“She only wants to be allowed to curl up and purr,” thought Henrietta.
They sat happily on the corner of the cucumber frames where the sun, now low in the sky, gave an illusion of a summer day.
Then a silence fell. Gerda’s face lost its expression of placidity. Her shoulders drooped. She sat there, the picture of misery. She jumped when Henrietta spoke.
“Why do you come,” said Henrietta, “if you hate it so much?”
Gerda hurried into speech.
“Oh, I don’t! I mean, I don’t know why you should think—”
She paused, then went on:
“It is really delightful to get out of London, and Lady Angkatell is so very kind.”
“Lucy? She’s not a bit kind.”
Gerda looked faintly shocked.
“Oh, but she is. She’s so very nice to me always.”
“Lucy has got good manners and she can be gracious. But she is rather a cruel person. I think really because she isn’t quite human—she doesn’t know what it’s like to feel and think like ordinary people. And you are hating being here, Gerda! You know you are. And why should you come if you feel like that?”
“Well, you see, John likes it—”
“Oh, John likes it all right. But you could let him come by himself?”
“He wouldn’t like that. He wouldn’t enjoy it without me. John is so unselfish. He thinks it is good for me to get out into the country.”
“The country is all right,” said Henrietta. “But there’s no need to throw in the Angkatells.”
“I—I don’t want you to feel that I’m ungrateful.”
“My dear Gerda, why should you like us? I always have thought the Angkatells were an odious family. We all like getting together and talking an extraordinary language of our own. I don’t wonder outside people want to murder us.”
Then she added:
“I expect it’s about teatime. Let’s go back.”
She was watching Gerda’s face as the latter got up and started to walk towards the house.
“It’s interesting,” thought Henrietta, one portion of whose mind was always detached, “to see exactly what a female Christian martyr’s face looked like before she went into the arena.”
As they left the walled kitchen garden, they heard shots, and Henrietta remarked: “Sounds as though the massacre of the Angkatells has begun!”
It turned out to be Sir Henry and Edward discussing firearms and illustrating their discussion by firing revolvers. Henry Angkatell’s hobby was firearms and he had quite a collection of them.
He had brought out several revolvers and some target cards, and he and Edward were firing at them.
“Hallo, Henrietta, want to try if you could kill a burglar?”
Henrietta took the revolver from him.
“That’s right—yes, so, aim like this.”
Bang!
“Missed him,” said Sir Henry.
“You try, Gerda.”
“Oh, I don’t think I—”
“Come on, Mrs. Christow. It’s quite simple.”
Gerda fired the revolver, flinching, and shutting her eyes. The bullet went even wider than Henrietta’s had done.
“Oh, I want to do it,” said Midge, strolling up.
“It’s more difficult than you’d think,” she remarked after a couple of shots. “But it’s rather fun.”
Lucy came out from the house. Behind her came a tall, sulky young man with an Adam’s apple.
“Here’s David,” she announced.
She took the revolver from Midge, as her husband greeted David Angkatell, reloaded it, and without a word put three holes close to the centre of the target.
“Well done, Lucy,” exclaimed Midge. “I didn’t know shooting was one of your accomplishments.”
“Lucy,” said Sir Henry gravely, “always kills her man!”
Then he added reminiscently, “Came in useful once. Do you remember, my dear, those thugs that set upon us that day on the Asian side of the Bosphorus? I was rolling about with two of them on top of me feeling for my throat.”
“And what did Lucy do?” asked Midge.
“Fired two shots in the mêlée. I didn’t even know she had the pistol with her. Got one bad man through the leg and the other in the shoulder. Nearest escape in the world I’ve ever had. I can’t think how she didn’t hit me.”
Lady Angkatell smiled at him.
“I think one always has to take some risk,” she said gently. “And one should do it quickly and not think too much about it.”
“An admirable sentiment, my dear,” said Sir Henry. “But I have always felt slightly aggrieved that I was the risk you took!”
Eight
I
After tea John said to Henrietta, “Come for a walk,” and Lady Angkatell said that she must show Gerda the rock garden though of course it was quite the wrong time of year.
Walking with John, thought Henrietta, was as unlike walking with Edward as anything could be.
With Edward one seldom did more than potter. Edward, she thought, was a born potterer. Walking with John, it was all she could do to keep up, and by the time they got up to Shovel Down she said breathlessly: “It’s not a marathon, John!”
He slowed down and laughed.
“Am I walking you off your feet?”
“I can do it—but is there any need? We haven’t got a train to catch. Why do you have this ferocious energy? Are you running away from yourself?”
He stopped dead. “Why do you say that?”
Henrietta looked at him curiously.
“I didn’t mean anything particular by it.”
John went on again, but walking more slowly.
“As a matter of fact,” he said, “I’m tired. I’m very tired.”
She heard the lassitude in his voice.
“How’s the Crabtree?”
“It’s early days to say, but I think, Henrietta, that I’ve got the hang of things. If I’m right”—his footsteps began to quicken—“a lot of our ideas will be revolutionized—we’ll have to reconsider the whole question of hormone secretion—”
“You mean that there will be a cure for Ridgeway’s Disease? That people won’t die?”
