The Flower Beneath the Foot

by Ronald Firbank

  “It’s a pity you can’t pull the strings for us,” Lady Something ventured: “I was saying so lately to Sir Somebody.”

  “I wish I could, dear Lady Something: I wouldn’t mind wagering I’d soon bring it off!”

  “Have you fixed up Grace Gillstow yet, Mrs Chilleywater?” Lord Tiredstock’s third son asked.

  “She shall marry Baldwin: but not before she has been seduced first by Barnaby…”

  “What are you talking about?” the Hon. ‘Eddy’ queried.

  “Of Mrs Chilleywater’s forthcoming book.”

  “Why should Barnaby get Grace —? Why not Tex!”

  But Mrs Chilleywater refused to enter into reasons.

  “She is looking for cowslips,” she said, “and oh I’ve such a wonderful description of a field of cowslips… They make quite a darling setting for a powerful scene of lust.”

  “So Grace loses her virtue!..!” Lord Tiredstock’s third son exclaimed.

  “Even so she’s far too good for Baldwin: after the underhand shabby way he behaved to Charlotte, Kate, and Millicent!”

  “Life is like that, dear,” the Ambassadress blandly observed.

  “It ought not to be, Lady Something!” Mrs Chilleywater looked vindictive.

  Née Victoria Gellybore Frinton, and the sole heir of Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms, Kent, Mrs Harold Chilleywater, since her marriage “for Love,” had developed a disconcerting taste for fiction—a taste that was regarded at the Foreign Office with disapproving forbearance… So far her efforts (written under her maiden name in full with her husband’s as well appended) had been confined to lurid studies of low life (of which she knew nothing at all), but the Hon. Harold Chilleywater had been gently warned, that if he was not to remain at Kairoulla until the close of his career, the style of his wife must really grow less virile.

  “I agree with V. G. F.,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness murmured fondling meditatively his “Charlie Chaplin” moustache—“Life ought not to be.”

  “It’s a mistake to bother oneself over matters that can’t be remedied.”

  Mrs Chilleywater acquiesced: “You’re right indeed, Lady Something,” she said, “but I’m so sensitive… I seem to know when I talk to a man, the colour of his braces…! I say to myself:, Yours are violet…’, Yours are blue…’ ‘ His are red…’”

  “I’ll bet you anything, Mrs Chilleywater, you like, you won’t guess what mine are,” the Hon. Lionel Limpness said.

  “I should say, Mr Limpness, that they were multi-hued— like Jacob’s,” Mrs Chilleywater replied, as she withdrew her head.

  The Ambassadress prepared to follow:

  “Come, Mr Limpness,” she exclaimed, “we’ve exhausted the poor fellow quite enough—and besides, here comes his dinner.”

  “Open the champagne, Mario,” his master commanded immediately they were alone.

  “‘Small, beer’ is all the butler would allow, sir.”

  “Damn the b… butler!”

  “What he calls a demi-brune, sir. In Naples we say spumenti!”

  “To — with it.”

  “Non è tanto amarro, sir; it’s more sharp, as you’d say, than bitter…”

  “…!!!!!!”

  And language unmonastic far into the night reigned supreme.

  Standing beneath the portraits of King Geo and Queen Glory, Lady Something, behind a large sheaf of mauve malmaisons, was growing stiff. Already, for the most part, the guests were welcomed, and it was only the Archduchess now, who as usual was late, that kept their Excellencies lingering at the head of the stairs. Her Majesty Queen Thleeanouhee of the Land of Dates had just arrived, but seemed loath to leave the stairs, while her hostess, whom she addressed affectionately as her dear gazelle, remained upon them—“Let us go away by and by, my dear gazelle,” she exclaimed with a primitive smile, “and remove our corsets and talk.”

  “Unhappily Pisuerga is not the East, ma’am!” Lady Something replied.

  “Never mind, my dear; we will introduce this innovation…”

  But the arrival of the Archduchess Elizabeth spared the Ambassadress from what might too easily have become an “incident.”

  In the beautiful chandeliered apartments several young couples were pirouetting to the inevitable waltz from the Blue Banana, but most of the guests seemed to prefer exploring the conservatories and Winter Garden, or elbowing their way into a little room where a new portrait of Princess Elsie had been discreetly placed…

  “One feels, of course, there was a sitting —; but still, it isn’t like her!” those that had seen her said.

