CHAPTER II.
He took nobody by surprise; there was nobody to take. All was quiet;Denis wandered from room to empty room, looking with pleasure at thefamiliar pictures and furniture, at all the little untidy signs of lifethat lay scattered here and there. He was rather glad that they wereall out; it was amusing to wander through the house as though onewere exploring a dead, deserted Pompeii. What sort of life would theexcavator reconstruct from these remains; how would he people theseempty chambers? There was the long gallery, with its rows of respectableand (though, of course, one couldn't publicly admit it) rather boringItalian primitives, its Chinese sculptures, its unobtrusive, datelessfurniture. There was the panelled drawing-room, where the hugechintz-covered arm-chairs stood, oases of comfort among the austereflesh-mortifying antiques. There was the morning-room, with its palelemon walls, its painted Venetian chairs and rococo tables, its mirrors,its modern pictures. There was the library, cool, spacious, and dark,book-lined from floor to ceiling, rich in portentous folios. There wasthe dining-room, solidly, portwinily English, with its greatmahogany table, its eighteenth-century chairs and sideboard, itseighteenth-century pictures--family portraits, meticulous animalpaintings. What could one reconstruct from such data? There was much ofHenry Wimbush in the long gallery and the library, something of Anne,perhaps, in the morning-room. That was all. Among the accumulations often generations the living had left but few traces.
Lying on the table in the morning-room he saw his own book of poems.What tact! He picked it up and opened it. It was what the reviewers call"a slim volume." He read at hazard:
"...But silence and the topless dark Vault in the lights of Luna Park;And Blackpool from the nightly gloom Hollows a bright tumultuous tomb."
He put it down again, shook his head, and sighed. "What genius I hadthen!" he reflected, echoing the aged Swift. It was nearly six monthssince the book had been published; he was glad to think he would neverwrite anything of the same sort again. Who could have been reading it,he wondered? Anne, perhaps; he liked to think so. Perhaps, too, she hadat last recognised herself in the Hamadryad of the poplar sapling; theslim Hamadryad whose movements were like the swaying of a young tree inthe wind. "The Woman who was a Tree" was what he had called the poem. Hehad given her the book when it came out, hoping that the poem would tellher what he hadn't dared to say. She had never referred to it.
He shut his eyes and saw a vision of her in a red velvet cloak, swayinginto the little restaurant where they sometimes dined together inLondon--three quarters of an hour late, and he at his table, haggardwith anxiety, irritation, hunger. Oh, she was damnable!
It occurred to him that perhaps his hostess might be in her boudoir. Itwas a possibility; he would go and see. Mrs. Wimbush's boudoir was inthe central tower on the garden front. A little staircase cork-screwedup to it from the hall. Denis mounted, tapped at the door. "Come in."Ah, she was there; he had rather hoped she wouldn't be. He opened thedoor.
Priscilla Wimbush was lying on the sofa. A blotting-pad rested on herknees and she was thoughtfully sucking the end of a silver pencil.
"Hullo," she said, looking up. "I'd forgotten you were coming."
"Well, here I am, I'm afraid," said Denis deprecatingly. "I'm awfullysorry."
Mrs. Wimbush laughed. Her voice, her laughter, were deep and masculine.Everything about her was manly. She had a large, square, middle-agedface, with a massive projecting nose and little greenish eyes, the wholesurmounted by a lofty and elaborate coiffure of a curiously improbableshade of orange. Looking at her, Denis always thought of Wilkie Bard asthe cantatrice.
"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing inop-pop-pop-pop-pop-popera."
Today she was wearing a purple silk dress with a high collar and a rowof pearls. The costume, so richly dowagerish, so suggestive of the RoyalFamily, made her look more than ever like something on the Halls.
"What have you been doing all this time?" she asked.
"Well," said Denis, and he hesitated, almost voluptuously. He had atremendously amusing account of London and its doings all ripe and readyin his mind. It would be a pleasure to give it utterance. "To beginwith," he said...
But he was too late. Mrs. Wimbush's question had been what thegrammarians call rhetorical; it asked for no answer. It was a littleconversational flourish, a gambit in the polite game.
"You find me busy at my horoscopes," she said, without even being awarethat she had interrupted him.
A little pained, Denis decided to reserve his story for more receptiveears. He contented himself, by way of revenge, with saying "Oh?" rathericily.
"Did I tell you how I won four hundred on the Grand National this year?"
"Yes," he replied, still frigid and mono-syllabic. She must have toldhim at least six times.
"Wonderful, isn't it? Everything is in the Stars. In the Old Days,before I had the Stars to help me, I used to lose thousands. Now"--shepaused an instant--"well, look at that four hundred on the GrandNational. That's the Stars."
Denis would have liked to hear more about the Old Days. But he was toodiscreet and, still more, too shy to ask. There had been something ofa bust up; that was all he knew. Old Priscilla--not so old then, ofcourse, and sprightlier--had lost a great deal of money, dropped itin handfuls and hatfuls on every race-course in the country. She hadgambled too. The number of thousands varied in the different legends,but all put it high. Henry Wimbush was forced to sell some of hisPrimitives--a Taddeo da Poggibonsi, an Amico di Taddeo, and four or fivenameless Sienese--to the Americans. There was a crisis. For the firsttime in his life Henry asserted himself, and with good effect, itseemed.
