And if Joe could see Nat in such false colours, in what roseate mist did he clothe his own, faintly ridiculous person? Mathilda thought that she could read Joe clearly enough. A failure in life, it was necessary to his selfesteem that he should see himself as a success at least in his crowning part of Peacemaker, Beloved Uncle. Yes, that would explain Joe's insistence on this dreadful family gathering.
A laugh shook Mathilda as she flung back the bedclothes, and prepared to get up. Poor old Joe, trotting from member to member of this house-party, and pouring out quarts of what he fondly believed to be balm! If he did not drive Nat at least to distraction, it would be a miracle. He was like a clumsy, well-meaning St Bernard puppy, dropped amongst a set of people who were not fond of dogs.
When she walked into the dining-room presently, Mathilda found that her first waking fears were already being fulfilled. "Good morning, Tilda! A white Christmas, after all!" Joseph said.
Nathaniel had breakfasted early, and had gone away. Mathilda sat down beside Edgar Mottisfont, and hoped that he would not think it necessary to entertain her with conversation.
He did not. Apart from some desultory comments on the weather, he said nothing. It occurred to her that he was a little ill-at-ease. She wondered why, remembered that he had wanted a private interview with Nathaniel on the previous evening, and hoped, with a sinking heart, that more trouble was not brewing.
Valerie, breakfasting on half a grape-fruit and some dry toast, and explaining why she did so, wanted to know what they were all going to do. Only Joseph seemed to welcome this desire to map out the day's amusements. Stephen said that he was going to walk; Paula declared that she never made plans; Roydon said nothing at all; and Mathilda only groaned.
"I believe there are some very pretty walks in the neighbourhood," offered Maud.
"A good tramp in the snow! Almost you tempt me, Stephen!" Joseph said, rubbing his hands together. "What does Val say, I wonder? Shall we all brave the elements, and blow the cobwebs away?"
"On second thoughts," said Stephen, "I shall stay indoors." Joseph bore up under the offensiveness of this remark, merely wagging his head, and saying with a laugh: "Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning!"
"Aren't you going to read your play to us, Willoughby?" asked Valerie, turning her large blue eyes in his direction.
It never took Valerie more than a day to arrive at Christian names, but Roydon felt flattered, rather excited, at hearing his on her lips. He said, stammering a little, that he would like to read his play to her.
Paula at once threw a damper on to this scheme. "It's no use reading it just to Valerie," she said. "You're going to read it to everybody."
"Not to me," said Stephen.
Roydon bristled, and began to say something rather involved about having no desire to bore anyone with his play.
"I hate being read to," explained Stephen casually. "Now, now!" gently scolded Joseph. "We are all longing to hear the play, I'm sure. You mustn't pay any attention to old Stephen. What do you say to giving us a reading after tea? We'll gather round the fire, and enjoy a real treat."
"Yes, if Willoughby starts to read it directly after tea, Uncle Nat won't have time to get away," said Paula, brightening.
"Nor anyone else," interpolated her brother.
This remark not unnaturally involved Roydon in a declaration of his unwillingness to inflict the literary flowers of his brain upon an unsympathetic audience. Stephen merely said Good! but everyone else plunged into conciliatory speeches. Finally, it was agreed that Roydon should read his play after tea. Anyone, said Paula, casting a dagger-glance at her brother, incapable of appreciating Art might absent himself with her goodwill.
It next transpired that Joseph had instructed the head gardener to uproot a young fir tree, and to bring it up to the house for decoration. He called for volunteers in this festive work, but Paula evidently considered a Christmas tree frivolous, Stephen was apparently nauseated by the very mention of such a thing, Edgar Mottisfont thought it work for the younger members of the party, and Maud, plainly, had no intention of exerting herself in any way, at all.
Maud had been reading more of the Life of the Empress of Austria, and created a diversion by informing the company that the Hungarians had all worshipped Elizabeth. She feared, however, that her mind had not been stable, and suggested to Roydon that she would provide an excellent subject for a play.
