AT DINNER
Down in the lower hall were the men-servants with their watchful eyes.
They showed us the drawing-room door.
As we came in, I was conscious again of Aunt Josephine's appraising
look. Then of the elaborate grey head turning towards an old man, as if
to ask: Well, what do you think of my nieces? He had a red blotchy face.
The kind of red that is crossed by little purple lines like the tracery
of very tortuous rivers on a map. The lines ran zigzagging into his
nose, which was thick at the end, round and shining. He had no hair
except a sandy fringe, and his eyes, which had no lashes, looked as if
he had a cold. He was introduced as "an old friend of mine"--but she
forgot to tell us his name. We heard him called Colonel. Through all the
scent we could not help noticing that he smelled of brandy.
I looked round for the beautiful foreign lady. But I was prepared to
find her late, after seeing her idling at her door, in a dressing-gown,
so near the dinner-hour.
There was only one other person. A man of about thirty-six. Good-looking
I thought--and not happy. He had a clear face, quite without colour. The
skin very smooth and tight. His dry brown hair was thinning on the
crown. He had nice hands. I noticed that when he stroked his
close-fitting moustache. I did not like him because of his manner. I did
not know what was wrong with it. Perhaps he was only absent-minded. But
when I tried to imagine him talking to my mother I could not.
He was introduced first to Bettina. The others treated him as if he were
very important. They talked about his new Rolls Royce, which turned out
to be a motor-car. The Colonel tried to get him to say how many times he
had been fined for "exceeding speed limit." Then they talked about "The
Tartar." How he was always late. It would be a chance if he came at all.
Aunt Josephine was positive he would appear. "I wired to say it was all
right."
"Just as well, perhaps, if he doesn't come to-night," the good-looking
man said. He would be in a devil of a temper.
Betty asked why would he? They said because his favourite horse had been
"scratched." Betty thought it was nice of him to be so fond of his
horse. But if it was only a scratch----
We did not know why they laughed. But we laughed too. We tried not to
show how unintelligible the talk was. I listened very hard. I felt like
a learner in a foreign tongue. I understood the words but not the
sentences.
The Colonel looked at his watch in a discontented way. Then we went in
to dinner.
I don't think we sat in the order Aunt Josephine had meant. But the
absent-minded man, who had taken me in, refused to change, or to let me.
I had the old Colonel on my left. Aunt Josephine of course at the head.
The empty place was between her and Betty.
The table was glittering and magnificent. We had little helpings of
strange, strong-tasting food before the soup. And caviar.
"You like caviar?" the Colonel said.
I said I didn't know, for in my heart I felt it looked repulsive.
"Don't know caviar?"
I said of course I had heard of it. He asked where. And I said, "In
Shakespeare." The old Colonel choked, and they all laughed to see how
apoplectic he looked--all except Betty and me.
I caught Betty's eye. She had that fiery-rose in her cheeks. I felt
excited, too, and "strange." But I hoped they didn't notice. Betty and I
had agreed that we must try not to show how unused we were to the ways
of a great London house. So I made conversation. I asked about the
absent guest.
My good-looking man pretended to be annoyed. He called, in his slightly
husky voice, across the table to Aunt Josephine: "Already she wants to
talk about The Tartar!" I explained that I meant the foreign lady--the
very beautiful lady I had seen upstairs looking out of her door.
Again my man exchanged glances with Aunt Josephine. He was smiling
disagreeably. Aunt Josephine did not smile at all. But the old Colonel
laughed his croaking laugh, and said the lady upstairs expected people
to go to her.
"Does she expect dinner to go to her, too?" Betty asked. And something
in their faces made Betty blush, though she didn't know why, as I saw.
I believed they were teasing Betty, just for fun, and to see that
beautiful colour in her cheeks flicker and deepen.
So I leaned towards her, and across the flowers and the dazzling lights
I told her the foreign lady was not very well. That was why she was not
coming down.
The Colonel asked me why I thought the lady wasn't well. So I said:
"Because I saw the doctor going up to her."
They were all quite still for a second or two. I looked at Aunt
Josephine. Why was it wrong to mention the doctor's visit? Was she
afraid of making these friends of the beautiful lady anxious about her?
My man still was smiling, but not pleasantly. I couldn't tell whether
the strange noises the Colonel made were choking or laughing. But I felt
more and more miserably shy; And I had no clear idea of why I should
feel so--unless it was that nothing these people said meant what it
seemed to mean.
I could see that Betty was bewildered, too.
We knew we should feel strange; we did not know we should feel like
this.
I was thankful when they all turned round and called out. "The Tartar"
had come, after all.
