He began to tread his way to the sitting-room with a curious flicking movement of the feet.
The Countess followed him. The servants had cleared the table of the supper dishes and the room had been left with so serene a composure about it that it was hard to believe that it was but a short while ago in this same room that Irma had disgraced herself.
Prunesquallor flung wide the door of the sitting-room for the Countess to pass through. He flung it with a spectacular abandon: it seemed to imply that if the door broke, or the hinges snapped, or a picture was jerked off the wall, what of it? This was his house; he could do what he liked with it. If he chose to jeopardize his belongings, that was his affair. This was an occasion when such meagre considerations would only enter the minds of the vulgar.
The Countess advanced down the centre of the room and then stopped. She stared about her abstractedly - at the long lemon-yellow curtain, the carved furniture, the deep green rug, the silver, the ceramics, the pale grey-and-white stripes of the wallpaper. Perhaps her mind reverted to her own candle-smelling, bird-filled, half-lit chaos of a bedroom, but there was no expression on her face.
'Are... all.... your... rooms... like... this...?' she muttered. She had just seated herself in a chair.
'Well, let me see,' said Prunesquallor. 'No, not exactly, your Ladyship... not 'exactly'.'
'I... suppose... they're... spotless. Is... that it... eh?'
'I believe they are; yes, yes, I quite believe they are. Not that I see more than five or six of them during the course of a year; but what with the servants flitting here and there with dusters and brooms, and clanking their buckets and wringing things out - and what with my sister Irma flitting after them to see that the right things are wrung and the wrung things are right, I have no doubt that we are all but sterilized to extinction: no tartar on the banisters: not a microbe left to live its life in peace.'
'I see,' said the Countess. It was extraordinary how damning those two words sounded. 'But I have come to talk to you.'
For a moment she stared about her ruminatively. The cats, with not a whisker moving, were everywhere in the room. The mantelpiece was heraldic with them. The table was a solid block of whiteness. The couch was a snowdrift. The carpet was sewn with eyes.
Her ladyship's head, which always seemed far bigger than any human head had a right to be, was turned away from the doctor and down a little, so that her powerful throat was tautened: yet ample along the near side. Her profile was nearly hidden by her cheek. Her hair was built up, for the most part, into a series of red nests and for the rest smouldered as it fell in snakelike coils to her shoulders, where it all but hissed.
The doctor twirled about on his narrow feet and flung open a silkwood cabinet door with a grandiose flourish, bringing his long white hands together beneath his chin and tossing a mop of grey hair from his forehead. He flashed his brilliant teeth at the Countess (who was still presenting him with her shoulder and about an eighth of her face), and then with eyebrows raised- 'Your Ladyship,' he said, 'that you should decide to visit me, and to discuss some subject with me, is an honour. But first what will you drink?'
The doctor in flinging open the door of his cabinet had revealed as rare and delicately chosen a group of wines as he had ever selected from his cellar.
The Countess moved her great head through the air.
'A jug of goat's milk, Prunesquallor, if you please,' she said.
What there was in the doctor that loved beauty, selectivity, delicacy and excellence - and there was a good deal in him that responded to these abstractions - shrank up like the horn of a snail and all but died. But his hand, which was poised in the air and was half-way to the trapped sunlight of a long-lost vineyard, merely fluttered to and fro as though it was conducting some gnomic orchestra, while he turned about, apparently in full control of himself. He bowed, and his teeth flashed. Then he rang the bell, and when a face appeared at the door - 'Have we a goat?' he said. 'Come, come, my man - yes or no. Have we, or haven't we, a goat?'
The man was positive that they had no such thing.
'Then you will find one, if you please. You will find one immediately. It is wanted. That will do.'
The Countess had seated herself. Her feet were planted apart and her heavy freckled arms were along the sides of her chair. In the silence that followed even Prunesquallor could think of nothing to say. The stillness was eventually broken by the voice of the Countess.
'Why do you have knives sticking in your ceiling?'
The doctor recrossed his legs and followed her impassive gaze which was fixed on the long bread-knife that suddenly appeared to fill the room. A knife in the fender, on a pillow, or under a chair is one thing, but a knife surrounded by the blank white wasteland of a ceiling has no shred of covering - is as naked and blatant as a pig in a cathedral.
But any subject was fruitful to the doctor. It was only a lack of material. a rare enough contingency in him, that he found appalling.
'That knife, your ladyship,' he said, giving the implement a glance of the deepest respect. 'bread-knife though it be, has a history. A history, madam! It has indeed.'
He turned his eyes to his guest. She waited impassively.
'Humble, unromantic, ill-proportioned, crude as it looks, yet it means much to me. Indeed, madam, it is so, and I am no sentimentalist. And why? you will be asking yourself. Why? Let me tell you all.'
He clasped his hands together and raised his narrow and elegant shoulders. 'It was with that knife, your ladyship, that I performed my first successful operation. I was among mountains. Huge tufted things. Full of character; but no charm. I was alone with my faithful mule. We were lost. A meteor flew overhead. What use was that to us? No use at all. It merely irritated us. For a moment it showed a track through the fever-dripping ferns. It was obviously the wrong one. It would only have taken us back to a morass we had just spent half a day struggling out of. What a sentence! What a vile sentence, your Ladyship, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha! Where was I? Ah, yes! Plunged in darkness. Miles from anywhere. What happened next? The strangest thing. Prodding my mule forward with my walking-cane - I was riding the brute at the time - it suddenly gave a cry like a child and began to collapse under me. As it subsided it turned its huge hairy head and what little light there was showed me its eyes were positively imploring me to free it from some agony or other. Now agony is an agonizing thing to happen to anyone, your Ladyship, but to locate the seat of the agony in a mule in the darkness of a mountainous and fever-dripping night is - er... not easy (Lytotis), ha, ha, ha! But 'do' something I must. It was already upon its side in the darkness - the great thing. I had leapt from its collapsing spine and at once my faculties began to do their damndest. The brute's eyes, still fixed on mine, were like lamps that were running out of oil. I put a couple of questions to myself - pertinent ones, I felt at the time - and still do; and the first was: IS the agony spiritual or physical? If the former, the darkness wouldn't matter, but the treatment would be tricky. If the latter, the darkness would be helclass="underline" but the problem was in my province - or very nearly. I plumped for the latter, and more by good fortune or that curious sixth sense one has when alone with a mule, among tufted mountains, I found almost at once it to have been a happy guess: for directly I had decided to work on a carnal basis I got hold of the mule's head, heaved it up, and swivelled it to such an angle that by the glow of its eyes I was able to illumine - faintly, of course, but to illumine, none the less - with a dull glow, the 'rest' of its body. At once I was rewarded. It was a pure case of "foreign body". Coiled - I couldn't tell you how many times - round the beast's hind leg, was a python! Even at that ghastly and critical moment I could see what a beautiful thing it was. Far more beautiful than my old brute of a mule. But did it enter my head that 1 should transfer my allegiance to the reptile? No. After all, there is such a thing as loyalty as well as beauty. Besides, I hate walking, and the python would have taken some riding, your Ladyship: the very saddling would tax a man's patience. And besides...'