beneath a wide golden ceiling people were dancing. a capricious concert waltz, drowsy, intricate, caressing, reached fitfully the supper-room, where a few privileged guests were already assembled to meet king jotifa and queen thleeanouhee of the land of dates.
it was one of the regulations of the court, that those commanded to the king’s board, should assemble some few minutes earlier than the sovereigns themselves, and the guests at present were mostly leaning stiffly upon their chair-backs, staring vacuously at the olives and salted almonds upon the table-cloth before them. several of the ladies indeed had taken the liberty to seat themselves, and were beguiling the time by studying the menu or disarranging the smilax, while one dame went as far as to take, and even to nibble, a salted almond. a conversation of a non-private 25 kind (carried on between the thin, authoritative legs of a court chamberlain) by countess medusa rappa and the english ambassadress, was being listened to by some with mingled signs of interest.
“ah! how clever shakespere!” the countess was saying: “how gorgeous! how glowing! i once knew a speech from ‘julia sees her!...’ perhaps his greatest ?uvre of all. yes! ‘julia sees her’ is what i like best of that great, great master.”
the english ambassadress plied her fan.
“friends, comrades, countrymen,” she murmured, “i used to know it myself!”
but the lady nibbling almonds was exciting a certain amount of comment. this was the duchess of varna, voted by many to be one of the handsomest women of the court. living in economical obscurity nearly half the year round, her appearances at the palace were becoming more and more infrequent.
“i knew the varnas were very hard up, but i did not know they were starving,” the countess yvorra, a woman with a 26 would-be indulgent face, that was something less hard than rock, remarked to her neighbour the count of tolga, and dropping her glance from the count’s weak chin she threw a fleeting smile towards his wife, who was looking “eastern” swathed in the skin of a blue panther.
“yes, their affairs it seems are almost desperate,” the count returned, directing his gaze towards the duchess.
well-favoured beyond measure she certainly was, with her immense placid eyes, and bundles of loose, blonde hair. she had a gown the green of nile water, that enhanced to perfection the swan-like fairness of her throat and arms.
“i’m thinking of building myself a villa in the land of dates!” she was confiding to the british ambassador, who was standing beside her on her right: “ah, yes! i shall end my days in a country strewn with flowers.”
“you would find it i should say too hot, duchess.”
“my soul has need of the sun, sir somebody!” the duchess replied, opening with 27 equanimity a great black ostrich fan, and smiling up at him through the sticks.
sir somebody something was a person whose nationality was written all over him. nevertheless, he had despite a bluff, and somewhat rugged manner, a certain degree of feminine sensitiveness, and any reference to the soul at all (outside the embassy chapel), invariably made him fidget.
“in moderation, duchess,” he murmured, fixing his eyes upon the golden head of a champagne bottle.
“they say it is a land of love!” the duchess related, raising indolently an almond to her sinuously-chiselled lips.
“and even, so it’s said, too,” his excellency returned: “of licence!” when just at this turn of things the royal cortège entered the supper-room, to the exhilarating strains of king goahead’s war-march.
those who had witnessed the arrival of king jotifa and his queen earlier in the afternoon, were amazed at the alteration of their aspect now. both had discarded their european attire for the loosely-flowing vestments of their native land, and for a 28 brief while there was some slight confusion among those present as to which was the gentleman, or which the lady of the two. the king’s beard long and blonde, should have determined the matter outright, but on the other hand the queen’s necklet of reeds and plumes was so very misleading.... nobody in pisuerga, had seen anything to compare to it before. “marvellous, though terrifying,” the court passed verdict.
attended by their various suites, the royal party gained their places amid the usual manifestation of loyal respect.
but one of the royal ladies as it soon became evident was not yet come.
“where’s lizzie, lois?” king william asked, riveting the archduchess’ empty chair.
“we’d better begin without her, willie,” the queen exclaimed, “you know she never minds.”
and hardly had the company seated themselves when, dogged by a lady-in-waiting and a maid-of-honour, the archduchess elizabeth of pisuerga rustled in. 29
very old and very bent, and (even) very beautiful, she was looking as the grammar-books say, ‘meet’ to be robbed, beneath a formidable tiara, and a dozen long strands of pearls.
“forgive me willie,” she murmured, with a little high shrill tinkling laugh: “but it was so fine, that after tea i, and a lady, went paddling in the basin of the nymphs.”
“how was the water?” the king enquired.
the archduchess repressed a sneeze: “fresh,” she replied, “but not too....”