He made no apology for being late, nor for not having dressed. He
strolled in as if the place belonged to him--a great broad-shouldered
young man in a frock-coat. He had a round, black, cannon-ball of a head,
and his eyebrows nearly joined. His moustache was like a little
blacking-brush laid back against the lip, with the bristles sticking
straight out. But he seemed to be making this effect deliberately, by
pushing out his mouth like a pouting child; or, even more, like a person
with swollen lips. I felt sure I could not have seen him before; but
there was something oddly familiar about him.
He nodded to the others.
When Aunt Josephine said, "My nieces," he said, "Oh," stared a moment,
and then, as he lounged into the empty place, said it had been a rotten
race. I thought how astonished my mother would have been at such
behaviour. Betty must have been thinking of her, too, for she put on our
mother's manner. It was a beautiful manner, but it sat oddly on my
little sister; it made her seem more self-possessed than she was. She
turned and said: "I think you must be Mr. Whitby-Dawson."
The young man stared.
Everybody stared.
He turned sharply from Betty to his hostess. She shook her head. But the
yellow part of her big eyes had turned reddish. She looked very strange.
A creepy feeling came over me.
I remembered she had been "most eccentric" twenty years ago. Was
eccentricity the sort of thing that grew worse as people grew older?
I looked round at the company and met the eyes of the neighbour on my
right. They were unhappy eyes; but they reassured me.
"What put such an idea into your head?" Aunt Josephine was asking Betty.
"Because," Betty said, and she looked at the young man again, "only
because I saw so many of your--of Mr. Whitby-Dawson's photographs----"
"Really?" the young man said, in a bored voice. "That was, no doubt, a
great privilege. My name's Williams."
In her embarrassment Betty turned to the man who sat between us. "He
has even the little scar," she said, like a person defending herself.
"Mr. Whitby-Dawson got his scar in a duel with a student at Heidelberg.
He studied at the University there part of one year----"
"Studied duelling?" the Colonel chuckled. Our absent-minded man was not
absent-minded any more. He was listening, with a look I could not
understand, as if he took a malicious pleasure in poor Betty's mistake.
Such a trifling slip to have taken the young man for Guy Whitby-Dawson,
and yet it seemed to have put the company out of tune. Or perhaps it was
the loss of the race. All except my man seemed to care very much about
the lost race. The Tartar, in his annoyed voice, told his hostess and
the Colonel how it happened. He leaned his elbow on the table, and
almost turned his back on poor Bettina.
I thought I could see that my man seemed not to like The Tartar; and
that gave me a kindlier feeling towards him; I wondered what had made
him unhappy.
I felt I wanted to justify Bettina to him.
I felt, too, that she would recover herself sooner if we broke the
silence at our end. So I said--in a voice too low, I thought, for the
others to hear--that I also had noticed the resemblance to Mr.
Whitby-Dawson. Lower still, he asked me how we came "to hear of
Mr.--of--the gentleman in question." Then Betty and I between us told
about Hermione Helmstone's engagement--only we did not, of course, give
her name.
"The faithless Whitby!" our man said, with the tail of his eye on the
young gentleman opposite. As for him, he tried to go on talking about
"Black Friar," as though he heard nothing of the history being retailed
on the other side. But I had a feeling that he was listening all the
time.
Bettina's loyalty to Hermione made her object to hearing Guy called
faithless. "They would have had only L400 a year between them. And he
said--Mr. Whitby-Dawson said--they couldn't possibly live on that. He
was miserable, poor man!"
"I should say so! Poor and miserable."
"Oh, you laugh," Bettina protested. "But I saw a heart-broken letter
about the poverty that kept them apart and condemned him 'to run in
single harness.'"
"'Single harness!'" the husky voice said. And he repeated it: "'Single
harness,' eh?"
Bettina was recovering her spirits. She said something about Duncombe.
And I don't know what reminded her of the collie-dog story; but she told
it very well, though she did "pile it on." She made me out an immense
heroine, and I am afraid I looked sheepish.
The husky voice said "Good!" and "Pretty cool." The story seemed to
remind him of something. He looked at his plate, and he looked at
Bettina and me.
Betty was amused at having made me feel shy, and she laughed that
bubbling laugh of hers.
The Tartar turned his head.
He did not take away his elbow. But he looked over his shoulder down on
Bettina's apricot-coloured hair. The fillet showed the shape of her
head. It defined the satiny crown, where the hair lay as close as a
red-gold skull-cap. The forget-me-nots and the little green leaves held
all smooth and tight except the heavy, shining rings. They fell out and
lay on her neck.
The Tartar stopped talking about the race.
He still ate his food condescendingly--with one hand. But he drank with
great good-will.
