It turned out, unfortunately for everybody else, that this was an understatement. Nathaniel had a good deal more to say, on subjects which ranged from the decadence of modern drama and the puppyishness of modem dramatists to the folly of all women in general and of his niece in particular. He added a rider to the effect that Paula’s mother would have done better to have stayed at home to look after her daughter than to spend her time gadding about marrying every Tom, Dick, and Harry she met.
It was now felt by all who were privileged to hear these remarks that it would be advisable to get Roydon out of the way until Nathaniel’s wrath had had time to cool. Mathilda very nobly put herself forward, and told Roydon that she had been immensely interested in Wormwood, and would like to have a talk with him about it. Roydon, who, besides being rather impressed by Mathilda, was naturally eager to talk about his play, allowed himself to be manoeuvred out of the room just as Joseph joined the stricken group about his brother, and, with ill-timed jocosity, smote him lightly on the back, saying: ‘Well, well, Nat, we’re a couple of oldstagers, eh? A crude, sometimes a violent piece of work. Yet not without merit, I think. What do you say?’
Nathaniel at once became a cripple. He said: ‘My lumbago! Damn you, don’t do that!’ and tottered to a chair, one hand to the small of his back and his manly form bent with suffering.
‘Why, I thought it was all right again!’ said Valerie innocently.
Nathaniel, who had closed his eyes, opened them to cast a baleful glance in her direction, and replied in the voice of one whose days were attended by anguish bravely borne: ‘The least touch brings it on!’
‘Rubbish!’ said Paula, with quite unnecessary emphasis. ‘You weren’t even thinking about your lumbago a minute ago! You’re a miserable humbug, Uncle Nat!’
Nathaniel rather liked being abused, but he resented having his lumbago belittled, and said that the day might come when Paula would be sorry she had said that.
Maud, who was rolling up her knitting-wool, said in her sensible way that he had better have some antiphlogistin, if it was really bad.
‘Of course it’s bad!’ snapped Nathaniel. ‘And don’t think I’m going to have any of that muck on me, because I’m not! If anyone had the least consideration – But I suppose that’s too much to expect! As though it isn’t enough to have the house filled with a set of rackety people, I’m forced to sit and listen to a play I should have thought any decent woman would have blushed to sit through!’
‘When you talk about decent women you make me sick!’ flashed Paula. ‘If you can’t appreciate a work of genius, so much the worse for you! You don’t want to put your hand in your pocket: that’s why you’re making all this fuss! You’re mean, and hypocritical, and I despise you from the bottom of my soul!’
‘Yes, you’d be very glad to see me laid underground! I know that!’ said Nathaniel, hugely enjoying this refreshing interlude. ‘Don’t think I don’t see through you! All the same, you women: money’s all you’re out for! Well, you won’t get any of mine to waste on that young puppy, and that’s flat!’
‘All right!’ said Paula, in the accents of a tragedienne. ‘Keep your money! But when you’re dead I shall spend every penny you leave me on really immoral plays, and I shall hope that you’ll know it, and hate it, and be sorry you were such a beast to me when you were alive!’
Nathaniel was so pleased by this vigorous response to his taunt that he forgot to be a cripple, and sat up quite straight in his chair, and said that she had better not count her chickens before they were hatched, since after this he would be damned if he didn’t Make a Few Changes.
‘Do as you please!’ Paula said disdainfully. ‘I don’t want your money.’
‘Oho, now you sing a different tune!’ Nathaniel said, his eyes glinting with triumph. ‘I thought that that was just what you did want – two thousand pounds of my money, and ready to murder me to get it!’
‘What are two thousand pounds to you?’ demanded Paula, with poor logic, but fine dramatic delivery. ‘You’d never miss it, but just because you have a bourgeois taste in art you deny me the one thing I want! More than that! You are denying me my chance in life!’
‘I don’t care for that line,’ said Stephen critically.
‘You shut up!’ said Paula, rounding on him. ‘You’ve done all you can to crab Willoughby’s play! I suppose your tender regard for me makes you shudder at the thought of my appearing in the rôle of a prostitute!’
‘Bless your heart, I don’t care what sort of a rôle you appear in!’ replied Stephen. ‘All I beg is that you won’t stand there ranting like Lady Macbeth. Too much drama in the home turns my stomach, I find.’
‘If you had a shred of decency, you’d be on my side!’
‘In that case, I haven’t a shred of decency. I don’t like the play, I don’t like the dramatist, and I object to being read to.’
‘Children, children!’ said Joseph. ‘Come now, this won’t do, you know! On Christmas Eve, too!’
‘Now I am going to be sick,’ said Stephen, dragging himself up, and lounging over to the door. ‘Let me know the outcome of this Homeric battle, won’t you? I’m betting six to four on Uncle Nat myself.’
‘Well, really, Stephen!’ exclaimed Valerie, with a giggle. ‘I do think you’re the limit!’
This infelicitous intervention seemed to remind Nathaniel of her existence. He glared at her, loathing her empty prettiness, her crimson fingernails, her irritating laugh; and gave vent to his feelings by barking at Stephen. ‘You’re as bad as your sister! There isn’t a penny to choose between you! You’ve got bad taste, do you hear me? This is the last time either of you will come to Lexham! Put that in your pipe, and smoke it!’
‘Tut-tut!’ said Stephen, and walked out of the room, greatly disconcerting Sturry, who was standing outside with a tray of cocktails, listening with deep appreciation to the quarrel raging within.
‘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 tha
n 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 illstarred 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.’
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 be
nevolent 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 rôle 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 dressing-room. 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.