And yet by yet a Body and a Body went under, and she lost both God and man. So deviled of Appetite that no Food was her winning Portion. God passed, and Man passed and Maternity went by as but the Dust under the Heel of wan marching, and she saw herself becoming thin Batter and no-why’s Bread, and she leaned at her Casement and wept most bitterly. She climbed down the Stairs, by Stair made her moan, and into the Streets went by Lamp-post and Pillar, singing and sobbing: “Aupreède ma blonde!” by Haberdasher and Butcher. At every Gate and Post she lamented and hummed, her Hands upon the Copings, passing and bewailing, and went yet further and heard the Lark singing, and listened until it was the Heron crying by the Sedges, and the nightfall’s true rising nightly nightingale. The Birds were off the Earth, and the Sky covered with Claws going South, and she sat where the Wheat sprang not and was now a Cud in a Winter Mouth, and she saw that her Years were mounting, and she returned homeward, and Godless and fearless, made Fear and a God of the yellow Hair of Dame Musset, wandering about the grassless Sods of her Garden, leaning aver and anon upon the Sun-dial without its Hours, or bending over the Fountain that never poured forth that gentle Spray for which it and she were pining, or just plain walking, her Hands well wrapped in the Folds of her dust-colored man-saver, or, as it was originally registered and patent applied for, Winter-woolens for-the-Woman-over-forty.
Did then Daisy Downpour, for so she might as well be called as any other, let down her mouse-colored-insufficient-hemi-spherical-quantity of Hair, thrilled loose a Shoulder, thus exposing to the gaze of Dame Musset (had she looked) the machine-hooked glory of a Pair of near pink Undergarments, most luringly loosened in the Weave at full good four Points. “If this,” said Daisy, “does not secure me God, then a linen Rose tossed at my Love’s hour of Need, should bring her to my Surface!”
And casting it, Dame Musset went around and around. Under Foot it went, and down into the Earth, and there descended, Dame Musset still pacing and thinking of a Girl’s Eye from which she had skimmed the Milk of Love, and whether she should again promenade the Impasse des deux Anges, and trust to the Bed-airing instincts of the said Girl, to bring her in Mob-cap, and all June of Bosom to the utter third-storey Window left, from which point of Vantage Dame Musset had first seen her winking a House-wife’s Eye at the little Scullion in the Pantry Window opposite, from whom the Bed-airer had removed her Wiles and Ways for a short yet thrifty Glance in the direction of Musset, — or should she not? For Flank on Flank, Jew on Christian, had bedded throughout her gentle Forefathers to the tune of many an aristocratic Artery athwart many a crude Civilian, to give her the uncertainty now in the Hooves of her Feet, one Heathen and one Gentlewoman, and to make her yet Angle before she stopped to think and to withdraw the Bait from thick Waters and from thin, pleased in the one vein with the Housemaid and in the other sighing for Quality.
Nay, it was beneath her! As was also the prying, overlooking Eye of Daisy Downpour, for she was known in the Arrondissement as Corset maker, and a woman so much of the People that she had clung to them, Palm on Palm, down to the very first, who had decided to plant Orchids in his Bean-rows, and thus started all the strain of difference between a Lady and no Lady at all.
“Alas and alas!” sighed Dame Musset, “to think that blue Blood should set so many out of reach! Yet were I one of the direct Peerage, could I not confer the Order of the Garter upon her, thus bring her, like a Calf on a Rope, slowly balking to my Bed, through the Land unknown, over the hedges of How-So, slipping and sliding past the Zone of unfit, in by a Leg at least, until incarnation by generation, the Calf becomes the Bird of Paradise, to lean all moulting Love upon my Spartan Chest, there to pluck at my heart’s Armour, until the Visor is lifted — but no!” thought she, “I get my Armoury mixed, that is another Spot!”
Still she paced. “If,” said she,” I could mould the Pot nearer to the Heart’s desire, I would have my Scullion’s Eye lie in the Head of Billings-On-Coo, with the Breasts of Haughty on the Hips of Doll, on the Leg of Moll, with the Shins of Mazie, under the Scullion’s Eye which lies in the Head of Billings-On-Coo. The Buttocks of a Girl I saw take a slip and slither one peelish day in Fall, when on her way to Devotion in the side Aisles of the Church of the St Germain des Pres, to lie on the back of the Hips of Doll, on the Leg of Moll, whose Shins are Mazie’s, all under the Eye of the Scullion, Etc., and the rowdy Parts of a scampering Jade in Pluckford Place, on the front of the Back that was a Girl seen one peelish day, all under the Scullion’s Eye, with the Breasts of Haughty on the Hips of Doll, with the Leg of Moll, whose Shins are Mazie’s, all under the Scullion’s Eye, in the Head of Billings-on-Coo. But the Hand,” she said, “must be Queen Anne’s, to smooth down the Dress with the rightful and elegant Gesture necessary to cover the Hip that was and the rowdy Part, etc., and the things that there were done! Oh monstrous Pot!” she sighed, “oh heinous Potter, oh refined, refined, refined Joke, that once smashed to bits it must go a go-going, and when once concocted must eternally be by another’s Whim! We should be able to order our Ladies as we would, and not as they come. Could any haphazard be as choice as I could pick and prefer, if this Dearing were left scattered about at Leg-counter and Head-rack? Ah, how I could choose were I not floor-walked and pounced upon at every Step!” Yet never by so much as a Feature did she choose, in her roving, one Tendon, nay not so much as a Sternum bone or a coxal of Daisy Downpour; and by so much Indifference, packed down on Scorn, became she first God, then God Almighty, then God Dumbfounding, and still later God help us, and finally God Damn to Daisy Downpour. Year on Year she leaned in her pink hook-weave Underkirtel, singing, “Auprès de ma Blonde,” and Autumn by Autumn tossed a tattered linen Rose, and age by age became more God-haunted and Demon-seeking, until Dame Musset, who was in a way an Amazon unhorsed, feared her more than she noticed her, and noticed her yet more than she liked her, and liked her not at all. “That woman,” said she to her Folly, Senorita Fly-About, “knows when I go and come, when I bed and when I arise, and all she has asked of me these ten Years is that on the Day I shall find a need of her, I shall place a Pot of Geraniums on my Sill, and she will come flying to me, a Drupe of a Juno in Flannels, to thaw me down, shall I, as I Say but hint that State by the simplest Pot of rosy Geraniums set out upon my Sill, and has turned her Eye that way so long and so tirelessly that I dread me one of these days she will fancy the Flower into growing there indeed, and for such a Catastrophe” she said, sinking into her Furs, and drawing a duvet about her, “I shall need Friends, Friends of a noble Tarnish, as flocking as Shad-roe, and all of them stout of Heart, high and sharp of Heel. All Women,” she apostrophised, “are not Women all, and I fear that, in yonder Bosom leaning upon her Casement, grows a Garden of Hope, and that with it she would crown and feather me with the Pinions of celestial Glory only to destroy me with these same Implements, for in the Mind,” said she, “of the Woman lost twice there is only one Furrow in which to grow a Seed, and much dead Matter to nourish it, and alas! in that mundane Skull, that Fontanel of Baby-lady-woman, grows one Weed, myself!”