He called to the butler, who had been going round with a gold-necked
bottle in a napkin. He was to come back, The Tartar said, and fill the
ladies' glasses.
I said no. Bettina said she, too, drank water.
The Tartar said "Nonsense!"--quite as though the matter were for him to
decide. The servant filled Bettina's tall, vaselike glass. Bettina
looked alarmed. Already she had displeased this dreadful Tartar once.
"Ought I?" she telegraphed across to me. I shook my head.
"There is one woman in London"--The Tartar made a motion towards the
head of the table--"one woman who's got a decent cellar." The Tartar was
almost genial. He raised his glass to my aunt. "I approve of the new
coiffure, too. Rippin'!"
The Colonel was not to be diverted from the subject of the wine. "Take
an old man's advice," he said to me. "It's a chancy sort of world. Make
sure of a little certain bliss." He lifted his own glass and drained
it.
The Tartar said something to Bettina which I could not hear. She looked
up at him with a kind of wonder in her eyes, and with that "fiery rose"
quite suddenly overspreading her face again. She put out her hand to the
tall glass, hesitated, and then looked at the head of the table. Perhaps
Bettina saw what all of a sudden was clear to me. Aunt Josephine was
like a huge grey hawk. The head craning out; the narrow forehead, all
grey crest; the face falling away from the beak. How she had changed
from the days when she had a double chin! The tilt of the outstretched
head was exactly like a bird's. Watching sideways--watching ... for
what?
The eye made me shrink. It made Bettina set her lips, obedient, to the
glass. She looked apologetic over the rim at me.
Mine stood untouched.
"I see you have a will of your own," the voice on my right said in my
ear.
The London way seemed to be that ladies did not leave the table while
men smoked. The talk was about wines, but it flagged. The Tartar kept
looking at Bettina. The fitful colour in her cheeks had paled again. The
scent of flowers, and that other all-pervading perfume, mixed with the
tobacco, was making Bettina faint.
My man noticed it. "You aren't accustomed to smoke," he said to Bettina,
and he twisted his cigar round on his fruit-plate till he crushed out
the burning. But the others took no notice.
I was sure Bettina was trying hard to throw off her oppression. I
thought of our mother; and the thought of her sent sharp aching through
me. Bettina and I looked at each other. I knew by her lip she had great
trouble not to cry.
"Do you think," I whispered to my man, "you could ask to have a window
opened?"
He said we would be going into the drawing-room soon. "Drink that black
coffee," he recommended.
He seemed not unkind, so I tried to think why he would not do so small a
thing for us as ask to have a window opened. "Are the downstairs windows
barred with iron, too?"
He looked sharply at me.
"I believe so," he said.
I thought it must be because of all the silver and valuables in the
house. But he glanced at me again, as if he thought I was still
wondering and might ask someone else. Then he said he had heard "it
used to be a private madhouse."
"_This house?_"
He nodded.
"You needn't say I told you."
That, then, was what I had been feeling. The poor mad people who used to
be shut up here--they had left this uncanny influence behind. A
strangeness and a strain.
The Colonel was speaking irritably to one of the footmen. Something had
gone wrong with an electric-light bulb over the sideboard.
"Send for Waterson to-morrow to attend to that!"
No one but me seemed at all surprised to hear the Colonel giving orders
in my aunt's house.
As I sat there in the midst of all the contending scents, with the soft
clash of silver, glass, and voices in my ears, a train of ideas raced
through my brain as crazy as any that could have been harboured here in
the days when....
The letters that had come out of this house Eric had called "demented."
All the windows were still barred.
What if it were a private madhouse still! Before my eyes the watchful
big footmen turned into keepers to the Grey Hawk and to the lady
upstairs. The doctor--he was for those too dangerous to trust
downstairs. That was why they had laughed at my inquiry--such
callousness had familiarity bred. The Colonel might be the proprietor of
the house. My aunt was well off. No doubt they humoured her. With a
keeper dressed like a footman, they allowed her certain liberties--to
write crazy letters in her harmless intervals ... friends to dine ...
nieces to divert her. They would do almost anything to keep that red
look out of her eyes.
"There is one thing I don't understand," I began to say to the man at my
side.
But he was nervous too, and jumped down my throat: "Don't ask me
questions! I never passed an examination in my life," he pulled out his
watch. "And I've got an engagement to keep in exactly three minutes'
time."
No wonder I stared. One man comes when dinner is half done, and one
wants to go before the hostess had risen. For my part I wanted him _not_
to go ... I told him so.
"Why?" he turned suddenly and faced me.
I said it was perhaps because I felt I knew him best. "Anyway," I
persisted, "don't go!" He hesitated. "_Please_ don't go," I said. I was
relieved when he said, very well, he would "see it out." For I knew, had
he gone, my aunt would think I had driven him away.
