Chapter 24
I
Sober and content went Mr. Porritt and Mr. Wilson to their beds; at Friars Carmel every one was up late, and if the Professor was not intoxicated he should have been, for in the words of Mr. Syrett, he had properly punished the champagne. But in spite of champagne, and in spite of the fact that Cynthia and the Colonel, hastily invited, made it a party, the farewell dinner wasn’t exactly gay. Sir Henry was still upset, and Andrew seemed to have something on his mind. (He had: he was trying to conceal an immense pleasure.) Cynthia flinched every time Belinski opened his mouth, and the good Colonel monopolized Betty with interminable canine pedigrees. Moreover, Cluny Brown’s waiting was deplorable, it was back to her lowest standard, she scattered cutlery right and left and nearly lost a sauce-boat, and though Lady Carmel, in whose ear Mrs. Maile had dropped a discreet word, tried hard to make allowances, no hostess can feel thoroughly at ease and guide the conversation properly when her guests are in obvious danger from her parlour-maid. Betty Cream helped, but she was wearing white broderie anglaise; every time a dish skated over the puff of her sleeve she instinctively froze. To a spontaneously gay party none of this would have mattered, it would have become a joke; as it was, the pauses grew longer and longer, till at last Lady Carmel made a sign to Syrett, and Cluny went out with the entrée dishes and did not return.
“What’s the matter?” asked Sir Henry. “Girl got toothache?”
“Yes,” said Lady Carmel.
Gloomy and resigned, Syrett carried on alone, and they were all grateful when the meal ended. Only Sir Henry and the Colonel sat on over their port, for Belinski followed Betty out of the room and Andrew came after. It was Andrew who turned on the wireless and asked Betty to dance; they rolled up the rugs and pushed back the furniture—and happy was Lady Carmel to see her drawing-room disarranged, if only gaiety would result. She caught the Professor’s eye and glanced meaningly at Cynthia. Belinski at once rose, grasped the girl round the waist, and they began to rumba. It was perhaps fortunate that Belinski did not know how, for this gave Cynthia an opportunity to do something she could do well: she taught him. She was used to difficult pupils—had she not coerced countless awkward squads through Gathering Peascods?—she was strong and determined, and long after the other two had sat down the Professor and Cynthia laboured on. Then Belinski fiddled with the wireless until he found a Viennese orchestra, and with a menacing look invited Cynthia to dance again: if he could not rumba he could waltz, and they circled the room like a whipped top, Cynthia with scarlet face and set teeth holding up for the honour of the Guides, Belinski white and tireless. It was less a dance than an athletic contest, and it ended in a draw.
“That is how we dance in Poland,” gasped the Professor, as the tune ended leaving them both on their feet. “We do not stand and wriggle our hips, we dance!”
“You’ve a good wind,” approved Sir Henry, who had entered, with the Colonel, just in time to witness the finish. “Ought to go out with the beagles—oughtn’t they, Allie?”
This unusual compliment was well received. Cynthia sipped barley-water and looked pleased with herself, Belinski demonstrated a few steps of the mazurka. Andrew and Betty danced again—how differently, thought Lady Carmel! How smoothly and gracefully! It seemed a pity they should ever separate. But Andrew had not yet asked Cynthia, and of course he had to, though the next tune was the best of all, “The Blue Danube.” The Professor danced it with Betty.
Even Lady Carmel was forced to admit they made a wonderful couple. Belinski did not grasp Betty as he had grasped Cynthia; lightly his arm touched her waist, lightly her hand lay on his shoulder, as though they had been blown together by the music. Blown by the music her flower-like skirt puffed and swung; blown on the music they floated, not speaking, rapt by perfection. Andrew and Cynthia dropped out to give them room; it was hardly necessary; without taking his eyes from Betty’s face, Belinski seemed able to guide their flight like a bat in the dusk; they might have been dancing in empty air. And Betty’s eyes, Lady Carmel saw, were closed. And then she saw something else: every time they passed the arch to the smaller drawing-room beyond they wavered towards it, Belinski’s arm tightening, Betty, still in perfect rhythm, leaning away; so perhaps her eyes were not quite shut after all.…
But they did not know when the music ended. It took the Colonel’s hearty clap to bring them back to their surroundings. Betty stood blinking a little, laughing a little, and then dropped down beside Sir Henry in a spread of white skirts.
