Envious Casca (7 page)

"I beg your pardon, sir; I was about to enter," said Sturry, fixing Stephen with a quelling eye.

"What a lot you'll have to regale them with in the servants' hall, won't you?" said Stephen amiably.

"I was never one to gossip, sir, such being beneath me," replied Sturry, in a very grand and despising way.

He stalked into the room, bearing his burden. Paula, who was addressing an impassioned monologue to her elder uncle, broke off short, and rushed out; Joseph urged Valerie, and Maud, and Mottisfont to go up and change for dinner; and Nathaniel told Sturry to bring him a glass of the pale sherry.

While this family strife had been in full swing, Mathilda, in the library, had been explaining to Willoughby, as tactfully as she could, that Nathaniel was not at all likely to finance his play. He was strung up after his reading, and at first he seemed hardly to understand her. Plainly, Paula had led him to suppose that her uncle's help was a foregone conclusion. He went perfectly white when the sense of what Mathilda was saying penetrated his brain, and said in a trembling voice: "Then it's all no use!"

"I'm afraid it's no use as far as Nat is concerned," Mathilda said. "It isn't his kind of play. But he isn't the only potential backer in the world, you know."

He shook his head. "I don't know any rich people. Why won't he back it? Why shouldn't p-people like me be g-given a chance? It isn't fair! People with money - people who don't care for anything but -"

"I think you'd be far better advised to send your play to some producer in the usual way," said Mathilda, in a bracing voice calculated to check hysteria.

"They're all afraid of it!" he said. "They say it hasn't got box-office appeal. But I know - I know it's a good play! I've - I've sweated blood over it! I can't give it up like this! It means so much to me! You don't know what it means to me, Miss Clare!"

She began gently to suggest that he had it in him to write other plays, plays with the desired box-office appeal, but he interrupted her, saying violently that he would rather starve than write the sort of play she meant. Mathilda began to feel a little impatient, and was quite glad to see Paula stride into the room.

"Paula!" said Roydon despairingly, "is it true, what Miss Clare says? Is he going to refuse to put up the money?"

Paula was flushed and bright-eyed, stimulated by her quarrel with Nathaniel. She said: "I've just told him what I think of him! I told him -"

"Well, we don't want you to tell us," said Mathilda, losing patience. "You ought to have known that there wasn't a hope!"

Paula's gaze flickered to her face. "I shall get the money. I always get what I want, always! And I want this more than I've ever wanted anything in my life!"

Judging by those of Nat's remarks which I was privileged to hear -"

"Oh, that's nothing!" Paula said, tossing back her hair. "He doesn't mind having rows. We none of us do. We like rows! I shall talk to him again soon. You'll see!"

"I hope to God I shan't!" said Mathilda.

"Ah, you're so un-understanding!" Paula said. "I know him much better than you do. Of course I shall get the money! I know I shall!"

"Don't buoy yourself up with false hopes: you won't!" said Mathilda.

"I've got to get it!" Paula said, looking rapt, and tense. "I've got to!"

Roydon glanced uncertainly from her glowing face to Mathilda's discouraging one. He said in a dejected voice: "I suppose I'd better go and change. It doesn't seem much use -"

Paula said: "I'm coming too. It is of use, Willoughby! I always get my own way! Really!"

A merry Christmas! Mathilda thought, watching them go. She took a cigarette from the box on the table, and lit it, and sat down by the fire, feeling quite limp. All this emotional strain! she thought, with a wry smile. It was not her affair, of course, but the threadbare playwright, tiresome though he was, had roused her pity, and Paula had a disastrous way of dragging even mere onlookers into her quarrels. Besides, one couldn't sit back and watch this ill-starred party going to perdition. One had at least to try to save it from utter ruin.

She was forced to admit that she could not immediately perceive any way of saving it from ruin. If Paula's folly did not precipitate a crisis, Joseph's balm spreading would. There could be no stopping either of them. Paula cared only for what concerned herself; Joseph could never be convinced that his oil was not oil but vitriol. He saw himself as a peacemaker; he was probably peacemaking now, Mathilda reflected: infuriating Nat with platitudes, making bad worse, all with the best intentions.

