B007TB5SP0 EBOK (41 page)

‘Sally,’ her father said, ‘I could not make out where you sat at Vespers, child, to-night.’

In the old-world Deanery drawing-room, coffee and liqueurs – a Sunday indulgence – had been brought in.

Miss Sinquier set down her cup.

Behind her, through the open windows, a riot of light leaves and creepers was swaying restively to and fro.

‘I imagine the
Font
hid me,’ she answered with a little laugh.

Canon Sinquier considered with an absent air an abundant-looking moon, then turned towards his wife.

‘To-morrow, Mary,’ he said, ‘there’s poor Mrs Cushman again.’

At her cylinder-desk, between two flickering candles, Mrs Sinquier, while her coffee grew cold, was opening her heart to a friend.

‘Do, Mike, keep still,’ she begged.

‘Still?’

‘Don’t fidget. Don’t talk.’

‘Or dare to breathe,’ her daughter added, taking up a Sunday journal and approaching nearer the light.

‘ “At the Olive Theatre,” ’ she read, ‘ “Mrs Starcross will produce a new comedy, in the coming autumn, which promises to be of the highest interest.” ’

Her eyes kindled.

‘O God!’

‘ “At the Kehama, Yvonde Yalta will be seen shortly in a Japanese piece, with singing mandarins, geishas, and old samurai—” ’

‘Dear Lord!’

‘ “Mr and Mrs Mary are said to be contemplating management again.” ’

‘Heavens above!’

‘ “For the revival of
She Stoops to
—” ’

Crescendo, across the mist-clad Close broke a sorrowful, sated voice.

‘You can fasten the window, Sarah,’ Canon Sinquier said.

‘It’s Miss Biggs!’

‘Who could have taught her? How?’ the Canon wondered.

Mrs Sinquier laid down her pen.

‘I dread her intimate dinner!’ she said.

‘Is it to be intimate?’

‘Isn’t she always? “Come round and see me soon, Miss Sarah,
there’s
a dear, and let’s be intimate!” ’

‘Really, Sally!’

‘Sally can take off anyone.’

‘It’s vulgar, dear, to mimic.’

‘Vulgar?’

‘It isn’t nice.’

‘Many people do.’

‘Only mountebanks.’

‘I’d bear a good deal to be on the stage.’

Canon Sinquier closed his eyes.

‘Recite, dear, something; soothe me,’ he said.

‘Of course, if you wish it.’

‘Soothe me, Sally!’

‘Something to obliterate the sermon?’

Miss Sinquier looked down at her feet. She had on black babouches all over little pearls with filigree butterflies that trembled above her toes.

‘Since first I beheld you, Adèle,

While dancing the celinda,

I have remained faithful to the thought of you;

My freedom has departed from me,

I care no longer for all other negresses;

I have no heart left for them; –

You have such grace and cunning; –

You are like the Congo serpent.’

Miss Sinquier paused.

‘You need the proper movements …’ she explained. ‘One ought
really
to shake one’s shanks!’

‘Being a day of rest, my dear, we will dispense with it.’

‘I love you too much, my beautiful one –

I am not able to help it.

My heart has become just like a grasshopper, –

It does nothing but leap.

I have never met any woman

Who has so beautiful a form as yours.

Your eyes flash flame;

Your body has enchained me captive.

Ah, you are like the rattlesnake

Who knows how to charm the little bird,

And who has a mouth ever ready for it

To serve it for a tomb.

I have never known any negress

Who could walk with such grace as you can,

Or who could make such beautiful gestures;

Your body is a beautiful doll.

When I cannot see you, Adèle,

I feel myself ready to die;

My life becomes like a candle

Which has almost burned itself out.

I cannot then find anything in the world

Which is able to give me pleasure:

I could well go down to the river

And throw myself in so that I might cease to suffer.

Tell me if you have a man,

And I will make an ouanga charm for him;

I will make him turn into a phantom,

If you will only take me for your husband.

I will not go to see you when you are cross:

Other women are mere trash to me;

I will make you very happy

And I will give you a beautiful Madras handkerchief.’

‘Thank you, thank you, Sally.’

‘It is from
Ozias Midwinter
.’

Mrs Sinquier shuddered.

