§ 1
FOR more than one reason Viola was glad to leave Gloucestershire for a
short London visit. If challenged, she would probably have said that
she wanted some clothes, or was eager to see the Empire’s capital.
Certainly her time spent with Corinne at Morvane was pleasantly
strenuous, and her guardian, after one more brief interview in which
he had shown himself prompt and generous in regard to money, made
no demands upon her privacy. But her enjoyment was spoilt, with a
completeness incommensurate to their intrinsic importance, by the
events of a conversation between herself and old Mrs. Plethern. They
met in the garden. The dowager, in her long chair, was knitting in
the shade of the cedars. Viola was alone, for Charles had driven Lady
Grieve and the Welwyns to the Agricultural Show at Sawley, and Corinne,
who had been thrown while riding in the morning, was prostrate with
headache in her room.
“All alone, my dear?” queried the old lady. “Where are the others? I
thought you would be playing tennis.”
Viola explained.
“Poor Corinne! I am so sorry. But you should not risk these madcap
jumps alone, you foolish children. At least I am the gainer, for you
can help me in with these things. Perhaps you will come and have tea
with me? I am just ready.”
Laden with a basket of wools and two cushions, Viola followed Mrs.
Plethern to the tower door.
“This is the first time you have been in my tower. It is an
interesting old place. The lift is a little odd, is it not? But I was
never very strong and there were so many stairs. Yes, just pull the
cord and check it when I tell you. I dare say they have all kinds of
new-fangled lifts now, but this was very modern once. Now pull again.
That’s right, and here we are.”
They stepped on to a small landing. Viola saw that the lift-shaft ended
and that a spiral stair led to an upper floor.
“This is not the top, then?” she asked.
“No. My bed- and dressing-rooms are above here. This is my
sitting-room--the one I generally use. Has it not a lovely view over
the park and garden? I cannot see the house at all from here. To do
that I must go upstairs to my dressing-room. That overlooks the house.
Please put those things down, dear. I will ring for Bathsheba and tell
her to fetch us tea. Sit anywhere you like and make yourself quite at
home. I do not have many visitors. Folks think it too far to come, I
suppose. And then I am so old. Most of my contemporaries have gone. You
young people cannot imagine what it is to feel oneself left behind by
death.”
The door opened to admit a middle-aged woman, sandy-haired like her
mistress and with something also of the old lady’s heavy pallor.
“Bathsheba,” said Mrs. Plethern, “this is Miss Marvell who has come to
keep us all company.” The woman bobbed a curtsy, glancing sullenly at
Viola from under her pale lashes. “We want some nice tea, please; just
for the two of us.”
“What a curious name!” said Viola, as the maid disappeared. “Is it a
local one?”
“Bathsheba has been with me for many years,” replied the old lady.
“Her home is in Norfolk, near Ely--near my old home. She suits me and
I let her take liberties now and then. Old servants, you know--they
have a hold on us!” She chuckled unpleasantly. “I hope you did not
mind my introducing you? I should have been so scolded this evening had
I not done so!” The affectation of shudder was as unpleasant as the
chuckle. The old lady’s grotesque playfulness had at once imbecility
and nastiness. In the discomfort of the moment Viola failed to smile
in response to her hostess’ humour. Mrs. Plethern noticed the failure,
and her wrinkled eyelids flickered. She continued in the same even,
mumbling voice:
“You are right in noticing the name of Bathsheba. But it is not
uncommon among the East Anglian peasantry. Perhaps they bathe, when
they do, in public. That was the lady’s forte, I believe? Not that
my maid would be so indiscreet, or any audience forthcoming if she
were. Women need to be young and lovely to draw the eyes of dwellers
in palaces and towers. Beware of tower-dwellers, my dear. They are
well-placed for keeping watch!”
Again that bad, reflective chuckle. Viola felt herself blushing. Mrs.
Plethern took her up.
“Do not trouble to keep up polite conventions with me, my dear. I am an
old woman and know my sex well. You need not be ashamed in my company
to have read Bible stories or any others for that matter. Women who do
not realize the power of their beauty are fools indeed. Worse fools
even than the men they rule. I do not know which is the greater idiot,
the woman who will not admit she has a body or she that puts no proper
price on it. It is a mistake to give, without taking first.”