“That, incidentally.”
What odd people doctors were, thought Henrietta. Incidentally!
“Scientifically, it opens up all sorts of possibilities!”
He drew a deep breath. “But it’s good to get down here—good to get some air into your lungs—good to see you.” He gave her one of his sudden quick smiles. “And it will do Gerda good.”
“Gerda, of course, simply loves coming to The Hollow!”
“Of course she does. By the way, have I met Edward Angkatell before?”
“You’ve met him twice,” said Henrietta dryly.
“I couldn’t remember. He’s one of those vague, indefinite people.”
“Edward’s a dear. I’ve always been very fond of him.”
“Well, don’t let’s waste time on Edward! None of these people count.”
Henrietta said in a low voice:
“Sometimes, John—I’m afraid for you!”
“Afraid for me—what do you mean?”
He turned an astonished face upon her.
“You are so oblivious—so—yes, blind.”
“Blind?”
“You don’t know—you don’t see—you’re curiously insensitive! You don’t know what other people are feeling and thinking.”
“I should have said just the opposite.”
“You see what you’re looking at, yes. You’re—you’re like a searchlight. A powerful beam turned on to the one spot where your interest is, and behind it and each side of it, darkness!”
“Henrietta, my dear, what is all this?”
“It’s dangerous, John. You assume that everyone likes you, that they mean well to you. People like Lucy, for instance.”
“Doesn’t Lucy like me?” he said, surprised. “I’ve always been extr
emely fond of her.”
“And so you assume that she likes you. But I’m not sure. And Gerda and Edward—oh, and Midge and Henry. How do you know what they feel towards you?”
“And Henrietta? Do I know how she feels?” He caught her hand for a moment. “At least—I’m sure of you.”
She took her hand away.
“You can be sure of no one in this world, John.”
His face had grown grave.
“No, I won’t believe that. I’m sure of you and I’m sure of myself. At least—” His face changed.
“What is it, John?”
“Do you know what I found myself saying today? Something quite ridiculous. ‘I want to go home.’ That’s what I said and I hadn’t the least idea what I meant by it.”
Henrietta said slowly: “You must have had some picture in your mind.”
He said sharply: “Nothing. Nothing at all!”
II
At dinner that night, Henrietta was put next to David, and from the end of the table Lucy’s delicate eyebrows telegraphed not a command—Lucy never commanded—but an appeal.
Sir Henry was doing his best with Gerda and succeeding quite well. John, his face amused, was following the leaps and bounds of Lucy’s discursive mind. Midge talked in rather a stilted way to Edward, who seemed more absentminded than usual.
David was glowering and crumbling his bread with a nervous hand.
David had come to The Hollow in a spirit of considerable unwillingness. Until now, he had never met either Sir Henry or Lady Angkatell, and disapproving of the Empire generally, he was prepared to disapprove of these relatives of his. Edward, whom he did not know, he despised as a dilettante. The remaining four guests he examined with a critical eye. Relations, he thought, were pretty awful, and one was expected to talk to people, a thing which he hated doing.
Midge and Henrietta he discounted as empty-headed. This Dr. Christow was just one of these Harley Street charlatans—all manner and social success—his wife obviously did not count.
David shifted his neck in his collar and wished fervently that all these people could know how little he thought of them! They were really all quite negligible.
When he had repeated that three times to himself he felt rather better. He still glowered but he was able to leave his bread alone.
Henrietta, though responding loyally to the eyebrows, had some difficulty in making headway. David’s curt rejoinders were snubbing in the extreme. In the end she had recourse to a method she had employed before with the tongue-tied young.
She made, deliberately, a dogmatic and quite unjustifiable pronouncement on a modern composer, knowing that David had much technical and musical knowledge.
To her amusement the plan worked. David drew himself up from his slouching position where he had been more or less reclining on his spine. His voice was no longer low and mumbling. He stopped crumbling his bread.
“That,” he said in loud, clear tones, fixing a cold eye on Henrietta, “shows that you don’t know the first thing about the subject!”
From then on until the end of dinner he lectured her in clear and biting accents, and Henrietta subsided into the proper meekness of one instructed.
Lucy Angkatell sent a benignant glance down the table, and Midge grinned to herself.
“So clever of you, darling,” muttered Lady Angkatell as she slipped an arm through Henrietta’s on the way to the drawing room. “What an awful thought it is that if people had less in their heads they would know better what to do with their hands! Do you think Hearts or Bridge or Rummy or something terribly terribly simple like Animal Grab?”
“I think David would be rather insulted by Animal Grab.”
“Perhaps you are right. Bridge, then. I am sure he will feel that Bridge is rather worthless, and then he can have a nice glow of contempt for us.”
They made up two tables. Henrietta played with Gerda against John and Edward. It was not her idea of the best grouping. She had wanted to segregate Gerda from Lucy and if possible from John also—but John had shown determination. And Edward had then forestalled Midge.
The atmosphere was not, Henrietta thought, quite comfortable, but she did not quite know from whence the discomfort arose. Anyway, if the cards gave them anything like a break, she intended that Gerda should win. Gerda was not really a bad Bridge player—away from John she was quite average—but she was a nervous player with bad judgment and with no real knowledge of the value of her hand. John was a good, if slightly overconfident player. Edward was a very good player indeed.
