But enough and to spare of all this egotism. I must get back to my story.
XLIII
The fact is, Miss M.’s connection with good society was rapidly drawing to a close. My smoky little candle had long since begun to gutter and sputter and enwreathe itself in a winding sheet. It went out at last in a blaze of light. For once in his life Percy had conceived a notion of which his aunt cordially approved—my Birthday Banquet. Heart and soul, all my follies and misdemeanours forgotten, she entered into this new device to give her Snippety, her Moppet, her Pusskinetta, her little Binbin, her Fairy, her Petite Sereine, an exquisite setting.
Invitations were sent out to the elect on inch-square cards embossed with my family crest and motto—a giant, head and shoulders, brandishing a club, and Non Omnis Moriar.1 She not only postponed her annual departure from town, but, as did the great man in the parable, compelled her friends to come in. She exhausted her ingenuity on the menu. The great, on this occasion, were to feast on the tiny. A copy of it lies beside me now, though, unfortunately, I did not examine it when I sat down to dinner. Last, but not least, Percy’s pastry-cooks, Messrs Buszard, designed a seven-tiered birthday-cake, surrounded on its lowermost plateau by one-and-twenty sugar-figures, about a quarter life-size, and each of them bearing on high a silver torch.
Their names were inscribed on their sugar pediments: Lady Morgan (the Windsor Fairy); Queen Elizabeth’s Mrs. Tomysen; the Empress Julia’s Andromeda; the great little, little great Miss Billing of Tilbury; Anne Rouse and poor Ann Colling; the Sicilian Mlle. Caroline Crachami (who went to the anatomists); Nannette Stocker (thirty-three inches, thirty-three lbs. avoirdupois at thirty-three); the blessed and tender Anastasia Boruwlaski; Gaganini; the gentle Miss Selby of Bath; Alethea (the Guernsey Nymph); Madame Teresa (the Corsican Fairy); Mrs. Jeykll Skinner; the appalling Nono; Mrs. Anne Gibson (née Shepherd); and the rest.
It was a joke, none the worse, maybe, for being old; and Peter the Great must have turned in his grave in envy of Mrs. Monnerie’s ingenuity.
It may scarcely be believed, but I had become so hardened to such little waggeries that under the genial eye of Mrs. Monnerie I made the circuit of this cake with a smile; and even scolded her for omitting the redoubtable Mrs. Bellamy with her life-size family of nine. I criticized the images too, as not to be compared, even as sugar, with the alabaster William of Windsor and Blanche, in the Tower.
The truth is, when real revulsions of body and soul come, they come in a gush, all at once. Fleming, on the Night, was actually putting the last touches to my coiffure when suddenly, with a wicked curse, I turned from the great glass and announced my decision. Tiny tortoiseshell comb uplifted, she stood in the clear lustrousness looking in at my reflection, queer thoughts darting about in her eyes. At first she supposed it was but another fit of petulance. Then her hatred and disgust of me all but overcame her.
She quietly argued. I insisted. But she was mortally afraid of Mrs. Monnerie, and rather than deliver my message to her, sought out Susan. Poor Susan. She, too, was afraid: and it was her face rather than her love that won me over at last. Then she had to rush away to make what excuse she could for my unpunctuality. It thus came about that Mrs. Monnerie’s guests had already sat down to table, and were one and all being extremely amused by some story she was entertaining them with, when Marvell threw open the great mahogany doors for me, and I made my solitary entry.
In primrose silk, à la Pompadour, a wreath of tight-shut pimpernels in my hair—it is just possible that Mrs. Monnerie suspected I had chosen to come in late like this merely for effect. But that would have been an even feebler exhibition of vanity than I was capable of. All her guests were known to me, even though only one of them was of my choosing; for Mrs. Bowater was in the Argentine, Sir Walter in France, Miss Fenne on her deathbed, Mr. Pellew in retreat, and Mr. Crimble in his grave. Fanny was my all.
She was sitting four or five chairs away from me on my left, between Percy (who had on his right hand a beautiful long-faced girl in turquoise green) and Captain Valentine. Further down, and on the other side of the table, sat Lady Maudlen—a seal-like lady, who, according to Fanny, disapproved of me on religious grounds—while I was on Mrs. Monnerie’s left, and next to Lord Chiltern. Alas, even my old friend the “Black Pudding” was too far distant to do more than twinkle “Courage!” at me, when our eyes met.
Recollections of that disastrous evening are clouded. So evil with dreams my nights had been that I hardly knew whether I was awake or asleep. But I recall the long perspective of the table, the beards, the busts, the pearls, the camellias and gardenias, the cornucopias, and that glistening Folly Castle, my Birthday Cake. Marvell is behind me, and Adam Waggett is ducketing in the luminous distance. The clatter of many tongues beats
