‘That means that you’ve promised to pay,’ said Vicky. ‘Or else you’ve fobbed him off for the moment, and he’ll come back.’
‘It seems to me,’ said Wally, with a good deal of asperity, ‘that all you learned at that precious finishing-school of yours was to snoop round listening at keyholes. You may think that a smart thing to do, but let me tell you that it isn’t at all the clean potato. In fact, it’s very dishonourable, that’s what it is.’
Upon which austere pronouncement he strayed away grandly, but a little uncertainly, in the direction of his bedroom.
Five
If Wally hoped that his wife was going to turn a blind eye to his latest peccadillo, he was soon undeceived. Though the night might have brought little counsel and less repose to Ermyntrude, it did strengthen her determination to ‘have it out’ with Wally. Mary and Vicky, and probably the Prince too, knew that a highly dramatic scene had been staged in Ermyntrude’s bedroom before breakfast on the following morning, for when Ermyntrude succumbed to her emotions she became not only hysterical, but extremely shrill. Anyone at Palings on that Sunday morning would have had to have been very deaf indeed not to have been disturbed by the sound of its mistress’s voice, rising higher and higher, and finally breaking into gusty sobs.
When Ermyntrude did not appear to take her place behind the coffee-cups, Mary began to feel uneasy, for although Ermyntrude often indulged in hearty quarrels with Wally, they usually relieved her feelings so much that she was able to face her family, ten minutes later, with all her customary good-humour. When the sinister message was delivered to her that Ermyntrude would not be requiring any breakfast, her spirits sank to their lowest level. It was with an effort that she summoned up a smile to greet the Prince. She told him, in what she hoped was a careless tone, that Ermyntrude had a headache, and was breakfasting in her room. He accepted this information with all the polite concern of one who had not sipped his early tea to the accompaniment of an unleashed female voice reciting, in ruthless crescendo, every sin his host had committed since his marriage.
Mary could not but applaud the correctness of his attitude, and was just beginning to accuse herself of having been unjust to the Prince, when he once more alienated her sympathy by leading their conversation into a channel whither she refused to follow him. Gracefully, delicately, but none the less obviously, Prince Varasashvili was attempting to discover from Miss Cliffe the terms of the late Mr Fanshawe’s will. The Prince, in fact, wanted to know whether Geoffrey Fanshawe’s fortune had been left unconditionally to his relict, or whether it was tied up in his daughter.
Restraining an impulse to inform the Prince that the outlay of a small sum at Somerset House would place at his disposal the information that was so necessary to him, Mary returned no sort of reply to his adroit conversational feelers, but offered him instead a second cup of coffee. He spoke of what he must suppose to be Vicky’s large expectations, adding with a smile which Mary thought brazen: ‘She is at all times enchanting, but when it is known that she will have also a fortune when she comes of age – is it not so? – one is astonished that she is not already betrothed! It is very well, however: she should make what you call a good match, do you not agree?’
‘Yes, Vicky’s very attractive,’ responded Mary woodenly.
‘You also, Miss Cliffe, are one of the lucky ones, I understand,’ he continued. ‘I hear that you, too, are an heiress.’
For a startled moment, Mary wondered whether he were considering her as a possible bride, but came to the conclusion, after a glance at his face, that he was merely sliding by not too obvious stages away from a subject which he had been quick to see she disliked.
‘An heiress!’ she said. ‘I’m afraid you’ve been listening to Uncle Wally, Prince.’
‘Certainly, yes. It’s not true? Alas, then! I understood that there is an aunt who leaves all her money to your guardian, and that you are his heiress.’
‘You’ve got it wrong,’ replied Mary. ‘My guardian’s Aunt Clara hasn’t made a will at all, and isn’t likely to, because, to tell you the truth, she’s mad. Has been, for years and years.’
‘Yes, and a good job too,’ said Wally, who had just come into the room. ‘I’ve no doubt if she were sane she’d go and leave every penny to a Home for Lost Cats, because that’s just the sort of thing that happens to me. In fact, it would be just my luck if the old girl recovered, instead of kicking the bucket, which is what she ought to have done years ago.’ He sat down, and shook out his napkin. ‘And yet you’ll hear people arguing that euthanasia’s all wrong!’ he added bitterly. ‘The end of it’ll be that I shall die first, and the only person who’ll benefit will be Mary. Not that I don’t want you to benefit, my dear, because I do, but it’s a bit thick if I don’t benefit first, if you see what I mean.’
