"Well, that's where you're wrong, because I've got a bit of business to discuss with him. There's no need for Ermy to know anything about it, unless you go and give the show away to her."
"She'll find out without any assistance from me," replied Mary curtly, and left him.
Dr Chester's visit, or his cachets, seemed to have had a most beneficial effect upon Ermyntrude. Mary found her keeping body and soul together with a few delicate sandwiches and a glass of champagne, a diet which, however ill-advised it might have been for one in a high fever, apparently revived her considerably. She smiled sadly at Mary, and said: 'Maurice made me promise to try to eat something. I always think there's nothing like champagne if you're feeling wretched. But, Mary dear, I don't like this salt caviar. You oughtn't to have bought it, ducky: I know the Prince prefers it fresh."
"It's a bit difficult to get the fresh out here," explained Mary. "And it doesn't keep."
"Well, we don't want to keep it," said Ermyntrude reasonably. She finished what was left of her champagne, and felt so much restored by it that after silently considering the disadvantages of a prolonged sojourn in bed, she said that little though she might be equal to it, she ought to make an effort to come down to lunch.
So at twelve o'clock, accompanied by her personal maid, who carried her smelling-salts, handkerchief, and eau-de-Cologne, and leaning artistically on Mary's arm, she came falteringly downstairs, and disposed herself on the sofa in the drawing-room. Though made quite faint by so much exertion, she was able to take an interest in the pleasing picture she presented, and to remark naively that the new tea-gown she was wearing might have been expressly designed for just such an occasion.
It seemed at first as though the new tea-gown was going to be wasted, for Mary had neglected to inform the Prince that his hostess proposed to come downstairs to luncheon, so that instead of being at hand to lead Ermyntrude to her couch, he was playing an extremely competent game of tennis against both Vicky and Alan.
Happily, just as Ermyntrude was beginning to feel herself miserably neglected, Robert Steel dropped in on his way back from church, and showed so much concern over her condition that her depression fell away from her, and she forgot about the Prince. For, as she had more than once confided to Mary, there was something very attractive about a masterful man.
Mary left her basking in the care of this particular masterful man. She knew that in all probability Ermyntrude would pour out her woes to him, but it hardly seemed worthwhile to try to avert this indiscretion, since sooner or later Ermyntrude would be bound to tell him the whole story.
He left the house just after one o'clock, and when Mary, encountering him in the hall, asked him if he would not stay to luncheon, he declined so roughly that she knew that Ermyntrude had made the most of her wrongs to him.
He seemed to repent of his brusqueness, and said in his blunt way: "Sorry, Mary, but if I had to sit down to table with Carter I'd choke! By God, I'd like to break his bloody neck!"
"Don't mind me, will you?" said Mary wearily.
"I'm damned sorry for you!" retorted Steel. "You needn't pretend you care tuppence about him, because I know you don't."
"That doesn't mean that I like having to listen to your strictures on him!" said Mary, whose temper was wearing thin.
The muscles about his mouth seemed to stiffen. "All right, I apologise!" he said in a carefully controlled voice. "No business to have said that to you. I'd better go before I run into him."
She felt a little stir of pity for him, and said: "Robert, don't take it too seriously! I know it's pretty bad, but it isn't your affair, and honestly it's no use getting worked up about it."
He looked down at her with an angry glow at the back of his eyes. "Look here, my girl!" he said grimly, "I've loved Ermy ever since I first laid eyes on her, and you know damned well what I've always felt about her, so you can stop handing out pap about what's my affair and what isn't, because I'm not interested in your views on the matter!"
He did not wait to hear what she might have to say in answer to this, but strode out of the house to his car, and drove off with a furious jarring of gears slammed home, and the scud of gravel slipping under wheels wrenched roughly round.
"An English Sunday at Home!" said Mary, apparently addressing a huge bowl filled with auratum lilies.
Ermyntrude's luncheon was carried into the drawingroom on a tray, an arrangement which met with Wally's undisguised approval, but although she was clearly too unwell to attempt to take her place in the dining-room, she felt just strong enough, after she had disposed of a nourishing and varied repast, to welcome the Prince to a chair beside her sofa, and to hold him in sad, low-voiced converse for over an hour.
