CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE




OF KITTY WILLIAMS, HER LOVES PASTORAL, PAIDOPARTHENICAL, AND EXTRATERMINUMUNIVERSITATIDUOMILLERADIODEMAGNAESANCTAEMARIAECCLESISTICAL.





   ``Xanthous as golden sunset were you, Kitty, from the curled hair to the flushed feet that lay like curled rose-petals, tiny in my hand. I quiver now, the glow of you yet radiant across the chill abyss of twenty times twelve moons.'' 'Twas thus that Roger wrote, as his trick is, to people who are not there -- and then, after a phrase or two, he will break off, and sacrifice to Memory, when Imagination happens to be busy elsewhere, and actuality gone out for a walk.


   Kitty was flushed from crown to heel; it was a tawny gold of passion that flooded her. There was none of that dreadful milkmaid rosiness in her; here skin was pale, but it glowed like old ivory warmed through by blood itself. There was a curious fieriness in the hair and in the nails, as well as in the skin; yet 'twas so subtle a matter that it was rather felt than seen. She was graceful as a tiger-cub, and lithe, and hot; yet she had all the awkwardness of a young she-goat; for her vitality tumbled over itself, fulvous as a burn in spate. Ay! she was muscular, nor spare nor plump; tall, not too tall; but what caught Sir Roger Bloxam was her temperament. There was the lass for him -- the true religous type. For her the good Cardinal never became tedious; never could he labour a point too fully, ejaculate too often or too long. Her dear little sisters, Connie and Annie, were full of him; brave Signor Coglio and gay Don Cojone counted them, you may believe it. Does it not remind you of Watteau, or of Corot, those scenes pastoral in that most fortunate corner wood on the road to Bishop's Stortford that lies just beyond the two miles from Great Saint Mary's, where ends the empery of proctor and vice-Chancellor and Esquire Bedell. All May term ye can revel it there, lasses and lads; there's grass and moss, and many a wild flower, all soft for the foot, or whatever ye dance withal. Nunc est bibendum, nunc pede libero Pulsanda tellus. But Kitty had Nijinsky's spring, even when her clinometer equation was cot 90ø. 'Twas in the early days of Dunlop; and Sir Roger was wont to say that his racing Humber had them, but Kitty never did. So there in the woodland they played many a pageant: the mystery of St. George, the Comedy of Pan, the Morality of the Wild Beast, the Argument of the Flood, a thousand merry and joyous rites of Saturn and Flora, of Dionysus and of Paphian Aphrodite, of her that reigns in Panormus, of him that guards great Lampsacus in his reverberating splendour. 'Twas wonder Cardinal Mentula took not Clergyman's Sore Throat, and Kitty Housemaid's knee. Gay scholar she, in every mood (??) and tense crissare: cevere, too, although another conjugation. As for brave Coglio and gay Cojone, they were involved in theological discussion anent the Kinesis. This was before the love of Porphyria Poppoea for Hippolytus, else there had been division of interest in the little world of Sir Roger Bloxam. Eheu fugaces! Termini Maiae! The May week ended; Sir Roger ruffles it to Norway, flies back for one night to his sweet wench of Wales, then off he goes to Russia. I'll tell you of his love for Mathilde Doriac, when I feel in the mood.