A door opened across the wide hall; Nathaniel's voice came to Mathilda's ears. "Damn you, stop pawing me about! For two pins, I'd turn the whole lot of them out of doors, bag and baggage!"

Mathilda smiled to herself. Joseph at it again!

"Now, Nat, old fellow, you know you don't mean that! Let's talk the whole thing over quietly together!"

"I don't want to talk it over!" shouted Nathaniel. "And don't call me old fellow! You've done enough, inviting all these people to my house, and turning it into a damned bazaar! Paper-streamers! Mistletoe! I won't have it! Next you'll want to dress up as Santa Claus! I hate Christmas, do you hear me? Loathe it! abominate it!"

"Not you, Nat!" Joseph said. "You're just an old curmudgeon, and you're upset because you didn't like young Roydon's play. Well, I didn't care for it either, if you want to know, but, my dear old chap, youth must be served!"

"Not in my house!" snarled Nathaniel. "Don't come upstairs with me! I don't want you!"

Mathilda heard him stump up the four stairs which led to the first half-landing. A crash which she had no difficulty in recognising followed. Nathaniel, she deduced, had knocked over the steps.

She strolled to the door. The steps lay on the ground, -and Joseph was tenderly assisting his brother to rise from his knees.

"My dear Nat, I'm so sorry! I'm afraid it was my fault," he said remorsefully. "I'm a careless fellow! I had meant to have finished my poor little decorations before this!"

"Take them down!" ordered Nathaniel in a strangled voice. "All of them! This instant! Clumsy jackass! My lumbago!"

These dread words struck Joseph to silence. Nathaniel went upstairs, clinging to the handrail, once more a helpless cripple.

"Oh dear!" said Joseph ridiculously. "I never thought they would be in anyone's way, Nat!"

Nathaniel returned no answer, but dragged his painful way upstairs to his bedroom. Mathilda heard a door slam, and laughed.

Joseph looked round quickly. "Tilda! I thought you'd gone up! Oh dear, dear, did you see what happened? Most unfortunate!"

"I did. I knew those steps of yours would be the death of someone."

Joseph picked them up. "Well, my dear, I don't want to tell tales out of school, but Nat's a naughty old man. He deliberately knocked them over! All that fuss!"

"I could wish that you hadn't left them there." Mathilda said. "Lumbago, I feel, will be our only topic of conversation this evening."

He smiled, but shook his head. "No, no, that isn't quite fair! He has got lumbago, you know, and it is very painful. We must put our heads together, you and I, Tilda."

"Not me," said Mathilda vulgarly.

"My dear, I'm relying on you. Nat likes you, and we must smooth him down! Now, I'll just put these steps out of harm's way, and then we'll think what can be done."

"I," said Mathilda firmly, "am going upstairs to change."

Chapter Five

While Joseph bore the step-ladder away to safety in the billiard-room, Mathilda went back into the library to pick up her handbag. She had reached the top of the stairs before he overtook her, but he did overtake her, and, tucking a hand in her arm, said that he did not know what they would any of them do without her.

"No soft soap, thanks, Joe," replied Mathilda. "I'm not going to be the sacrifice."

"Sacrifice indeed! What an idea!" He lowered his voice, for they had reached the door of Nathaniel's room. "My dear, help me to save my poor party!"

"No one can save your party. You might do a bit towards it by removing all paper festoons and mistletoe from his outraged sight."

"Sh!" Joseph said, with an absurdly nervous glance towards Nathaniel's shut door. "You know Nat! That was only just his way. He doesn't really mind my decorations. I'm afraid the trouble is more difficult to deal with than that. To tell you the truth, Tilda, I wish Paula hadn't brought that young man here."

"We all wish that," said Mathilda, coming to a halt outside her own bedroom. "But don't you worry, Joe! He may have added to Nat's annoyance, but he isn't the cause of it."

He sighed. "I did so hope that Nat would have taken to Valerie!"

"You're an incurable optimist."

"I know, I know, but one had to try to ease things for poor old Stephen! I must confess I am a little bit disappointed in Valerie. I've tried to make her realise just how things are, but - well, she doesn't co-operate, does she?"

"That, Joe, is meiosis," said Mathilda dryly.

"And now there's this bother with Mottisfont," he went on, a worried frown creasing his brow.

"What's he been up to?"