‘Those scandalous topsies that entrap our missionaries!’ she said.

‘In Oshkosh—’

‘Don’t, Mike. The horrors that go on in certain places, I’m sure no one would believe.’

Miss Sinquier caressed lightly the Canon’s cheek.

‘Soothed?’ she asked.

‘… Fairly.’

‘When I think of those coloured coons,’ Mrs Sinquier went on, ‘at the Palace fête last year! Roaming all night in the Close … And when I went to look out next day there stood an old mulattress holding up the baker’s boy in the lane.’

‘There, Mary!’

‘Tired, dear?’

‘Sunday’s always a strain.’

‘For you, alas! it’s bound to be.’

‘There were the Catechetical Classes to-day.’

‘Very soon now Sally will learn to relieve you.’

Miss Sinquier threw up her eyes.

‘I?’ she wondered.

‘Next Sunday; it’s time you should begin.’

‘Between now and
that
,’ Miss Sinquier reflected, shortly afterwards, on her way upstairs, ‘I shall almost certainly be in town.’

‘O London – City of Love!’ she warbled softly as she locked her door.

In the gazebo at the extremity of the garden, by the new parterre, Miss Sinquier, in a morning wrapper, was waiting for the post.

Through the trellis chinks, semi-circular, showed the Close, with its plentiful, seasoned timber and sedate, tall houses, a stimulating sequence, architecturally, of whitewash, stone and brick.

Miss Sinquier stirred impatiently.

Wretch! – to deliver at the Palace before the Deanery, when the Deanery was as near!

‘Shower down over there, O Lord, ten thousand fearsome bills,’ extemporaneously she prayed, ‘and spare them not at all. Amen.’

Hierarchic hands shot upwards.

Dull skies.

She waited.

Through the Palace gates, at length, the fellow lurched, sorting as he came.

‘Dolt!’

Her eyes devoured his bag.

Coiled round and round like some sleek snake her future slumbered in it.

Husband; lovers … little lives, perhaps – yet to be … besides voyages, bouquets, diamonds, chocolates, duels, casinos! …

She shivered.

‘Anything for me, Hodge, to-day,’ she inquired, ‘by chance?’

‘A fine morning, miss.’

‘Unusually.’

It had come …

That large mauve envelope, with the wild handwriting and the haunting scent was from
her
.

As she whisked away her heart throbbed fast. Through the light spring foliage she could see her father, with folded hands, pacing meditatively to and fro before the front of the house.

‘Humbug!’ she murmured, darting down a gravel path towards the tradesmen’s door.

Regaining her room, she promptly undid the seal.

Panvale Priory, Shaftesbury Avenue,

London, W.

Mrs Albert Bromley presents her compliments to Miss S. Sinquier and will be pleased to offer her her experience and advice on Thursday morning next at the hour Miss Sinquier names.

P.S
. Mrs Bromley already feels a parent’s sympathetic interest in Miss Sinquier. Is she dark or fair? … Does she shape for Lady Macbeth or is she a Lady Teazle?

‘Both!’ Miss Sinquier gurgled, turning a deft somersault before the glass.

To keep the appointment, without being rushed, she would be obliged to set out, essentially baggageless, to-night – a few requisites merely, looped together and concealed beneath her dress, would be the utmost she could manage.

‘A lump here and a lump there!’ she breathed, ‘and I can unburden myself in the train.’

‘Okh!’

She peeped within her purse.

… And there was Godmother’s chain that she would sell!

It should bring grist; perhaps close on a thousand pounds. Misericordia: to be compelled to part with it!

Opening a levant-covered box, she drew out a long flat tray.

Adorable pearls!

How clearly now they brought her Godmother to mind …
a little old body … with improbable cherry-cheeks and excrescent upper lip, with always the miniatures of her three deceased husbands clinging about one arm … ‘Aren’t they pleasant?’ she would say proudly every now and then … What talks they had had; and sometimes of an evening through the mauve moonlight they would strut together.

Ah! She had been almost ugly then; clumsy, gawky,
gauche
…

Now that she was leaving Applethorp, for ever perhaps, how dormant impressions revived!

