Mandrake speculated. “Perhaps she sees him as a sort of irresistible young god, choosing where he will, and, without resentment, accepts Madame as a votaress.” There was no doubt about Chloris’ reaction. Mandrake saw her stiffen and go very still when Jonathan pronounced Madame Lisse’s name. For perhaps a full second neither of the women spoke and then, for all the world as if they responded to some inaudible cue, Chloris and Madame Lisse were extremely gracious to each other. “So they’re going to take that line,” thought Mandrake, and wondered if Jonathan shared his feelings of relief. He felt less comfortable when he saw Mrs. Compline’s reaction to Dr. Hart. She murmured the conventional greeting, looked casually and then fixedly into his face, and turned so deadly white that for a moment Mandrake actually wondered if she would faint. But she did not faint. She turned away and sat in a chair farthest removed from the light. With the effect of entering on a cue, Caper brought in sherry and champagne cocktails.
The cocktails, though they did not perform miracles, helped considerably. Dr. Hart in particular became more sociable. He continued to avoid Nicholas but attached himself to Chloris Wynne and to William. Jonathan talked to Mrs. Compline; Mandrake and Nicholas to Madame Lisse. Nicholas still kept up his irritating performance — now, apparently, for the benefit of Chloris. Whenever Madame Lisse spoke he bent towards her and, whether her remark was grave or gay, he broke out into an exhibition of merriment calculated, Mandrake felt certain, to arouse in Chloris the pangs proper to the woman scorned. If she suffered this reaction she gave no more evidence of her distress than might be discovered in an occasional thoughtful glance at Nicholas, and it seemed to Mandrake that if she reacted at all to the performance, it was pleasurably. She listened attentively to Dr. Hart, who became voluble and bland. Chloris had asked if anyone had heard the latest wireless news. Hart instantly embarked on a description of his own reaction to radio. “I cannot endure it. It touches some nerve. It creates a most disagreeable — an unendurable—frisson. I read my papers and that is enough. I am informed. I assure you that I have twice changed my flat because of the intolerable persecution of neighbouring radios. Strange, is it not? There must be some psychological explanation.”
“Jonathan shares your dislike,” said Mandrake. “He has been persuaded to install a wireless next door in the smoking-room, but I don’t believe he ever listens to it.”
“My respect for my host grows with everything I hear of him,” said Dr. Hart. He became expansive, enlarged upon his love of nature and spoke of holidays in the Austrian Tyrol.
“When it was still Austria,” said Dr. Hart. “Have you ever visited Kaprun, Miss Wynne? How charming it was at Kaprun in those days! From there one could drive up the Gross-Glockner, one could climb into the mountains above that pleasant Weinstube in the ravine, and on Sunday mornings one went into Zell-amsee. Music in the central square. The cafés! And the shops where one might secure the best shoes in the world!”
“And the best cloaks,” said Chloris with a smile.
“Hein? Ah, you have seen the cloak I have presented to our host.”
“Nicholas,” said Chloris, “wore it when we went for a walk just now.”
Dr. Hart’s eyelids, which in their colour and texture a little resembled those of a lizard, half closed over his rather prominent eyes. “Indeed,” he said.
“I hope,” said Jonathan, “that you visited my swimming-pool on your walk.”
“Nicholas is going to bathe in it to-morrow,” said William, “or hand over ten pounds to me.”
“Nonsense, William,” said his mother. “I won’t have it. Jonathan, please forbid these stupid boys to go on with this nonsense.” Her voice, coming out of the dark corner where she sat, sounded unexpectedly loud. Dr. Hart turned his head and peered into the shadow. When Chloris said something to him it appeared for a moment that he had not heard her. If, however, he had been startled by Mrs. Compline’s voice he quickly recovered himself. Mandrake thought that he finished his cocktail rather rapidly and noticed that when he accepted another it was with an unsteady hand. “That’s odd,” thought Mandrake. “He’s the more upset of the two, it appears, and yet they’ve never met before. Unless — but no! that would be too much. I’m letting the possibilities of the situation run away with me.”
“Lady Hersey Amblington, sir,” said Caper in the doorway.
Mandrake’s first impression of Hersey Amblington was characteristic of the sort of man his talents had led him to become. As Stanley Footling of Dulwich, he would have been a little in awe of Hersey. As Aubrey Mandrake of the Unicorn Theatre, he told himself she was distressingly wholesome. Hersey’s face, in spite of its delicate make-up, wore an out-of-doors look, and she did not pluck her dark brows, those two straight bars that guarded her blue eyes. She wore Harris tweed and looked, thought Mandrake, as though she would be tiresome about dogs. A hearty woman, he decided, and he did not wonder that Madame Lisse had lured away Hersey’s smartest clients.
Jonathan hurried forward to greet his cousin. They kissed. Mandrake felt certain that Jonathan delayed the embrace long enough to whisper a warning in Lady Hersey’s ear. He saw the tweed shoulders stiffen. With large, beautifully shaped hands, she put Jonathan away from her and looked into his face. Mandrake, who was nearer to them than the rest of the party, distinctly heard her say: “Jo, what are you up to?” and caught Jonathan’s reply: “Come and see.” He took her by the elbow and led her towards the group by the fire.
“You know Madame Lisse, Hersey, don’t you?”
“Yes,” said Hersey, after a short pause. “How do you do?”
“And Dr. Hart?”
“How do you do? Sandra, darling, how nice to see you,” said Hersey, turning her back on Dr. Hart and Madame Lisse and kissing Mrs. Compline. Her face was hidden from Mandrake, but he saw that her ears and the back of her neck were scarlet.
“You haven’t kissed me, Hersey,” said Nicholas.
“I don’t intend to. How many weeks have you been stationed in Great Chipping and never a glimpse have I had of you? William, my dear, I didn’t know you had actually reached home again. How well you look.”
“I feel quite well, thank you, Hersey,” said William gravely. “You’ve met Chloris, haven’t you?”
“Not yet, but I’m delighted to do so, and to congratulate you both,” said Hersey, shaking hands with Chloris.
“And Mr. Aubrey Mandrake,” said Jonathan, bringing Hersey a drink. “How do you do. Jonathan told me I should meet you. I’ve got a subject for you.”
“Oh, God,” thought Mandrake, “she’s going to be funny about my plays.”
“It’s about a false hairdresser who strangles his rival with three feet of dyed hair,” Hersey continued. “He’s a male hairdresser, you know, and he wears a helmet made of tin waving clamps and no clothes at all. Perhaps it would be better as a ballet.”
Mandrake laughed politely. “A beguiling theme,” he said.
“I’m glad you like it. It’s not properly worked out yet, but of course his mother had long hair and when he was an infant he saw his father lugging her about the room by her pigtail, and it gave him convulsions because he hated his father and was in love with his mother, and so he grew up into a hairdresser and worked off his complexes on his customers. And I must say,” Hersey added, “I wish I could follow his example.”
“Do you dislike your clients, Lady Hersey?” asked Madame Lisse. “I do not find in myself any antipathy to my clients. Many of them have become my good friends.”