As she spoke, the old lady looked eagerly at the girl and marvelled at
her evident discomfort. The scene glimpsed through the library windows
was vivid to Mrs. Plethern’s mind. And yet this embarrassment was
surely not assumed? She changed the subject, thinking better to relax
for a moment the pressure of suggestion and later, when the victim was
off her guard, to apply it once again. A clink of tea-cups gave her
rational excuse.
“Here is tea,” she said pleasantly. “I shall be glad of it. One gets
fond of one’s tea with years.”
During the arrangement of trays and tables and the pouring of tea,
Viola contrived to collect her startled wits. Why the conversation
had so troubled her, she did not wholly know. Never before had anyone
talked to her thus. Not only were the words of unpleasant meaning,
but they were charged with sinister suggestion. What was suggested
she could not tell; none the less the presence of dimly realized evil
stirred the nerves of her innocence. She longed to escape from this
tower and from the white mass of age that leered at her from the deep
chair. Flight until after tea was impossible. She must talk, talk
of anything, rather than leave the guidance of conversation in her
hostess’ incalculable hands.
“Are those cards in the glass cases?” she asked.
“My collection,” nodded Mrs. Plethern. “I have collected playing cards
for years. They are a fascinating subject. After tea we will look at
some of the more interesting. I have them of all periods. Notebooks
full of history and observation are in those drawers. Perhaps, when I
am gone, some one will make a book of my notes and publish them. They
tell many curious things. The whole science of fortune-telling is to be
found in them, and through fortune-telling one comes easily to magic
and to witchcraft.”
The mention of witchcraft held Viola’s attention. If witches there
were, this old lady would surely be of their number. The thought of
her flying from her tower on a broomstick was as nearly amusing as was
possible to any thought or incident of this horrid tea-party. Murmuring
polite interest in the subject of playing cards, the girl set down
her cup and wandered to the window. The garden spread itself below
her, its pattern defined, its trees foreshortened to incidents in a
general vague design. The avenue, slanting away toward the ridge of
the hill, was like the humped back of some sleeping monster. She had
not realized how high the tower was. The very topmost branches of the
cedars were level with her eyes.
“How many floors are there between us and the ground?” she asked.
“Three, my dear--not counting the ground floor of all. That is used for
gardening things. Above that is my box-room and kitchen and Bathsheba’s
bedroom. Above that my guest-room and a bathroom. Above that again
my dining-room and a little room behind with a bed in it. Then this
room--also a small room in which I keep much of my collection and other
special things. Above, my bedroom and bath-dressing room. Above that
the dome. The dome is curious. Corinne shall take you up. There is
provision for a light up there--you know the legend perhaps? No? I must
lend you the book about Morvane. It is a strange story.”
“I should like to read that,” said Viola.
“So you shall my dear, so you shall. Do you read much? There are books
in Canada, I suppose?”
Viola laughed.
“Yes, indeed! Father had quite a number, but mostly scientific and I
thought them dull. But the Toronto Library is very fine and our friends
lent us novels and so on. There seem to be some beautiful books in the
house here. I must ask Mr. Plethern if I may look at them.”
“Ah--in the library, you mean? Yes, there are a great many books there,
but no one ever reads them. You have been in the library then?”
This time the speaker had satisfaction. The abrupt question brought a
sudden colour to Viola’s cheek. The next instant, shutting her mind to
memories of the evening upon which she had betrayed her mother, she
spoke steadily enough:
“Yes, once or twice. Mr. Plethern asked me to go.”
The old lady was cheered. She had, a while ago, trembled on the edge
of doubt even of her own eyes. Now, however, she felt reassured. The
girl was ashamed of something that had taken place in the library.
Probably she had let Charles go farther than she meant, unaware of his
competence and dispatch in the making of love. Then she had repented
her own rashness and was now deliberately cultivating virginal modesty,
lest inclination should once more prevail against self-interest.