“after sunset, beware dear aunt, of chills.”
“but for a frog, i believe nothing would have got me out!” the august lady confessed as she fluttered bird-like to her chair.
forbidden in youth by parents and tutors alike the joys of paddling under pain of chastisement, the archduchess elizabeth appeared to find a zest in doing so now. attended by a chosen lady-in-waiting (as a rule the dowager marchioness of lallah miranda) she liked to slip off to 30 one of the numerous basins or natural grottos in the castle gardens, where she would pass whole hours in wading blissfully about. whilst paddling, it was her wont to run over those refrains from the vaudevilles and operas (with their many shakes and rippling cadenzi), in favour in her day, interspersed at intervals by such cries as: “pull up your skirt, marquise, it’s dragging a little my friend below the knees ...” or, “a shark, a shark!” which was her way of designating anything that had fins, from a carp to a minnow.
“i fear our archduchess has contracted a slight catarrh,” the mistress of the robes, a woman like a sleepy cow, observed, addressing herself to the duke of varna upon her left.
“unless she is more careful, she’ll go paddling once too often,” the duke replied, contemplating with interest, above the moonlight-coloured daffodils upon the table board, one of the button-nosed belles of queen thleeanouhee’s suite. the young creature, referred to cryptically among the subordinates of the castle, as ‘tropical 31 molly,’ was finding fault already it seemed with the food.
“take it away,” she was protesting in animated tones: “i’d as soon touch a foot-squashed mango!”
“no mayonnaise, miss?” a court-official asked, dropping his face prevailingly to within an inch of her own.
“take it right away.... and if you should dare sir! to come any closer...!”
the mistress of the robes fingered nervously the various orders of merit on her sumptuous bosom.
“i trust there will be no contretemps,” she murmured, glancing uneasily towards the queen of the land of dates, who seemed to be lost in admiration of the royal dinner-service of scarlet plates, that looked like pools of blood upon the cloth.
“what pleases me in your land,” she was expansively telling her host, “is less your food, than the china you serve it on; for with us you know there’s none. and now,” she added, marvellously wafting a fork, “i’m for ever spoilt for shells.”
king william was incredulous. 32
“with you no china?” he gasped.
“none, sir, none!”
“i could not be more astonished,” the king declared, “if you told me there were fleas at the ritz,” a part of which assertion lady something, who was blandly listening, imperfectly chanced to hear.
“who would credit it!” she breathed, turning to an attaché, a young man all white and pensieroso, at her elbow.
“credit what?”
“did you not hear what the dear king said!”
“no.”
“it’s almost too appalling ...” lady something replied, passing a small, nerveless hand across her brow.
“won’t you tell me though,” the young man murmured gently, with his nose in his plate.
lady something raised a glass of frozen lemonade to her lips.
“fleas,” she murmured, “have been found at the ritz.”
“.............! .............? .......! ..... !!!” 33
“oh and poor lady bertha! and poor good old mrs hunter!” and lady something looked away in the direction of sir somebody, as though anxious to catch his eye.
but the british ambassador and the duchess of varna were weighing the chances of a grant being allowed by parliament for the excavation of chedorlahomor.
“dear little chedor,” the duchess kept on saying, “i’m sure one would find the most enthralling things there. aren’t you, sir somebody?”
and they were still absorbed in their colloquy when the king gave the signal to rise.
although king william had bidden several distinguished divas from the opera house to give an account of themselves for the entertainment of his guests, both king jotifa and queen thleeanouhee with disarming candour declared that, to their ears, the music of the west was hardly to be borne.
“well i’m not very fond of it either,” her dreaminess admitted, surrendering her 34 skirts to a couple of rosy boys, and leading the way with airy grace towards an adjacent salon, “although,” she wistfully added across her shoulder, to a high dignitary of the church, “i’m trying, it’s true, to coax the dear archbishop to give the first act of la tosca in the blue jesus.... such a perfect setting, and with desiré erlinger and maggie mellon...!”
and as the court now pressed after her the rules of etiquette became considerably relaxed. mingling freely with his guests, king william had a hand-squeeze and a fleeting word for each.
“in england,” he paused to enquire of lady something, who was warning a dowager, with impressive earnestness, against the ritz, “have you ever seen two cooks in a kitchen-garden?”
“no, never, sir!” lady something simpered.
“neither,” the king replied moving on, “have we.”
the ambassadress beamed.
