‘Duets,’ he said, looking at one.
‘Yes. I used to amuse myself with them,’ said Mrs Middleton.
‘I didn’t know you played,’ said Denis.
‘I don’t,’ said Mrs Middleton, ‘I did before I was married and when I lived in London, but one can’t play duets alone somehow. I ought to have a little piano in my sitting-room, but even so it would make rather a noise.’
Denis at once realized that Mr Middleton would find music disturbing and wondered what the point was of having a grand piano in the library if no one could use it. But he did not say this. He said what an amusing collection of duets she had and how he adored all that modern French stuff.
‘We might try some of them one day when Uncle Jack is away,’ he said, sitting down to the piano. ‘Or would it bore you?’
Mrs Middleton said it would be great fun, only she must have the bass and the pedals, so that she could cover up all her mistakes.
‘That will be perfect,’ said Denis, beginning to play with the soft pedal down as he had promised, ‘and I will do the counting. Do you like One and, two and, or Wuh-un, too-oo? Some people are proud about counting, but I think it’s half the fun of duets. Now,’ he went on, half speaking, half following the melody, ‘this is where all the lovers have had a picnic in a grove, all very Watteau, and they all go off two and two and there is one unfortunate gentleman left who has no one to make love to, all in lovely blues he is to be if only I can keep the designer and the producer off putting him into white tights, and he has a sad little pas seul to himself to express the pangs of having no one to love, all graceful and melancholy. And this is where the critics will say “Mr Stonor should guard against the primrose path of a too facile gift for melody.” Facile! Catherine, I would sooner invent six hundred pages of stark atonality than one real tune. I nearly killed myself over this facile little melody.’
‘Keep the pedal down,’ murmured Mrs Middleton.
‘I will keep it down if it is with my last drop of blood, not that that would be much use,’ said Denis, ‘although a pint of pure water does weigh a pound and a quarter. And what is more I will stop playing at once if it is likely to inconvenience anyone,’ he added, with a quick glance unlike the leisurely mode of his speech.
‘It is no inconvenience,’ said Mrs Middleton and resigned herself to the facile melody if Denis liked to call it that. A long tiring day. Denis, looking once more at her, decided that she ought to be allowed to rest, and he amused himself on the piano, always keeping the soft pedal down, till the sound of voices and an odious sound of barking shattered his music.
‘That,’ said Mr Middleton loudly from the terrace, ‘is Flora.’
No one contradicted him.
‘I shall call her,’ said Mr Middleton. ‘Flora!’
‘“Tell me, shepherds, have you seen,”’ Denis remarked as he shut the piano and put the duets back on the table.
The whole party now met on the terrace.
‘And what did my doggie think, shut up alone, no master to love her?’ cried Mr Middleton. ‘How her faithful heart was tried!’
‘She was having a marvellous time, Uncle Jack,’ said Daphne. ‘There are a lot of rats in the stable and she had a splendid fight. When Alister and I got there, there was such a row we couldn’t hear ourselves speak.’
‘I didn’t know spaniels had it in them,’ said Mr Cameron, ‘but all the blood of the Macdonalds must be in Flora. The way she got that rat down was a pleasure, a grisly one I admit, to the connoisseur.’
‘So I gave her some coffee sugar that I’d taken with me,’ said the practical Daphne, ‘and she buried the rat and then we took her for a walk and I got my shoes absolutely sopping. There’s a lot of dew about. I have enjoyed myself. I say, Uncle Jack, could Denis and I play our duet? I feel I ought to celebrate the death of the rat. I know you aren’t musical, but it wouldn’t take long and it doesn’t make much noise, not really much.’
Flushed with excitement she dragged Denis back into the library and opened the piano.
‘Catherine!’ said Mr Middleton, ‘I appeal to you. That I loathe and abhor this modern cacophony that goes by the name of music is true enough, but of the classics there is no more ardent worshipper than I. Bach, wise, serene, human in the deepest sense; Beethoven, a troubled mortal like ourselves, foretelling in his later works all the struggle, the turmoil of the world we live in to-day, a true prophet crying in the wilderness –’
Mrs Stonor said one must always remember that he was deaf.
