“I suppose he sees a lot of the nobs at that place? He’s lucky, isn’t he, getting a billet like that!”
“Well—it isn’t just what he wanted to do, Mrs. Marsden.”
“Oh, I should worry! ’E’s a real boy, that boy of yours, Mrs. Ellis, not one of them long drinks of water that play on Sundays.” This, presumably, with memories of Albert Hall placards. “’E’s no ninny in a velvet suit, Gareth isn’t. I’ll bet ’e’ll come to like playing with Regan just as if ’e was born to it. I should worry!”
“You’ll be quiet upstairs, then, won’t you? I do want him to get all the sleep he can. He’s always needed a lot of sleep ever since he was a baby.”
“Oh, you spoil that boy,” Mrs. Marsden said indulgently. But she wound a duster round the wooden part of her broom, and Mary, watching out of the corner of her eye, was amused to think that her paint-work was going to be saved after all those years merely because Gareth was not to be wakened.
But Gareth was not asleep. Of a winter morning the cold in the attics of Number Seventeen was so intense that only a swoon would have kept one insensible to it, and although it was still only September the days were frosty. Gareth had drawn his chilly toes nearer and nearer to the rest of him, until his thin knees were directly under his chin. The discomfort and the hopelessness of this impasse had finally forced him to face the world he had been trying to ignore. As he opened his eyes on the dreary grey room he felt that there was something nice that he wanted to remember. As his eyes lighted on his violin case he remembered what it was. It was Regan’s.
And suddenly it struck him as rather amusing that he should be recalling with pleasure his first night in the service of Mammon. But it was so. There was no use denying it. He had enjoyed it; every minute of it. And he was looking forward to to-night. It was a world he knew nothing of, Regan’s world, and it was amusing and full of colour. Molly had been right; he was going to enjoy his “fling.”
He had gone to that first rehearsal in a queer mixture of shyness and what can only be described as “uppishness”. He was a little afraid of his new colleagues, and at the same time contemptuous of them. They had been very kind to the new-comer, putting him at his ease, and showing no open curiosity about him, throwing out bits of information with friendly casualness. His shyness had been replaced by that brotherly feeling which exists between members of a trade, and his feeling of superiority had begun to wilt. It disappeared entirely when he heard Hal play. Hal had “amused” himself while waiting for Regan, and Gareth, listening through the hubbub to Hal communing with Bach, was shocked. Gareth, who was not without humour, had no illusions about his own talent; he had never imagined himself a genius. He had wanted to play music by the masters because that is what he happened to like, not because it was the appropriate vehicle for genius. But here at the piano was a far greater master of his instrument than he would ever be. And he was Regan’s pianist. Gareth began to feel almost humble; a state of mind which was very good for him.
He had learned, incidentally, that Tavender, his predecessor, had “walked out on Regan, contract and all”, because Regan had objected to his passion for feminine admiration. “You keep your eyes for music, young Ellis,” they said; and Gareth had laughed, and felt pleasantly superior to the poor fool Tavender, who had let his eyes wander. At eleven o’clock that night he remembered Tavender with less superiority. He had caught the eye of the girl who had come that morning to rehearsal; she was dancing with a tall fair man, and his glance had lingered on them a moment because they made such a perfect couple; she had met his eyes and she had smiled at him. A friendly, involuntary smile it had been. Gareth was so startled that he had not smiled back, and before her own smile faded she had danced away in the crowd. At the back of his mind as he played he kept thinking about that smile. Why should she smile at him? And a smile like that; not coquettish or provocative, but merely a smile of greeting, as one glad to see a friend. Perhaps she had mistaken him for someone else. Or perhaps she remembered him from that morning and had forgotten that she didn’t know him. But it had been a very personal smile. If it had meant anything at all it had meant: “Why, there you are!” Unconsciously he watched for her to come round again; but when she did she was talking to the good-looking man as though she had never had another thought in the world. And Gareth had not seen her again (her table was behind a projection) until when they were packing up he saw her talking to Regan. They were only a few yards away, and Gareth, wrapping up his fiddle, could hear quite distinctly.
“Come and have some bacon and eggs with us, José.”
“I should love to, but there is my beauty sleep to be considered. You may not need one, but I do.”
“Eggs are very good for the complexion, and bacon is a wonderful tonic for the muscles.”
“But half an hour in bed is better. The boys are expected to go straight to bed, and I can’t expect them to do something if I don’t do it myself, can I?”
“Oh, but you’re going to bring Mr. Ellis too. I want to meet him.”
Mr. Ellis! So she knew his name. And she wanted to meet him!
“Now look here, Lady Ursula”—José’s tone was one of good-humoured expostulation—“I don’t want another Tavender in the band.”
“I don’t think there is any danger of that. Really, José, you are maddening. If you don’t come I shall never invite you again.”
“You don’t call this an invitation, do you? It’s a press-gang.”
“Come on. Raoul is looking daggers at us. His corns are hurting and he wants to get his shoes off. That’s what that fixed smile means. We’re going down to The Laurel Bush.”
