the greeting with her friend, that had both surprised and pained her.

“When those we rely on wound and betray us, to whom should we turn but Thee?” she breathed, addressing a crucifix, in ivory, contrived by love, that was a miracle of wonder.

Finished Mass, there was a general rush for the Refectory!

Preceded by Sister Clothilde, and followed, helter-skelter, by an exuberant bevy of nuns, even Mother Martinez, who being shortsighted would go feeling the ground with her cane, was propelled to the measure of a hop-and-skip.

Passing beneath an archway, labelled “Silence” (the injunction to-day being undoubtedly ignored), the company was welcomed by the mingled odours of tea, _consommé_, and fruit. It was a custom of the Convent for one of the Sisters during meal-time to read aloud from some standard work of fideism, and these edifying recitations, interspersed by such whispered questions as: “Tea, or _Consommé_?” “A Banana, or a Pomegranate?” gave to those at all foolishly, or hysterically inclined, a painful desire to giggle. Mounting the pulpit-lectern, a nun with an aristocratic, though gourmand little face, was about to resume the arid life of the Byzantine monk, Basilius Saturninus, when Mother Martinez de la Rosa took it upon herself, in a few patriotic words, to relax all rules for that day.

“We understand in the world now,” a little faded woman murmured to Laura upon her right: “that the latest craze among ladies is to gild their tongues; but I should be afraid,” she added diffidently, dipping her banana into her tea, “of poison, myself!”

Unhappy at her friend’s absence from the Refectory, Laura, however, was in no mood to entertain the nuns with stories of the present pagan tendencies of society.

Through the bare, blindless windows, framing a sky so bluely luminous, came the swelling clamour of the assembling crowds, tinging the languid air as with some sultry fever. From the _Chausée_, music of an extraordinary intention--heated music, crude music, played with passionate élan to perfect time, conjured up, with vivid, heartrending prosaicness, the seething Boulevards beyond the high old creeper-covered walls.

“I forget now, Mother, which of the Queens it is that will wear a velvet train of a beautiful orchid shade: But one of them will!” Sister Irene of the Incarnation was holding forth.

“I must confess,” Mother Martinez remarked, who was peeling herself a peach, with an air of far attention: “I must confess, I should have liked to have cast my eye upon the _lingerie_....”

“I would rather have seen the ballwraps, Mother, or the shoes, and evening slippers!”

“Yes, or the fabulous jewels....”

“Of course Sister Laura saw the _trousseau_?”

But Laura made feint not to hear.

Discipline relaxed, a number of nuns had collected provisions and were picnicking in the window, where Sister Innez (an ex-Repertoire actress) was giving some spirited renderings of her chief successful parts--_Jane de Simerose_, _Frou-Frou_, _Sappho_, _Cigarette_....

“My darling child! I always sleep all day and only revive when there’s _a Man_,” she was saying with an impudent look, sending the scandalised Sisters into delighted convulsions.

Unable to endure it any longer, Laura crept away.