Mrs. Plethern felt this explanation to be satisfactory. She did not
believe in the ‘modern girl.’ The phrase was a modern euphemism, and
independence a convenient cloak for licence. Either a girl was subject
to her parents and an ignorant miss or she was a woman of the world,
grown beyond silly ideas of reserve or self-respect, other than those
dictated by prudence and expressible in things material. It did not
occur to her to question the validity of this opinion, to remind
herself that she belonged to an earlier generation and had not for many
years mingled with her younger countrywomen. In solitude she had fed
her own malevolence and cynicism on books grateful to her prejudice
and had allowed to harden into dogma what was in origin only personal
taste. Mrs. Plethern, as her favourite son well said, was clever. But
she was not wise, a fact which both she and her beloved James failed to
reckon. And yet it was neither the old lady’s folly nor her cleverness
that at this moment impelled Viola to take her leave. She would herself
have been quite unable to explain why it was that instant departure
became then and not a moment sooner frankly imperative. Only was
she conscious of an urgent, almost a physical thrust, that sent her
doorwards.
“I must go down now, Mrs. Plethern,” she said. “Corinne will be
expecting me.”
“But, my dear, it is early! I have strange things to show you--my rarer
and more curious cards, a little manual of gipsy fortune-telling lore
that is two hundred years old and more----”
But Viola could only repeat, while still the invisible pressure on mind
and body urged her to flight:
“Corinne will be expecting me.”
For a moment the old woman looked the young one in the eyes. Then
without a word she turned away and shuffled to her usual chair.
“Very well then,” she muttered. “Another time, another time....”
* * * * *
Viola was not half-way across the lawn before there crept over her a
great fatigue. Hardly could she drag her legs up the staircase, with
difficulty could she, wrists nerveless and hands trembling, turn the
handle of her bedroom door. Making an effort of will she steadied
herself, closed the door and locked it. Then, with a sudden stagger,
she leant to a chair. The room whirled round her.
It was a short faint, and she had soon sufficient control of will and
limb to climb on to her bed. There she lay, striving to comprehend
what had befallen her. She was conscious of having fled some evil
thing, but of corroborating fact she could recall no atom. Gradually,
in the place of fact, came fancy. She felt herself alone in the midst
of enemies. A malevolence of which she was aware, but against which
she could make no movement of self-defence, threatened to envelop her.
Miserably, like trapped birds, her thoughts darted from side to side
of the cruelty that was caging them in. Almost hysterical, she lost
herself in distraught foreboding, piling in terrified anticipation
peril on grisly peril. A shadow seemed to close down upon her, heavily,
broodingly, and suddenly from the vague darkness of its menace sounded
the slow, salacious chuckle that had so startled her when first in Mrs.
Plethern’s tower she heard it. Her nerves began to quiver. Shrinking
against her pillow she had a moment of growing fear, then another of
blind, shuddering terror. But before terror’s cause could show itself,
before even she could scream, the room was light and free and peaceful
once again and she saw through the open window the golden calm of the
summer afternoon. Her imagination drooped, bruised with the weariness
of an uncanny fight. She fell asleep.
She woke to find Corinne standing over her.
“Viola, darling! What’s the matter? Why aren’t you dressed? It’s eight
o’clock!”
She struggled to wakefulness. The room was shrouded in dusk. Corinne in
her white dress hovered against shadowy furniture.
“Eight o’clock?” she stammered. “Eight o’clock? It is dark. Why----”
With an effort she rallied a more complete consciousness. “I have been
asleep,” she said with awkward futility.
Corinne laughed.
“You don’t say so! But the door was locked. I found your water in the
corridor and couldn’t get in. So I tried the door from the next room.
Luckily it bolts on the other side. Are you ill?”
“No. I’m quite all right. Merely dropped off, like a fool. I must rush!”
Glad to conceal embarrassment, she plunged into a rapid toilet.
“Is your head better?” she asked.
“Nearly. Anyway I’m coming to dinner. There’s the drum. I’ll run on and
make excuses.”
* * * * *
By ten o’clock that night Viola could wonder whether she had not
imagined her afternoon adventure. Dinner and the games which followed
it were so friendly and so normal; the silver and polished mahogany,
the drawing-room chintz, the lights blazing on the billiard table were
so comfortably, so happily themselves, that the tower and its aged
mistress seemed the phantoms of a nightmare world. When she went to
bed, she craned from her window in faint but unmistakable hope to see
whether, after all, the campanile had not vanished. However small the
disappointment of finding it still there, proud and pale and silent in
the moonlight, there was in its serene propinquity enough of menace to
give zest to plans for leaving Morvane and enthusiasm to acceptance of
Corinne’s invitation.
