Chambers Robert William
The Laughing Girl

XXI
SUS SCROFA

For two exasperating weeks, now, the Schwindlewald pass had remained hermetically sealed with snow, utterly isolating the valley. It is true that a Swiss airplane had appeared overhead and had dropped several tons of bread which we did not require, and a message couched in hysterical language reminding us that God would protect us while several score of sweating Swiss dug us out.

Personally I didn't care except for the highly objectionable colony of boches with whom I was obliged to share an imprisonment which otherwise would never have bored me.

But the royal circus was a dreadful visitation – kings, queen, lesser fry, and Bolsheviki became almost unendurable, even when, during the first week of our captivity, they flocked by themselves and conspired to their hearts' content.

Had this condition endured, the situation might have been borne with a certain philosophy. But the inevitable, of course, happened: one week of exclusive gregariousness was enough for these people: they began to bore one another.

It showed first, characteristically, at table. Tino and spouse, always engaged in continual bickering to the vast discomfort of everybody, now had it out in star-chamber proceedings; and the King, badly battered but jaunty, appeared at table with one eye partly closed and a mouth so swollen that he could not comfortably manipulate a cigarette. He explained that he had bumped his head in the dark. But it was perfectly understood who had bumped it.

King Ferdinand became moody, and his cunning, furtive features often bore a white, scared expression. He developed, too, a morbid mania for a most depressing line of conversation – celebrated assassinations being his theme, – and he ransacked the history of all times in search of examples, Eddin Bey slyly assisting him.

Sluggish livers and piggish feeding probably accounted for the sullen lethargy of Von Dungheim and Bummelzug. Their ever latent and brutal tempers blazed at absurd trifles, involving usually the bad manners and lack of respect shown them by the Bolsheviki, who chattered back at them like enraged monkeys, terrifying the Princess Pudelstoff who had never forgotten her "dream."

Admiral Lauterlaus, whose personal habits were always impossible, now spent most of his time bullying the wretched Secretary Gizzler or, with a telescope such as chamois-hunters carry, squatted on the veranda steps and swept the Bec de l'Empereur for "gamps," and heaven knows what else.

Only the Countess Manntrapp and Eddin Bey appeared to retain their good humor. The Turk, a handsome fellow of distinguished manners and gay address, evidently possessed a lively eye for pulchritude. He lost no time at all in paying his sly court to my servants, beginning with Thusis, progressing to Clelia, and ending with Josephine Vannis in the kitchen: and he accepted defeat with such cheerful and humorous alacrity that they all forgave him, I think, and his perfectly frank suggestions that they return to Adrianople with him and honor him by becoming the nucleus for a zenana.

He found, however, a pretty bird of his own vivacious and volatile temperament in the exceedingly bored Countess Manntrapp. And they were often together and apparently having a jolly flirtation, being cleverly aware of each other's character and entertaining no delusions.

Except for these two at table and on the veranda, and except for the companionship of Smith, and now and then an opportunity for a few cautious words with Thusis, those days would have been insupportable for me. A hungry hun is bad enough; an ill-tempered one is worse; but a bored boche! – imagine a penful of them with time heavy on their hoofs!

The old story – "What's time to a hawg!" – has no significance among the Sus scrofa or the "Bosch Vark." Bored, the embers of that dull, slumbering rage glow hotter; the sulky silence is broken by grumbling, then by quarrels; the blind, senseless instinct to brutalize and rend obsesses. Small wonder the boche desires a place in the sun where his herds can spread out from the constricted and common wallow!

Tino had again appeared at luncheon with the other eye done in thunderous tints of purple, taupe, and an exquisite mauve. Parallel scratches adorned his nose; some of his mustache was missing. But I must admit he took it jauntily enough, and his bland explanation – something about tripping over a rock in the woods – was accepted by all and believed by none.

The queen, still somewhat pasty and pinched from the effects of this ritual in camera, ate haughtily, disdainful of what anybody might really think, and calm in her conviction that the Hohenzollern is responsible to Gott alone for whatever a Hohenzollern may choose to do.

That she had done plenty to Tino was painfully visible: but he was in a jocose and waggish humor, and his barrack-room quips and jests were plainer than usual. In fact, they became so coarse that even the Admiral bristled his beard and eyebrows, sniffing lack of respect for himself in the loud-mouthed levity of the King.

