The elderly lady was governess emerita of the Lanes. They had grown so attached to her that she had stayed on as “odd woman”—arranging the flowers, superintending the servants, going up to London at the sales to shop for the family. They called her “Jollypot,” because “jolly” was the adjective with which she qualified anything beautiful, kindly, picturesque, or quaint; “pot” was added as the essence of the æsthetic aspect of “jolliness,” typified in the activities of Arts and Crafts and Artificers’ Guilds—indeed she always, and never more than to-day, looked as if she had been dressed by one of these institutions; on her head was a hat of purple and green straw with a Paisley scarf twisted round the crown, round her shoulders was another scarf—handwoven, gray and purple—on her torso was an orange jumper into which were inserted squares of canvas wool-work done by a Belgian refugee with leanings to Cubism; and beads,—enormous, painted wooden ones. Once Harry Sinclair (the father of Anna and Jasper) had exploded a silence with the question, “Why is Jollypot like the Old Lady of Leeds? Because she’s ... er ... er ... INFESTED WITH BEADS!!!”
While on this subject let me add that it was characteristic of her relationship with her former pupils that they called her Jollypot to her face, and that she had never taken the trouble to find out why; that the great adventure of her life had been her conversion to Catholicism—a Catholicism, however, which retained a tinge of Anglicanism: to wit, a great deal of vague enthusiasm for “dear, lovely St. Francis of Assisi,” combined with a neglect of the crude and truly Catholic cult of that most potent of “medicine-men”—St. Anthony of Padua; and that taste for Dante studies so characteristic of middle-aged Anglican spinsters. Indeed, she was remarkably indiscriminating in her tastes, and loved equally Shakespeare, Dante, Mrs. Browning, the Psalms, Anne Thackeray, and W. J. Locke; but from time to time she surprised one by the poetry and truth of her observations.
The Doña, holding in mid-air a finger biscuit soaked in chocolate, smiled and blinked a welcome; but her eyes flashed to her brain the irritated message, “If only the jumper were purple, or even green! And those beads—does she sleep in them?”
Partly from a Latin woman’s exaggerated sense of the ridiculous possibilities in raiment, partly from an Andalusian Schaden-freude, ever since she had known Jollypot she had tried to persuade her that a devout Catholic should dress mainly in black; but Jollypot would flush with indignation and cry, “Oh! Mrs. Lane, how can you? When God has given us all these jolly colours! Just look at your own garden! I remember a dear old lady when I was a girl who used to say she didn’t see why we should say grace for food because that was a necessity and God was bound to give it to us, but that we should say it for the luxuries—flowers and colours—that it was so good and fatherly of Him to think of.” Which silly, fanciful Protestantism would put the Doña into a frenzy of irritation.
But Jollypot—secure in her knowledge of her own consideration of the Sesame and Lilies of the field—had, as usual, a pleasant sense of being prettily dressed, and, quite unaware that she offended, she sat down to her tea with a little sigh of innocent pleasure. Concha, after having hugged the unresponsive Doña, and affectionately inquired after Teresa’s headache, wearily examined the contents of the tea-table, and having taken a small piece of bread and butter, muttered that she wished Rendall would cut it thinner.
“And what have you been doing this afternoon?” asked the Doña.
“At the Moore’s,” answered Concha, a little sulkily.
“But how very kind of you! That poor Mrs. Moore must have been quite touched ... did I hear that Eben was home on leave?” and the Doña scrutinised her with lazy amusement; Teresa, also, looked at her.
“Oh, yes, he’s back,” said Concha, lightly, but blushing crimson all the same. She loathed being teased. “How incredibly Victorian and Spanish it all is!” she thought.
She yawned, then poured some tea and cream into a saucer, added two lumps of sugar, and put it down on the lawn for the refreshment of ’Snice, the dachshund.