“my dear,” she told sir somebody, a moment afterwards, “my dear, the king 35 was simply charming. really i may say he was more than gracious! he asked me if i had ever seen two cooks in a kitchen-garden, and i said no, never! and he said that neither, either, had he! and oh isn’t it so strange how few of us ever have?”
but in the salon, one of queen thleeanouhee’s ladies had been desired by her dreaminess to sing.
“it seems so long,” she declared, “since i heard an eastern voice, and it would be such a relief.”
“by all means,” queen thleeanouhee said, “and let a darbouka or two be brought! for what charms the heart more, what touches it more,” she asked, considering meditatively her babouched feet, “than a darbouka?”
it was told that, in the past, her life had been a gallant one, although her adventures, it was believed, had been mostly with men. those however, who had observed her conduct closely, had not failed to remark how often her eyes had been attracted in the course of the evening 36 towards the dimpled cheeks of the british ambassadress.
perceiving her ample form not far away, queen thleeanouhee signalled to her amiably to approach.
née rosa bark (and a daughter of the poet) lady something was perhaps not sufficiently tactful to meet all the difficulties of the r?le in which it had pleased life to call her. but still, she tried, and did do her best, which often went far to retrieve her lack of savoir faire. “life is like that, dear,” she would sometimes say to sir somebody, but she would never say what it was that life was like. ‘that,’ it seemed....
“i was just looking for my daughter,” she declared.
“and is she as sympathetic,” queen thleeanouhee softly asked, “as her mamma?”
“she’s shy—of the violet persuasion, but that’s not a bad thing in a young girl.”
“where i reign, shyness is a quality which is entirely unknown...!”
“it must be astonishing, ma’am,” lady 37 something replied, caressing a parure of false jewels, intended, indeed, to deceive no one, “to be a queen of a sun-steeped country like yours.”
queen thleeanouhee fetched a sigh.
“dateland—my dear, it’s a scorch!” she averred.
“i conclude, ma’am, it’s what we should call ‘conservatory’ scenery?” lady something murmured.
“it is the land of the jessamine-flower, the little amorous jessamine-flower,” the queen gently cooed with a sidelong smiling glance, “that twines itself sometimes to the right-hand, at others to the left, just according to its caprices!”
“it sounds i fear to be unhealthy, ma’am.”
“and it is the land also, of romance, my dear, where shyness is a quality which is entirely unknown,” the queen broke off, as one of her ladies, bearing a darbouka, advanced with an air of purposefulness towards her.
the hum of voices which filled the room might well have tended to dismay a vocalist of modest powers, but the young matron 38 known to the court as ‘tropical molly,’ and whom her mistress addressed as timzra, soon shewed herself to be equal to the occasion.
“under the blue gum-tree
i am sitting waiting,
under the blue gum-tree
i am waiting all alone!”
her voice reached the ears of the fresh-faced ensigns and the beardless subalterns in the guard room far beyond, and startled the pages in the distant dormitories, as they lay smoking on their beds.
and then, the theme changing, and with an ever-increasing passion, fervour and force:
“i heard a watch-dog in the night ...
wailing, wailing ...
why is the watch-dog wailing?
he is wailing for the moon!”
“that is one of the very saddest songs,” the king remarked, “that i have ever heard. ‘why is the watchdog wailing? he is wailing for the moon!’” and the 39 ambitions and mortifications of kingship, for a moment weighed visibly upon him.
“something merrier, timzra!” queen thleeanouhee said.
and throwing back her long love-lilac sleeves, timzra sang:
“a negress with a margaret once, lolled frousting in the sun
thinking of all the little things that she had left undone ...
with a hey, hey, hey, hey, hi, hey ho!”
“she has the air of a cannibal!” the archduchess murmured behind her fan to his weariness, who had scarcely opened his lips except to yawn throughout the whole of the evening.
“she has the air of a ——” he replied, laconically, turning away.
since the conversation with his mother earlier in the day, his thoughts had revolved incessantly around laura. what had they been saying to the poor wee witch, and whereabouts was she to be found?
leaving the salon, in the wake of a pair of venerable politicians, who were helping 40 each other along with little touches and pats, he made his way towards the ballroom, where a new dance known as the pisgah pas was causing some excitement, and gaining a post of vantage, it was not long before he caught a glimpse of the agile, boyish figure of his betrothed. she passed him, without apparently noticing he was there, in a whirlwind of black tulle, her little hand pressed to the breast of a man like a sulky eagle; and he could not help rejoicing inwardly, that, once his wife, it would no longer be possible for her to enjoy herself exactly with whom she pleased. as she swept by again he succeeded in capturing her attention, and nodding meaningly towards a deserted picture-gallery, wandered away towards it. it was but seldom he set foot there, and he amused himself by examining some of the pictures to be seen upon the walls. an old shrew with a rose ... a drawing of a man alone in the last extremes ... a pink-robed christ ... a seascape, painted probably in winter, with cold, hard colouring....