‘– Mozart, that prince among his peers,’ Mr Middleton continued, raising his voice, ‘who filled his brief life with pure bright sound. One cannot but love him. There is a little melody of his from a violin-sonata that I whistle to Flora. She loves it,’ he said, looking round for possible disagreement. ‘That universal language is music even to her doggie ears. Flora!’
‘I think she has run away again,’ said Mr Cameron.
‘You and Daphne had better go and find her then,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘or Jack will talk all night. Daphne!’
‘Hullo!’ shouted Daphne from the library where she and Denis were fighting for the pedals.
‘Flora is lost again,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘Hadn’t you and Alister better find her?’
‘I expect she’s gone to unbury the rat,’ yelled Daphne. ‘Come on now, Denis. Ready?’
The cheerful sound of a duet to celebrate the death of a rat filled the evening air. Mr Middleton winced in a noticeable way, but owing to the gathering darkness no one saw him. Mr Cameron began to talk about Daphne to Mrs Stonor. Mrs Middleton wandered down the path to look at the white Canterbury bells which were her pride at the moment. In her white dress she was almost indistinguishable among them now. Luckily the duet was short and before Mr Middleton could arrange suitable periods in which to express his disapproval the performers had finished and come out again.
‘There is Flora,’ said Daphne, as a brown form came lightly trotting over the lawn. ‘What did I say?’
Flora, a look of conscious pride on her face, came up to her master and deposited at his feet with tender care the mangled and mould-covered corpse of her rat.
‘Oh, Diamond, Diamond, what hast thou done?’ said Mr Middleton, shrinking from the offering.
‘I say, Uncle Jack, you oughtn’t to talk to her as if she was Cain,’ said Daphne indignantly. ‘She has killed a jolly good rat and I expect Pucken will be as pleased as anything. I’ll ask him to bury it properly so that she can’t dig it up again.’
‘Flora! Good dog!’ said Mr Middleton, feeling that this was the attitude required of him.
But Flora, having paid this formal tribute to her master, turned her back to him and attached herself to Denis with loving and unwelcome gambols.
‘Well, good night, Uncle Jack,’ said Denis, feeling that the end of the evening had not been a success.
‘Yes, you go to bed, Denis,’ said Mrs Stonor, who was a little anxious about the night dew for her stepson since Daphne had so vividly described its effects. ‘I’ll come along with Daphne in a few moments.’
Denis walked down the path towards the gate. On the way he stopped by the Canterbury bells.
‘Good night and thank you so much,’ he said to his hostess.
‘And thank you for the music,’ said Mrs Middleton. ‘We will try the duets when Jack is in town.’
‘White flowers, and you all in white,’ said Denis. ‘Could you keep Flora? She has taken an embarrassing affection for me.’
Mrs Middleton stooped and held Flora by her collar till she heard the latch of the garden gate click behind Denis. Then she went back to the house, asked Mr Cameron to take the rat in the library tongs and put it in the dustbin, and applied herself to soothing her husband. Flora, pleased with a well-spent day, was obliging enough to go to sleep at Mr Middleton’s feet, so the evening ended more harmoniously than might have been expected. Mr Cameron walked back to the White House with Mrs Stonor and Daphne and it was not till well af
ter midnight that Mrs Middleton heard him come back. She guessed that he had been talking to Mrs Stonor about Daphne and about himself, and it is probable that her guess was not far out. As she went to sleep she wondered how soon Mr Cameron would find himself impelled to talk to her about Daphne. Friends come and go. Alister might be a friend that was soon to go a little from her. Would any newer friend come a little nearer?
8
Hunting the Folk-Song
Although Lord Bond fully realized that his wife was a woman of inflexible determination who could carry out her intentions at whatever cost to others, it was not until he had seen her set off for London in the large car that he breathed freely. But not for long, for a difficult task lay before him.