  “The artist has attributed to her at least the pale spent eyes of her father!” the Duchess of Cavaljos remarked to her niece, who was standing quite silent against a rose-red curtain.

  Mademoiselle de Nazianzi made no reply. Attaching not the faintest importance to the rumours afloat, still, she could not but feel, at times, a little heartshaken…

  The duchess plied her fan.

  “She will become florid in time like her mother!” she cheerfully predicted turning away just as the Archduchess approached herself to inspect the painting.

  Swathed in furs, on account of a troublesome cough contracted paddling, she seemed nevertheless in charming spirits.

  “Have you been to my new Pipi?” she asked.

  “Not yet—”

  “Oh but you must!”

  “I’m told it’s even finer than the one at the Railway Station. Ah, from musing too long on that Hellenic frieze, how often I’ve missed my train!” the Duchess of Cavaljos murmured, with a little fat deep laugh.

  “I have a heavenly idea for another—Yellow tiles with Thistles…”

  “Your Royal Highness never repeats herself!”

  “Nothing will satisfy me this time,” the Archduchess declared, “but files of state-documents in all the dear little boxes: In secret, secrets!” she added archly fixing her eyes on the assembly.

  “It’s positively pitiable,” the Duchess of Cavaljos commented, “how the Countess of Tolga is losing her good-looks: She has the air to-night of a tired business-woman!”

  “She looks at other women as though she would inhale them,” the Archduchess answered, throwing back her furs with a gesture of superb grace, in order to allow her robe to be admired by a lady who was scribbling busily away behind a door, with little nervous lifts of the head. For noblesse oblige the correspondent of the Jaw-Waw, the illustrious Eva Schnerb, was not to be denied.

  “Among the many balls of a brilliant season,” the diarist, with her accustomed fluency, wrote: “none surpassed that which I witnessed at the English Embassy last night. I sat in a corner of the Winter Garden and literally gorged myself upon the display of dazzling uniforms and jewels. The Ambassadress Lady Something was looking really regal in dawn-white draperies, holding a bouquet of the new mauve malmaisons (which are all the vogue just now), but no one, I thought, looked better than the Archduchess, etc… Helping the hostess, I noticed Mrs Harold Chilleywater, in an ‘aesthetic’ gown of flame-hued Kanitra silk edged with Armousky fur (to possess a dear woolly Armousk as a pet, is considered chic this season), while over her brain—an intellectual caprice, I wonder?—I saw a tinsel bow… She is a daughter of the fortieth Lord Seafairer of Sevenelms-Park (so famous for its treasures) and is very artistic and literary having written several novels of English life under her maiden name of Victoria Gellybore-Frinton:—She inherits considerable cleverness also from her Mother. Dancing indefatigably (as she always does!) Miss Ivy Something seemed to be thoroughly enjoying her Father’s ball: I hear on excellent authority there is no foundation in the story of her engagement to a certain young Englishman, said to be bound ere long for the ruins of Sodom and Gomorrah. Among the late arrivals were the Duke and Duchess of Varna—she all in golden tissues: they came together with Madame Wetme, who is one of the new hostesses of the season you know, and they say has bought the Duke of Varna’s palatial town-house in Samaden Square”

  “There,” the Archd
uchess murmured, drawing her wraps about her with a sneeze: “she has said quite enough now I think about my toilette!”

  But the illustrious Eva was in unusual fettle, and only closed her notebook towards Dawn, when the nib of her pen caught fire.

  VI

  AND suddenly the Angel of Death passed by and the brilliant season waned. In the Archduchess’ bedchamber, watching the antics of priests and doctors, he sat there unmoved. Propped high, by many bolsters, in a vast blue canopied bed, the Archduchess lay staring laconically at a diminutive model of a flight of steps, leading to what appeared to be intended, perhaps, as a hall of Attent, off which opened quite a lot of little doors, most of which bore the word: “Engaged.” A doll, with a ruddy face, in charge, smiled indolently as she sat feigning knitting, suggesting vague “fleshly thoughts,” whenever he looked up, in the Archduchess’ spiritual adviser.