There was a rustle, and I saw Aunt Josephine rising. My man left me
instantly. He went and opened the door. As we filed out he turned
towards my aunt. I heard him whisper, "_Je vous fais mes compliments,
madame_." He looked at Betty.
Aunt Josephine nodded. "But...." her face changed.
What was wrong? For whom was that "but"? I turned quickly and caught the
yellow eyes leaving my back. I was "but." But why? What had I done? The
Colonel talked to Betty and The Tartar, as he led the way back to the
drawing-room. The other man still was behind with my aunt. He seemed to
be reassuring her. His curious low voice kept going off the register. At
a break I heard the words: "Doucement" enunciated with an emphasis that
carried.
I kept thinking how all the softly-draped windows had iron bars behind
the silk.
In the drawing-room, my aunt was saying to The Tartar, "Oh, yes, Bettina
sings and dances."
"She sings," I said.
"Don't you skirt-dance?" The Tartar asked.
Bettina looked sorry. "I can dance ordinary dances," she said. "But what
sort is a skirt-dance?"
The men made a semicircle round her to explain.
Betty said she hadn't done any skirt-dances since she was a little girl.
"Oh, and what are you now?" the Colonel said, grinning horribly.
They made Bettina tell about the action-songs our mother had taught us
in the nursery. They asked her to do one.
Of course Bettina refused. "They're only for children," she said with
that little air borrowed from our mother.
The Tartar threw back his bullet head and roared. The Colonel said they
were sick, in London, of sophisticated dancing. What they wanted was
Bettina's sort. Bettina shook her head.
The Grey Hawk said it was too soon after dinner. But they went across
the room towards the piano.
I was following, when the man who had taken me in to dinner said: "This
is a comfortable chair." So I sat down.
He said something about the strangeness of London "just at first." It
would pass away.
I told him I hoped Bettina would find it so. As for me, I was only
staying till to-morrow.
He looked so surprised that I explained I had to go back and take care
of my mother.
"You have never been to London since you were a child--and you come all
this way just for a few hours?"
"I came to take care of Betty," I said. "She has never travelled alone."
He looked at me: "And you?"
"Oh, I haven't either. To-morrow will be the first time. But then, I am
older."
He said nothing for several moments. I looked across the room to where I
could see the back of Bettina's head, between the bare crown of the
Colonel and The Tartar's black bullet. The Tartar was bending over
towards Bettina. Aunt Josephine sat near them, facing the door, and us.
My man looked up suddenly and saw the eyes of the Grey Hawk on us.
"We must talk!" he said, with a laugh, "or they will think we aren't
getting on. That isn't a comfortable chair after all." He stood up. I
said it was quite comfortable. While he was insisting, a servant came in
to speak to my aunt. I caught a glimpse through the door of a footman
going upstairs with a short, fattish young man. Too young, I thought, to
be another doctor.
We went to the end of the room, and we sat on a sofa near the
fireplace--one of those sofas you sink down in till you feel half
buried. I didn't like to say I hated it, for he was taking so much
trouble. He put a great down cushion at my back, as if I were an
invalid.
"There! Now, can you sit quite still for a few minutes? As still as if I
were taking your picture?" I said I supposed I could. "And must I look
pleasant?" I laughed. He hesitated and then: "How good are your nerves?"
he asked.
"Very good," I boasted.
But he was grave.
"Have you ever fainted?"
"Never!" I said, a little indignantly.
"Could you hear something very unexpected, even horrible, and not cry
out?"
"You know something!" I thought of an accident to my mother. "You have
news for me...."
"Careful," he said in a sharp whisper. "You told me you could keep
perfectly still. If you can't I won't go on." I begged him to go on, and
I kept my face a blank. He turned his head slightly and took in the
group at the other end of the room. He sat so a moment, with his eyes
still turned away, while he said: "Everything--more than life, depends
on your self-control during the next few minutes."
I sat staring at him.
"Have you any idea where you are?"--and still he looked not at me but
towards the others.
My first bewilderment was giving way to fear. No fear now of anything he
could tell me. Fear of the man himself. I saw it all. Not that iron-grey
woman who had left the room with the servant, not the brilliant lady
upstairs, but the person who had set me thinking wild thoughts at dinner
about barred windows and private lunatic asylums.
The man sitting not three feet way from me--was mad.
I calculated the distance between me and the other group, while I
answered him: "I am at my aunt's--Mrs. Harborough's."
"Where does your aunt live?"
"At 160 Lowndes Square."
"You are twenty minutes from Lowndes Square. You are in one of the most
infamous houses in Europe."