And I was getting madder and madder, Thusis and Clelia being present to wait on table as usual, and I was on the point of making a sharp observation to King Tino, when a sudden burst of applause from the other end of the table checked me. The Countess Manntrapp was speaking. She continued:

"This enforced imprisonment is becoming exceedingly dull for everybody. Why not divert ourselves? Has anybody any suggestions to offer?"

"A mountain party," rumbled Admiral Lauterlaus. "I, in my time, a famous hunter of 'gamps' have been."

"We don't wish to break our necks to divert ourselves," sneered the queen.

"A fishing party!" exclaimed Von Dungheim. "If there is a good big net we can all help draw it and clean out every trout in the stream!"

"Droly," expostulated Tino, "you have such wholesale ideas! Our host might possibly object, you know."

At the very idea of anybody objecting to the destructive wishes of a Prussian officer, General Count von Dungheim glared at me.

"Why not give a baby-party?" inquired Smith, blandly.

"A – a baby-party!" repeated Baron Bummelzug vacantly, in English; "what perhaps iss it a baby-party?"

Thusis, serving me, bent over and whispered in my ear: "Not the sort of baby-parties they gave in Belgium; there are no babies." And she moved serenely to serve the queen, her beautiful face placid and inscrutable.

The Princess Pudelstoff began to clap her pudgy hands excitedly:

"A baby-party! A baby-party! That'll be fun! That'll be great! And we'll have a feed and a spiel – "

"Ach wass!" shouted the Admiral exasperated. "Tell us once what it iss a baby-party, und stop your noises yet!"

But the excited Princess had become uncontrollable, and she began to hammer on the table with her fat fists, shouting:

"A feed and a spiel! For God's sake somebody start something in this hellofa hole!"

Amid her clamor and the ominous roaring of the infuriated Admiral, I tinkled my goblet with my fork and presently secured comparative silence for Smith.

In a few pleasant phrases he explained to them the simple intricacies of the American baby-party.

"I'll come!" cried the Countess Manntrapp, delighted.

"I also!" echoed Eddin Bey.

Tino was visibly enchanted at the prospect, and he clapped King Ferdinand on his elephantine back exultingly:

"We'll go as twins!" he cried. "This is most agreeable to me! Eh, Sophy? I'm half dead for a bit of a frolic! Everybody must come. Nobody is to be excused. Desperate cases require desperate remedies. Ennui is what is killing us; diversion is what we need!"

He was pounding the breath out of King Ferdinand who began to cough and dodge and blink wildly at everybody out of his little wild-pig's eyes, when I stood up giving the signal.

"The party," announced Smith, "is for to-night! There will be games, a dance, and a supper. All are politely invited!"

"My God," said Secretary Gizzler to me, rubbing his bony hands together, "to what foolishness does noble company resort in order that ennui may be escaped."

The Princess Pudelstoff overheard him:

"Crape-hanger!" she said, giving him a vigorous dig in the ribs which almost disarticulated his entire and bony frame.

The majority, however, trooping out to the veranda where they could teutonically enjoy their coffee and cognac "im grünen," appeared desirous of engaging in the proposed diversion.

Even the queen deigned to inquire of me whether there was, in the house, material with which to construct a pair of ruffled panties for her husband.

Only the Bolsheviki remained aloof, chattering and mouthing together and waving their soiled fingers at each other and, presumably, at the bourgeois world in general.

Later, Smith came into my room whither I had retired to resume my series of poems to Thusis, – a rather melancholy occupation yet oddly comforting, too.

"Why the devil," said I, "did you suggest such a party?"

"I don't know. It occurred to me. I'm rather tired of their wrangling."

"But a baby-party!"

He laughed: "You see how they take to the idea. Anything to dissipate this sullen, ugly atmosphere. It gets on my nerves."

"Are you going?"

"Certainly."

"In costume?"

"Of course."

"Good heavens, Smith! I didn't think you had it in you to frivol."

"Why – I don't know," he said, smilingly. "I'm intensely happy."

I eyed him gloomily: "Yes," said I, "no doubt you are – winning the affections of the girl you wish to marry. By the way, has she been civil enough to tell you who she really is?"

"No," he replied cheerfully.

"Do you mean to tell me you are engaged to marry a girl who refuses to disclose her identity?"

"Exactly."

"How the devil is she going to marry you? Under an assumed name?"

"That is for Clelia to decide."

"That," said I, "is a most remarkable view to take of the situation."

"Why? I am in love. I dare believe she cares for me. It makes no difference to me who Clelia may be. That she is Clelia is enough – enough that she will be my wife. And when a man stands for the first time inside the gates of happiness with the girl he loves – what an ass he'd be to bother her about details!"