  And the mind of the sinking woman, as her thoughts wandered, appeared to be tinged with “matter” too: “I recollect the first time I heard the Blue-Danube played!” she broke out: “it was at Schonnbrunn—schönes Schonnbrunn—My cousin Ludwig of Bavaria came— I wore— the Emperor said—”

  “If your royal highness would swallow this!” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock started forward with a glass.

  “Trinquons, trinquons et vive l’amour! Schneider sang that ——”

  “If your royal highness—”

  “Ah my dear Vienna. Where’s Teddywegs?”

  At the Archduchess’ little escritoire at the foot of the bed, her Dreaminess was making ready a few private telegrams, breaking without undue harshness the melancholy news: “Poor Lizzie has ceased articulating,” she did not think she could improve on it, and indeed had written it several times in her most temperamental hand, when the Archduchess had started suddenly cackling about Vienna.

  “Ssssh, Lizzie—I never can write when people talk!”

  “I want Teddywegs.”

  “The Countess Yvorra took him for a run round the courtyard.”

  “I think I must undertake a convenience next for dogs… It is disgraceful they have not got one already, poor creatures,” the Archduchess crooned accepting the proffered glass.

  “Yes, yes, dear,” the Queen exclaimed rising and crossing to the window.

  The bitter odour of the oleander flowers outside oppressed the breathless air and filled the room as with a faint funereal music. So still a day. Tending the drooping sun-saturated flowers, a gardener with long ivory arms alone seemed animate.

  “Pull up your skirt. Marquise! Pull it up… It’s dragging, a little, in the water.”

  “Judica me, Deus,” in imperious tones, the priest by the bedside besought: “et discerne causam meum de gente non sancta. Parce, Domine! Parce populo tuo!— ne in aeternum irascaris nobis.”

  “A whale! A whale!”

  “Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus speravit anima mea in Domino.”

  “Elsie?” A look of wondrous happiness overspread the Archduchess’ face— She was wading— wading again among the irises and rushes; wading, her hand in Princess Elsie’s hand, through a glittering golden sea, towards the wide horizon.

  The plangent cry of a peacock rose disquietingly from the garden.

  “Tm nothing but nerves, doctor,” her Dreaminess lamented, fidgeting with the crucifix that dangled at her neck upon a chain. Ultra feminine, she disliked that another—even in extremis— should absorb all the limelight.

  “A change of scene, ma’am, would be probably beneficial,” Dr Cuncliffe Babcock replied, eyeing askance the Countess of Tolga who unobtrusively entered:

  “The couturiers attend your pleasure, ma’am,” in impassive undertones she said: “to fit your mourning,”

  “Oh tell them the Queen is too tired to try on now,” her Dreaminess answered repairing in agitation towards a glass.

  “They would come here, ma’am,” the Countess said, pointing persuasively to the little anteroom of the Archduchess, where two nuns of the Flaming-Hood were industriously telling their beads.

  “—I don’t know why, but this glass refuses to flatter me!”

  “Benedicamus Domino! Ostende nobis Domine misericordiam tuam. Et salutare tuum da nobis!”

  “Well just a toque,” the Queen sadly assented.

  “Indulgentiam absolutionem et remissionem peccatorum nostrorum tribuat nobis omnipotens et misericors Dominus.”

  “Guess who is at the Ritz, ma’am, this week!” the Countess demurely murmured.

  “Who is at the Ritz this week, I can’t,” the Queen replied.

  “Nobody!”

  “Why how so?”

  “The Ambassadress of England, it seems has alarmed the world away. I gather they mean to prosecute!”

  The Archduchess sighed.

  “I want mauve sweet-peas,” she listlessly said.

  “Her spirit soars; her thoughts are in the Champs-Elysées,” the Countess exclaimed, withdrawing noiselessly to warn the milliners.

  “Or in the garden,” the Queen reflected, returning to the window. And she was standing there, her eyes fixed half wistfully upon the long ivory arms of the kneeling gardener, when the Angel of Death (who had sat unmoved throughout the day) arose.

  It was decided to fix a period of mourning of fourteen days for the late Archduchess.

  VII

  SWANS and sunlight. A little fishing boat with coral sails. A lake all grey and green. Beatitude intense. Consummate calm. It was nice to be at the Summer-Palace after all.