"Oh, my dear, don't ask me! You know what an impractical old fool I am about business! He seems to have done something that Nat very much disapproves of, but I don't know all the ins and outs of it. I only know what Mottisfont told me, which was really nothing but hints, and very mysterious. But there! Nat's bark is always worse than his bite, and I daresay it will all blow over. What we've got to do is to think of some way of keeping Nat in a good humour. I don't think this is quite the moment for me to approach him about Mottisfont's affairs."

Joe," said Mathilda earnestly, "you can count me out in your benevolent schemes, but I'll give you a piece of advice! Don't approach Nat about anyone's affairs!"

"They all look to me, you see," he said, with one of his whimsical smiles.

She supposed that he really did see himself as a general mediator, but she was feeling tired, and this resumption of his peacemaking role exasperated her. "I haven't noticed it!" she said.

He looked hurt, but nothing could seriously impair his vision of himself. A couple of minutes later, Mathilda, turning on the taps in the bathroom they both shared, could hear him humming to himself in his dressingroom. He hummed the first few phrases of an old ballad inaccurately and incessantly, and Mathilda, who had an ear for music, thumped on the door leading from the bathroom to his dressing-room, and begged him either to learn the ditty or to gag himself. Then she was sorry, because, finding that by raising his voice a trifle he could easily converse with her, he became very chatty, and favoured her with some sentimental reminiscences of his careless youth. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to ask her if she was listening, but he did not seem to need the stimulus of intelligent comment, and, indeed, went on talking happily for quite some time after she had left the bathroom. However, he was not at all offended by the discovery that for quite ten minutes his conversation had reached her only as an indistinguishable burble of sound, but laughed good-humouredly, and said, Alas, he found himself living very much in the past nowadays, and feared he must be turning into a dreadful old bore. After that he returned to his Victorian ballad, alternately humming and singing it until Mathilda began to nourish thoughts of homicide.

She called out to him: "Are you sure you never appeared in Grand Opera, Joe? What a Siegfried you'd have made! Figure and all!"

"Naughty, naughty!" he replied, with an archness which made her understand Stephen's brutality to him. "Tilda dear, are you dressed yet?"

"Nearly. Why?"

"Don't go down without me! I've got an idea!"

"You're not laying your head together with mine, Joe: don't think it!"

He only laughed at this, but he must have kept an ear cocked, for when she opened her door a few minutes later, he instantly emerged from his room, rubbing his hands together, and saying gleefully: "Ah, you can't fox your old uncle, you bad girl!"

"Let me point out to you, Joe, that you're not my uncle, and that even my best friends don't call me a girl."

He linked arms with her. "Wasn't it the Immortal Bard who wrote, To me, dearfriend,you never can be old?"

Mathilda closed her eyes for an anguished moment. "If we are going to quote at one another, I warn you, you'll come off the worst!" she said. "I know a song which runs, Your parents missed a golden opportunity: They should of course have drowned you in a bucket as a child."

He squeezed her arm, chuckling. "Oh, that tongue of yours, Tilda! Never mind! I don't care a bit! not a little bit! Now, just you listen to the plan I've made! You're going to play Piquet with Nat after dinner."

"Not on your life."

"Yes, yes, you are! I had thought of Bridge again, but that would mean Mottisfont, and he doesn't seem to be a very strong player, and you know how seriously Nat takes his game! And then I suddenly remembered those grand battles you and he had the last time you stayed here, and how much he enjoyed them. I suggest that after dinner you should challenge Nat to a rubber, while I keep the others amused in the billiard-room. Charades or Clumps, or one of those other good, old-fashioned round games."

"If the choice lies between Piquet and a good, old fashioned round game, you've sold your idea, Joe. I'll co-operate."

He beamed with gratitude, and might, she felt, have patted her on the back had they not by this time reached the drawing-room.

Neither Stephen nor Mottisfont had as yet come downstairs, but the other three guests had assembled, and were standing about, drinking cocktails, while Maud, who said that she never touched spirits, was hunting ineffectively for the Life of the Empress, which she remembered having laid down somewhere, though she wasn't sure where. She rather unwisely asked Paula if she had seen it, and Paula, who was wrapped in gloomy reflection, came to earth with a start, and a gesture of insupportable irritation.