§ 2
James Plethern lived in Montagu Square. Before the Boer War, while
yet a bureaucrat and, later, a politician, he had found Hyde Park
Terrace suitable and adequate. But now, having made brave use of
commercial opportunity and having won to wealth and social eminence, he
overstepped the subtle boundary of the Edgware Road.
Why not to Mayfair or Belgravia? His choice of district had its
subtlety, sprang from the deepest instinct of his nature. He was
complacent toward his riches, took them for proof of his own industry
and intelligence; yet for their very origin he despised them. From
his Victorian forbears he inherited respect for property. They had
loved property and plotted for it, married and died to save or add to
it. So would have James, had fortune given him the only property that
mattered. Land, land inherited, was to his queer conviction the sole
delectable possession; but land, being a younger son, he had not.
Cruel, the ceaseless smart of juniority, no balm for which was found
in money earned! He was a younger son; a thing of nought beside his
brother. Rich as Charles he was, but vainly; for in all that made a man
respected and admirable, Charles, as the owner of Morvane and lord of
the Plethern lands, must remain always and impregnably supreme.
From this sense of personal inferiority to his brother grew in James’
angry heart a conviction that he belonged altogether to a lower
social order. Younger sons, younger brothers, the unhappy world of
those condemned by later birth to make their own lives or to live
on other’s bounty, these were his equals. He was absurdly sensitive
to this distinction (a distinction which, had he defined it, would
have been unclear to most of his contemporaries and unintelligible
to their children), so much so that he would not force his way into
Mayfair, into Belgravia, nor even, north of Oxford Street, into those
areas in which dwelt many of the truly propertied. Montagu Square was,
to his judgment, suited to his predicament and there, among wealthy
dilettanti, captains of industry, and other junior scions of ancient
families he set up his over-emphatic household gods.
The building of his choice was tall and dignified and sombre, its grave
proportions slighted but unconquered by a trite vulgarity of tiling and
exotic decoration lavished on its front-door and ground-floor façade.
The interior, more helpless than an eighteenth century elevation
in the grip of a tenant’s tastelessness, was loaded to suffocation
with Italian and French antiquities. Wrought-iron grilles; elaborate
fire-furniture; richly carved cassoni; a chimney breast from a Loire
château; a ceiling from Venetia; chairs and settees in faded crimson
velvet, their tassels trailing lifeless in this alien air; long
sideboards in marqueterie; leather screens of burnished gold over which
flowers and leaves and birds sprawled in dark magnificence; on the
walls darkly oppressive pictures in tremendous frames; on the floors
carpets and rugs, once brilliant, now dulled with age and wear--such to
typical excess were the adornments of James Plethern’s home.
Seated alone at breakfast, two days after Viola had come to her
guardian’s house, he received a letter from his mother. He finished his
meal and was passing to his own room, as his son came gaily down the
stairs.
“Good morning, dad,” said Chris.
“Good morning, Chris,” replied his father. “Have you seen your mother?
Is she up?”
“More or less,” replied the young man. “Anyway she’s having breakfast.”
And he disappeared, in search of his own. After a moment’s thought
James went to his study, took a letter from a Japanned dispatch box
and walked slowly upstairs. He found his wife in an embroidered kimono
eating buttered egg.
“Well?” she asked. “Is the head better?”
He smiled and laid a hand on her head.
“Thank you, yes. And Rosalind? A good night? Excellent. I have another
letter from mother. The girl has arrived.”
“Well?” queried his wife once more.
James stretched his long legs in a deep chair and for a moment studied
his faultless finger-nails.
“Yes, the girl has arrived,” he repeated meditatively.
Mrs. Plethern showed no further curiosity. Not only did she know
her husband, but she was a woman to whom all emotion was personally
distasteful. She bent her coldly stylish head over her tray and went on
with her breakfast.