“My dear, you dance like an angel,” said he.
“So does the Professor!”
Belinski, without asking any one’s leave, opened a cabinet and brought her a small ivory fan. “My heart,” he said politely, and they all laughed. It was a charming little ballroom scene, gay and artificial as the cupids on the fan. Gaiety, indeed, had at last descended: the Colonel insisted on dancing with Betty himself, and they executed a slow waltz to universal applause. That was the last of the waltzes, for now Andrew juggled with the wireless again, and the strains which reached Cluny Brown’s ears, as she took round the hot-water bottles, were strictly modern.
“Don’t you wish us could have a look?” sighed Hilda, as they went up to bed at their usual time.
“Not particularly,” said Cluny.
“It’s all right for you, you’ve seen their dresses,” complained Hilda.
“Miss Cream’s in white and looks wonderful, Miss Duff-Graham’s in blue and looks a mess.”
Hilda guessed what was wrong. The humiliation of being sent out of the dining-room still rankled, and no wonder. Even her own splendid breathing apparatus had never brought her, Hilda, so low as that. So she did a kind thing. She slipped down again, to Mr. Andrew’s room, and got the hot-water bottle from his bed (he always threw it out anyway) and put it into Cluny Brown’s instead.
About midnight Cynthia and her father went home, the party was over, but the Professor’s spirits refused to abate. “What shall we do now,” he demanded, “with this evening so well begun?” “We’ll go to bed,” said Andrew. “Impossible!” cried the Professor. But it wasn’t impossible at all, at Friars Carmel; Lady Carmel was gathering herself together, Betty picked up her bag and her fan—then looked at the fan and smiled, and went to put it back in the cabinet. At once Belinski intercepted her; as though the thing were his to give, and he had given it her, he seemed to be begging her to keep it. Andrew, from the other side of the room, saw them, and with a sudden annoyance. He walked across, opened the cabinet door so that Betty could lay the fan inside, closed it and turned the key. It was a silly thing to have done, trivial and ungracious: Andrew at once regretted it. For a moment he thought Belinski was going to smash the glass; then Betty laughed and began to say good-night, kissed Lady Carmel, kissed Sir Henry, cried that it had been a lovely party, and disappeared upstairs.
After that, they all went to bed.
II
But not to sleep. Andrew read two pages of Boswell’s Johnson, put out his light, and presently put it on again. It was one in the morning, an hour when any unpleasant incident looms larger than by day: he was still cursing himself for his spurt of ill humour. It had been childish—precisely, for he suddenly recollected how once, at the end of an early birthday-party, he had objected to another little boy’s taking the last cracker. Then tender age and over-excitement had partly excused him; now he was inexcusable. “Damn!” said Andrew aloud. How idiotic it was to worry, when ten to one Belinski had already forgotten the whole incident! Belinski wouldn’t worry, he had too much sense … But reason as he might Andrew could not compose his mind to sleep. Discourtesy to a guest, however slight, was a lapse which Friars Carmel did not permit; and presently Andrew thought it would be a good idea if he went along to Belinski’s room.
For Andrew had by this time noticed that there was no hot-water bottle in his bed. Possibly there was none in Belinski’s either. It would be a most attentive, expiatory act to go and find out.
He got up, put on dressing-gown and slippers, and made his way towards the east corridor. The house always seemed much larger at night: Andrew, sleeping at the extremity of the west wing, passed two empty rooms before he reached his mother’s door; then came a dressing-room and bathroom, then Betty’s door in the angle before he turned on to the landing. The house was so still that he could hear the tick of the clock in the hall below; so dark that crossing the head of the stairs he blundered against the newel post; he stepped back, groping for the wall, and felt his hand in contact with something hard, smooth, and icy-cold. It was the china swan. Andrew reached behind it (knocking out a bough of lilac) to the curtains of the deep window and drew one back. A little light flowed in, enough to show the angle of the passage. Andrew went on past the service-stairs, turned, and reached the Professor’s room. He tapped, gently at first, then louder. Then he opened the door and looked in. The Professor was not there.