This was a totally new and unexpected Smith, to me. I never dreamed it was in him.

"Don't you agree with me?" he inquired.

I nodded doubtfully.

"Wouldn't you accept Thusis as she chose to offer herself?" he insisted.

A pang shot through me:

"Good Lord, yes!" I said. "I'd marry her if she were a beggar or a convict or the least creature of her sex. I'd never ask a question; I'd take thankfully and happily what she offered. You are right, Smith – wonderfully right. If you love, love! If you don't, worry!"

"Quite right," he said; "it's either love or worry; the genuine article doesn't admit of both. If you really love you are satisfied; if you worry it isn't love – it's merely something resembling it. Love is specific; there are sub-species and varieties, none the real thing. The acid test of love is contentment; baser metal dissolves in trouble, and the sediment is worry. I – "

"Oh, shut up!" I burst out, nervously; "you're too darned eloquent on the subject. Besides," I added with a perfectly new and instinctive suspicion, "you're so confoundedly contented with yourself that I believe you have begun to guess the identity of Clelia, and that it pleases you enormously!"

He reddened.

"Have you any idea who she is?" I insisted.

"A vague idea."

"And that vague idea pleases you?"

"It does," he said with a shy sort of grin.

That was too much for me. "Go to Guinea!" said I, resuming my pen and paper and paying him no further attention.

Clelia came for orders, sweet and serious in her garb of service. Again I laid aside my poem to Thusis.

"I am glad," said I, camouflaging my melancholy with a sprightly allure, "that you have renounced kidnaping kings and have decided to kidnap Mr. Smith instead."

She didn't seem to think it was funny. The newly engaged lack humor.

"Josephine," she said with dignity, "suggests this supper-card." And she handed me the written sheet.

"Fine!" said I. "Stuff 'em till they're unconscious and we'll have peace."

At that she laughed.

"Josephine desires to know what time the party is to begin," she said.

"It begins with dinner, Clelia. They all come in costume. After dinner they play games. Supper at midnight. Then they dance – God help them."

"The Bolsheviki, too?"

"That's another breed of cat," said I. "I haven't the faintest idea what they intend to do. All I know is that they're not coming to the party. So give them a table by themselves in their rooms half an hour before we dine. Otherwise those chattering apes are likely to spoil the party."

She agreed with me.

After she had departed I began again on my poem called "Nobody Home":

 
"She who, risen from the sea, —
Body fashioned from its foam, —
Once appeared to favor me,
Now has left me all alone: —
When I call she's not at home;
Silent are the Temple closes
Where her priestess used to roam
Smiling at me, crowned with roses
Underneath the Temple's dome;
So I stand outside alone.
From the dead fire on her altar
Now I turn away and falter:
Aphrodite's not at home.
 
 
Goddess born of sun and sea,
Goddess born of sea and sun,
Blue-eyed Venus pity me,
I would wed my Dearest One: —
She denies; and I'm undone!" —
 

Just here I found myself in difficulties: the verse called for two more words to rhyme with "sun," and the available ones already unused included such words as bun, dun, fun, gun, hun, nun, pun, run, shun, ton, and won – at least these were all I could think of – none among them available for classical purposes.

Much disturbed I sat consulting my Rhyming Dictionary and smoking a cigarette without relish, when a terrific screaming from the Princess Pudelstoff's apartment brought me to my feet and out into the corridor.

The Princess stood in the hallway wringing her hands and almost dancing with rage and fright while, from their doorway across the hall, Puppsky and Wildkatz jabbered at her in apparent fury.

"What the dickens is all this!" I demanded angrily.

"They've got cooties!" she screamed. "I suspected it! I knew it! All Bolsheviki have 'em! Don't let 'em near me! Lock 'em up and turn the gas on! Make 'em take baths! They don't want to, but make 'em!"

"What do you mean?" said I, feeling suddenly ill and pale.

"I mean what I say!" she cried, wringing her jeweled hands. "They've got 'em but we don't have to have 'em! We ain't in the trenches, thank God! No, nor we ain't in Rooshia where them things is family pets! I d-don't want any! I don't want any even from my own brother – "

I strode over to Puppsky and Wildkatz.

"Get into that room or I'll knock your heads off!" I whispered in an ungovernable rage.

They began to chatter at me but thought better of it and fled; and I tore the key from their door and locked it on the outside. Then I went downstairs and out to the stable where I found Raoul and gave him the key.