“yousef?” 41
“rara!”
“let us go outside, dear.”
a night so absolutely soft and calm, was delicious after the glare and noise within.
“with whom,” he asked, “sweetheart, were you last dancing?”
“only the brother of one of the queen’s maids, dear,” mademoiselle de nazianzi replied. “after dinner, though,” she tittered, “when he gets arabian-nighty, it’s apt to annoy one a scrap!”
“arabian-nighty?”
“oh, never mind!”
“but (pardon me dear) i do.”
“don’t be tiresome, yousef! the night is too fine,” she murmured glancing absently away towards the hardly moving trees, from whose branches a thousand drooping necklets of silver lamps palely burned.
were those the “bladders” then?
strolling on down hoops of white wisteria in the moon they came to the pillared circle of a rustic-temple, commanding a prospect on the town.
“there,” she murmured smiling elfishly, and designating something, far below them, 42 through the moonmist, with her fan: “is the column of justice and,” she laughed a little, “of liberty!”
“and there,” he pointed inconsequently, “is the automobile club!”
“and beyond it ... the convent of the flaming-hood....”
“and those blue revolving lights; can you see them, rara?”
“yes, dear ... what are they, yousef?”
“those,” he told her, contemplating her beautiful white face against the dusky bloom, “are the lights of the café cleopatra!”
“and what,” she questioned, as they sauntered on, pursued by all the sweet perfumes of the night, “are those berried-shrubs, that smell so passionately?”
“i don’t know,” he said: “kiss me, rara!”
“no, no.”
“why not?”
“not now!”
“put your arm about me, dear.”
“what a boy he is!” she murmured, gazing up into the starry clearness. 43
overhead a full moon, a moon of circumstance, rode high in the sky, defining phantasmally far off, the violet-farded hills beyond the town.
“to be out there among the silver bean-fields!” he said.
“yes, yousef,” she sighed, starting at a triton’s face among the trailing ivy on the castle wall. beneath it, half concealed by water-flags, lay a miniature lake: as a rule now, nobody went near the lake at all, since the queen had called it ‘appallingly smelly,’ so that, for rendezvous, it was quite ideal.
“tell me, yousef,” she presently said, pausing to admire the beautiful shadow of an orange-tree on the path before them: “tell me, dear, when life goes like that to one—what does one do!!”
he shrugged. “usually nothing,” he replied, the tip of his tongue (like the point of a blade) peeping out between his teeth.
“ah, but isn’t that being strong?” she said half-audibly, fixing her eyes as though fascinated upon his lips.
“why,” he demanded with an engaging 44 smile that brought half-moons to his hollow cheeks: “what has the world been doing to rara?”
“at this instant, yousef,” she declared, “it brings her nothing but joy!”
“you’re happy, my sweet, with me?”
“no one knows, dearest, how much i love you.”
“kiss me, rara,” he said again.
“bend, then,” she answered, as the four quarters of the twelve strokes of midnight rang out leisurely from the castle clock.
“i’ve to go to the ritz!” he announced.
“and i should be going in.”
retracing reluctantly their steps they were soon in earshot of the ball, and their close farewells were made accompanied by selections from the blue banana.
she remained a few moments gazing as though entranced at his retreating figure, and would have, perhaps, run after him with some little capricious message, when she became aware of someone watching her from beneath the shadow of a garden vase.
advancing steadily and with an air of 45 nonchalance, she recognised the delicate, sexless silhouette and slightly hunched shoulders of olga blumenghast, whose exotic attraction had aroused not a few heartburnings (and even feuds) among several of the grandes dames about the court.
poised flatly against the vases’ sculptured plinth, she would have scarcely have been discernible, but for the silver glitter of her gown.
“olga? are you faint?”
“no; only my slippers are torture.”
“i’d advise you to change them, then!”
“it’s not altogether my feet, dear, that ache....”