Mary had finished her breakfast by this time, and now got up, adjuring Wally to look after his guest.
‘As far as I can see, he doesn’t need any looking after,’ said Wally outrageously. ‘Quite one of the family, aren’t you?’
The Prince refused to take offence, but replied smilingly: ‘Yes, indeed, you have made me feel so. It’s very pleasant! I assure you, I enjoy my stay enormously.’
‘Well, I’m glad someone’s pleased,’ retorted Wally, eyeing him with gloomy dislike.
Mary felt unequal to the task of coping with this situation, and left the room, preferring to perform another unpleasant duty. She went upstairs to visit Ermyntrude.
That afflicted lady was lying amorphously in the centre of a large rose-pink brocade bed. A strong aroma of scent filled the room, and the pink silk curtains were drawn to shut out the indiscreetly cheerful sunshine.
‘Is that you, dearie?’ she said faintly. ‘Oh, my head!’
Mary was fond of Ermyntrude, and although she might deprecate her flights into hysteria, she thought that Wally treated her abominably, and so was able to reply with genuine sympathy: ‘Poor Aunt Ermy! I’ll bathe your forehead with eau-de-Cologne, and you’ll soon feel more yourself.’
‘I’ve come to the end!’ announced Ermyntrude, in a voice that would have done credit to any tragedienne. ‘God knows I’ve tried my best, but this is the parting of the ways!’
Mary opened the window at the bottom, and began to soak a handkerchief with eau-de-Cologne. ‘Are you going to divorce Wally?’ she asked bluntly.
This swift descent from the realms of drama to the practical was rather ill-timed. Ermyntrude gave a moan, and turned her face into one of the lace-edged pillows that sprawled all over the head of the bed.
Realising that she had spoken out of turn, Mary said no more, but began to bathe Ermyntrude’s brow. After a slight pause, Ermyntrude said: ‘I oughtn’t to speak of such things to you. You being his ward and all, and so young and innocent!’
‘Never mind about that,’ replied Mary, speaking as mechanically as she felt any actress must in the two hundred and fiftieth performance of a successful drama. ‘What happened?’
‘Oh, don’t ask me!’ besought Ermyntrude, with a shudder.
It was indeed unnecessary; the history of the morning’s encounter with Wally came pouring out, a little garbled perhaps, and certainly incoherent, but graphic enough to present Mary with a comprehensive picture. Ermyntrude spoke in thrilling tones, working herself up to the moment when, starting up in bed, and flinging wide two plump arms, she demanded to be told why she should bear this humiliation, when a better and a nobler man asked nothing more of life than to be allowed to take her away from it all.
‘The Prince?’ asked Mary.
Ermyntrude sank back on to her pillows, and groped for the smelling-salts. ‘He couldn’t remain silent any longer,’ she said simply. ‘He has struggled, but when he saw – when he realised the life I lead, the way Wally treats me, flesh and blood wouldn’t stand it! He spoke! Oh, Mary dear, when I think that if things h
ad been different I might have been Princess Varasashvili, it seems as though I just can’t bear it!’
Mary was silent for a moment, but presently she said: ‘Well, why don’t you divorce Wally, Aunt Ermy?’
Ermyntrude had cast an anguished arm across her eyes, but she lowered it at this, and replied with a note of sound common sense in her voice: ‘Divorce Wally, on account of this Baker hussy? I’m not such a fool!’
‘You needn’t cite her as the co-respondent. It could be an unknown woman, couldn’t it?’
‘Catch Wally doing anything so obliging!’ said Ermyntrude caustically. ‘Of course he wouldn’t! And what would I look like, cut out by a cheap little— Well, we’ll leave it at that, for I’m sure I’ve no wish to soil my lips with what she is! Besides, look what harm it would do my Vicky, if I was to go and get a divorce!’
‘I don’t really see why it should.’
‘I dare say you don’t, but I wasn’t born yesterday, and I know what people are! Goodness knows the right people look down on me enough without my giving them something fresh to turn up their noses at!’