He had been so well brought up, first by an autocratic mother and then by an autocratic wife, not to speak of a black period during which he had been brought up by both ladies, who sometimes used him as a pawn against each other and at other times joined forces to crush him, that he had a feeling of guilt on those very rare occasions when he set out to enjoy himself in his own way. When he met Denis Stonor and was deluded by his kindness into thinking that he had discovered a fellow-enthusiast for Gilbert and Sullivan, he had invited Denis to dinner and music without thinking of the consequences. When he came to think of them he was uneasy, but kept his uneasiness to himself. Then the slight intoxication of being in league with a fellow-man against the regiment of Lady Bond had encouraged him to the further excess of inviting Daphne, Mr Cameron and Mrs Stonor. And as his son was coming they would now be a party of six, but of this he had not breathed a word to his wife. The only drawback to this secrecy was that he knew Lady Bond had gone to London leaving word that his lordship would be alone that evening, and he would have to face Spencer with the news that there would be a small party. Desperate ills need desperate remedies, so Lord Bond went into the library and rang the bell. Spencer appeared, with the faint and provoking air of relaxation which Lady Bond’s absence always produced in the household and which was bitterly if dumbly resented by the master of Staple Park.
‘Yes, my lord,’ said Spencer.
‘Oh, did her ladyship mention that we should be six to-night?’ said Lord Bond, plunging into the subject.
‘No, my lord,’ said Spencer.
‘Yes, six,’ said Lord Bond, temporizing.
‘And that, my lord, would be…?’ said Spencer with irritating deference.
Lord Bond wanted to say Five friends of mine and it doesn’t matter to you who they are and give me the key of the piano at once and take a month’s notice and I hate you.
‘Mrs and Miss Stonor and Mr Stonor and Mr Cameron,’ he said in an unnatural voice.
‘That would be four, my lord; five together with your lordship,’ said Spencer. ‘Shall I tell Mrs Alcock five?’
‘No, I said six; didn’t you hear me?’ said Lord Bond, beginning to revolt. ‘Mr Bond is coming down.’
‘Very good, my lord. Anything else, my lord?’ said Spencer with weary tolerance.
‘Yes. That champagne in the fourth bin,’ said Lord Bond, ‘and the 1875 brandy. And the key of the piano.’
Spencer bowed and went away. Neither side had won; or more correctly both sides had lost. Spencer had been ordered to produce wine and brandy which he considered suitable for better dinner parties and knew that he could not disobey. Lord Bond had demanded the key of his own piano, but Spencer would not give it up till the last moment and even then Lord Bond feared that he might be reduced to the ignominious position of having to beg for it again in front of his guests. On the whole, Spencer’s game. The only person who was pleased was Mrs Alcock who was always on the verge of giving notice because her employers did not entertain on a scale suited to her ambitions. Six was hardly a party, but it would at least give her an excuse to harry the scullerymaid and the two kitchenmaids.
At eleven o’clock the small car came to the front door to take Lord Bond over to Southbridge on business. Something unfamiliar struck him, which on investigation turned out to be a strange face in the chauffeur’s seat.
‘Who is that driving?’ he asked Spencer, forgetting for the moment the blood feud between them.
Spencer, who never forgot what was due to himself, said coldly that he understood that Pollett’s brother was taking Ferguson’s place while Ferguson was in town with her ladyship and he supposed that was the young man. He accompanied these words with a look of such thinly veiled contempt that Lord Bond, feeling for Ed Pollett a sympathy which Ed, blissful in his brother’s old uniform, did not in the least require, seated himself in front beside his temporary chauffeur. Spencer, who knew to a nicety how employers should behave, nearly gave notice on the spot, but remembering that the piano key was still in his keeping, decided to rest on his laurels and reserve the question of notice till a more pressing occasion. He stood on the steps till the car disappeared and then returned to the establishment which he felt was, with the trifling exception of that second window in his pantry, almost all that a butler could wish, especially when his employers were not contaminating it with their presence.
