She Painted Her Face by Dornford Yates

Author:Dornford Yates
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: She Painted Her Face
ISBN: 9780755127221
Publisher: House of Stratus
Published: 2012-12-28T05:00:00+00:00

7: Love Upon the Terrace

The festival held that evening in Tracery’s Medici Room was one of such intimate splendour of matter and mind that, though I subscribed to it, when first I awoke the next morning, I wondered if it was not a dream.

I sat between two Old Masters – on the left of the Duchess of Whelp and the right of the Countess of Brief. Each glowed with the sterling quality of a forgotten age. Lost arts made up their being. Sheer beauty lived with kindness: sheer brilliance beamed with goodwill. And each admiring the other was thus exalted. Their natural royalty was duly served. Powdered footmen in scarlet livery stood behind every chair: gold plate winked upon the table: the choicest fare was perfectly presented.

And there I will leave an event which neither Herrick nor I will ever forget, for that evening we two hobnobbed with the stuff that queens were made of in olden days.

That Herrick found instant favour, I need not say. Indeed, Old Harry and he were as good as a play, for, as I have said before, his address was beyond compare, and I think that each of them whetted the other’s wit.

When dinner was done, Herrick and I were left with orders to ‘join the ladies’ in ten minutes’ time: and when that had gone, we were led to a glorious salon, whose sixteenth-century tapestries filled the eye. These were so very lovely and were so cunningly lighted and cleverly hung that you had the rare illusion that you were not confined by walls, but were standing on some high place, commanding a living landscape of which the depth and detail bewildered sight. (I afterwards learned that they were beyond all price; that they had been woven in Flanders of threads of gold and silver, as well as of silk and wool; and that they had been designed by a master, to please a king.)

Though the evening was warm, a fire of logs had been lighted upon the hearth: before this the Duchess was resting upon a mighty chaise longue, and Elizabeth was standing beside a jamb of the fireplace, one of her beautiful hands on the chiselled stone, regarding the leisurely flicker that hovered above a hillock of rose-grey ash.

As the door closed behind us —

“I have ordered your car,” said Old Harry, “for half-past ten. That gives us just half an hour, which should be enough. I’ve one or two things to say, and I’ll say them first.

“I think we all know where we are and where we shall be next Tuesday at five o’clock. On no account try to conceal that we have already met. That way madness lies. We have all met here tonight – for the very first time. Let no one be ill at ease. Except for Richard Exon, I don’t think anyone will.”

“Oh, madam,” protested Herrick.

“Don’t interrupt,” said Old Harry. “Besides, you’d be at ease with a gaggle of Elders discussing the wrath to come.”

I very near laughed and Elizabeth covered her mouth.

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