“Mother is a very clever old lady,” said James at last. “I have brought
up her first letter on this matter so that you can see how clever she
is. You remember that when first Charles broke the news of this foolish
scheme and when I had failed to dissuade him from acknowledging the
applicant without very careful investigation, I sent mother a note
giving my point of view and yours.”
The woman nodded and took some marmalade. James proceeded in the
judicial manner now usual with him.
“You remember also that she replied by return of post and that her
letter, among other things, contained the following sentences.” He read
aloud:
“I have thought the matter over and believe that your fears are
exaggerated. Charles of course will tell me nothing. He says he has
no idea what the girl is like. If this is true, we must wait and see.
She may be impossible, in which case he will hide her away somewhere
and merely foot the bill. She may, on the other hand, be presentable.
What will happen then? I am myself unconvinced that the whole affair
is not an elaborate joke on Charles’ part. For all I know, he may
have devised this way of providing distraction for himself while at
Morvane. He is always bored here and restless, because he is debarred
from his usual amusements. May it not be that this guardian story is
merely an invention? The girl may not be coming from Canada at all. I
have only his word for the existence of the original letter, said to
have been received from her father. In such a case we need not worry.
Nevertheless, it will not do to count on this solution as correct.
Assuming that the girl is genuine and presentable, what will happen?
Charles will make love to her. That goes without saying. Perhaps she
will refuse to respond? He is not used to rejection and will take it
hardly. Surely in these circumstances he will pack her off and we shall
not be troubled further? On the other hand, she may respond. If she
yields immediately, there will be little danger of anything serious
arising. He will tire of her in time. If, however, she is clever as
well as attractive and genuine, she may lead him slowly on--into what?
Here will be our difficulty, but here only. I urge you therefore, and
dear Rosalind, not to let the matter weigh upon your minds. I will
write to you when I have seen the girl and again when I can tell how
matters are moving. In the meantime give no sign to Charles that you
have thought of the business any more.”
James glanced up at his wife. She was nibbling toast and gazing at the
fire-screen. As his voice ceased, she nodded slightly and flashed him a
look.
“Go on,” she said.
James settled himself lower in his chair and crossed his legs. His
admirable patent boots flashed in the sunshine that filtered between
the slats of the blind.
“Now for this morning’s letter. It is written late the day before
yesterday but not posted until yesterday at noon.
“The girl Viola Marvell arrived at tea-time. Belinda Grieve is here,
that Captain Welwyn, whom Charles plays polo with, and his wife; also
of course Corinne. In the matter of appearance the girl is dangerous.
She is fair and well made, with that innocent, quiet beauty that
always attracts men and frightens women. One cannot tell whether girls
like that are simple fools or very deep. She behaved with timidity but
without awkwardness. I had a little talk with her, but beyond a fair
certainty that the ward story is genuine, got very little out of her.
Indeed she kept me at a distance very cleverly. Belinda Grieve took
her away just as I was making another attempt. When they came back
from going round the garden, I saw them kiss each other. Belinda is a
sentimental fool and had been slobbering over her, I have no doubt.
Charles said little to her, while I was by, but he seemed nervous. I
noticed that he looked at her a great deal, and I am not surprised,
for she is certainly attractive. As a result of the afternoon I am
a little apprehensive. She is not in appearance a girl given to
philandering, but neither is she a mere prude. She has brains as well
as looks and probably principles as well. This type are sometimes
troublesome. To-morrow I will get her to come and see me in my room
and perhaps win her confidence.”
Mrs. Plethern had lit a cigarette and was standing at her mirror. In
one hand she held the cigarette; in the other a stick of lip-salve.
“It’s too bad!” she said angrily as her husband stopped reading. “Too
bad, after all we have done! The beastly little interloper----”
“One moment, my dear, one little moment. Let me finish. There is a
postscript and postscripts often make a lot of difference.
“P.S. 10 p.m. Something further has happened and I am so cheered that
I must add this note at once. I happened to go to my dressing-room
(which, as you know, overlooks the house) and to pass by the window
which was open and uncurtained. I saw the library lights were on and
through the window I saw Charles and the girl. They were together on
the sofa and it was evident that my theory of her having principles
was a mistaken one. I could not see very clearly as a tall chair
was partly in the way, but I saw him bending over her and she was
certainly as much in his arms as justifies me in reversing my earlier
judgment. Maybe after all she is as complacent as the rest. In this
case we may feel easy again.”
