Harriet Hume: A London Fantasy by Rebecca West

Author:Rebecca West [West, Rebecca]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2010-12-20T23:00:00+00:00

IV

RAMPOUND had done far worse than this. Had he not! He had obtained the vile George Filiaepandarus a baronetcy to help him dupe the simpletons of England with prospectuses promising much gold to those who would lay out their money in such enterprises as the London Hills Exploitation Company, Ltd. (which had for objects, to send to Covent Garden the primroses of Primrose Hill and the lavender of Lavender Hill, and to market to cooks and chemists the saffron from the crocuses on Saffron Hill, with as side issue the felling of the tall redwoods of Westbourne Grove.) “For services rendered during the Great War,” the patent of nobility had run, and there had been this and that of questioning in the House concerning the right gloss of that phrase; and it had been stated (and the Speaker, whom we all know to be impartial, had quashed all ribaldry) that what England owed Sir George was per contra that foresight which had made him, through the early years of the War, push on in despite of Dora’s building regulation with those orchid-houses which were later mistaken by the Zeppelin crews for the Crystal Palace. But “Forty thousand pounds,” the lobby had said, “Forty thousand pounds,” Fleet Street had said, “Forty thousand pounds,” the City had said, and (it seemed likely) “Forty thousand pounds,” God had said, who had seen the affair from beginning to end. Oh, Rampound had done far worse than this, and he was still the admired, the popular Rampound, fawned on by the great and small.

Fawned on by greater than gave their good fellowship to Arnold Condorex. There was an ill-atmosphere about this drawing-room to-night. It was in part an emanation of the room itself, the damnable room. Odd it was to think that this house had ever soothed him by its beauty, instead of irritating him as the fair setting of an indifferent play. It looked very grim in the half-light he had made when, that he might think over Scorchington’s proposition in not too much brightness, he had switched out all the lamps save the alabaster urn on the chimney piece. The fluted pilasters, their grooves black with shadow, looked like claw-nails drawn down the walls, and the gold convoluted capitols might have been the claws that traced them. The painted lunettes on the panels and ceiling were black oily smears from which shone only the whiter details of a universe lackadaisically falsified, swan necks bent by angelic meekness to re-entrant curves, profiles so tense with nobility that the breath must rush forth from the nostrils like the shriek of a police whistle, forearms like fins with languishment. As always, when there was not full light in the room, a shadow fell in one corner of the gold damask settee in the recessed alcove and took the shape of a woman, lying on the cushions in the attitude of Madame Récamier in her picture. Oh, he would like to sell the place and go. But

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