The evening wore on, and at Henrietta’s table they were still playing the same rubber. The scores rose above the line on either side. A curious tensity had come into the play of which only one person was unaware.
To Gerda this was just a rubber of Bridge which she happened for once to be quite enjoying. She felt indeed a pleasurable excitement. Difficult decisions had been unexpectedly eased by Henrietta’s overcalling her own bids and playing the hand.
Those moments when John, unable to refrain from that critical attitude which did more to undermine Gerda’s self-confidence than he could possibly have imagined, exclaimed: “Why on earth did you lead that club, Gerda?” were countered almost immediately by Henrietta’s swift, “Nonsense, John, of course she had to lead the club! It was the only possible thing to do.”
Finally, with a sigh, Henrietta drew the score towards her.
“Game and rubber, but I don’t think we shall make much out of it, Gerda.”
John said: “A lucky finesse,” in a cheerful voice.
Henrietta looked up sharply. She knew his tone. She met his eyes and her own dropped.
She got up and went to the mantelpiece, and John followed her. He said conversationally: “You don’t always look deliberately into people’s hands, do you?”
Henrietta said calmly: “Perhaps I was a little obvious. How despicable it is to want to win at games!”
“You wanted Gerda to win the rubber, you mean. In your desire to give pleasure to people, you don’t draw the line at cheating.”
“How horribly you put things! And you are always quite right.”
“Your wishes seemed to be shared by my partner.”
So he had noticed, thought Henrietta. She had wondered herself, if she had been mistaken. Edward was so skilful—there was nothing you could have taken hold of. A failure, once, to call the game. A lead that had been sound and obvious—but when a less obvious lead would have assured success.
It worried Henrietta. Edward, she knew, would never play his cards in order that she, Henrietta, might win. He was far too imbued with English sportsmanship for that. No, she thought, it was just one more success for John Christow that he was unable to endure.
She felt suddenly keyed up, alert. She didn’t like this party of Lucy’s.
And then dramatically, unexpectedly—with the unreality of a stage entrance, Veronica Cray came through the window.
The french windows had been pushed to, not closed, for the evening was warm. Veronica pushed them wide, came through them and stood there framed against the night, smiling, a little rueful, wholly charming, waiting just that infinitesimal moment before speaking so that she might be sure of her audience.
“You must forgive me—bursting in upon you this way. I’m your neighbour, Lady Angkatell—from that ridiculous cottage Dovecotes—and the most frightful catastrophe has occurred!”
Her smile broadened—became more humorous.
“Not a match! Not a single match in the house! And Saturday evening. So stupid of me. But what could I do? I came along here to beg help from my only neighbour within miles.”
Nobody spoke for a moment, for Veronica had rather that effect. She was lovely—not quietly lovely, not even dazzlingly lovely—but so efficiently lovely that it made you gasp! The waves of pale shimmering hair, the curving mouth—the platinum foxes that swathed her shoulders and the long sweep of white velvet underneath them.
She was looking from one
to the other of them, humorous, charming!
“And I smoke,” she said, “like a chimney! And my lighter won’t work! And besides there’s breakfast—gas stoves—” She thrust out her hands. “I do feel such a complete fool.”
Lucy came forward, gracious, faintly amused.
“Why, of course—” she began, but Veronica Cray interrupted.
She was looking at John Christow. An expression of utter amazement, of incredulous delight, was spreading over her face. She took a step towards him, hands outstretched.
“Why, surely—John! It’s John Christow! Now isn’t that too extraordinary? I haven’t seen you for years and years and years! And suddenly—to find you here!”
She had his hands in hers by now. She was all warmth and simple eagerness. She half-turned her head to Lady Angkatell.
“This is just the most wonderful surprise. John’s an old old friend of mine. Why, John’s the first man I ever loved! I was crazy about you, John.”
She was half laughing now—a woman moved by the ridiculous remembrance of first love.
“I always thought John was just wonderful!”
Sir Henry, courteous and polished, had moved forward to her.
She must have a drink. He manoeuvred glasses. Lady Angkatell said:
“Midge, dear, ring the bell.”
When Gudgeon came, Lucy said:
“A box of matches, Gudgeon—at least, has Cook got plenty?”
“A new dozen came in today, m’lady.”
“Then bring in half a dozen, Gudgeon.”
“Oh, no, Lady Angkatell—just one!”
Veronica protested, laughing. She had her drink now and was smiling round at everyone. John Christow said:
“This is my wife, Veronica.”
“Oh, but how lovely to meet you.” Veronica beamed upon Gerda’s air of bewilderment.
Gudgeon brought in the matches, stacked on a silver salver.
Lady Angkatell indicated Veronica Cray with a gesture and he brought the salver to her.
“Oh, dear Lady Angkatell, not all these!”
Lucy’s gesture was negligently royal.
“It’s so tiresome only having one of a thing. We can spare them quite easily.”
Sir Henry was saying pleasantly:
“And how do you like living at Dovecotes?”