  “The way the air will catch your cheek and make a rose of it,” the Countess of Tolga breathed. And as none of the company heeded her: “How sweetly the air takes one’s cheek,” she sighed again.

  The post-prandial exercise of the members of the Court through the palace grounds was almost an institution.

  The first half of the mourning prescribed, had as yet not run its course, but the tongues of the Queen’s ladies had long since made an end of it.

  “I hate dancing with a fat man,” Mademoiselle de Nazianzi was saying: “for if you dance at all near him, his stomach hits you, while if you pull away, you catch either the scent of his breath or the hair of his beard.”

  “But, you innocent baby, all big men haven’t beards,” Countess Medusa Rappa remarked.

  “Haven’t they? Never mind. Everything’s so beautiful,” the young girl inconsequently exclaimed: “Look at that Thistle! and that Bee! O, you darling!”

  “Ah, how one’s face unbends in gardens!” the Countess of Tolga said, regarding the scene before her, with a faraway pensive glance.

  Along the lake’s shore, sheltered from the winds by a ring of wooded hills, shewed many a proud retreat, mirroring its marble terraces to the waveless waters of the lake.

  Beneath a twin-peaked crag (known locally as the White Mountain whose slopes frequently would burst forth into patches of garlic that from the valley resembled snow) nestled the Villa Clement, rented each season by the Ambassador of the Court of St James, while half-screened by conifers and rhododendrons, and in the lake itself, was St Helena—the home and place of retirement of a “fallen “minister of the Crown.

  Countess Medusa Rappa cocked her sunshade; “Whose boat is that,” she asked, “with the azure oars?”

  “It looks nothing but a pea-pod!” the Countess of Tolga declared.

  “It belongs to a darling, with delicious lips and eyes like brown chestnuts,” Mademoiselle de Lambèse informed.

  “Ah!… Ah!… Ah!… Ah!…” her colleagues crooned.

  “A sailor?”

  The Queen’s maid nodded: “There’s a partner, though,” she added, “A blue-eyed, gashed-cheeked angel…”

  Mademoiselle de Nazianzi looked away.

  “I love the lake with the white wandering ships,” she sentimentally stated, descrying in the distance the prince.

  It was usually towards this time, the hour of the siesta, that the lovers would meet and taste their happiness, but, to-day, it seemed ordained otherwise.

&n
bsp; Before the heir apparent had determined whether to advance or retreat, his father and mother were upon him, attended by two dowagers newly lunched.

  “The song of the pilgrim women, how it haunts me,” one of the dowagers was holding forth: “I could never tire of that beautiful, beautiful music! Never tire of it. Ne-ver…”

  “Ta, ta, ta, ta,” the Queen vociferated girlishly, slipping her arm affectionately through that of her son’s.

  “How spent you look, my boy… Those eyes…”

  His Weariness grimaced.

  “They’ve just been rubbing in Elsie!” he said.

  “Who?”

  “‘ Vaseline, and, Nanny-goat,!”

  “Well?”

  “Nothing will shake me.”

  “What are your objections?”

  “She’s so extraordinarily uninteresting!”

  “Oh Yousef!” his mother faltered: “Do you wish to break my heart?”

  “We had always thought you too lacking in initiative,” King William said (tucking a few long hairs back into his nose) “to marry against our wishes.”

  “They say she walks too wonderfully,” the Queen courageously pursued.

  “What? Well?”

  “Yes.”

  “Thank God for it.”

  “And can handle a horse as few others can!”

  Prince Yousef closed his eyes.

  He had not forgotten how as an undergraduate in England he had come upon the princess once while out with the hounds. And it was only by a consummate effort that he was able to efface the sinister impression she had made—her lank hair falling beneath a man’s felt-hat, her habit skirt torn to tatters, her full cheeks smeared in blood; the blood, so it seemed, of her “first “fox.

  A shudder seized him.

  “No, nothing can possibly shake me,” he murmured again.

  With a detached, cold face, the Queen paused to inhale a rose.

  (Oh you gardens of Palaces…! How often have you witnessed agitation and disappointment? You smooth, adorned paths…! How often have you known the extremes of care…?)