Roydon appeared bewildered. He said that costume pieces (with awful scorn) were hardly in his line.
"She seems to have had a very dramatic life," persisted Maud. "It wouldn't be sword-and-cloak, you know."
Joseph intervened hastily, saying that he thought it would hardly be suitable, and could he not persuade Maud to lay aside the book and help him with the tree?
He could not. In the end, only Mathilda responded to his appeal for assistance. She asserted her undying love for tinsel decorations, and professed her eagerness to hang innumerable coloured balls and icicles on to the tree. "Though I think, Joe," she said, when the company had dispersed, "that no one else feels any sympathy with your desire for a Merry Christmas."
"They will, my dear; they will, when it comes to the point," said Joseph, incurably optimistic. "I have got a collection of little presents to hang on the tree. And crackers, of course!"
"Does it strike you that Edgar Mottisfont has got something on his mind?" asked Mathilda.
"Yes," Joseph replied. "I fancy there is some little matter connected with the business which has gone wrong. You know what a stick-in-the-mud Nat is! But it will blow over: you'll see!"
Judging from Mottisfont's crushed demeanour at luncheon, his interview with his sleeping partner had not been in keeping with the Christmas spirit. He looked dejected, while Nathaniel sat in disapproving gloom, repulsing all attempts to draw him into conversation.
Valerie, who seemed during the course of the morning to have made great headway with the dramatist, was unaffected by her host's blighting conduct, but everyone else seemed to feel it. Stephen was frankly morose, his sister restless, Mathilda silent, the dramatist nervous, and Joseph impelled by innate tactlessness to rally the rest of the guests on their lack of spirits.
The gloom induced by himself had the beneficent effect of raising Nathaniel's spirits at least. To find that his own ill-humour had quenched the gaiety of his guests appeared to afford him considerable gratification. Almost he rubbed his hands together with glee; and by the time the company rose from the table, he was so far restored to equanimity as to enquire what his guests proposed to do to amuse themselves during the afternoon.
Maud broke her long, ruminative silence by announcing that she would have her rest as usual, and very likely take her book up with her. Still cherishing the fancy that the life of the Empress would make a good play, she said that of course it would be rather difficult to stage that erratic lady's travels. "But I daresay you could get over that," she told Roydon kindly.
"Willoughby doesn't write that sort of play," said Paula.
"Well, dear, I just thought it might be interesting," Maud replied. "Such a romantic life!"
Nathaniel, perceiving from the expressions of weary boredom on the faces of his guests, that the Life of the Empress Elizabeth was not a popular subject, at once, and with ill-disguised malignity, affected a keen interest in it. So everyone, except Stephen, who lounged out of the room, had to hear again about the length of the Empress's hair, the circus-horses, and the jealousy of the Archduchess.
"Who would have thought," murmured Mathilda in Mottisfont's ear, "that we undistinguished commoners should be haunted by an Empress?"
He gave her a quick, perfunctory smile, but said nothing.
"Who cares about Elizabeth of Austria, anyway?" asked Paula impatiently.
"It's history, dear," explained Maud.
"Well, I hate history. I live in the present."
"Talking of the present," struck in Joseph, "who is going to help Tilda and me to finish the tree?"
Since it had begun to snow again, and no other entertainment offered, Valerie and Roydon also joined the tree-decorating party. They came into the billiardroom with the intention of turning on the radio, but they were quite unable to resist the lure of glittering tinsel, packets of artificial frost, and coloured candles. Roydon was at first inclined to lecture the company on the childishness of keeping up old customs, and Teutonic ones at that, but when he saw Mathilda clipping candlesticks on to the branches, he forgot that it was all very much beneath him, and said: "Here, you'd better let me do that! If you put it there, it'll set light to the whole thing."
Valerie, finding several boxes of twisted wire icicles, began to attach them to the tree, saying at intervals: "Oh, look! it really is rather sweet, isn't it? Oh, I say, here's a place with absolutely nothing on it!"