And they had gone. He had been in a slight panic to begin with, wondering what he should say to her; he couldn’t say clever things. But as he went down the narrow dark street alongside her, scared of the shining creature at his elbow but a little pleased to be singled out by anyone so famous, he found that she didn’t expect him to make epigrams. She had asked about himself, and they had chatted about music. She had talked about music quite sensibly, as a musician might, with none of the gush and ecstasies that he had come to expect from women on the subject. She didn’t talk about “that perfectly adorable thing of So-and-So.’” She was interested when she learned that he had been a protégé of Dolmetsky.
“Funny old dear, Dolmetsky, isn’t he? I travelled in a train with him once—we were going to stay at the same house—and he swore all the time because the creak the window made was in the wrong key. I don’t suppose he approves of your playing for José!”
“He doesn’t know yet.”
“Why aren’t you playing for him now?” He noticed that she asked questions directly, in a way that Sark Street would consider rude; Sark Street hinted and suggested for their information.
“There’s no vacancy at the moment. When a man gets a job with Dolmetsky he settles down for life.”
“What will he do when he knows about Regan?”
“Kill me, probably.”
They had sat at right angles to each other at the bench-like table under the staring yellow lights of The Laurel Bush, and had talked to each other, while José and Captain Grierson and the Conyers-Munford girl and a man called Clive Something had drowned their voices with argument on a hypothetical National Theatre and whether the Conyers-Munford girl could possibly be allowed to eat Irish stew at one in the morning. Gareth decided that she was lovelier than anyone he had ever seen. Lovelier than Sara, and he knew that Sara was beautiful. No photograph of her had ever done her justice. He had seen lots. You couldn’t pick up a paper without seeing a photograph of Lady Ursula Deane. Her make-up was more obvious than Sara’s; Sara had to be discreet in her aids to beauty because of father; but her face was more alive than Sara’s, and although her mouth, like Sara’s, had a scornful curve, there was a wealth of laughter in her eyes. It had been wonderful to sit so near her that he could watch the changing expressions in those eyes.
Gareth, made reckless by the memory,
turned over in the freezing sheets. His cold upper cheek came to rest in the warm hollow where his head had been. He savoured the exquisiteness of the sensation for a moment with closed eyes. But the recollection of last night still sent little pricks of exultation through him. The pricks multiplied, until he was a sort of catherine wheel of emotions. He kicked aside the blankets and leaped into the grey day. With one arm through his dressing-gown sleeve he undid his violin. As he lifted it out he shoved his arm through the other. He began to play, walking up and down on the hard carpet with bare feet.
His mother, four flights below, heard the faint sounds, and laid down the pastry roller to put the kettle on. Twenty minutes later she appeared in the doorway with a breakfast tray. But Gareth had by that time remembered he was cold. He was half dressed, and fighting with his collar in a mood that held little of rapture. It annoyed him that his mother should have gone to all the trouble of bringing up a tray when she could have found out first that he was getting up.
“What did you do that for!” he asked testily.
“I thought when you were playing that you weren’t coming down yet. But it doesn’t matter. I can put it in the oven for a little. You won’t be long.”
“Oh, won’t I!” he said, wrenching at his collar.
“Let me do that,” she said, and he submitted as if he had been a baby. He noticed that she had made toast, and felt apologetic.
“You were very late last night. I heard you come in. Did you have a good sleep?”
“Iphm.”
“How did you get on?” The question was of hand, but her eyes watched him fearfully.
“Oh, not bad,” he said cheerfully.
He debated with himself for a moment whether he should tell her about the supper at The Laurel Bush, about meeting Lady Ursula and that crowd. There was no reason why he shouldn’t tell her, and yet something held him back. He wanted to tell her because it was, in a way, a feather in his cap. But it was also something which for some reason he wanted to hug to himself. He decided that he would not tell any of them.
“Oh, not half bad!” he said joyously.
“You can tell me all about it when you come down. It’s cold up here.”
She picked up the tray and carried it away, smiling, relieved. He hadn’t hated it after all. Things were going to be all right.
Chapter VIII
As Mary made her happy way downstairs, Ursula was lying watching the firelight flicker on her bedroom wall and wondering what she was going to do about Gareth Ellis. It was the first time that she had ever paused to examine a line of action. But then! Was she really going to make a fool of herself over this boy? What in heaven’s name was there in him to attract her? His talent? She had known some of the greatest musicians in the world. His looks? He was what Daphne had said: like something that had been wrung out. He was a painfully ordinary little suburban fiddler, with a cockney accent and badly waved hair. What on earth made her interested in him!
And while her reasonable worldly mind behaved with such commendable lucidity, she herself was remembering with a queer tenderness the way his mouth moved irresolutely when he spoke, the little hollow below his cheek bone, his funny, adorable freckles, the way his long eyes, so unexpectedly dark, slid round to her in appreciation before he smiled at what she had said, his thin boy’s hands, his cheeky shyness. A dozen times, while her mind recited his impossibilities, she went down that street with him, slim and silent at her side. He had not been more than an inch taller than she. She had been able to look straight across at his profile, half-hidden between his upturned collar and the brim of his black soft hat. And she had been filled with an eager happiness that was strange and lovely.
