The Flower Beneath the Foot

by Ronald Firbank

  “You are all my pets, my dear,” Mrs Bedley softly cooed.

  “Have you read Men— my Delight, Bessie?” Miss Hopkins asked, “by Cora Velasquez.”

  “No!”

  “It’s not perhaps a very… It’s about two dark, and three fair, men,” she added vaguely.

  “Most women’s novels seem to run off the rails before they reach the end, and I’m not very fond of them,” Mrs Barleymoon said.

  “And anyway, dear, it’s out,” Mrs Bedley asserted.

  “The Passing of Rose I read the other day,” Mrs Montgomery said, “and so enjoyed it.”

  “Isn’t that one of Ronald Firbank’s books?”

  “No, dear, I don’t think it is. But I never remember an author’s name and I don’t think it matters!”

  “I suppose I’m getting squeamish! But this Ronald Firbank I can’t take to at all. Valmouth! Was there ever a novel more coarse. I assure you I hadn’t gone very far when I had to put it down.”

  “It’s out,” Mrs Bedley suavely said, “as well,” she added, “as the rest of them.”

  “I once met him,” Miss Hopkins said, dilating slightly the retinae of her eyes: “He told me writing books was by no means easy!”

  Mrs Barleymoon shrugged.

  “Have you nothing more enthralling, Mrs Bedley,” she persuasively asked, “tucked away?”

  “Try The Call of the Stage, dear,” Mrs Bedley suggested.

  “You forget, Mrs Bedley,” Mrs Barleymoon replied, regarding solemnly her crêpe.

  “Or Mary of the Manse, dear.”

  “I’ve read Mary of the Manse twice, Mrs Bedley—and I don’t propose to read it again.”

  “… ?”

  “…!”

  Mrs Bedley became abstruse.

  “It’s dreadful how many poets take to drink,” she reflected.

  A sentiment to which her subscribers unanimously assented.

  “I’m taking Men are Animals, by the Hon. Mrs Victor Smythe, and What Every Soldier Ought to Know, Mrs Bedley,” Miss Hopkins breathed.

  “And I The East is Whispering,” Mrs Barleymoon in hopeless tones affirmed.

  “Robert Hitchinson! He’s a good author.”

  “Do you think so? I feel his books are all written in hotels with the bed unmade at the back of the chair.”

  “And I daresay you’re right, my dear.”

  “Well, Mrs Bedley, I must go—if I want to walk to my husband’s grave,” Mrs Barleymoon declared.

  “Poor Bessie Barleymoon,” Mrs Bedley sighed, after Mrs Barleymoon and Miss Hopkins had gone: “I fear she frets!”

  “We all have our trials, Mrs Bedley.”

  “And some more than others.”

  “Court life, Mrs Bedley, it’s a funny thing.”

  “It looks as though we may have an English Queen, Mrs Montgomery.”

  “I don’t believe it!”

  “Most of the daily prints I see are devoting leaders to the little dog the Princess Elsie sent out the other day.”

  “Odious, ill-mannered, horrid little beast…”

  “It seems, dear, he ran from room to room looking for her until he came to the prince’s door, where he just lay down and whined.”

  “And what does that prove, Mrs Bedley?”

  “I really don’t know, Mrs Montgomery. But the press seemed to find it, significant,” Mrs Bedley replied as a Nun of the Flaming-Hood with a jolly face all gold with freckles entered the shop:

  “Have you Valmouth by Ronald Firbank or Inclinations by the same author?” she asked.

  “Neither I’m sorry—both are out!”

  “Maladetta + + + +! But I’ll be passing soon again,” the Sister answered as she twinklingly withdrew.

  “You’d not think now by the look of her she had been at Girton!” Mrs Bedley remarked.

  “Once a Girton girl always a Girton girl, Mrs Bedley.”

  “It seems a curate drove her to it…”

  “I’m scarcely astonished. Looking back I remember the average curate at home as something between a eunuch and a snigger.”

  “Still, dear, I could never renounce my religion. As I said to the dear Chaplain only the other day (while he was having some tea), Oh, if only I were a man, I said! Wouldn’t I like to denounce the disgraceful goings on every Sabbath down the street at the church of the Blue Jesus.”