James replaced the letter in his pocket and regarded his wife with a
triumphant smile. She frowned thoughtfully as she looked back at him.
“It seems to be going all right, doesn’t it?” he said.
“Certainly the postscript is better,” admitted the woman grudgingly,
“but I am puzzled. It doesn’t seem possible.”
“What doesn’t seem possible?”
“I have a letter from Corinne this morning,” explained Mrs. Plethern,
“a letter raving about this girl and how good and beautiful she is and
how I shall like her----”
James got up from his chair.
“Why didn’t you say so sooner?” he demanded crossly. His wife ignored
the interruption.
“Now I do not believe Corinne would write like that about a girl who
let Charles make love to her the moment she got to England and into his
house. Girls are very quick at sizing one another up and Corinne is
such an innocent child. There is some mistake, Jim. Either your mother
is wrong or Corinne, and I cannot believe that Corinne has written
except from genuine excitement.”
“Let me see the child’s letter.”
He read it quickly and without comment. His broad, pale face remained
impassive and expressionless; only the deep, sensitive nostrils
twitched slightly, as they would at moments of interest or puzzlement.
Corinne’s letter was an outpouring of girlish enthusiasm. Viola was
just lovely and a perfect darling. They were to ride in the afternoon,
and Aunt Belinda had said how much she liked Viola, and Corinne
proposed to bring her up to London the day before the ’Varsity match,
so that they could all go together. In conclusion the writer announced
that this new friend would stop a fortnight and come again in the
winter.
James took two turns up and down the room, his forehead lined with
thought.
“Yes, it is very odd,” he said at last, handing the letter back. “We
must see the girl for ourselves. Send Corinne a line to say Miss
Marvell will be welcome here.”
And he left his wife to the completion of her toilet.
§ 3
“Let her alone,” James had said. “Let her alone and we can see what she
is made of. Corinne will keep her happy and at ease.”
Mrs. Plethern obeyed and was careful to welcome Viola with no more
emphasis than she would likely have shown to any one of her daughter’s
friends. Relieved thus informally to be accepted, Viola slipped easily
into the life and diversions of the London household. Excusably she
overlooked a motive in the detachment of her hosts. Excusably also she
allowed their aloofness to colour her own attitude. Her cool reserve
jarred a little on Corinne’s brother.
“Delighted to see you!” he said heartily, extending a large, strong
hand. “You’ve timed your coming over splendidly. It’ll be a fine game.”
She smiled at him and shook her head.
“Shameful confession! I never heard of the Oxford and Cambridge match
nor knew there was one till a day or two ago. Indeed I have been
regretting the coronation and ignoring my real good fortune.”
“Ha! Ha! Well, that’s frank, at all events! Don’t they play cricket in
Canada? Jolly old baseball all the time, what?”
Again she shook her head.
“They may do,” she said indifferently. “I really don’t know. I never
inquired.”
Christopher vented his spleen on Corinne, in her little room among the
attics.
“Stand-offish,” he said with finality. “Topping girl, all right, but
stand-offish.”
“Nonsense, Chris! She’s not a bit like that. She’s only shy.”
“No girl was ever shy of me before,” he objected, “not in that way,
anyhow.”
He was a large young man, rosy cheeked and fair haired, with that
almost aggressive cleanliness often met with among blond Englishmen.
Although a boy in years and boyish in many aspects of his nature,
security was in his blood and centuries of complacent lordship. From
these he derived an obstinate dogmatism and the gestures of a spurious
maturity.
“At any rate not in _that_ way,” he repeated a little jauntily.
The turn of the arm with which he flicked ash from his cigarette was
at once rakish and traditional. As his forbears had slapped their
tall boots with their riding crops or, with a click of the tongue,
had replaced their port glasses on polished mahogany, even so did
Chris Plethern powder with tobacco ash the carpet of his sister’s
sitting-room.
Corinne watched him with a half smile. She admired her brother, but she
had full share of the mischievous feminine humour that likes a man to
strut, at once enjoying his absurdity and loving it.