"You will take a couple of gallons of sheep-dip," said I, still in a cold fury, "and you will go up and fill their bathtub with it, and then you may call me."

"Oh," said Raoul, coolly comprehending, "I can souse them myself, Monsieur."

"Tell them I'll beat them to death if they stir until I permit it," I added. "Also be good enough to burn their clothing and bedding, and fumigate their rooms."

"Give yourself no anxiety, Monsieur," he said, amused.

XXII
PARTICEPS CRIMINIS

Toward the dinner hour excitement in the house became intense as the royal circus fussed and pinned and basted and struggled with its impromptu costumes.

Bells jangled to summon Thusis and Clelia; the Princess Pudelstoff was too fat to braid her own hair; the Countess Manntrapp required basting into her boy's breeches; the Queen, desiring to go as the infant Germania, had pasted tin-foil all over her high Austrian corset, but still it didn't resemble armor, nor did the oval boiler-lid furnished by Josephine Vannis particularly resemble a shield.

Otherwise a blonde wig of tow in two obese braids and a shiny fireman's helmet of 1840 which I discovered in the garret, consoled the queen. To these properties I rashly added an eel-spear; and then, remembering her quick temper, I feared for King Constantine, wondering whether, if fatally prodded, he would name me as accessory after the fact.

As for the men, they continually rang for Raoul who acted as dresser and as messenger between them and Josephine Vannis who had constructed their costumes from odd scraps and from such of their own garments as would serve.

Admiral Lauterlaus was monstrous as a sailor-boy of six; Von Bummelzug, Eddin Bey, Von Dungheim, and Secretary Gizzler were school-lads in socks, bare knees, and denim blouses. King Constantine who, it appeared, rather fancied his own legs, went as a smirking doll in a costume principally constructed out of his wife's underclothes.

But the most gruesome sight of all was Ferdinand as a youthful ballet-girl; and he most horridly resembled an elephant on his hind legs in a stick-out tulle skirt, and his enormous feet, cross-ribboned, went shuffling and flapping to and fro as he waddled about busy with powder and rouge.

Raoul laced his stays and tugged in vain to indent his bulk. It was useless, but we got him into his corsage and left him before a mirror ponderously prancing in imitation of the pony ballet, and singing la-la-la! furtively peeping the while at his own proportions with the unfeigned pleasure of perfect approval.

Really, except for the characters of these impossible individuals, the jolly noise and confusion they made with their preparations and the lively excitement that pervaded hall, corridor and stair, resembled the same sort of delightful uproar one hears at a week-end party in a big country house under similar circumstances.

The queen's bell had been jangling persistently for some minutes when, stepping from my room into the hallway to see whether anybody was answering it, I came face to face with Thusis.

Warm, and delicately flushed with her exertions, she was half vexed, half laughing now as she cast a prudent glance right and left along the corridor before slipping through the door into my room. I followed, locking the door.

"Michael," she began, "the queen says there are not enough women in the party and she insists that Clelia and I find costumes and join. I was furious – and she's making a violent row about it now, insisting, bullying, ordering Clelia about – "

"What! Ordering my servants about!" I interrupted angrily.

"Yes – your servants, Michael," dropping me an ironical curtsey which brought me back to my senses. We both laughed. And suddenly it occurred to me how adorable Thusis would be at a baby-party.

"Why not?" I exclaimed. "Why not drop hostilities for an hour and enjoy the ridiculous? Absurdity always appeals to you, anyway, Thusis," I added, "and the entire situation is so impossible that it ought to attract you!"

"It does," she admitted with that engaging and reckless little laugh I had come to know so well. "Besides, you are my host, Michael, and I am under your roof. So who your ragamuffin-bobtail guests may be does not concern me. Clelia and I are not responsible, are we?"

"Not at all," said I. "The ignominy of this royal riff-raff rests upon my shoulders. Anyway, you do not need to dance except with me," I added reassuringly.

"Eddin Bey is rather attractive," she mused, letting her glance rest on me sideways while the innocent pleasure of this discovery parted her lips in a honeyed smile.

"All right," said I shortly, "dance with him!"

"Michael – "

"Go ahead and dance with him," I repeated, stabbed by the most ignoble of emotions.