‘Oh!’ cried Mary, moved for the first time during this scene, ‘you mustn’t think that sort of thing, Aunt Ermy! If people look down on you, you can be sure they aren’t the right people, and send them to the devil!’
‘That’s all very well for you, dearie: you’ve had education,’ said Ermyntrude. ‘I can’t afford to send people to the devil, though I don’t deny I’ve often been tempted to. Funny, isn’t it, when you think how I could buy up the Derings and the Bawtrys, and all the rest of them, and never notice it? Oh well! there’s no use repining, as they say. But there’s one thing I’m determined on, and always have been, and that is that there’s never going to be any sneering at my Vicky. She’s been brought up a lady, and her father was a real gentleman, and whatever else I may have been, I’ve always been respectable, and no one can say different!’
‘But no one would think you less respectable for having divorced Wally,’ said Mary.
‘That’s all you know, dearie,’ replied Ermyntrude tartly. ‘There aren’t any flies on me, thanks! What with my having been on the stage, and having the kind of looks I have, I can just hear all the dirty-minded Nosey-Parkers saying it was all a put-up job, and Wally doing it to oblige me, just so as I could marry a prince!’ Mention of her exalted suitor, and the thoughts of splendour his title conjured up, proved too much for her. She abandoned herself to despair, moaning faintly that she would have to go on being a bird in a golden cage.
Mary could not help laughing at this. ‘Dear Aunt Ermy, at least the gold is your own! Has the Prince actually asked you to divorce Wally, and marry him?’
‘A woman,’ proclaimed Ermyntrude in throbbing accents, ‘doesn’t need to be told everything in black and white! The Prince is the soul of honour.’
‘Quite,’ said Mary dryly. ‘Does he know that you don’t approve of divorce?’
‘I had to tell him! I couldn’t let him waste his life on me, could I? The might-have-been! Oh, dear, my head feels as though it would split!’
Mary moistened the handkerchief again, and laid it across Ermyntrude’s brow. ‘If you don’t mean to divorce Wally, what are you going to do?’ she inquired.
‘God knows!’ responded Ermyntrude, letting her voice sink a tone. She added, more prosaically, but with quite as much feeling: ‘I’m not going to spend my poor first husband’s money buying that creature off, and that’s flat!’
‘It certainly seems most unfair that you should have to,’ Mary agreed. ‘At the same time, won’t there be rather a nasty scandal if she isn’t provided for?’
‘Let him do the providing!’ said Ermyntrude, her bosom heaving. ‘The idea of his expecting his wife to pay off his mistress! Oh, I can’t bear it, Mary! I can’t go on! What – what, I ask you, does the future hold for me? Neglect and scandal, and me still in my prime, tied hand and foot to a man like Wally! I can see it all! He’ll go from bad to worse, drinking himself into his grave, and behaving so that I won’t be able to have a housemaid in the place that isn’t over sixty and hare-lipped, just like that nasty old Williams, who led his poor wife such a dance when I first came to live here – before your time, that was, dearie, and personally I always did say and I always shall say that she drove him to it, going about with a face a mile long, and her hair scratched up on the top of her head, and her nose always shiny, and red at the tip, like she did!’ She broke off, realising that this reminiscence was not entirely felicitous, and retrieved the situation with a magnificent gesture indicating her own charms. ‘You can’t say Wally’s goings-on are my fault!’ she said. ‘Look at me! Thrown away, Mary! Thrown away!’
‘I don’t want to sound unsympathetic, Aunt Ermy, but after all, you’ve known what Wally is for ages. Let me bring you up some tea, and some thin toast, and you’ll feel better.’
‘I couldn’t touch a morsel!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘You know what I get like when Wally’s upset me. Feel how burning hot I am! I shall probably be ill for a week. That’s the worst of having an artist’s temperament: one suffers for it.’
If Ermyntrude contemplated extending a nerve-crisis over a week, Mary could not help feeling that the other inmates of the house would suffer to an almost equal extent. She agreed that Ermyntrude was certainly in a high fever, and refrained from pointing out that the day was bidding fair to be a very hot one, and that a fat, satin-covered eiderdown might well be expected to make anyone burning hot. She offered to ring up Dr Chester’s house, and to ask him to call.