At Laverings Mr Middleton had decided to take a week at home, partly to recover from the meeting on Saturday, partly because things at the office were slack enough at the moment to justify the absence of the two senior partners, and if it came to that he and Mr Cameron could discuss the preliminaries of the new building for the College of Epistemological Ideology which a gentleman, described by the Press as a super-steel magnate, had just forced upon the unwilling University of Oxbridge, just as well in the country as in town. So Mrs Middleton and Denis had not yet played their duets.
On the day of Lord Bond’s dinner-party Mr Cameron, wandering as he so often did into the garden of the White House, found Mrs Stonor peacefully getting the peas for lunch, and accompanied her on the other side of the pea-sticks, talking through the prosaic but exquisite trellis of leaves and tendrils.
‘Daphne isn’t helping you with the peas, is she?’ said Mr Cameron.
Mrs Stonor, after looking carefully round, said she wasn’t. In fact, she added, Daphne had gone into Winter Overcotes in the bus with Denis to see if they could get a copy of the Gondoliers, as Denis had felt it in his bones that Lord Bond would want him to play ‘Dance a Cachuca’ and wasn’t quite sure if he remembered it, while Daphne had equally felt it in her bones that Lord Bond would require ‘Poor Wandering One’ and wanted to get a copy of the Pirates.
Mr Cameron said how very kind Daphne was, adding that he had never heard her sing and how much he looked forward to the evening.
‘She doesn’t really sing,’ said Mrs Stonor. ‘She knows all the words and the music of lots of songs, but it isn’t a voice. She and Denis just have fun together.’
Mr Cameron was faintly shocked by this criticism. However, doubtless Mrs Stonor wasn’t really musical and didn’t know. Mrs Stonor, sorry for his obvious disappointment at not finding Daphne, said they would probably be back on the twelve o’clock bus and wouldn’t he stay till half-past twelve on the chance, and if he would excuse her while she took the peas in they could sit in the garden. So she took the peas in to Palfrey, and came back to Mr Cameron.
The next hour was not an easy one for Mrs Stonor. Her guest, while trying to conduct polite conversation on ordinary topics, was so obviously pulled back to the subject of Daphne again and again as if he were a tethered gold ball on an elastic cord, that she felt a great deal of pity for him. Even when she led the conversation to the work that he and Mr Middleton were engaged upon at the moment, he could only bring a limited amount of his attention to bear, and Mrs Stonor well knew that if a man is incapable of being a bore on his own subject, it must mean that his feelings are very deeply occupied. Her compassion led her to relate a number of very dull stories of Daphne’s school career, of her subsequent training at a Secretarial College and of the various positions she had held, winding up with the Dr Browning whose death had thrown her temporarily out of employment.
‘I
suppose one oughtn’t to call him selfish,’ said Mrs Stonor, ‘because death seems to be something beyond one’s control, but it really was annoying, just as Daphne had settled down to the work. One really would think doctors could do something about it, but I daresay they get so used to the idea of people dying that they don’t really notice it in themselves.’
Mr Cameron, paying but scant attention to this interesting theory, said he wondered if Mrs Stonor would let him ask her something, but perhaps there was hardly time now.
Mrs Stonor looked at him. What she had half feared must be only too true. She liked Alister Cameron very, very much. He was now going to hurt himself a good deal, and hers would be the unpleasant role of seeing him suffer and not being able to help him; for sympathy is often difficult to offer and difficult to accept and even so does not get to the root of the matter. That foolish child Daphne had called him middle-aged, which just showed how silly the young were, for Alister Cameron was what Mrs Stonor regarded as a very reasonable kind of age and was moreover, she felt, the sort of person one could depend on, the sort of person it would be a very blessed relief and relaxation to depend on.
Before Lunch Page 17