“She is so strange in England. You must remember that. At Morvane she
was very quiet and talked little enough, even to me. She’ll get used to
us, Chris.”
He had wandered to the window and was studying the unclouded sky. Cares
of a cricketer had thrust trivialities of feminine character from his
mind. He replied to his sister’s words with an absent grunt.
“Still beastly fine,” he remarked. “But it might shower, mightn’t it?”
Corinne knew her job.
“It _must_ do soon,” she agreed. “It’s been baking for ages. I
dare say it’ll rain to-night.”
He brightened immediately.
“Topping. Sun again to-morrow. Nasty sticky wicket. Put ’em in. All
out hundred and fifty. Wicket recovers. We go in. Whsst--whsst--four
hundred for six!----”
With a ruler and round pin-cushion he scored freely all round the
wicket. The demise of a china dog, miraculous survivor from Corinne’s
childhood, brought the innings to a close.
“Sorry!” he said cheerfully. “Poor old Towser!”
§ 4
Within two days of her arrival in London, Viola was plunged into the
massed enthusiasm and bewildering unreality of Lords. The game itself
made little or no impression on her mind. Corinne’s excited prophecies,
the technicalities of those about her, passed with the muted beat
of a bat’s wings. Amusedly aloof from the partisan sparring of her
companions, she watched the slim white figures scattered in seeming
hazard round the wickets, the multi-coloured seethe of the crowded
stands, and told herself, rather for the relief of her own satiety
than from logical deduction, that the smart crowd and those individual
members of it among whom she was thrown were masked for carnival,
that their pranks and gestures were of tradition, that from externals
only need the weary questing of a stranger mind seek teaching or
enlightenment.
By four o’clock on the second day even externals had begun to pall.
Everything was so laboriously the same; repetition so meticulously
complete. Corinne still twittered over her match card; Hilda Crossley,
Oxford and argumentative, still hummed engrossedly at each light-blue
catastrophe. Christopher’s spirited if fortunate innings of fifty-two
had brought the party of his special supporters to a fever of
excitement but, as their pleasure mounted and stood in drops of sweat
upon their brows, Viola sank lower into the tedium of a speciality
whose formulae she had never learnt. The jostling languor of yet
another interval menaced her boredom. She could hardly endure the
strained attention of her hosts. Then Corinne, turning to put some
question to her father, caught sight of an interest that was not purely
cricket. Viola saw her turn, saw her eyes light to eager mischief. Is
it, she wondered swiftly, is it relief at last? And in the moment of
her thought, Corinne cried out:
“_Daniel_, by all that’s wonderful! Dan, _darling_, what a
condescension!”
Viola turned her head in discreet curiosity. Below her on the grass
she saw a slim young man, olive skinned, with an oval womanish face
and soft brown eyes. He was raising a gleaming hat to Corinne in
mock obeisance. His glance travelled casually from Corinne to her
companions; lit on Viola. For a moment they looked each other in the
eyes, silently, across the gulf of mutual strangeness. Then the young
man turned his head brusquely toward the game and stood, in silent
elegance, gazing over the field.
A sudden murmur of disapproval buzzed along the crowded stands.
“Ran away from it!” grunted James Plethern.
With a something of petulance Viola gave attention to the game of which
secretly she was so passionately tired.
“What’s the trouble?” she asked Miss Crossley.
“Funking Shaw,” responded Hilda crisply. “He’ll be out in a second.”
Rather bewildered, Viola glanced one by one at her neighbours. They
glowered angrily at the distant scatter of flannelled heroes. A queer
gloom hung over the scene. On a sudden impulse she bent toward the
young man on the grass below her.
“Do tell me what is the matter,” she whispered.
He smiled quietly into her face.
“You are Viola Marvell?” he asked.
She blushed, remembering that her familiarity had no social sanction.
“I am sorry----” she murmured.
“And I am glad,” he replied. His voice was very low but very clear.
He possessed the feminine faculty of speaking audibly to one near
neighbour but inaudibly to all the rest. “Mother has spoken of you.”
Something in the friendliness of the word ‘mother’ warmed Viola’s heart.
