"Well, really, Stephen!" exclaimed Valerie, with a giggle. "I do think you're the limit!"
This infelicitous intervention seemed to remind Nathaniel of her existence. He glared at her, loathing her empty prettiness, her crimson fingernails, her irritating laugh; and gave vent to his feelings by barking at Stephen. "You're as bad as your sister! There isn't a penny to choose between you! You've got bad taste, do you hear me? This is the last time either of you will come to Lexham! Put that in your pipe, and smoke it!"
"Tut-tut!" said Stephen, and walked out of the room, greatly disconcerting Sturry, who was standing outside with a tray of cocktails, listening with deep appreciation to the quarrel raging within.
"I beg your pardon, sir; I was about to enter," said Sturry, fixing Stephen with a quelling eye.
"What a lot you'll have to regale them with in the servants' hall, won't you?" said Stephen amiably.
"I was never one to gossip, sir, such being beneath me," replied Sturry, in a very grand and despising way.
He stalked into the room, bearing his burden. Paula, who was addressing an impassioned monologue to her elder uncle, broke off short, and rushed out; Joseph urged Valerie, and Maud, and Mottisfont to go up and change for dinner; and Nathaniel told Sturry to bring him a glass of the pale sherry.
While this family strife had been in full swing, Mathilda, in the library, had been explaining to Willoughby, as tactfully as she could, that Nathaniel was not at all likely to finance his play. He was strung up after his reading, and at first he seemed hardly to understand her. Plainly, Paula had led him to suppose that her uncle's help was a foregone conclusion. He went perfectly white when the sense of what Mathilda was saying penetrated his brain, and said in a trembling voice: "Then it's all no use!"
"I'm afraid it's no use as far as Nat is concerned," Mathilda said. "It isn't his kind of play. But he isn't the only potential backer in the world, you know."
He shook his head. "I don't know any rich people. Why won't he back it? Why shouldn't p-people like me be g-given a chance? It isn't fair! People with money - people who don't care for anything but -"
"I think you'd be far better advised to send your play to some producer in the usual way," said Mathilda, in a bracing voice calculated to check hysteria.
"They're all afraid of it!" he said. "They say it hasn't got box-office appeal. But I know - I know it's a good play! I've - I've sweated blood over it! I can't give it up like this! It means so much to me! You don't know what it means to me, Miss Clare!"
She began gently to suggest that he had it in him to write other plays, plays with the desired box-office appeal, but he interrupted her, saying violently that he would rather starve than write the sort of play she meant. Mathilda began to feel a little impatient, and was quite glad to see Paula stride into the room.
"Paula!" said Roydon despairingly, "is it true, what Miss Clare says? Is he going to refuse to put up the money?"
Paula was flushed and bright-eyed, stimulated by her quarrel with Nathaniel. She said: "I've just told him what I think of him! I told him -"
"Well, we don't want you to tell us," said Mathilda, losing patience. "You ought to have known that there wasn't a hope!"
Paula's gaze flickered to her face. "I shall get the money. I always get what I want, always! And I want this more than I've ever wanted anything in my life!"
Judging by those of Nat's remarks which I was privileged to hear -"
"Oh, that's nothing!" Paula said, tossing back her hair. "He doesn't mind having rows. We none of us do. We like rows! I shall talk to him again soon. You'll see!"
"I hope to God I shan't!" said Mathilda.
"Ah, you're so un-understanding!" Paula said. "I know him much better than you do. Of course I shall get the money! I know I shall!"
"Don't buoy yourself up with false hopes: you won't!" said Mathilda.
"I've got to get it!" Paula said, looking rapt, and tense. "I've got to!"
Roydon glanced uncertainly from her glowing face to Mathilda's discouraging one. He said in a dejected voice: "I suppose I'd better go and change. It doesn't seem much use -"
Paula said: "I'm coming too. It is of use, Willoughby! I always get my own way! Really!"
A merry Christmas! Mathilda thought, watching them go. She took a cigarette from the box on the table, and lit it, and sat down by the fire, feeling quite limp. All this emotional strain! she thought, with a wry smile. It was not her affair, of course, but the threadbare playwright, tiresome though he was, had roused her pity, and Paula had a disastrous way of dragging even mere onlookers into her quarrels. Besides, one couldn't sit back and watch this ill-starred party going to perdition. One had at least to try to save it from utter ruin.
She was forced to admit that she could not immediately perceive any way of saving it from ruin. If Paula's folly did not precipitate a crisis, Joseph's balm spreading would. There could be no stopping either of them. Paula cared only for what concerned herself; Joseph could never be convinced that his oil was not oil but vitriol. He saw himself as a peacemaker; he was probably peacemaking now, Mathilda reflected: infuriating Nat with platitudes, making bad worse, all with the best intentions.
A door opened across the wide hall; Nathaniel's voice came to Mathilda's ears. "Damn you, stop pawing me about! For two pins, I'd turn the whole lot of them out of doors, bag and baggage!"
Mathilda smiled to herself. Joseph at it again!
"Now, