Silence in Court (5 page)

Midas lived who had the touch of gold.

Oh, so very very long ago.

Here's the tale still told for him who listens.

How much wiser all of us should be.

Yet you see

We still believe that all is gold that glistens

And find ourselves as asinine as he.”

He looked at her, laughing, over the last chords.

She said, “Who wrote that?”

“I did.”

“It's clever. You're good—aren't you?”

He twisted round on the piano-stool and fished out his cigarette-case. “Thank you! I have thought of retiring upon street-singing if I'm unlucky enough to be odd man out when Aunt Honoria packs up.”

CHAPTER SIX

As Carey went upstairs to bed, the door of Mrs. Maquisten's room opened and a little elderly woman in a black stuff dress came out. She had a small wrinkled face, grey hair brushed smooth and twisted into a tight knot behind, and little sunken eyes. Something about the way her head poked forward and the silent way she moved put Carey in mind of a lizard.

“Mrs. Maquisten would like to speak to you.”

Carey went back with her, was shown in, and was aware of the door closing behind her without any sound at all. It was a relief to hear Cousin Honoria's voice bidding her come and say good-night. She went over to the bed as she had done on her arrival.

A mild transformation had taken place. The silken cushions were now green linen pillows. There were still a great many of them. The brocaded coverlet had been replaced by a thin spread embroidered in wool with little bright bunches of flowers. A hemstitched green sheet was turned down over it. Cousin Honoria's rings, earrings, and pearls lay in a heap on the table beside the bed, and a lace cap covered the red curls. One of the thin hands came out, looking undressed without its diamonds.

“Well, my dear, what sort of an evening have you had?”

“Very nice, thank you.”

“Get on all right with my young people?”

“Oh, yes.”

To her relief, Mrs. Maquisten did not pursue this. She said,

“I told Ellen I wanted to see you. Thank God, she does what she's told—at least in that sort of way. Nurses don't. They tell you you won't sleep or something like that and begin to be soothing. But Ellen's been my maid for long enough to do what she's told. Thirty-five years—it's a long time. And I've got my own bell that rings in her room, so I'm not quite at any nurse's mercy yet.” She screwed round in bed, made a schoolgirl grimace at the door in the wall. “So you may put that in your pipe and smoke it, Magda Brayle!” She turned back, to see Carey laughing. “You've got to keep your end up with a nurse or she'll down you. I'm not ready to be downed—not yet anyhow. There—be off to your bed! And if anyone isn't nice to you, put them in their place. You've as much right here as the rest of them, and you can say I said so.”

Carey went upstairs soberly. She was so tired that she fell asleep at once, but something followed her into her sleep and cast a shadow there which never quite became a dream. Only in the shadow something moved and someone wept—inaudibly, bitterly, dreadfully. She woke to a dark morning and Molly bringing her a cup of tea.

Jeff Stewart fetched her at twelve. She was surprised and a little bit shocked to find herself so glad to see him, because what he wanted was to be taken down a peg or two. It is very difficult to take people down when they can see with their own eyes that you're as pleased as Punch. For moment she thought that Jeff was going to kiss her, but she got a rather frozen look into her eye just in time and he thought better of it, but she could see right away that she was going to have trouble. Before they were out of the Square he was asking her what she thought would be the right sort of Christmas present for a girl if you were going to marry her but hadn't broken it to her yet. The bother about Jeff was that he made her angry—at least she supposed he did—but he also made her want to laugh. Something about his impudent, lazy voice and his impudent, lazy eyes. And of course quite too fatal to laugh. She said in a nicely detached voice,

“Well, I don't know—it would depend on the man, and on the girl.”

She heard him laugh.

“Helpful—aren't you! What about a fur coat?”

Carey chilled the voice down.

“You can't give a girl a fur coat unless you're engaged to her—at least not the sort of girl—”

“I've made a break—I told you I was liable to. The fur coat's out. Pity, because I've got the coupons for it and all. How much engaged do we have to be?”

“Wedding-present engaged.”

“Well, that's where it gets difficult. I suppose you'd say I'd got that far, but she hadn't. Of course the coupons will keep. What sort of fur do you think would be best?”

“That would depend on the girl.”

“Well, take a blonde—people generally do take them, don't they?”

Carey said sedately, “Fair girls are very lucky about furs. They can wear all the kinds that make you look like a fiend if you're dark.”

“As?”

“Squirrel, mole—sable, only practically nobody can afford it—I can't see who does.”

“I've got quite a lot of money. Didn't you know?” Mr. Stewart's slight drawl had become more pronounced. “And my blonde is the platinum sort—practically albino, except of course she hasn't got pink eyes.”

“Then she'll look hideous in anything. The less you spend the better.”

There was a pause, after which he said mournfully,

“I could always change her. It's a pity I don't like them dark. Of course I could compromise and look out for something half and half—say dark hair and blue eyes. What do you think about that?”

“I don't have to think about it. It isn't my business—is it?”

He said, “It might be.” He slipped his hand inside her arm and began to laugh. “Carey—let me give you a coat.”

“Certainly not!”

“But I want to very badly.”

“That has nothing to do with it.”

“But it might have—you said so yourself. You said I could give a girl a fur coat for a wedding present.”

Carey's colour burned.

“I'm not having a wedding.”

“You might think about having one, and then we could go and choose the coat.”

She detached herself.

“Now, Jeff Stewart—”

He looked at her solicitously.

“You didn't finish that. Couldn't you think of anything to say?”

He got an ominously sparkling glance.

“Plenty, but you'd better not make me say it. Now, are you going to talk sense, or do I turn round and go home?”

“I talk sense. Here's the first instalment. Have you taken a vow of celibacy or anything like that?”

“Of course I haven't!”

“Then would you like to think about marrying me?”

Carey stood still, jerked up her chin, and directed a repressive glance at him. It didn't seem to get there. She produced a reinforcement of words.

“I'm not considering marrying anyone. And if you think I'm going to be proposed to in the street, well, I'm not!”

“But I don't ever see you alone except in the street,” he said in a reasonable voice. “You don't want me to propose to you in front of Cousin Honoria and all the rest of them, do you?”

Carey stamped on a very hard pavement. Pins and needles ran up her leg, but the moral effect was good.

“I don't want you to propose to me at all!”

“But I have proposed to you. You don't want me to take it back, do you?”

“I think I'm going home.”

He took her by the elbow.

“All right, all right—don't get mad. We'll call it off. What about putting the fur coat in cold storage and getting down to buying a handbag—what we call a purse. Could you use one?”

They walked on again. Looking down at the bag which, like herself, had been damaged by enemy action and, unlike herself, would never be the same again, she had a horrid suspicion that all this talk of blondes, weddings, and fur coats was so much Machiavellian overstatement in order to undermine her resistance to being given an expensive handbag.

Whilst she was considering retaliatory measures Jeff's voice began again overhead.

“You know, you've got this proposal business all wrong. I've been reading a lot since I came over—what you might call sound escapist literature, all about how people lived before they started having European wars—late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century stuff. When the girls in those books were proposed to they appreciated it—no jibbing and saying they were going home. Even if they were going to come back with the offer of being a sister to the fellow they did it as kindly as they could. There were some nice blushes and a lot of pretty remarks about its being an honour and they would always remember it and hand it down as a sort of an heirloom.”

The corners of Carey's mouth began to twitch. A lazy downward-glancing eye may have perceived this. The voice overhead continued.

“I won't say you didn't blush. Maybe you did the best you could, but it didn't look right to me. It could easily have been mistaken for just ordinary temper. These girls I was talking about, they had a kind of melting look with it. Some of them got their eyes brimming over, and a tear or two trickling down over the blushes.”

A wave of laughter broke through Carey's guard. It wasn't any good being angry, and she wanted to enjoy herself.

