'And what's the matter with them?' asked Stafford Nye, smiling slightly.
'Too many earnest women. Makes them lack gaiety, you know.'
'Oh well, no political party goes in for gaiety much nowadays.'
'Just so,' said Aunt Matilda. 'And then of course that's where you go wrong. You want to cheer things up. You want to have a little gaiety and so you make a little gentle fun at people and of course they don't like it. They say 'Ce n'est pas un garзon serieux,' like that man in the fishing.'
Sir Stafford Nye laughed. His eyes were wandering round the room.
'What are you looking at?' said Lady Matilda.
'Your pictures.'
'You don't want me to sell them, do you? Everyone seems to be selling their pictures nowadays. Old Lord Grampion, you know. He sold his Turners and he sold some of his ancestors as well. And Geoffrey Gouldman. All those lovely horses of his. By Stubbs, weren't they? Something like that. Really, the prices one gets!
'But I don't want to sell my pictures. I like them. Most of them in this room have a real interest because they're ancestors. I know nobody wants ancestors nowadays but then I'm old-fashioned. I like ancestors. My own ancestors, I mean. What are you looking at? Pamela?'
'Yes, I was. I was thinking about her the other day.'
'Astonishing how alike you two are. I mean, it's not even as though you were twins, though they say that different sex twins, even if they are twins, can't be identical, if you know what I mean.'
'So Shakespeare must have made rather a mistake over Viola and Sebastian.'
'Well, ordinary brothers and sisters can be alike, can't they? You and Pamela were always very alike — to look at, I mean.'
'Not in any other way? Don't you think we were alike in character?'
'No, not in the least. That's the funny part of it. But of course you and Pamela have what I call the family face. Not a Nye face. I mean the Baldwen-White face.'
Sir Stafford Nye never had been able to beat his great-aunt when the subject was genealogical.
She went on: 'I always thought that you and Pamela had taken after Alexa.'
'Who was Alexa?'
'You're great-great and many more great's grandmother. An hungarian countess, or a baroness, I'm not quite sure. Your great-great-great-grandfather fell in love with her when he was at the embassy in Vienna. Yes, hungarian. That's what she was. Very sporting. They are, hungarians. She went on huntings, great rider.'
'Is there a portrait of her in the gallery?'
'On the first floor. A little on the right of the top of the stairs.'
'I'll have a look when I turn in.'
'Why don't you go and look now, so we can talk about her later?'
'If you want to, I'll go now,' he smiled at her.
He left the room and went up the stairs. Yes, she was sharp, old Mathilda. This was the face. This was the face remembered and had seen. A pretty girl brought home by his great-great-great-grandfather, if that were enough great's…
She must be about twenty. She came here and was very gay, rode splendorously, danced magnificiently, and men fell in love with her. But she had been faithful, at least that was what everybody said. She went with her husband to many foreign embassies and always came back with him. They had children, three of four, it seemed. Through one of these children her face, her nose, the curve of her neck, went down to him and his sister Pamela.
'Did you find her?' Lady Matilda asked when her nephew came back to her. 'An interesting face, isn't it?'
'Yes, and very pretty too.'
'It's better to be interesting than pretty. But you weren't in Hungary nor in Austria, were you? You wouldn't find someone looking like her in Malaya. She wouldn't be there sitting at a table, taking notes or proofreading speeches, or anything like that. She was a wild creature by conviction. Had adorable manners and was well-bred, but she was wild. Wild as a bird. She didn't know the meaning of the word danger.'
'How do you know so much about her?'
'Oh, I haven't known her in person. I was born a few years after her death. But even so, I always took an interest in her. She was bold, you know? Very bold. There were many strange stories about her, about the things she got involved.'
'And how did her husband react to that?'
'I guess he worried too much,' said Lady Matilda. 'But, they say he adored her. Talking of which, Staffy, did you ever read 'The prisoner of Zenda'?'
''The prisoner of Zenda'? Seems familiar…'
'Of course it's familiar. It's a book.'
'Yes, yes, I know it's a book.'
'You wouldn't know it, I guess. It's not from your time. But when I was a girl… it was the first touch of romance we knew. There weren't pop singers nor The Beatles. Only romantic novels. We weren't allowed to read them in the morning. Only in the afternoon.'
'What extraordinary rules,' said Sir Stafford. 'Why was it wrong to read novels in the morning?'
'Well, in the morning, you know, the girls were supposed to do something useful. You know, arranging the flowers or polishing the silver portrait frames. All these things that young girls were supposed to do. Studying a bit with the governess… all these things. In the afternoon we wee allowed to read stories and novels, and 'The prisoner of Zenda' was usually the first that we got hold of.'
'A very pretty story, very respectable, wan't it? I seem to remember something about it. Perhaps I did read it. All very pure, I suppose. Not too sexy?'
'Certainly not. We didn't have sexy books. We had romance. The Prisoner of Zenda was very romantic. One fell in love, usually, with the hero, Rudolf Rassendyll.'
'I seem to remember that name too. Bit florid, isn't it?'
'Well, I still think it was rather a romantic name. Twelve years old, I must have been. It made me think of it, you know, your going up and looking at that portrait. Princess Flavia,' she added.
Stafford Nye was smiling at her.
'You look young and pink and very sentimental,' he said.
'Well, that's just what I'm feeling. Girls can't feel like that nowadays. They're swooning with love, or they're fainting when somebody plays the guitar or sings in a very loud voice, but they're not sentimental. But I wasn't in love with Rudolf Rassendyll. I was in love with the other one — his double.'
'Did he have a double?'
'Oh yes, a king. The King of Ruritania.'
'Ah, of course, now I know. That's where the word Ruritania comes from: one is always throwing it about. Yes, I think I did read it, you know. The King of Ruritania, and Rudolf Rassendyll was stand-in for the King and fell in love with Princess Flavia to whom the King was officially betrothed.'
Lady Matilda gave some more deep sighs.
'Yes. Rudolf Rassendyll had inherited his red hair from an ancestress, and somewhere in the book he bows to the portrait and says something about the — I can't remember the name now — the Countess Amelia or something like that from whom he inherited his looks and all the rest of it. So I looked at you and thought of you as Rudolf Rassendyll and you went out and looked at a picture of someone who ought have been an ancestress of yours and saw whether she reminded you of someone. So you're mixed up in a romance of some kind, are you?'
'What on earth makes you say that?'
'Well, there aren't so many patterns in life, you know. One recognizes patterns as they come up. It's like a book on knitting. About sixty-five different fancy stitches. Well, you know a particular stitch when you see it. Your stitch, at the moment, I should say, is the romantic adventure.' She sighed. 'But you won't tell me about it, I suppose.'
'There's nothing to tell,' said Sir Stafford.