Priscilla's gay and gadding existence had come to an abrupt end.Nowadays she spent almost all her time at Crome, cultivating a ratherill-defined malady. For consolation she dallied with New Thought and theOccult. Her passion for racing still possessed her, and Henry, who was akind-hearted fellow at bottom, allowed her forty pounds a month bettingmoney. Most of Priscilla's days were spent in casting the horoscopesof horses, and she invested her money scientifically, as the starsdictated. She betted on football too, and had a large notebook in whichshe registered the horoscopes of all the players in all the teams ofthe League. The process of balancing the horoscopes of two elevens oneagainst the other was a very delicate and difficult one. A match betweenthe Spurs and the Villa entailed a conflict in the heavens so vast andso complicated that it was not to be wondered at if she sometimes made amistake about the outcome.
"Such a pity you don't believe in these things, Denis, such a pity,"said Mrs. Wimbush in her deep, distinct voice.
"I can't say I feel it so."
"Ah, that's because you don't know what it's like to have faith. You'veno idea how amusing and exciting life becomes when you do believe. Allthat happens means something; nothing you do is ever insignificant. Itmakes life so jolly, you know. Here am I at Crome. Dull as ditchwater,you'd think; but no, I don't find it so. I don't regret the Old Daysa bit. I have the Stars..." She picked up the sheet of paper that waslying on the blotting-pad. "Inman's horoscope," she explained. "(Ithought I'd like to have a little fling on the billiards championshipthis autumn.) I have the Infinite to keep in tune with," she waved herhand. "And then there's the next world and all the spirits, and one'sAura, and Mrs. Eddy and saying you're not ill, and the ChristianMysteries and Mrs. Besant. It's all splendid. One's never dull for amoment. I can't think how I used to get on before--in the Old Days.Pleasure--running about, that's all it was; just running about. Lunch,tea, dinner, theatre, supper every day. It was fun, of course, while itlasted. But there wasn't much left of it afterwards. There's rather agood thing about that in Barbecue-Smith's new book. Where is it?"
She sat up and reached for a book that was lying on the little table bythe head of the sofa.
"Do you know him, by the way?" she asked.
"Who?"
"Mr. Barbecue-Smith."
Denis knew of him vaguely. Barbecue-Smith was a name in the Sundaypapers. He wrote a
bout the Conduct of Life. He might even be the authorof "What a Young Girl Ought to Know".
"No, not personally," he said.
"I've invited him for next week-end." She turned over the pages of thebook. "Here's the passage I was thinking of. I marked it. I always markthe things I like."
Holding the book almost at arm's length, for she was somewhatlong-sighted, and making suitable gestures with her free hand, she beganto read, slowly, dramatically.
"'What are thousand pound fur coats, what are quarter million incomes?'"She looked up from the page with a histrionic movement of the head; herorange coiffure nodded portentously. Denis looked at it, fascinated.Was it the Real Thing and henna, he wondered, or was it one of thoseComplete Transformations one sees in the advertisements?
"'What are Thrones and Sceptres?'"
The orange Transformation--yes, it must be a Transformation--bobbed upagain.
"'What are the gaieties of the Rich, the splendours of the Powerful,what is the pride of the Great, what are the gaudy pleasures of HighSociety?'"
The voice, which had risen in tone, questioningly, from sentence tosentence, dropped suddenly and boomed reply.
"'They are nothing. Vanity, fluff, dandelion seed in the wind, thinvapours of fever. The things that matter happen in the heart.Seen things are sweet, but those unseen are a thousand times moresignificant. It is the unseen that counts in Life.'"
Mrs. Wimbush lowered the book. "Beautiful, isn't it?" she said.
Denis preferred not to hazard an opinion, but uttered a non-committal"H'm."
"Ah, it's a fine book this, a beautiful book," said Priscilla, as shelet the pages flick back, one by one, from under her thumb. "And here'sthe passage about the Lotus Pool. He compares the Soul to a Lotus Pool,you know." She held up the book again and read. "'A Friend of mine hasa Lotus Pool in his garden. It lies in a little dell embowered with wildroses and eglantine, among which the nightingale pours forth its amorousdescant all the summer long. Within the pool the Lotuses blossom, andthe birds of the air come to drink and bathe themselves in its crystalwaters...' Ah, and that reminds me," Priscilla exclaimed, shutting thebook with a clap and uttering her big profound laugh--"that reminds meof the things that have been going on in our bathing-pool since you werehere last. We gave the village people leave to come and bathe here inthe evenings. You've no idea of the things that happened."
She leaned forward, speaking in a confidential whisper; every now andthen she uttered a deep gurgle of laughter. "...mixed bathing...saw themout of my window...sent for a pair of field-glasses to make sure...nodoubt of it..." The laughter broke out again. Denis laughed too.Barbecue-Smith was tossed on the floor.
"It's time we went to see if tea's ready," said Priscilla. She hoistedherself up from the sofa and went swishing off across the room, stridingbeneath the trailing silk. Denis followed her, faintly humming tohimself:
"That's why I'm going to Sing in op'ra, sing in op'ra, Sing in op-pop-pop-pop-popera."
And then the little twiddly bit of accompaniment at the end: "ra-ra."