Prunesquallor knew that by the third verse the strong, tasteless soporific which had dissolved in her wine would begin to take effect. He sat on the floor at her knees and, quelling a revulsion, he patted her hand.
'Queen bee,' he said, 'look at me, if you can. Through your midnight spectacles. It shouldn't be too dreadful - for one who had fed on horrors. Now, listen...' Irma's eyes were already beginning to close.
'It goes like this, I think. I called it 'The Osseous 'Orse'.'
Come, flick the ulna juggler-wise
And twang the tibia for me!
O Osseous 'orse, the future lies
Like serum on the sea.
Green fields and buttercups no more
Regale you with delight, no, no!
The tonic tempests leap and pour
Through your white pelvis ever so.
'Are you enjoying it, Irma?' She nodded sleepily.
Come, clap your scapulae and twitch
The pale pagoda of your spine,
Removed from life's eternal itch
What need for iodine?
The Osseous 'orse sat up at once
And clanged his ribs in biblic pride.
I fear I looked at him askance
Though he had naught to hide…
At this point the doctor, having forgotten what came next, turned his eyes once more to his sister Irma; she was fast asleep. The doctor rang the bell.
'Your mistress's maid; a stretcher; and a couple of men to handle it.' (A face had appeared in the doorway.) ''And' be rapid.' The face withdrew.
When Irma had been put to bed and her lamp had been turned low and silence swam through the house, the doctor unlocked the door of his study, entered and sank back into his arm-chair. His friable-looking elbows rested upon the padded arms. His fingers were twined together into a delicate bunch, and on this bunch he supported his long and sunken jaw. After a few moments he removed his glasses and laid them on the arm of his chair. Then, with his fingers clasped together once again beneath his chin, he shut his eyes and sighed gently.
SEVEN
But he was not destined to more than a few moments of relaxation, for feet were soon to be heard outside his window. Only two of them, it was true, but there was something in the weight and deliberation of the tread that reminded him of an army moving in perfect unison, a dread and measured sound. The rain had quietened and the sound of each foot as it struck the ground was alarmingly clear.
Prunesquallor could recognize that portentous gait among a million. But in the silence of the evening his mind flew to the phantom army it awakened in his leap-frogging brain. What was there in the clockwork stepping of an upright host to contract the throat and bring, as does the thought of a sliced lemon, that sharp astringency to throat and jaw? Why do the tears begin to gather? And the heart to thud?
He had no time to ponder the matter now, so at one and the same time he tossed a mop of grey thatch from his brow and an army-on-the-march from his mind.
Reaching the door before his bell could clang the servants into redundance he opened it, and to the massive figure who was about to whack the door with her fist- 'I welcome your Ladyship,' he said. His body inclined itself a little from the hips and his teeth flashed, while he wondered what, in the name of all that was heterodox, the Countess thought she was doing in visiting her physician at this time of night. She visited nobody, by day 'or' night. That was one of the things about her. Nevertheless, here she was.
'Hold your horses.' Her voice was heavy, but not loud.
One of Doctor Prunesquallor's eyebrows shot to the top of his forehead. It was a peculiar remark to be greeted with. It might have been supposed that he was about to embrace her. The very notion appalled him.
But when she said: 'You can come in now,' not only did his other eyebrow fly up his forehead, but it set its counterpart a-tremble with the speed of its uprush.
To be told he could 'come in now' when he was already inside was weird enough; but the idea of being given permission to enter his own house by a guest was grotesque.
The slow, heavy, quiet authority in the voice made the situation even more embarrassing. She had entered his hall. 'I wish to see you,' she said, but her eyes were on the door which Prunesquallor was closing. When it had barely six inches to go before the night was locked out and the latch had clicked 'Hold!' she said, in a rather deeper tone, 'hold hard!' And then, with her big lips pursed like a child's, she gave breath to a long whistle of peculiar sweetness. A tender and forlorn note to escape from so ponderous a being.
The doctor, as he turned to her, was a picture of perplexed inquiry, though his teeth were still shining gaily. But as he turned something caught the corner of his eye. Something white. Something that moved.
Between the space left by the all-but-closed door, and very close to the ground, Doctor Prunesquallor saw a face as round as a hunter's moon, as soft as fur. And this was no wonder, for it was a face of fur, peculiarly blanched in the dim light of the hall. No sooner had the Doctor reacted to this face than another took its place, and close upon it, silent as death, came a third, a fourth, a fifth... In single file there slid into the hall, so close upon each other's tails that they might have been a continuous entity, her ladyship's white clowder.
Prunesquallor, feeling a little dizzy, watched the undulating stream flow past his feet as he stood with his hand on the doorknob. Would they never end? He had watched them for over two minutes.
He turned to the Countess. She stood in coiling froth like a lighthouse. By the dim glow of the hall lamp her red hair threw out a sullen light.
Prunesquallor was perfectly happy again. For what had irked him was not the cats, but the obscure commands of the Countess. Their meaning was now self-evident. And yet, how peculiar to have enjoined a swarm of cats to hold their horses!
The very thought of it got hold of his eyebrows again, which had lowered themselves reluctantly while he waited for his chance to close the door, and they had leapt up his forehead as though a pistol had been cracked and a prize awaited the fastest.
'We're... all... here,' said the Countess. Prunesquallor turned to the door and saw that the stream had, indeed, run dry. He shut the door.
'Well, well, well, well!' he trilled, standing on his toes and fluttering his hands, as though he were about to take off like a fairy. 'How 'delightful'! how very, very 'delightful' that you should call, your Ladyship. God bless my ascetic soul! if you haven't whipped the old hermit out of his introspection. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! And here, as you put it, you all are. There's no doubt about that, is there? What a party we will have! 'Mews'ical chairs and all! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha.'
The almost unbearable pitch of his laughter created an absolute stillness in the hall. The cats, sitting bolt upright, had their round eyes fixed on him.
'But I keep you waiting!' he cried. 'Waiting in my outer rooms! Are you a mere valetudinarian, my dear Ladyship, or some prolific mendicant whose bewitched offspring she hopes I can return to human shape? Of course you are not, by all that's evident, so why should you be left in this cold - this damp - this obnoxious hell of a hall, with the rain pouring off you in positive waterfalls... and so... and so, 'if' you'll allow me to lead on... ' - he waved a long, thin, delicate arm with as white a hand on the end of it, which fluttered like a silk flag - '... I'll throw a few doors open, Light a lamp or two, flick away a few crumbs in readiness for... What wine shall it be?'