III
About five minutes earlier, indeed, Betty Cream had woken up, switched on the bedside light, and seen Mr. Belinski standing just inside her door. He shut it quietly behind him.
“Please can you lend me a good book?” he asked politely.
Before answering Betty switched on a second light, which thoroughly illumined the whole room. The conjunction of a highly desirable appearance with a great deal of sense had inevitably taught her much that young girls were not commonly supposed to know: for instance, that a strong light is almost as good as a chaperon. Adam Belinski blinked under it.
“No,” said Betty.
“I cannot sleep, and I wondered—”
“Mr. Belinski, you’re making a fool of yourself. If I scream—”
He looked astonished.
“Scream? But why should you scream?”
“Because I don’t like people coming into my room.”
“Then why did you not lock your door?” asked Belinski reasonably.
“One doesn’t, in private houses.”
“Then it is very misleading,” complained Mr. Belinski. “If I found a door locked, I would naturally go away again—”
“And I don’t want to hear about your experiences in hotel corridors,” added Betty. “I want to go to sleep.”
“When you danced with me, you were awake for the first time.”
Betty sighed. She felt it an unfair paradox that her excellent dancing—an accomplishment so insisted upon by mothers, governesses, and other guardians of the young—should so often lead her, as it did, into this sort of misunderstanding. She said patiently:—
“Mr. Belinski, I don’t want to scream, but if I do, do you know what would happen?”
“Nothing would happen. At least nothing that is not going to happen—”
“That’s just where you’re wrong,” explained Betty kindly. “If I scream, you’ll be turned out of the house to-morrow. It’s an old English custom. Then what will you do?”
“I shall go to America. I am going to America. That is what I came to remind you,” said Mr. Belinski resourcefully, “since you seem to forget. Soon you will never see me again.”
“Good,” said Betty.
There was a short pause. (It was while they were thus silent that Andrew as silently passed along the corridor outside.) Then Belinski said earnestly:—
“If you wish to marry me, of course we will get married. But honestly I cannot advise it, I have no income, I am a stranger, your family would undoubtedly and rightly object. I would not advise it at all.”
“My dear, I wouldn’t dream of marrying you,” said Betty.
“You have sense as well as everything else. I adore you. But love is something quite different—”
“Nor am I in love with you. Not in the least.”
“Not even while we are dancing? Besides,” argued Belinski, “how can you tell, if you will not let me make love to you? How can you tell if you are going to love any one? Such an attitude is ridiculous!”
“In this country, yours is considered immoral.”
“In this country, it is a wonder to me how the race survives. Has anything I say sounded shocking to you?”
“No,” admitted Betty. “In fact, I’ve heard it before, and it always sounds like sense. But I’ll tell you something I’ve noticed. Quite a number of people I know keep having casual affairs, and they do it just as you say, to find out if they’re in love, and what type suits them, and so on. And they nearly all get rather tatty.”
“Tatty?”
“Mothy. Shabby. Like a fur when you keep sending it to the cleaners,” explained Betty. “I don’t know how it is, but they do. Now look at Andrew’s mother and father—”
But Belinski knew too well the dangers, at such a point as this, of rational conversation. Already he had lost the advantage of surprise; Betty, now really interested in what she was saying, became with every moment less vulnerable to reckless emotion. Belinski put his hand to the switch by the door and moved very quickly; but it took even less time for Betty to scream.
IV
In the great bedroom, and just as Andrew’s hand encountered the swan, Lady Carmel sat up and ate a biscuit. She usually woke once or twice in the night, and it did not worry her. As a rule she lay quietly and contentedly waiting for sleep to take her again, enjoying the perfect comfort of the great bed and the familiar warmth of Sir Henry’s solid rump. Night-thoughts had no terrors for Alice Carmel: from old habit she often said a prayer or two at these times, because the words were pleasant to her, but the notion that they might penetrate to the Almighty’s ear would have distressed her very much. She made no claim on His attention, she prayed as a child hums a hymn. Then she ate a biscuit, being careful not to get crumbs under the sheet, and went to sleep again.