She said, “Oh, Jeff—you
fool!
” and heard him chuckle.

They bought a bag, they lunched, they went to a show. They quarrelled once or twice, and found it an exhilarating adventure. There were no dull moments. No shadow of things to come lay across their path.

CHAPTER SEVEN

It was in the evening that Honoria Maquisten gave her the brooch. Carey had changed when she came in, and proceeded by order to the bedroom, where Cousin Honoria sat in state by the fire robed in silver tissue hemmed with fur, diamonds in her ears and at her throat, diamonds on the long, thin fingers. None of the jewels were the same as she had worn yesterday. Carey blinked at the splendour, and felt herself very sober in her blue woollen house-gown. She sat obediently on a chair placed for her by Ellen, who then retired, noiseless and lizard-like. She seemed scarcely to open the door or to close it again, but since she was there one minute and gone the next, it was reasonable to suppose that she had done both.

With a feeling of discomfort it came to Carey that she had never been in a house where people made so little noise. Cousin Honoria's deep voice and the jarring tap of Dennis's crutch stood out against a curiously muffled background. Of course curtains and carpets being so thick had something to do with it. No, not something—everything. And then she remembered Nora calling the house a tomb the night before and flinging out of it with a banged door to break the silence.

Honoria Maquisten put a hand in a fur-trimmed pocket and held it out with something on the palm.

“That's a hideous garment you've got on—as much like a dressing-gown as makes no difference. All the clothes are hideous nowadays, but at any rate it's long. I can't get used to things above the knee in the evening. And I won't say the colour doesn't suit you. I suppose you matched your eyes. You'd better have this to cheer it up. I took a fancy to it in a second-hand shop and bought it to give to Julia on her twenty-first birthday—a week before she died. It's been put away for fifty years. I'd like you to have it.”

Carey lifted the brooch from the thin, dry palm. Her feelings were rather mixed. The word tomb cropped up again—it was like being given something out of a tomb. But it was very kind, and she had never had such a pretty brooch. Pleasure came to the top and stayed there. She put the brooch against the blue stuff of her dress, and saw how the colour deepened the big pale sapphire set round with small rose-diamond points.

“It's lovely, Cousin Honoria.”

Mrs. Maquisten nodded.

“It looks nice on your frock and on you, but it isn't worth twopence—the sapphire is too pale. It's just pretty—that's all. I suppose you'd rather have diamonds?” The sharp eyes were lively and searching under quizzical brows.

Carey shook her head. “Oh, no, I wouldn't.”

“Why?”

“Well, what's the good of diamonds when you've got your living to earn?”

Honoria Maquisten fingered her necklace.

“Do you mean to say you wouldn't say thank you for this?”

Carey met her look with a laughing one.

“What would I do with it? I couldn't wear it.”

“You could sell it.” The voice was dry and cold.

Carey flushed. “
Please
, Cousin Honoria—”

There was a rainbow flash as a hand came out and patted her.

“There, child—I'd no business to tease you. Put on the brooch and give me a kiss.”

Nora was at dinner, vivid and ornamental in emerald green.

“Got to match Aunt Honoria's room,” she explained. “I don't see why she should have it all her own way, and it might stir her up to give me an odd emerald or two. She's got oodles of them.”

When Magda did not appear, Carey asked where she was, and was answered by Dennis.

“Evening out. Only one of our rays of sunshine tonight. Honor darling, be twice as sparkling as usual, won't you. We don't want our new cousin to think us dull.” His eyes came back to Carey and dwelt, sparkling, upon the sapphire brooch. “Where did you get the gewgaw?” Then, without waiting for an answer, “Elementary, my dear Watson. Aunt Honoria has begun to part—the thick end of the wedge.”

Carey said, “It belonged to my grandmother.”

“Meaning that Aunt Honoria didn't give it to you—or that she did, but it used to belong to your grandmother?”

“It used to belong to my grandmother.”