“ah, i see,” mademoiselle de nazianzi said, stooping enough to scan the stormy, soul-tossed eyes of her friend: “you’re suffering, i suppose on account of ann-jules?”
“he’s such a gold-fish, rara ... any fingers that will throw him bread....”
“and there’s no doubt, i’m afraid, that lots do!” mademoiselle de nazianzi answered lucidly, sinking down by her side. 46
“i would give all my soul to him, rara ... my chances of heaven!”
“your chances, olga——” mademoiselle de nazianzi murmured, avoiding some bird-droppings with her skirt.
“how i envy the men, rara, in his platoon!”
“take away his uniform, olga, and what does he become?”
“ah what——!”
“no.... believe me, my dear, he’s not worth the trouble!”
mademoiselle blumenghast clasped her hands brilliantly across the nape of her neck.
“i want to possess him at dawn, at dawn,” she broke out: “beneath a sky striped with green....”
“oh, olga!”
“and i never shall rest,” she declared, turning away on a languid heel, “until i do.”
meditating upon the fever of love, mademoiselle de nazianzi directed her course slowly towards her room. she lodged in that part of the palace known as ‘the 47 bachelors’ wing,’ where she had a delicious little suite just below the roof.
“if she loved him absolutely,” she told herself, as she turned the handle of her door, “she would not care about the colour of the sky—; even if it snowed, or hailed!”
depositing her fan upon the lid of an old wedding-chest that formed a couch, she smiled contentedly about her. it would be a wrench abandoning this little apartment that she had identified already with herself, when the day should come to leave it for others more spacious in the keep. although scarcely the size of a ship’s cabin, it was amazing how many people one could receive together at a time merely by pushing the piano back against the wall, and wheeling the wedding-chest on to the stairs, and once no fewer than seventeen persons had sat down to a birthday fête, without being made too much to feel like herrings. in the so-called salon, divided from her bedroom by a folding lacquer screen, hung a few studies in oils executed by herself, and which, except to the initiated, or the 48 naturally instinctive, looked sufficiently enigmatic against a wall-paper with a stealthy design.
yes it would be a wrench to quit the little place, she reflected, as she began setting about her toilet for the night. it was agreeable going to bed late without anybody’s aid, when one could pirouette interestingly before the mirror in the last stages of déshabille, and do a thousand (and one) things besides2 that one might otherwise lack the courage for. but this evening being in no frivolous mood, she changed her ball-dress swiftly for a robe-de-chambre bordered deeply with ermins, that made her feel nearer somehow to yousef, and helped her to realise, in its various facets, her position as future queen.
“queen!” she breathed, trailing her fur flounces towards the window.
already the blue revolving lights of the café cleopatra were growing paler with the dawn, and the moon had veered a little towards the convent of the flaming-hood. 49 ah ... how often as a lay boarder there had she gazed up towards the palace wondering half-shrinkingly what life “in the world” was like; for there had been a period indeed, when the impulse to take the veil had been strong with her—more, perhaps, to be near one of the nuns whom she had idolised than from any more immediate vocation.
she remained immersed in thoughts, her introspectiveness fanned insensibly by the floating zephyrs that spring with morning. the slight sway-sway of the trees, the awakening birds in the castle eaves, the green-veined bougainvilleas that fringed her sill—these thrilled her heart with joy. all virginal in the early dawn what magic the world possessed! slow speeding clouds like knots of pink roses came blowing across the sky, sailing away in titanic bouquets above the town.
just such a morning should be their wedding-day! she mused, beginning lightly to apply the contents of a jar of milk of almonds to her breast and arms. ah, before that spina christi lost its leaves, 50 or that swallow should migrate ... that historic day would come!
troops ... hysteria ... throngs.... the blue jesus packed to suffocation.... she could envisage it all.
and there would be a whole holiday in the convent, she reflected falling drowsily at her bedside to her knees.
“oh! help me heaven,” she prayed, “to be decorative and to do right! let me always look young, never more than sixteen or seventeen—at the very outside, and let yousef love me—as much as i do him. and i thank you for creating such a darling, god (for he’s a perfect dear), and i can’t tell you how much i love him; especially when he wags it! i mean his tongue.... bless all the sisters at the flaming-hood—above all sister ursula ... and be sweet, besides, to old jane.... shew me the straight path! and keep me ever free from the malicious scandal of the court: amen.”
and her orisons (ending in a brief self-examination) over, mademoiselle de nazianzi climbed into bed.