"What an absolute boy you can be," she said. "If I do this thing at all it is because the tension of months is becoming unendurable. Reaction from the tragic usually lands one on the edges of the grotesque… If you had been a girl, Michael, always sheltered, secure, living a colorless restricted life, and if you suddenly were cast upon your own feet with the accumulated responsibility of your race on your shoulders, – and if, in the very middle of your first years of liberty and opportunity you suddenly found this wonderful world flaming like hell all about you, and all its inhabitants at each other's throats, and all delight in living turned to hate and fear – and if you concluded to take your fate into your own hands and run away from authority, and, in your own way, fight the good fight for God and King and Country, – and if the strain became, for an hour, too great – wouldn't you react – perhaps to the verge of folly?"

"You bet I would, sweetness," said I, taking her lovely hands in mine.

"I was a school-girl," she said, "when – it devolved upon me, and upon Clelia, to determine our own futures… The loss of parents is a – bewildering thing… Our mania was travel and education to fit us for – for what we considered to be our rightful future positions in the world… We have been in your country, – I don't mean Chile. We know England and France – God bless them both. Then, owing deference anyway if not perhaps blind obedience to the – to a – gentleman in Italy – "

"The King," I said soberly.

"Yes, the King of Italy. We were expected to return to Rome and defer to him all questions concerning our future… And we ran away."

"Why, Thusis?"

"Because we happen to have minds of our own, Michael."

"And you immediately employed them by concocting a plot to kidnap some kings!" I said. "Oh, Thusis, you are the limit!"

"I know I am," she said naïvely. "A mind that does not range to its extremest limits is a rather dull one, isn't it?"

"It is," I admitted, laughing and crushing her hands between my own. "You are delightfully right, Thusis; you are always deliciously right. I don't know who you are except that you're the lovely and mysterious Laughing Girl. What else you may be I don't know, dearest, but you are doubtless somebody or the King of Italy wouldn't bother his clever head about you and your sister."

"He does bother, I am afraid," admitted Thusis, smiling. "I'm sorry we've been obliged to annoy him. But it couldn't be helped, because we differed, politically, with the King of Italy. And we ran away from Rome to prove to him that our conception of world-politics was right and his was wrong. And we expect him, some day, to be very grateful to us – because we really are, Clelia and I, two of his most loyal subjects."

She spoke so frankly, so earnestly, that I dared make no jest of what she said.

However, I think she saw a glimmer in my eyes, for she flushed.

"Nothing," she said, "is sacred to a Yankee. Let me go."

"Shall I tell you what is sacred to a Yankee, Thusis?" said I, retaining her hands.

"No!"

"I'll tell you all the same: liberty of mind! – liberty within law! – liberty within the frontiers of conscience."

"Then you do not deny these privileges to me?"

"They are yours, Thusis. No man can deny essential rights and liberties."

"You believe I have a right to act as my conscience dictates?"

"Absolutely."

"To run away from authority?"

"If your mind approves."

"And – and devote my life – risk it – to free my native land and restore to my sovereign what once belonged to him?"

"Naxos?"

"Yes."

I said gravely: "If, in your self-dedication to this work there be no ulterior motive; – if you undertake this unselfishly, and with a heart clean of all personal ambition – then, Thusis, I say, go on! … And I am at your service."

Twice she started to speak, and hesitated. In her clear eyes, so intently, almost painfully fixed on mine, I saw she was fiercely pondering my words. Her intense and youthful seriousness in her concentration held me fascinated. And for a little while neither one of us stirred.

And it gradually began to appear to me that what I had said to her had suddenly opened to her young and ardent eyes a totally new view of some things in the world with which she had, perhaps, believed herself thoroughly familiar.

She turned from her absorption; and now she was presented to me in profile with downcast eyes and bitten lip, and a least relaxation of her slender figure which had been so straight and rigid.

It was becoming evident that she had nothing further to say to me, – no reply to make to what I had rather ponderously propounded as an ethical axiom.

But, as responding to the restless pressure, I released her hands, she turned back and stood looking at me out of painfully perplexed eyes – eyes that lacked no courage, either, yet doubted, now, almost wistfully.

Then, not speaking, she unlocked my door and went out.

Smith knocked at the doorway communicating between our apartments, and came in at my absent-minded invitation.

"Of course you're not in this, are you, Michael?" he inquired.

"We weren't asked. Besides, there are too many men now, and the Queen wants Thusis, Clelia, and Josephine Vannis to serve dinner in costume and join the party afterward."

"Are they going to do it?" he asked, surprised and amused.

"I don't know… Tell me, Smith, whom do you suspect Thusis to be? I can see you have some theory concerning Clelia – some idea. Haven't you?"