"And I quite think that she's doing her Great Renunciation scene," said Vicky, sprawling, all legs and arms, in the hammock. "She definitely had that look on her face, hadn't she?"
"I don't know, and I think the way you talk about her is perfectly disgusting!" replied Mary.
"Oh, darling, do you? Are you feeling foul?"
"I'm feeling utterly fed-up with the whole situation!"
"Never mind, sweet! We're getting rid of Alexis for tea," said Vicky.
"If your mother lets him go."
"Well, if she does, it'll be a pretty sure sign that she's sacrificed him to Duty," said Vicky cheerfully.
Whether Ermyntrude had indeed done this, or not, she put no obstacle in the way of the Prince's keeping his engagement with Dr Chester. When Mary interrupted her tete-a-tete with him, to suggest to her that she should rest on her bed until tea-time, she made no demur, but allowed herself to be supported upstairs to her room. She had had a disturbed night, an exhausting quarrel, and a large luncheon, and she felt extremely sleepy. She cherished no illusions about the appearance presented by middle-aged ladies overtaken by post-prandial slumber, and had no intention of sleeping anywhere but in the privacy of her bedroom. Moreover, she wanted to take off her corsets.
Mary waited to see her comfortably bestowed, and retired to her own apartment. She felt that she was entitled to a respite, and she did not emerge until it was nearly time for tea.
Vicky was still in the hammock, and the Prince, very natty in a grey-flannel suit and wash-leather gloves, was inquiring the way to Dr Chester's house of his host.
"You can't miss it," said Wally. "It's in the village. Ivy covered place standing right on the road, with a lot of white posts in front of it."
"Ah, yes, I will remember. But the village, in effect, where is that?"
"Turn to the right when you come out of the garage entrance, and left when you get to the T road, past the Dower House," said Wally, in the tone of one who found the subject tedious. "And it's no good expecting anyone to drive you, because my wife's got a lot of silly ideas about giving the chauffeur the day off every Sunday. Of course, if I weren't going out myself I wouldn't mind running you there," he added handsomely.
No amount of rudeness seemed to have the power of ruffling the Prince's temper. He replied with his inevitable smile: "It is unnecessary, I assure you, for Vicky lends me her car. It is I who may perhaps drive you to this Dower House which you say I shall pass?"
"Very good of you, but you needn't bother. I always walk over by way of the bridge," said Wally. "Short cut through the garden," he explained.
"Then I will say au revoir," bowed the Prince.
"So long!" replied Wally, adding when his guest was out of earshot: "And if you have a head-on collision with a steam-roller it'll be all right with me!"
Chapter Six
Ermyntrude would have been extremely indignant had she known that her dislike of the intimacy prevailing between Wally and Harold White was shared by Janet White. Filial piety forbade Janet to ascribe her father's vagaries to any inherent weakness of character. She said sadly that Mr. Carter had led him into bad ways, a pronouncement that enraged her brother, who did not suffer from filial piety, and who had never shown the slightest hesitation to proclaim his undeviating dislike
of his parent. This shocked Janet very much, for she was a girl who believed firmly in doing one's duty, and what more certain duty could there be than that of loving one's father? As it was clearly very difficult to love a father who showed only the most infrequent signs of reciprocating her affection, but more often wondered aloud why he should have been cursed with an unsatisfactory son, and a damned fool of a daughter, Janet was forced to weave round him a veil of her own imagination. She decided that her mother's death had embittered him, conveniently forgetting the quarrels that had raged between the pair during the much-enduring Mrs. White's lifetime. It was more difficult to find excuses to account for Harold White's predilection for low company, and Janet preferred not to think about this. When Alan spoke his mind on the subject of finding the house invaded by bookmakers and touts, she said that poor father had to mix with all sorts and conditions of men in the course of his duties at the colliery, and so had perhaps lost the power of discrimination. Her tea-planter, who privately considered that Harold White was what he called, tersely, "a wrong 'un', was anxious to remove her from the sphere of his influence; but Janet, though generally indeterminate, was firm on one point: until Alan was earning money, and could thus escape from the parental roof, her duty was to remain at home, and to keep the peace between father and son.