Her mind, resenting her inattention, brought her up with a jab. Look here: it said, what do you want with him? A lover? But she could not imagine Gareth as her lover. A husband? That was merely funny. Then what?
She stared at the firelight patterns and could find no answer. All she knew was that she wanted to go on thinking of Gareth; that she wanted to see him again more than she had ever wanted to see anyone.
It was supremely ridiculous.
“Take away the damned tray, Florence, it’s hurting my knees.”
But she said it gaily, and Florence looked at her in approval. Not many mistresses would look as nice as Lady Ursula after coming home in the small hours. Glad to be rid of that Somers person, she supposed. Oh, Florence had seen it coming, that she had, and Lady Ursula would be well rid of him when she broke it off. She had heard things in the kitchen about Mr. Bonamy Reginald Somers that made your hair curl. And Mrs. Maitland, the housekeeper, had told her some more. No one had been able to see why Lady Ursula liked him, except that he had a lot of back-chat. But she hadn’t stood for him long. They said she was changeable, but why not own up when you’d made a mistake. People were nasty about her just because they hadn’t her courage. They tried to keep their mistakes down instead of putting them up and getting them out of their system, and that spoiled their judgment as well as their lives. Lady Ursula wouldn’t be like that. She’d give Mr. Somers the sack, and that would leave the way free for Captain Grierson, who was a nice gentleman and very suitable. Not much wonder that she was looking happy this morning.
Florence tweaked the lemon silk sheet out of its creases and moved the unopened letters insinuatingly nearer on the embroidered counterpane. She never ceased to marvel at the indifferent way the gentry treated their letters. When she got a letter she couldn’t wait to open it.
“Was the ball a success, Florence?”
“So they do say, my lady.”
“Everyone come safely back?”
“Her ladyship got in about four, and Miss Pick she got in about half an hour later. Mr. Byron was with her.”
“Cedric Byron! What for?”
“Well, it seemed there was an accident to one of the costumes, and he was feeling bad about it. Miss Pick was bucking him up, like.”
“Florence! An accident! And you said it was a success. How could you? Poor Mr. Byron.”
Florence grinned at the tone. “It seems the accident was the success of the evening, my lady. There was one tableau that had the middle dress all beads. Very long it was, and Lady Eames—it was her who was wearing it—stepped on the hem, and before anyone knew that was happening beads began to run everywhere and go scooting over the floor. It was at the beginning of the procession part it happened, and by the time she got to the end of the ball-room there was hardly any frock left, and everyone was bursting themselves laughing.”
“Poor—darling—Cedric!” said Ursula with joy.
“I never did trust these hand-made things myself. A good machine seam is what I swear by.”
“Florence! What heresy! You who sew my things so beautifully.”
“Oh, my sewing’s all right, but I wouldn’t trust anyone else’s. Not for anything important.” It was understood that Florence meant important not in the matter of decoration but of decency. She flicked at the hearth with a brush, and went away to answer a knock on the sitting-room door, and Ursula heard her talking to Chitterne.
“Come in, Chit!” she called, and he came in, tall and shining and well-soaped looking. “My God! Dressed, even to the hair on the shoulder!” she said, leaning over as he sat down on the edge of the bed and picking off a hair.
“If it’s a hair, it’s a mare’s,” he said. “I’ve just come up from Newmarket. Been out on the Heath since six.”
“Newmarket! When did you go down?”
He looked faintly embarrassed. “I had an urgent call to see a filly last night.”
“Darling, you do hate fancy dress balls, don’t you!”
“Well, so do you!”
“Yes, but I don’t have urgent calls. I say that I’m not going, and that’s that.”
“Ah, but I haven’t got your delicious gift of indifference to people’s feelings.”
“You haven’t my moral courage, you mean. As soon as things begin to be difficult you res
ign.”
“Depends what the things are. If I wanted something enough I wouldn’t resign.”
“But you’ve never wanted anything enough. That’s how you got your reputation for good-nature. That’s why you’re popular, darling, and I’m merely notorious.”
“You wait. I’ll surprise you one of these days. Before long, perhaps.”
“What is it? Going into a monastery?”
He grinned. “Not exactly. What I came to say was that Double Bass is, God willing, going to win the Duke of York’s. I’m doing a commission this morning while the price is decent. Do you want to have anything on? If you do, I’ll do it with mine.”
“That is really lovely of you, Bobby. Fancy being philanthropic at this hour of the morning!”
“Oh, that’s not philanthropy, it’s pure caution. I don’t want two commissions coming from the family at the same time. Laury will expect one from me because it’s my horse, but if you made a bet so early in the proceedings that would be obviously inspired, and begin to spoil the market.”
“You might have avoided the danger altogether.”
“How?”
“By not telling me that Double Bass was a good thing.”
“I may be canny, but I’m not a cad.”
“No, darling.” She looked at him quizzically. “I sometimes think you’re a saint. Slightly damaged in the firing, but made from the authentic clay. A ‘seconds’ saint, as it were. I’ll have a pony on Double Bass, please.”
The Expensive Halo: A Fable Without Moral Page 7