"Yes, I have."

"Would you care to share it with me?"

"Yes. But I can't."

"Could you tell me why you can't?"

"I think I may tell you that much. The King of Italy requested me to maintain silence in the possible event of my discovering the identity of Thusis and Clelia. I am here on the King's service, with certain definite orders. I shall scrupulously observe these orders. Among these is his request concerning the identity of these two charming young girls."

"Just one thing, then. Have you discovered the identity of Thusis?"

"No."

"Of Clelia?"

He reddened. "Yes, I have," he said. "Or rather she has confirmed what I had begun to suspect."

"Clelia has told you who she is!" I exclaimed.

"She has."

"Isn't that disobedience of orders?"

"She told me before I could stop her. I never dreamed she was going to tell me. It came out – like a bolt of lightning – while I – I was – slipping over her finger that ring I used to wear – "

"She wears it!"

"Yes. She was glorious. She – "

"And she's going to marry you?"

"Yes, God bless her."

So I wrung his hand in silence and strove hard not to let any comparison of his situation and mine taint with the slightest trace of bitterness my happiness in his good fortune and my cordial recognition of it now.

Thusis was not mentioned between us. He didn't say "buck up, old chap," or "go in and win," or any insincere thing of that sort, for I felt that he believed my case to be hopeless.

Presently he returned to his room and closed the door. And I sat down at my table and produced pen and paper with a view to further poetry – my only form of relief from grief.

But rhymes evaded me; and finally I gave it up and rested my head on both hands, unhappy, unsatisfied, feeling that I was a failure, and always had been one.

After all what could such a glorious young thing as Thusis see in an interior decorator from New York? – a profession into which had minced all the lady-like young men and lisping sissies in Manhattan!

Perhaps, after all, the profession was all right, but the people who practiced it were weird and incompetent. And as for me I was perfectly aware that I had no taste, no color sense, no glimmering idea of composition.

Doubtless my artistic and financial success had been due to my utter incapacity.

I proceeded to masticate the cud of bitterness.

I had been masticating longer than I realized for the light in the room was already growing less when a knock came at my door; and I shoved my unuttered verses into the drawer and grunted out, "Come in!"

It was Thusis, transfigured, sparkling, mischievous, audacious. And she was the most beautiful thing I ever saw.

Her magnificent ruddy hair, unloosened, framed her face, its upcurled, burnished ends falling to her waist.

Otherwise she was an exquisite French doll in knee-skirts and sash and all over pale blue ribbons.

"I'm going to have a good time if I do murder to-morrow, Michael. Do you like my costume? Really? That is so sweet of you! You always are the most satisfactory of men! And you should see Clelia! She's like me only her ribbons and sash are primrose. She is really charming."

"Thusis," said I, "you and Clelia shall sit at table and Smith and I are going to turn waiters! No!" as she exclaimed in protest, "let's be logical in our grotesqueries! This little world of ours here in Schwindlewald is already absurd enough with you and Clelia waiting on table. Let's turn it completely upside down and stand it on its head."

She finally consented, forced by my gay ardour, and, I think, mischievously pleased at the prospect of protest from the Queen.

All over the house, now, I could hear snatches of loud laughter as my Teutonic guests began to gather and visit one another in their costumes. Thusis fled; and I opened the door and broke the news to Smith.

"Get into your evening duds," I added, "and announce dinner. We're all going stark mad and I'm glad of it."

So I dressed, and found him ready when I was; and we went downstairs into the large lounging room where Raoul was fitting disks into the music-box.

He laughed when we told him our intentions, and then we went into the kitchen and informed Josephine Vannis. That stately Juno condescended to smile on us. She was rather tremendously imposing as a baby with bonnet and stick-out skirts – as though somebody had decked out a masterpiece of Praxiteles.

Retiring, Smith murmured: "Only the Parthenon possesses such awe-inspiring symmetry; only the Acropolis could vie with her. Did you ever see such superb underpinning in all your life?"

Stunned by such stupendous symmetry I admitted that I never had. And we went away to announce dinner.

But it was not until the noisy company were gathered in the dining-room that the Queen perceived the two empty chairs and began to realize my intentions. And she came to me and made angry representations, refusing to be seated on the right of a servant, or, indeed, to suffer servants at all at table, and saying that if she chose to admit my waitresses to the dancing hall, it was because such privileges sometimes were graciously permitted to the peasantry who never misunderstood such condescension.