  “And I assure you it’s positively nothing, Mrs Bedley, at the Jesus, to what it is at the church of St Mary the Fair! I was at the wedding of one of the equerries lately, and never saw anything like it.”

  “It’s about time there was an English wedding, in my opinion, Mrs Montgomery!”

  “There’s not been one in the Colony indeed for some time.”

  Mrs Bedley smiled undaunted.

  “I trust I may be spared to dance before long at Dr and Mrs Babcock’s!” she exclaimed.

  “Kindly leave Cunnie out of it, Mrs Bedley,” Mrs Montgomery begged.

  “So it’s Cunnie already you call him!”

  “Dr Cuncliffe and I scarcely meet.”

  “People talk of the immense sameness of marriage, Mrs Montgomery; but all the same, my dear, a widow’s not much to be envied.”

  “There are times, it’s true, Mrs Bedley, when a woman feels she needs fostering; but it’s a feeling she should try to fight against.”

  “Ah my dear, I never could resist a mon!” Mrs Bedley exclaimed.

  Mrs Montgomery sighed.

  “Once,” she murmured meditatively, “men (those procurers of delights) engaged me utterly… I was their slave.…

  Now… One does not burn one’s fingers twice, Mrs Bedley.”

  Mrs Bedley grew introspective.

  “My poor husband sometimes would be a little frightening, a little fierce… at night, my dear, especially. Yet how often now I miss him!”

  “You’re better off as you are, Mrs Bedley, believe me,” Mrs Montgomery declared, looking round for the little prince who was amusing himself on the library steps.

  “You must find him a handful to educate, my dear.”

  “It will be a relief indeed, Mrs Bedley, when he goes to Eton!”

  “I’m told so long as a boy is grounded…”

  “His English accent is excellent, Mrs Bedley, and he shews quite a talent for languages,” Mrs Montgomery assured.

  “I’m delighted, I’m sure, to hear it!”

  “Well, Mrs Bedley, I mustn’t stand dawdling: I’ve to ’ave my ’air shampooed and waved for the Embassy party to-night you know!” And taking the little prince by the hand, the Royal Governess withdrew.

  V

  AMONG those attached to the Chedorlahomor expedition was a young—if thirty-five be young—eccentric Englishman from Wales, the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, a son of Lord Intriguer. Attached first to one thing and then another, without ever being attached to any, his life had been a gentle series of attachments all along. But this new attachment was surely something better than a temporary secretaryship to a minister, or, “aiding” an ungrateful general, or waiting in through draughts (so affecting to the constitution) in the anterooms of hard-worked royalty, in the purlieus of Pall Mall. Secured by the courtesy of his ex-chief, Sir Somebody Something, an old varsity friend of his father, the billet of “surveyor and occasional help” to the Chedorlahomorian excavation party had been waywardly accepted by the Hon. ‘Eddy’ just as he had been upon the point of attaching himself, to the terror of his relatives and the amusement of his friends, to a monastery of the Jesuit Order, as a likely candidate for the cowl.

  Indeed he had already gone so far as to sit to an artist for his portrait in the habit of a monk, gazing ardently at what looked to be the Escurial itself, but in reality was nothing other than an “impression” from the kitchen garden of Intriguer Park. And now this sudden change, this call to the East instead. There had been no time, unfortunately, before setting out to sit again in the picturesque “sombrero” of an explorer, but a ready camera had performed miracles, and
the relatives of the Hon., Eddy, were relieved to behold his smiling countenance in the illustrated-weeklies, pick in hand, or with one foot resting on his spade while examining a broken jar, with just below the various editors’ comments: To join the Expedition to Chedorlahomor—the Hon. ‘Eddy’ Monteith, only son of Lord Intriguer; or, Off to Chedorlahomor! or, Bon Voyage…!

  Yes, the temptation of the expedition was not to be withstood, and for vows and renunciations there was always time!.. . And now leaning idly on his window ledge in a spare room of the Embassy, while his man unpacked, he felt, as he surveyed the distant dome of the Blue Jesus above the dwarf-palm trees before the house, half-way to the East already. He was suffering a little in his dignity from the contretemps of his reception, for having arrived at the Embassy among a jobbed troop of serfs engaged for the night, Lady Something had at first mistaken him for one: “The cloak-room will be in the Smoking-room!” she had said, and in spite of her laughing excuses and ample apologies, he could not easily forget it. What was there in his appearance that could conceivably recall a cloak-room attendant —? He who had been assured he had the profile of a “Rameses”! And going to a mirror he scanned, with less perhaps than his habitual contentment, the light, liver-tinted hair, grey narrow eyes, hollow cheeks, and pale mouth like a broken moon. He was looking just a little fatigued he fancied from his journey, and really, it was all his hostess deserved, if he didn’t go down.