This suggestion found favour. ‘Tell him to bring me a sedative,’ said Ermyntrude in a fading voice. ‘I couldn’t bear anyone else near me, but Maurice always understands. He’s the kind of man I can talk to.’
Mary went away to perform this mission. While she would naturally have preferred Ermyntrude not to talk of her present difficulties to anybody, she was not a girl who expected impossibilities, and she considered that if Ermyntrude wished to unburden herself further it had better be to Maurice Chester, who had known her for many years, than to the Prince, or to Robert Steel.
She found Vicky hanging up the receiver of the telephone in the hall. Vicky had enlivened the Sabbath by coming down to breakfast in abbreviated tennis-shorts, and a sleeveless shirt. She said, when she saw Mary: ‘Oh, hallo! That was that corrosive Harold White. I do think he’s getting awfully redundant, don’t you?’
‘What does he want this time?’
‘Wally. It’s getting to be a habit with him. I say, would it be heartless, or anything, if I went and played tennis? Because I’ve told White to send Alan over. I quite meant to be a Comfort-to-Mother, in pale-blue organdie, but she rather turned her face to the wall.’
‘No, much better leave her alone. I’m going to ask Maurice to come and see her. You might have invited Janet, too. Then you could have had a four, with the Prince.’
‘Yes, I might, but I thought not. She’s got such fuzzy edges. I think she’s out of focus. Besides, she’s going to church. I’ve asked Alexis to come and play, though, which is definitely a Sundayish sort of thing for me to have done, because as a matter of fact I’ve got frightfully tired of him.’
‘Oh, so have I!’ said Mary involuntarily. ‘But he’ll leave tomorrow, won’t he?’
‘Well, I’m not sure, but I’ve got a crushing suspicion that he means to linger. So I told him in the most utterly tactful way that Ermyntrude’s one of those rather obsolete people who reckon nuts to divorce. It may shift him, but, of course, now that Wally’s started this imbroglio, I do see that the stage is practically set for Alexis to do his big act. I suppose you wouldn’t like to come and play tennis?’
‘No, I can’t. I must look after Aunt Ermy. What on earth are we going to do with the Prince this afternoon? We ought to have fixed up a proper tennis-party, of course. Well, it’s too late now, and in any
case, if Aunt Ermy doesn’t pull herself together—’ She left the sentence unfinished, and picked up the telephone.
Dr Chester answered the call himself. He asked what was the matter with Ermyntrude, and when Mary replied guardedly that she was suffering from one of her nervous attacks, he said: ‘I see. All right, I’ll come along at once,’ in his unemotional but reassuring way.
He had been on the point of setting out on his round, and he arrived at Palings ten minutes later, encountering in the hall Prince Varasashvili, who had changed into tennis-flannels, and was going out to join Vicky and Alan on the court.
Prostrate Ermyntrude might be, but she was not the woman to receive any gentleman (even her doctor) in a tumbled wrapper, with her hair in disorder, and her face not made-up. A message was brought down to Dr Chester that she would see him in ten minutes’ time if he would be good enough to wait; and the Prince at once took it upon himself to conduct him into the morning-room, and to beguile the time for him with conversation. When Mary came, not ten, but twenty minutes later, to summon the doctor, she found that he had been cajoled into talking about prehistoric remains, the study of which was one of his hobbies. He had collected a certain amount of pottery and a number of flint weapons in the Dordogne, and in East Anglia, but the Prince claimed to have visited Anau, in South Turkistan, and was describing some fragments of pottery of geometric pattern in a way that made it seem probable that he really had seen these treasures.
Dr Chester remained with Ermyntrude for quite half an hour. When he at last left her, he found Mary waiting for him, in a large window embrasure half-way up the broad staircase. He smiled at her look of inquiry, and sat down beside her on the window-seat. ‘All right,’ he said briefly.
‘I suppose she told you the whole sordid story?’
‘Oh yes.’
‘It’s about the limit of Wally,’ Mary said. ‘I don’t wonder Aunt Ermy’s upset. I only wish I knew what I could do to help.’
‘There’s nothing that you can do,’ he responded.
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