“She was very kind to me,” she said simply, and he knew that she knew
him for Daniel Grieve.
There was a roar of cheering. With a sigh and a rustle the huge crowd
relaxed its joyous or disapproving interest in the game. The tenth
wicket had fallen and the players were coming in for tea. Argument
broke out on the Plethern coach. With the solemn irritation of elderly
enthusiasts James Plethern and Sir Algeron Grieve bore testimony to the
failings of their side.
“What induced them to play the fellow, I cannot understand!”
“He’s been doing very well, earlier in the season,” pleaded Corinne. “I
expect the poor man’s nervous.”
Miss Crossley drawled an unpleasant interruption.
“He has never been able to play fast bowling,” she said.
Corinne tossed her head.
“If you _had_ a fast bowler,” she snapped.
The other laughed nastily.
“Darling Corinne----”
Once again petulance rose in Viola. What a fuss they made of their
wretched game, growling and scratching as though the world depended on
it! Seemingly in purposeful harmony with her momentary impatience, the
cool, quiet voice of Daniel Grieve sounded in her ear:
“It would be interesting to know how all these righteous critics would
themselves stand to a bumping ball....”
“You play?” she queried.
“Oh--at my age? Hardly. I _used_ to.”
“At _your_ age! Twenty-six? Seven maybe?”
He drew himself up.
“Thirty in August, Miss Marvell, and a fine child!”
She laughed, less at the words spoken than at the gently mocking glance
that accompanied them.
Corinne broke upon their privacy. Weary of technical discussions she
had climbed to the ground and having run behind the coach, now flung
herself on Daniel’s arm.
“Danny, I’m so glad to see you! How are you and how’s Moggs and the
camel and----” she broke off, seeing Viola’s amused eyes watching her
from their post of vantage. “Viola--this is Daniel! Dan--Viola.”
Both smiled at the tardy introduction. Corinne chattered on:
“He has been preaching anti-cricket to you, I’m sure. He’s
_dreadfully_ superior! Goes to watch chess tournaments--long
distance ones played by cable. Don’t you, Dan? Nothing so vulgar as a
ball game.”
“Rinka, you make me out barely human.”
She danced against his arm, delighted to tease him, delighted to bring
out for Viola the calm aloofness of his studied manner.
Lady Grieve joined the group.
“Daniel dear, what a compliment! Or is it a conventional lion’s
den--force majeure?”
“Now mother’s at me too!” He smiled to Viola, and his glance was a
humorous appeal for sympathy. “Mumsy dearest, I am your very humble
servant and follow wherever you go. But keep the governor away. I don’t
feel equal to post-mortems on the afternoon’s play.”
“He’s in the middle of his tea, you disrespectful imp. Where I should
be, also, if I hadn’t taken pity on your thirst, all of you. I’m sure
poor Viola is parched. Come and feed, child.”
Daniel offered his hand. She jumped lightly to the ground.
“Tea,” he said confidingly as they moved away, “is what I came for. The
Plethern brothers have a genius for meals.”
As they strolled in search of food Viola drew attention to the huge
figure of Chris Plethern, hung about with adoring relatives.
“There’s the great man,” she said. “He hit very hard. Is that good
cricket?”
“Sometimes the best of all. But not always. Chris is a lusty bat, but
he won’t use his head.”
As they approached, the hero of the morning turned and saw them.
“Hullo, Dan!” he roared. “How goes it, old son?”
“It goes,” replied Daniel, “about fifty-two to the hour. Very hot
stuff, master Christopher. I congratulate you.”
“Wasn’t it splendid!” chorused Corinne and her excited friends.
The great man waved a deprecatory hand.
“Oh, shut it!” he said. “I had a bad let off at slip and another at
mid-on. Got on top of ’em all right now and again, I suppose, but
nothing great.”
He turned to Viola, his face aglow with health, heat and pride of
achievement.
“Are you enjoying yourself, Miss Marvell, or are we too slow for you?”
“I do my best to keep up,” she returned. “At any rate I know enough to
cheer the right side.”
“That’s tophole,” he rejoined and glanced at his watch. “Time to
toddle. Just dashed out to see you all. So long, ladies. So long, dad.”