  “I have a headache, Mario,” he told his man (a Neapolitan who had been attached to almost as many professions as his master). “I shall not leave my room! Give me a kimono: I will take a bath.”

  Undressing slowly, he felt as the garments dropped away, he was acting properly in refraining from attending the soirée, and only hoped the lesson would not be “lost” on Lady Something, whom he feared must be incurably dense.

  Lying amid the dissolving bath crystals while his man-servant deftly bathed him, he fell into a sort of coma, sweet as a religious trance. Beneath the rhythmic sponge, perfumed with Kiki, he was St Sebastian, and as the water became cloudier and the crystals evaporated amid the steam, he was Teresa… and he would have been, most likely, the Blessed Virgin herself, but that the bath grew gradually cold.

  “You’re looking a little pale, sir, about the gills!” the valet solicitously observed, as he gently dried him.

  The Hon. ‘Eddy’ winced: “I forbid you ever to employ the word gill, Mario!” he exclaimed. “It is inharmonious, and in English it jars; whatever it may do in Italian.”

  “Overtired, sir, was what I meant to say.”

  “Basta!” his master replied, with all the brilliant glibness of the Berlitz-school.

  Swathed in towels, it was delicious to relax his powder-blanched limbs upon a comfy couch, while Mario went for dinner: “I don’t care what it is! So long as it isn’t —” (naming several dishes that he particularly abhorred, or might be “better,” perhaps, without) —“And be sure, fool, not to come back without Champagne.”

  He could not choose but pray that the Ambassadress had nothing whatever to do with the Embassy cellar, for from what he had seen of her already, he had only a slight opinion of her discernment.

  Really he might have been excused had he taken her to be the cook instead of the social representative of the Court of St James, and he was unable to repress a caustic smile on recollecting her appearance that afternoon, with her hat awry, crammed with Maréchal Niel roses, hot, and decoiffed, flourishing a pair of garden-gauntlets as she issued her commands. What a contrast to his own Mamma—“so different,”… and his thoughts returned to Intriguer—“dear Intriguer,…” that if only to vex his father’s ghost, he would one day turn into a Jesuit college! The Confessional should be fitted in the paternal study, and engravings of the Inquisition, or the sweet faces of Lippi and Fra Angelico, replace the Agrarian certificates and tiresome trophies of the chase; while the crack of the discipline in Lent would echo throughout the house! How “useful” his friend Robbie Renard would have been; but alas poor Robbie. He had passed through life at a rapid canter, having died at nineteen…

  Musingly he lit a cigarette.

  Through the open window a bee droned in on the blue air of evening and closing his eyes he fell to considering whether the bee of one country would understand the remarks of that of another. The effect of the soil of a nation, had it consequences upon its Flora? Were plants influenced at their roots? People sometimes spoke (and especially ladies) of the language of flowers… the pollen therefore of an English rose would probably vary, not inconsiderably, from that of a French, and a bee born and bred at home (at Intriguer for instance) would be at a loss to understand (it clearly followed) the conversation of one born and bred, here, abroad. A bee’s idiom varied then, as did man’s! And he wondered, this being proved the case, where the best bees’ accents were generally acquired…

  Opening his eyes, he perceived his former school chum, Lionel Limpness—Lord Tiredstock’s third (and perhaps most gifted) son, who was an honorary attaché at the Embassy, standing over him, his spare figure already arrayed in an evening suit.

  “Sorry to hear you’re off colour. Old Dear!” he exclaimed, sinking down upon the couch beside his friend.

  “I’m only a little shaken, Lionel…: have a cigarette.”

  “And so you’re off to Chedorlahomor, Old Darling?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said.

  “I suppose so…” the only son of Lord Intriguer replied.

  “Well, I wish I was going too!”

  “It would be charming, Lionel, of course to have you: but they might appoint you Vice-Consul at Sodom, or something?”