Joseph, it was plain to see, was in the seventh heaven of delight. He beamed triumphantly at Mathilda, rubbed his hands together, and trotted round and round the tree, extravagantly admiring everybody's handiwork, and picking up the rickety steps whenever they fell over, which they frequently did. Towards teatime, Maud came in, and said that it looked quite a picture, and she had never realised that the Empress was a cousin of Ludwig of Bavaria, the mad one who had Wagner to stay, and behaved in such a peculiar, though rather touching, way.
Paula, who, after an abortive attempt to discuss with Mathilda the probable duration of Nathaniel's life, had bearded her uncle in his study, interrupting him in the middle of a business talk with Mottisfont, joined the Christmas-tree party midway through the afternoon in a mood of glowering bad temper. Apart from making a number of destructive criticisms, she offered no help with the decorations, but walked about the room, smoking, and arguing that, since Nathaniel meant to leave her money in his will, she might just as well have it before he was dead. No one paid much attention to this, except Mathilda, who advised her not to count her chickens before they were hatched.
"Well, they are hatched!" said Paula crossly. "Uncle told me he was leaving me quite a lot of money, ages ago. It isn't as though I wanted it all now: I don't. A couple of thousand would be ample, and after all, what are a couple of thousand pounds to Uncle Nat?"
Roydon, who presumably found this open discussion embarrassing, turned a dull red, and pretended to be busy fitting candles into their holders.
But nothing could stop Paula. She went on striding about the room, and maintaining a singularly boring monologue, which only Joseph listened to. He, trying to pour oil on troubled waters, said that he knew just how she felt, and well recalled his own sensations on a somewhat similar occasion, when he was billed to appear as Macbeth, in Melbourne.
"Go on, Joe! You never played Macbeth!" said Mathilda.
Joseph took this in very good part, but insisted that he had played all the great tragic roles. It was a pity that he had not observed his wife's entry into the room before he made this boast, because Mathilda at once called upon her to deny so palpable a lie.
"I don't remember his ever appearing as Macbeth," said Maud, in her placid way. "But he was very good in character-parts, very good indeed."
Everyone immediately saw Joseph as the First Gravedigger, and even Paula's lips quivered. Maud, quite unconscious of the impression she was making, began to recall the various minor roles in which Joseph had appeared to advantage, and threw out a vague promise of looking out a book of press-cuttings, which she had put away somewhere.
"That'll be another book to be filched from her, and disposed of," remarked Stephen in Mathilda's ear, rather too audibly.
She started, for she had not heard him come into the room. He was standing just behind her, with his hands in his pockets, and his pipe between his teeth. He looked sardonically pleased; life had quickened in his eyes; and there was a suspicion of a smile playing about his mouth. Knowing him, Mathilda guessed that he had been enjoying a quarrel, probably with his uncle. "You're a fool," she said abruptly.
He looked down at her, eyebrows a trifle raised.
"Why?"
"You've been quarrelling with your uncle."
"Oh, that! I usually do."
"You're almost certainly his heir."
"So I understand."
"Did Nat actually tell you so?" she asked, surprised. "No. Improving homily from dear Uncle Joe."
"When?"
"Last night, after you'd gone to bed."
"Stephen, did Joe say that? That Nat had made you his heir?"
He shrugged. "Not as tersely as that. Arch hints, winks, and nudges."
"I expect he knows. You'd better watch your step. I wouldn't put it beyond Nat to change his mind,"
"I daresay you're right," he said indifferently.
She felt a sudden stab of exasperation. "Then why annoy him?"
His pipe had gone out, and he began to relight it. Over the bowl his eyes glinted at her. "Bless your heart, I don't annoy him! He doesn't like my intended."
"Do you?" she demanded, before she could stop herself.
He looked at her, evidently enjoying her unaccustomed discomfiture. "Obviously."
"Sorry!" she said briefly, and turned away.
