Her requirements took a little time to satisfy but the atlas, the magnifying glass and an older atlas by which to check, were finally produced and Amy, nice woman that she was, Lady Matilda thought, was extremely helpful.
'Yes, here it is. It still seems to be called Monbrьgge or something like that. It's either in the Tyrol or Bavaria . Everything seems to have changed places and got different names –'
Lady Matilda looked round her bedroom in the Gasthaus. It was well appointed. It was very expensive. It combined comfort with an appearance of such austerity as might lead the inhabitant to identify herself with an ascetic course of exercises, diet and possibly painful courses of massage. Its furnishings, she thought, were interesting. They provided for all tastes. There was a large framed Gothic script on the wall. Lady Matilda's German was not as good as it had been in her girlhood, but it dealt, she thought, with the golden and enchanting idea of a return to youth. Not only did youth hold the future in its hands but the old were being nicely indoctrinated to feel that they themselves might know such a second golden flowering.
Here there were gentle aids so as to enable one to pursue the doctrine of any of the many paths in life which attracted different classes of people. (Always presuming that they had enough money to pay for it.) Beside the bed was a Gideon Bible, such as Lady Matilda when travelling in the United States had often found by her bedside. She picked it up approvingly, opened it at random and put a finger on one particular verse. She read it, nodded her head contentedly and made a brief note of it on a booklet that was lying on her bed table. She had often done so in the course of her life — it was her way of obtaining guidance at short notice.
I have been young and now am old,
yet have I not seen the righteous forsaken.
She made further researches of the room. Handy, but not too apparent, was an Almanach de Gotha, modestly situated on a lower shelf of the bedside table. A most invaluable book for those who wished to familiarize themselves with the higher strata of society reaching back for several hundred years and which were still being observed and noted and checked by those of aristocratic lineage or interested in the same. It will come in handy, she thought, I can read up a good deal on that.
Near the desk, by the stove of period porcelain, were paperback editions of certain preachings and tenets by the modern prophets of the world. Those who were now or had recently been crying in the wilderness were here to be studied and approved by young followers with haloes of hair, strange raiment, and earnest hearts. Marcuse, Guevara, Levi-Strauss, Fanon.
In case she was going to hold any conversations with golden youth she had better read up a little on that also.
At that moment there was a timid tap on the door. It opened slightly and the face of the faithful Amy came round the corner. Amy, Lady Matilda thought suddenly, would look exactly like a sheep when she was ten years older. A nice, faithful, kindly sheep. At the moment, Lady Matilda was glad to think, she looked still like a very agreeable plump lamb with nice curls of hair, thoughtful and kindly eyes, and able to give kindly baa's rather than to bleat.
'I do hope you slept well.'
'Yes, my dear, I did, excellently. Have you got that thing?'
Amy always knew what she meant. She handed it to her employer.
'Ah, my diet sheet. I see.' Lady Matilda perused it, then said, 'How incredibly unattractive! What's this water like one's supposed to drink?'
'It doesn't taste very nice.'
'No, I don't suppose it would. Come back in half an hour. I got a letter I want you to post.'
Moving aside her breakfast tray, she moved over to the desk. She thought for a few minutes and then wrote her letter. 'It ought to do the trick,' she murmured.
'I beg your pardon. Lady Matilda, what did you say?'
'I was writing to the old friend I mentioned to you.'
'The one you said you haven't seen for about fifty or sixty years?'
Lady Matilda nodded.
'I do hope –' Amy was apologetic. 'I mean — I — it's such a long time. People have short memories nowadays. I do hope that she'll remember all about you and everything.'
'Of course she will,' said Lady Matilda. 'The people you don't forget are the people you knew when you were about ten to twenty. They stick in your mind for ever. You remember what hats they wore, and the way they laughed, and you remember their faults and their good qualities and everything about them. Now anyone I met twenty years ago, shall we say, I simply can't remember who they are. Not if they're mentioned to me, and not if I saw them even. Oh yes, she'll remember about me. And all about Lausanne . You get that letter posted. I've got to do a little homework.'
She picked up the Almanach de Gotha and returned to bed, where she made a serious study of such items as might come in useful. Some family relationships and various other kinships of the useful kind. Who had married whom, who had lived where, what misfortunes had overtaken others. Not that the person whom she had in mind was herself likely to be found in the Almanach de Gotha. But she lived in a part of the world, had come there deliberately to live in a Schloss belonging to originally noble ancestors, and she had absorbed the local respect and adulation for those above all of good breeding. To good birth, even impaired with poverty, she herself, as Lady Matilda well knew, had no claim whatever. She had had to make do with money. Oceans of money. Incredible amounts of money.
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton had no doubt at all that she herself, the daughter of an eighth Duke, would be bidden to some kind of festivity. Coffee, perhaps, and delicious creamy cakes.
Lady Matilda Cleckheaton made her entrance into one of the grand reception rooms of the Schloss. It had been a fifteen-mile drive. She had dressed herself with some care, though somewhat to the disapproval of Amy. Amy seldom offered advice, but she was so anxious for her patronesse to succeed in whatever she was undertaking that she ventured this time on a moderate remonstrance.
'You don't think your red dress is really a little worn, if you know what I mean. I mean just beneath the arm — well, there are two or three very shiny patches –'
'I know, my dear, I know. It is a shabby dress, but nevertheless a Patou model. It is old but it was enormously expensive. I am not trying to look rich or extravagant. I am an impoverished member of an aristocratic family. Anyone of under fifty, no doubt, would despise me. But my hostess is living and has lived for some years in a part of the world where the rich will be kept waiting for their meal while the hostess will be willing to wait for a shabby, elderly woman of impeccable descent. Family traditions are things that one does not lose easily. One absorbs them, even, when one goes to a new neighbourhood. In my trunk, by the way, you will find a feather boa.'
'Are you going to put on a feather boa?'
'Yes, I am. An ostrich feather one.'
'Oh dear, that must be years old.'
'It is, but I've kept it very carefully. You'll see, Charlotte will recognize what it is. She will think one of the best families in England was reduced to wearing her old clothes that she had kept carefully for years. And I'll wear my sealskin coat, too. That's a little worn, but such a magnificent coat in its time.'
Thus arrayed, she set forth. Amy went with her as a well-dressed though only quietly smart attendant.
Matilda Cleckheaton had been prepared for what she saw. A whale, as Stafford had told her. A wallowing whale, a hideous old woman sitting in a room surrounded with pictures worth a fortune. Rising with some difficulty from a throne-like chair which could have figured on a stage representing the palace of some magnificent prince from any age from the Middle Ages down.
'Matilda!'
' Charlotte !'
'Ah! After all these years. How strange it seems!'
They exchanged words of greeting and pleasure, talking partly in German and partly in English. Lady