  “Why Vice? Besides…! There’s no consulate there yet,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son said, examining the objects upon the portable altar, draped in prelatial purple of his friend.

  “Turn over, Old Dear, while I chastise you!” he exclaimed, waving what looked to be a tortoiseshell lorgnon to which had been attached three threads of “cerulean” floss silk.

  “Put it down, Lionel, and don’t be absurd.”

  “Over we go. Come on.”

  “Really, Lionel.”

  “Penitence! To thy knees. Sir!”

  And just as it seemed that the only son of Lord Intriguer was to be deprived of all his towels, the Ambassadress mercifully entered.

  “Poor Mr Monteith!” she exclaimed in tones of concern bustling forward with a tablespoon and a bottle containing physic, “so unfortunate… Taken ill at the moment you arrive! But Life is like that!”

  Clad in the flowing circumstance of an oyster satin ball dress, and all a-glitter like a Christmas tree (with jewels), her arrival perhaps saved her guest a “whipping.”

  “Had I known, Lady Something, I was going to be ill, I would have gone to the Ritz!” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ gasped.

  “And you’d have been bitten all over!” Lady Something replied.

  “Bitten all over?”

  “The other evening we were dining at the Palace, and I heard the dear King say-but I oughtn’t to talk and excite you”

  “By the way. Lady Something,” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked: “what is the etiquette for the Queen of Dateland’s eunuch?”

  “It’s all according; but you had better ask Sir Somebody, Mr Limpness,” Lady Something replied, glancing with interest at the portable altar.

  “I’ve done so, and he declared he’d be jiggered!”

  “I recollect in Pera when we occupied the Porte, they seemed (those of the old Grand Vizier—oh what a good-looking man he was —! such eyes —! and such a way with him —! Despot!!) only too thankful to crouch in corners.”

  “Attention with that castor-oil…!”

  “It’s not castor-oil; it’s a little decoction of my own,—aloes, gregory, a dash of liquorice. And the rest is buckthorn!”

  “Euh!”

  “It’s not so bad, though it mayn’t be very nice… Toss it off like a brave man, Mr Monteith (nip his nostrils, Mr Limpness), and while he takes i
t, I’ll offer a silent prayer for him at that duck of an altar,” and as good as her word, the Ambassadress made towards it.

  “You’re altogether too kind,” the Hon. Eddy, murmured seeking refuge in a book—a volume of Juvenalia published for him by “Blackwood of Oxford,” and becoming absorbed in its contents:, “Ah Doris” — “Lines to Doris” — “Lines to Doris: written under the influence of wine, sun and fever” — “Ode to Swinburne” — Sad Tamarisks” — “Rejection” — “Doigts Obscènes” — “They Call me Lily!”— “Land of Titian! Land of Verdi! Oh Italy!”— “I heard the Clock”:

  I heard the clock strike seven,

  Seven strokes I heard it strike!

  His Lordship’s gone to London

  And won’t be back to-night.”

  He had written it at Intriguer, after a poignant domestic disagreement, his Papa,—the “his lordship” of the poem—had stayed away however considerably longer… . And here was a sweet thing suggested by an old Nursery Rhyme, “Loves, have you Heard”:

  “Loves, have you heard about the rabbits??

  They have such odd fantastic habits…

  Oh, Children…! I daren’t disclose to You

  The licentious things some rabbits do.”

  It had “come to him” quite suddenly out ferreting one day with the footman…

  But a loud crash as the portable altar collapsed beneath the weight of the Ambassadress aroused him unpleasantly from his thoughts.

  “Horrid dangerous thing!” she exclaimed as Lord Tiredstock’s third son assisted her to rise from her “Silent” prayer: “I had no idea it wasn’t solid! But Life is like that…” she added somewhat wildly.

  “Pity oh my God! Deliver me!” the Hon., Eddy, breathed, but the hour of deliverance it seemed was not just yet; for at that instant the Hon. Mrs Chilleywater, the “literary” wife of the first attaché, thrust her head in at the door.

  “How are you?” she asked. “I thought perhaps I might find Harold…”

  “He’s with Sir Somebody.”

  “Such mysteries!” Lady Something said.

  “This betrothal of Princess Elsie’s is simply wearing him out,” Mrs Chilleywater declared, sweeping the room with half-closed, expressionless eyes.