"I?" she said. "What, in God's name, should I want with your book?"

"I only wondered, dear," said Maud mildly. "I remember having it here after lunch. Or did I take it up with me when I went for my rest?"

Paula threw her an exasperated glance, and began to pace about the room, once more wrapped in her dark thoughts.

Valerie, after making several vain attempts to flirt with Roydon, who seemed as dejected as Paula, flounced over to the fire, looking sulky. Here Joseph joined her, paying her a few fulsome compliments, and really doing his best, Mathilda thought, to entertain her.

But Valerie did not want to flirt with Joseph; Valerie was finding the party very dull, and since she did not belong to a generation trained to be polite to its elders she snubbed Joseph, and told Maud that she hadn't seen her book and wouldn't know it from another if she did see it.

Roydon brought a cocktail to Mathilda, and lingered undecidedly beside her. After a few desultory remarks, he suddenly said in a burst of confidence: "I've been thinking over what you've said, and I've come to the conclusion you're right. I shall try it out again. After all, I haven't tried Henry Stafford. He might like it. He put on Fevered Night, you know, and it only ran for a week. I shan't bother about backers any more. You're quite right: the play is strong enough to stand on its own legs."

Mathilda could not recall having made such a statement, but she was glad that Roydon, who, so short a time since, had been in despair over Nathaniel's refusal to back his play, had recovered his optimism, and she cordially applauded his decision. Edgar Mottisfont then came in, saying that he hoped he hadn't been keeping everyone waiting, and was chatty, in a determined way, until Joseph asked him if he had seen Nat or Stephen. This seemed to bring the memory of his interview with Nathaniel unpleasantly to mind, and he said No, he hadn't seen either of them, and relapsed into a depressed silence.

Stephen lounged in a few minutes later, similarly taciturn, and everybody glanced at the clock, and wished that Nathaniel would hurry up.

At half-past eight, Sturry appeared to announce dinner, saw that his master was not present, and went away again, looking affronted. Joseph said hopefully that he was sure Nat would be down in a minute, but when ten minutes had elapsed, he said that Nat must have forgotten the time, and suggested to Stephen that he should go upstairs to fetch his uncle down.

Stephen was pouring himself out another glass of sherry, and replied with his customary brusqueness that if Joe was so anxious for Nat's presence he had better go and fetch him for himself.

"Come, come, Stephen!" said Mottisfont. "Not very civil of you, eh, my boy?"

"Oh, I don't pay any heed to that old bear of a nephew of mine!" Joseph said sunnily. "Stephen and I understand one another. Paula dear, suppose you were just to run up, and tap on your uncle's door?"

"No, thank you!" Paula said, with an angry little laugh. "I've already tried that, because I wanted to speak to him, but he wouldn't even answer."

Stephen grinned. "No flies on Uncle Nat. Let's go in to dinner."

Valerie looked as though Nathaniel's absence from his board would be a relief to her, but said: "Oh, but we can't, without Mr. Herriard, can we?"

"What a nice sense of convention you have, my pretty!" said Stephen.

"You're a set of lazybones!" Joseph told them. "I see I shall have to trot up myself."

"I didn't phrase it quite like that, but you've interpreted my meaning correctly," said Stephen.

Paula gave an unwilling laugh, but said, as Joseph left the room: "You're in a sweet mood, brother!"

"Matching yours, sister," he replied, smiling at her with an amiability belied by his shut teeth.

"I think I'm suffering from an overdose of Herriard," said Mathilda.

Maud, who had abandoned the search for her book, and was seated in her usual place beside the fire, looked up fleetingly from Stephen and his sister to Mathilda. Her face was expressionless, but she moved her plump little hands, clasping them in her lap rather tightly.

"I wonder how you stand it, Maud," Mathilda said.

"I'm used to it, dear," Maud replied.

Joseph's voice was heard calling to Stephen from the head of the stairs. "Stephen, old chap, just come here a minute, will you?"

Edgar Mottisfont said: "Oh dear! I hope nothing's wrong!"

"What should be wrong?" said Stephen, strolling to the door. "What do you want, Joe?"

"Come up, my boy, will you?"

He shrugged, and went out.

"What can be the matter?" wondered Valerie. "Do you suppose Mr. Herriard's ill, or something?"