She succeeded in depressing the fossils on both sides of her, but they smiled at each other, indulgent to the feminine weakness of so amiable and devoted a mother.
CHAPTER IX
A CELEBRITY AT HOME
Miss Luscombe lived with her mother in a species of tank, or rather in a flat that gave that impression because it was in the basement. It was dark, and such glimpses as they had of people passing on the pavement were extremely odd; it seemed a procession of legs and skirts, like something in a pantomime or a cinematograph.
The Luscombes lived, as it were, beneath the surface; but that did not prevent their being very much dans le mouvement, and coming up with great frequency to the surface to breathe. And when one had once walked down the steps and found one's way into the tank, it was an extremely pleasant one, and quite artistic. It seemed original, too. There was something almost freakish in being answered by the parlourmaid (who was suitably like a fish in manner and profile), "Miss Luscombe is at home, and will you please step downstairs?" when one had rung the bell on the ground floor. And Miss Luscombe's ringing laugh with its three soprano notes and upward cadence always greeted one charmingly and cordially, and one always liked her; one couldn't help it. Her great fault was that she was never alone. She existed in an atmosphere of teaparties and 'afternoons'; like the Lotus-Eaters, she lived in 'that land where it was always afternoon'.
For an obscure person she led a singularly public life. In her existence there seemed no secrets, no shadows, no contrasts, and no domesticity. One could never imagine her except in what she regarded as full dress, nor without, by her side, a perpetual bamboo table with three little shelves in it, in which were distributed small cut pieces of very yellow cake with very black currants, sandwiches, made of rather warm thin bread and butter, pink and white cocoanut biscuits, and constant relays of strong dark tea made in a drab china teapot. On crowded afternoons—in fact, every other Thursday—little coffee cups containing lumpy iced coffee were also handed round. When they had music there were lemonade, mustard and cress sandwiches, and a buffet.
Even when Miss Luscombe was entirely alone she did not seem so. She had got into the habit of talking always as if she were surrounded by crowds, and said so much about the celebrities who ought to have turned up that one felt almost as depressed as if they had really been there. Sometimes they came, for there was no one like Miss Luscombe for firmness. Also, she was never offended and was hospitality itself, and she had a way of greeting one that was a reward for all one's trouble—it seemed much more trouble than it really was, somehow, just to step down into the tank. And she was so charming no one could help being flattered till the next visitor arrived, when she was even more charming.
After the Fancy Ball she had got hold of Valentia, who came to see her on one of those Thursdays that she had pointed out as peculiarly her own—one of my Thursdays. She really believed that for any one else to receive on that day was a kind of infringement of copyright.