On this night, however, something troubled her. She had the impression that something needed attending to. Had any one tapped at her door? It was possible; possible that Syrett (for instance) still stood without, reluctant to knock again. Perhaps Mrs. Maile, or one of the girls, had been taken ill.…
Lady Carmel glanced at her soundly sleeping spouse, and instead of calling out crept carefully from the bed and pattered to the door. No one stood behind it, neither Syrett nor Mrs. Maile in agony; but paddling along the corridor and looking towards the landing Lady Carmel observed, on the floor beneath the window, a vague pale shape like a small cloud. A bough of white lilac had fallen from the swan. “So that’s it!” thought Lady Carmel; and hastened, as to the scene of an accident, to put it back in water. She had just picked it up when some one switched on the light, and there stood Andrew.
For a moment mother and son stared at each other in mutual surprise. Lady Carmel in particular presented an odd appearance: the lilac in her hand gave her a vaguely allegorical look, like a figure strayed out of a pageant. (Sir Henry would have known at once whom she represented: the goddess Flora.)
“Oh, it’s you,” said Andrew. “Mother, you’re not still doing the flowers!”
“No, of course not,” said Lady Carmel. “But I heard this fall out. Aren’t you quite well, dear?”
“I wanted a cigarette.”
“Then be careful of the sheets, for the Professor has made two great holes already. Isn’t he quite well?”
“So far as I know. Why?”
“I just thought,” explained Lady Carmel, “that as you were coming from the east corridor, and there’s no one there but the Professor, and there were two hundred cigarettes in your room this afternoon, perhaps he had been taken ill and you didn’t want to worry me. Champagne does sometimes upset the stomach.”
“Darling,” said Andrew earnestly, “I wish you’d go back to bed.”
“I’m going. I just want to hear the house settle down again.…”
She turned and looked over the carved railing, into the shadowy hall beneath. Andrew moved to her side, rather touched, rather impatient; so they stood, mother and son, mistress and heir, listening to the clock’s tick, the flick of a leaf falling from a flower-pot. There were no other sounds.
The old house was solid, and the old furniture. No ghosts walked at Friars Carmel. Its inhabitants, having done their duty in one world, were presumably busy with their duty in the next.
“Andrew,” said Lady Carmel, “don’t sell it.”
“No, Mother,” replied Andrew automatically; and then, still staring down into the hall, he added, “But I’m going to join the Air Force.”
There was so long a silence that he wondered whether she had heard; but when he turned and looked at her, her face told him that she had. She said:—
“Does your father know?”
“Not yet. I’ll talk to him to-morrow. You don’t mind, Mother?”
“No,” said Lady Carmel steadily. “I suppose it’s logical … Thank you for telling me just now, Andrew, when we are so by ourselves. Now get back to bed, dear, or you’ll catch cold.”
Andrew laughed and put his arm round her shoulder; below them the clock struck the half-hour, leaving a deeper silence after the chime, a silence that held them there one moment longer; and in that moment, Betty screamed.
V
Immediately the scene was one of complex animation. Andrew, rushing towards Betty’s door, collided with Mr. Belinski bolting out. (It was an awkward moment for the Professor; expecting darkness and a clear field, he emerged into bright light and company.) Andrew grasped him by the arm; Belinski, with great presence of mind, as promptly grasped Andrew. Betty Cream appeared in the open door, saw Andrew, saw his mother, and disappeared to get her dressing-gown. Cluny Brown appeared on the service-stairs, looking, with long white nightdress and dishevelled locks, rather like Lady Macbeth. In the darkness behind her a low but continuous squeaking indicated the presence of Hilda. Lady Carmel still agitated a spray of lilac. They all spoke at once.
“Has there been a murder?” called Cluny Brown.
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