“A business arrangement.”
“Something more than that if Hersey — a prejudiced witness, certainly — is to be believed. Hersey’s spies tell her that Dr. Hart has been observed leaving Madame Lisse’s flat at a most compromising hour; that he presented to an exciting degree the mien of a clandestine lover, his hat drawn over his brows, his cloak (he wears a cloak) pulled about his face. They say that he has been observed to scowl most formidably at the mention of Nicholas Compline.”
“Oh, no,” said Mandrake, “it’s really a little too much. I boggle at the cloak.”
“It’s a Tyrolean cloak with a hood, a most useful garment. Rain-proof. He has presented me with one. I wear it frequently. You shall see it to-morrow.”
“What’s he like, this face-lifter?”
“A smoothish fellow. I find him amusing. He plays very good bridge.”
“We are not going to play bridge?”
“No. No; that, I feel, would be asking for trouble. We are going to play a round game, however.”
“Oh God!”
“You will enjoy it. A stimulating game. I hope that it will go far towards burying our little armoury of hatchets. Imagine what fun, Aubrey, if on Monday morning they all go gaily away, full of the milk of human kindness.”
“You’re seeing yourself in the detestable role of uplifter. I’ve got it! This is not Pirandello, nor is it vaudeville. Far from it. But it is,” cried Mandrake with an air of intense disgust, “it is ‘The Passing of the Third Floor Back.’ ”
Jonathan rose and stood warming his hands at the fire. He was a small man, very upright, with a long trunk and short legs. Mandrake, staring at him, wondered if it was some trick of firelight that lent a faintly malicious tinge to Jonathan’s smile; if it was merely his thick-lensed glasses that gave him that air of uncanny blankness.
“Ah, well,” said Jonathan, “a peacemaker. Why not? You would like to see your room, Aubrey. The blue room, as usual, of course. It is no longer raining. I propose to take a look at the night before going up to change. Will you accompany me?”
“Very well.”
They went out, crossing a wide hall, to the entrance. The wind had fallen and, as Jonathan opened his great outer doors, the quiet of an upland county at dusk entered the house and the smell of earth, still only lightly covered with snow. They walked out on the wide platform in front of Highfold. Far beneath them Cloudyfold village showed dimly through tree-tops and beyond it the few scattered houses down in the Vale, four miles away. In the southern skies the stars were out, but northward above Cloudyfold Top there was a well of blackness. And as Jonathan and his guest turned towards the north they received the sensation of an icy hand laid on their faces.
“That’s a deathly cold air,” said Mandrake.
“It’s from the north,” said Jonathan, “and still smells of snow. Splendid! Let us go in.”
Chapter II
Assembly
On the following day Mandrake observed his host to be in a high state of excitement. In spite of his finicky mannerisms and his somewhat old-maidish pedantry, it would never have occurred to his worst enemy to call Jonathan effeminate. Nevertheless he had many small talents that are unusual in a man. He took a passionate interest in the appointments of his house. He arranged flowers to perfection and on the arrival of three boxes from a florist in Great Chipping, darted at them like a delighted ant. Mandrake was sent to the Highfold glass-houses for tuberoses and gardenias. Jonathan, looking odd in one of his housekeeper’s aprons, buried himself in the flower-room. He intended he said, to reproduce bouquets from the French prints in the boudoir. Mandrake, whose floral tastes ran austerely to dead flowers, limped off to the library and thought about his new play, which was to represent twelve aspects of one character, all speaking together.
The morning was still and extremely cold. During the night there had been another light fall of snow. The sky was leaden and the countryside seemed to wait ominously for some portent from the north. Jonathan remarked several times, and with extraordinary glee, that they were in for a severe storm. Fires were lit in all the guest rooms and from the Highfold chimneys rose columns of smoke, lighter in tone than the clouds they seemed to support. Somewhere up on Cloudyfold a farmer was moving his sheep and the drowsy sound of their slow progress seemed uncannily near. So dark was the sky that the passage of the hours was seen only in a stealthy alteration of shadows. Jonathan and Mandrake lunched by lamplight. Mandrake said that he felt the house to be alive with anticipation, but whether of a storm without or within he was unable to decide. “It’s a grisly day,” said Mandrake.
“I shall telephone Sandra Compline and suggest that she bring her party for tea,” said Jonathan. “It will begin to snow again before six o’clock, I believe. What do you think of the house, Aubrey? How does it feel?”
“Expectant and luxurious.”
“Good. Excellent. You have finished? Let us make a little tour of the rooms, shall we? Dear me, it’s a long time since I looked forward so much to a party.”
They made their tour. In the great drawing-room, seldom used by Jonathan, cedar-wood fires blazed at each end. Mrs. Pouting and two maids put glazed French covers on the armchairs and the bergère sofas.
“Summer-time uniforms,” said Jonathan, “but they chime with the flowers and are gay. Admire my flowers, Aubrey. Don’t they look pleasant against the linen-fold walls? Quite a tone-poem, I consider.”
“And when seven furious faces are added,” said Mandrake, “the harmony will be complete.”
“You can’t frighten me. The faces will be all smiles in less than no time, you may depend on it. And, after all, even if they are not to be reconciled, I shall not complain. My play will be less pretty but more exciting.”
“Aren’t you afraid that they will simply refuse to stay under the same roof with each other?”
“They will at least stay tonight; and tomorrow, I hope, will be so inclement that the weather alone will turn the balance.”
“Your courage is amazing. Suppose they all sulk in separate rooms?”
“They won’t. I won’t let ’em. Confess now, Aubrey, aren’t you a little amused, a little stimulated?”
Mandrake grinned. “I feel all the more disagreeable sensations of first-night nerves, but — all right, I’ll admit to a violent interest.”
Jonathan laughed delightedly and took his arm. “You must see the bedrooms and the ‘boudoir’ and the little smoking-room. I’ve allowed myself some rather childish touches but they may amuse you. Elementary symbolism. Character as expressed by vegetation. As the florists’ advertisements would have it, I have ‘said it with flowers.’ ”
“Said what?”
“What I think of everyone.”
They crossed the hall to the left of the front door and entered the room that Jonathan liked to call the “boudoir”— an Adam sitting-room painted a light green and hung with French brocades, whose pert garlands were repeated in nosegays which Jonathan had set in the window, and upon a spinet and a writing-desk.
“Here,” said Jonathan, “I hope the ladies will foregather to write, gossip and knit. Miss Chloris, I should explain, is a W.R.E.N., not yet called up, but filling the interim with an endless succession of indomitable socks. My distant cousin Hersey is also a vigorous knitter. I feel sure poor Sandra is hard at work on some repellent comfort.”
“And Madame Lisse?”
“The picture of Madame in close co-operation with strands of khaki wool is one which could be envisaged only by a surrealist. No doubt you will find yourself able to encompass it. Come along.”