She was well aware that White had more than once managed to borrow money from Wally, and that the two men very often entered together into schemes for getting rich-quick which were, she suspected, as dubious as they were unsuccessful. The information, therefore, that Wally Carter and Samuel Jones, of Fritton, were both coming to tea at five o'clock on Sunday, made her feel vaguely disquieted, since it drew from Alan a highly libellous estimate of Mr. Jones's character and reputation.
"A man not fit to be in the same room with my sister!" he said dramatically.
His father was not unnaturally annoyed, and said angrily: "Shut up, you young fool! You don't know what you're talking about, and if you think I'm going to put up with your bloody theatrical ways, you're wrong! What's more, Sam Jones is a Town Councillor, and goes to chapel regularly."
"Yes," sneered Alan. "Votes against Sunday games in the park, too, not to mention Colonel Morrison's scheme for better housing for the poor devils in the Old Town. God, it makes me sick!"
"Perhaps it isn't true," said Janet charitably.
"Perhaps it isn't! And perhaps it isn't true that he gets his own employees into trouble, and doesn't pay a brass cent in maintenance!"
"Oh clear!" said Janet. "Not at the dinner-table, Alan, please!"
"I believe in facing facts unflinchingly," said Alan superbly. "If that greasy swine's coming here, I shall go out, that's all. I suppose, if the truth were told, he's got some shady scheme on foot, and you and Carter think you're going to benefit by it."
"Alan dear, you oughtn't to talk to father like that."
This mild reproof was endorsed by White in terms which finally drove Alan from the table, declaring that he would starve before he ate another morsel under the parental roof.
When he had slammed his way out of the room, Janet, in whom tact was not a predominant feature, said that she didn't know why it was, but she had never liked Samuel Jones.
"Well, you're not asked to like him," snapped White. "You needn't think he's coming for the pleasure of seeing you, because he's not. In fact, the scarcer you make yourself the better."
"Oh dear, that means you're going to talk business! I do wish you wouldn't, father: I'm sure he's not a good man."
"Never you mind what we're going to talk! And if I catch you blabbing all around the countryside any dam'-fool rubbish about Jones and Carter, you'll be sorry!"
"Have you paid Mr. Carter the money you owe him?" asked Janet. "I know you don't like me to remind you, but it does worry me so."
"Then it needn't worry you. Carter and I understand one another perfectly."
"But I thought he was so cross about it? I'm sure the last time he came over here he was simply horrid, and I do so hate you to be beholden to him."
"Oh, shut up!" said White. "You talk like someone out of a cheap novel! What the devil do you suppose Wally's likely to do about it, even supposing he is annoyed?"
"But it's not right to borrow money, and not pay it back!" faltered Janet.
"Of course I'm going to pay it back! Good Lord, a pretty opinion my own daughter has of me, I will say! Now, you get this, my girl! When I want you to poke your nose into my business, I'll tell you! Until then, keep it out!"
Janet was too well accustomed to this rough form of address to be hurt by it. She merely blinked at him, and said: "Yes, father. Will they want tea? Because it's Florence's half-day."
"I suppose you're just capable of making tea without assistance? God knows what other use you are!"
"Yes, only if you'd told me yesterday I could have made a cake. I'm afraid there isn't much."
"No, there wouldn't be," said her parent sardonically. "Cut some sandwiches, or something."
"We might have tea in the garden," said Janet, as though this would compensate for the meagre nature of the repast.
Her father intimated that she might set the tea-table where she chose, and added that he had no desire to include his son in the party.
As Alan had expressed his intention of starving before he ate another meal at the Dower House, Janet did not think that he would appear again until suppertime. She went in search of him presently, but found that he had left the house. White went out into the garden, and peace once more descended, so that Janet was able to devote her attention to the writing of her weekly letter to her tea-planter.