The Saunders’ Fifeshire bull, one New Year’s night, ravaging the Close, driven frantic by the pealings of the bells. The time poor Dixon got drowned – at a Flower Show, a curate’s eyes – a German governess’s walk – a mould of calves’-foot jelly she had let fall in the Cathedral once, on her way somewhere—

She replaced ruefully her pearls.

What else?

Her artist fingers hovered.

Mere bridesmaid’s rubbish; such frightful frippery.

She turned her thoughts to the room.

Over the bed, an antique bush-knife of barbaric shape, supposed to have been
Abraham’s
, was quite a collector’s piece.

It might be offered to some museum perhaps. The Nation ought to have it …

She sighed shortly.

And downstairs in the butler’s room there were possessions of hers, besides. What of those Apostle spoons, and the two-pronged forks, and the chased tureen?

Leonard frequently had said it took the best part of a day to polish her plate alone.

And to go away and leave it all!

‘O God, help me, Dear,’ she prayed. ‘This little once, O Lord! For Thou knowest my rights …’

She waited.

Why did not an angel with a basket of silver appear?

‘Oh, well …’

Gripper, no doubt, would suspect something odd if she asked for her things ‘to play with’ for an hour …

A more satisfactory scheme would be to swoop into the pantry, on her way to the station, and to take them away for herself.

She had only to say, ‘Make haste with them crevets’, for Gripper to go off in a huff, and Leonard, should he be there, would be almost sure to follow.

Men were so touchy.

Hush!

Her mother’s voice came drifting from below.

‘Kate! Kate! Kate! Kate!’

She listened.

‘Have the chintz curtains in the white room folded,’ she could hear her say, ‘and remember what I said about the carpet …’

Dear soul!

Miss Sinquier sniffed.

Was it a tear?

Dear soul! Dear souls! …

‘Never mind,’ she murmured, ‘they shall have
sofas
in their box on the night of my début …’

She consoled herself with the thought.

‘Make haste now with them crevets!’

‘For shame, miss. I shall go straight to the Dean!’

‘Cr-r-r-evets!’ Miss Sinquier called.

Clad in full black, with a dark felt
chapeau de résistance
and a long Lancastrian shawl, she felt herself no mean match for any man.

‘C-r-r-r,’ she growled, throwing back her shawl.

After all, were not the things her own?

She laughed gaily.

‘If dear Mrs Bromley could see me,’ she beamed, tucking dexterously away an apostolic spoon.

‘ “St Matthew – St Mark – St Luke – St John –

These
sprang into bed with their breeches on.” ’

At a friendly frolic once a Candidate for Orders had waltzed her about to that.

She recalled Fräulein’s erudite query still:

‘Pray, why did they not take off all like the others?’

And the young man’s significant reasons and elaborate suppositions, and Fräulein’s creamy tone as she said she
quite
understood.

Miss Sinquier turned a key.

S-s-s-st!

‘Butter fingers.’

In a moment she must run.

Terrible to forgo her great tureen …

She poked it. What magnitude to be sure!

Impossible to tow it along.

Under the circumstances, why not take something less cumbersome instead?

There were the Caroline sauce-boats, or the best Anne teapot, hardly if ever in use.

Her ideas raced on.

And who could resist those gorgeous grapes, for the train?

Together with their dish …

‘Tudor, “Harry”!’ she breathed.

From the corridor came a hum of voices.

Flinging her wrap about her, Miss Sinquier slipped quietly out by way of a small room, where the Canon preserved his lawn.

Outside, the moon was already up – a full moon, high and white, a wisp of cloud stretched across it like a blindfold face.

Oh Fame, dear!

She put up her face.

Across the garden the Cathedral loomed out of a mist as white as milk.

The damp, she reasoned, alone would justify her flight!

She shivered.

How sombre it looked in the lane.

There were roughs there frequently too.

‘Villains …’

She felt fearfully her pearls.

After all, the initial step in any career was usually reckoned the worst.

Some day, at the King’s, or the Canary, or the Olive, in the warmth of a stage dressing-room, she would be amused, perhaps, and say:

‘I left my father’s roof, sir, one sweet spring night – without so much as a word!’

Raindrops were falling although the sky was visibly brightening as Miss Sinquier, tired, and a little uncertain, passed through the main exit of Euston terminus.