She began, somewhat viciously, to straighten the little candles on the tree. As well as one knew Stephen one still could not get to the bottom of him. He might be in love with Valerie; he might have grown out of love with her; he might even be merely obstinate. But fool enough to whistle a fortune down the wind from mulishness? No man would be fool enough for that, thought Mathilda cynically. She glanced sideways at him, and thought, Yes, you would; you'd be fool enough for anything in this mood. Like my bull-terriers: bristling, snarling, looking for trouble, always convinced you've got to fight, even when the other dog wants to be riendly. Oh, Stephen, why will you be such an ass?
She looked at him again, not covertly this time, since his attention was not on her, and saw that he was watching Valerie, whom Joseph had drawn into one of the window-embrasures. He was not quite smiling, but he seemed to Mathilda to be enjoying some hidden jest.
She thought, Yes, but you're not an ass; I'm not at all sure that you're not rather devilish, in fact. You're cold-blooded, and you have a twisted sense of humour, and I wish I knew what you were thinking. Then another thought flashed across her mind, startling her: I wish I hadn't come here!
As though in answer, Paula said suddenly: "O God, how I hate this house!"
Stephen yawned. It was Roydon who asked: "Why?"
She detached the stub of her cigarette from its long holder, and threw it into the fire. "I can't put it into words. If I said it was evil, you'd laugh."
"No, I shouldn't," he said earnestly. "I believe profoundly in the influence of human passions on their surroundings. You're tremendously psychic: I've always felt that about you."
"Oh, Willoughby, don't!" implored Valerie, instantly distracted from her tete-d-tete with Joseph. "You make me feel absolutely ghastly! I keep thinking there's something just behind me all the time."
"Nonsense, young people, nonsense!" said Joseph robustly. "No ghosts at Lexham Manor, I assure you!"
"Oh - ghosts!" said Paula, with a disdainful shrug.
"I often think," offered Maud, "that when one gets fanciful it's because one's liver is out of order."
Paula looked so revolted by this excellent suggestion that Mathilda, to avert an explosion, said hastily that it must be time for tea. Joseph at once backed her up, and began to shoo everyone out of the room, adjuring them to go and "wash and brush up." He himself, he said, had one or two finishing touches to make to the decorations, and he would ask Valerie if she would just hold a few oddments for him.
The oddments consisted of two streamers, a large paper bell, a sprig of mistletoe, a hammer, and a tin of drawing-pins. Valerie was by this time bored with Christmas decorations, and she received the oddments rather
sulkily, saying: "Haven't we hung up enough things, don't you think?"
"It's just the staircase," Joseph explained. "It looks very bare. I meant to do it before lunch, but Fate intervened."
"It's a pity Fate didn't make a better job of it," said Stephen, preparing to follow Mathilda out of the room.
Joseph shook a playful fist at him, and once more picked up the step-ladder. "Stephen thinks me a dreadful old vandal," he told Valerie. "I'm afraid period-stuff makes very little appeal to me. You'll say I'm a simpleminded old fellow, I expect, but I'm not a bit ashamed of it, not a bit! I like things to be cheerful and comfortable, and it doesn't matter a bit to me whether a staircase was built in Cromwell's time or Victoria's."
"I suppose the whole house is pretty old, isn't it?" said Valerie, looking with faint interest at the staircase.
"Yes, quite a show-piece in its way," replied Joseph, mounting the four shallow stairs which led to the first half-landing, and trying to erect the steps on it. "Now, this is going to be tricky. I thought if I could reach that chandelier we could hang the bell from it."
"Mr. Herriard must be awfully rich, I should think," said Valerie, pursuing her own train of thought.
"Awfully!" said Joseph, twinkling down at her.
"I wonder -" She broke off, colouring a little.
Joseph was silent for a moment; then he said: "Well, my dear, perhaps I know what you wonder; and though one doesn't like to talk of such things, I have been meaning all day to have a little chat with you."
She turned enquiring eyes upon him. "Oh, do! I mean, you can say absolutely anything to me: I shall quite understand."
He came down the stairs again, abandoning the steps, and took her arm. "Well, I expect you've guessed that I have a very soft corner for old Stephen."
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