She was one of those persons who could, without apparent effort, fill any number of sheets with harmless inanities, and she had not by any means come to the end of all she had to say, when the clock in the hall struck four, and recalled her to her duties. She put away her writing materials, and went into the kitchen to make scones for tea. She was still engaged on this task when White shouted to know whether she was asleep, or meant to prepare for the coming of his guests. He did not show the least gratitude when she hurried out to tell him of her activities in the kitchen, but remarked, with perfect truth, that her hair was coming down, and that her nose was shining.
"It's so hot, bending over the stove on a day like this," said poor Janet apologetically.
"Well, for the Lord's sake make yourself respectable before Jones and Carter turn up!" he replied. "I've put some chairs out, but I don't know where you keep your tableclothes."
"Oh, have you? Oh, thank you, father! I'll do the rest!" she said, feeling that she had been right in her judgment of him all along, and that a rough exterior hid a heart of gold.
The garden of the Dower House sloped down to the stream separating it from Palings, but a previous tenant had levelled part of the upper ground into a shallow terrace. Here White had dragged several chairs, and a weather-beaten garden table, disposing them in the shade cast by the house. Janet, who had a slightly depressing habit of making yards of crochet-lace in her spare time, spread a cloth, heavy with this evidence of her industry, over the table, and set the tea-tray down on top of it. Like Ermyntrude, she wished that the rhododendrons and the azaleas were in flower, for she was an indifferent gardener, and the prospect included only a few sickly-looking dahlias, some Michaelmas daisies, one or two late-flowering roses, and a thicket of funereal shrubs that ran from the corner of the house down to the stream. However, it seemed unlikely that either Mr. Jones or Wally Carter was coming to admire the garden, so beyond casting a wistful glance at the blaze of colour on the southern slopes of the Palings garden, which she could see through a gap in the bushes, she wasted no time in idle repinings, but went indoors to take her scones out of the oven.
When she came out on to the terrace again, she had changed her workaday garb for a dress of a clear blue, startlingly unsuited to her rather sallow complexion, and had powdered her nose. She found that Mr. Jones had already arrived, and was deep in conversation with
her father. This conversation broke off abruptly upon her appearance, and Mr. Jones hoisted himself out of his chair with a grunt, and shook hands with her.
He was a fat man, with a jowl, and a smile that was altogether too wide and guileless to be credible; and his notion of making himself agreeable to women was to talk to them with an air of patronage mixed with gallantry.
Janet's rigid standards of the civility due to a guest compelled her to receive Mr. Jones's sallies with outward complaisance, but when, from her chair facing down the garden, she caught a glimpse of Wally descending the path to the bridge between the banks of rhododendrons on the opposite slope, she rose with rather obvious relief, and said that she could see Mr. Carter coming, and would go and make the tea.
Her father, who had been treating her with the politeness he reserved for public use, forgot, in the irritation of finding his cigarette-case empty, that in the presence of strangers she was his indulged daughter, and got up, demanding to know why she had not put out a box of cigarettes.
"Oh dear, didn't I?" said Janet distressfully. "I'll get it, shall I?"
"Not on my account, I beg!" said Mr. Jones, holding up a plump hand.
"It's all right: you needn't bother!" said White hastily. "My fault!"
This handsome admission, accompanied as it was by the smile of a fond parent, not unnaturally made Janet blink. As White moved towards the window of his study, and leaned in to reach the wooden cigarette-box that stood on his desk, Mr. Jones said wisely that his guess was that Janet was one of the Marthas of this world.
Not even the most domesticated girl could be expected to relish this reading of her character, and Janet had just opened her mouth to deny it, when a diversion occurred which changed the words on her tongue to a small shriek of dismay.
From somewhere in the dense rhododendron thickets a shot had sounded, and Wally Carter, who had unlatched the gate on the farther side of the stream, and stepped on to the bridge, sagged suddenly at the knees, and crumpled up into an inanimate heap on the rough planks.
No Wind of Blame ih-1 Page 9