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 196 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. 197
“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 arch?ological 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 198 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 arch?ologists’ 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 saada,” 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 199 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.” 200
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. 201 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 202 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. 203
“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, 204 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 205 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. 206
“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 207 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....”
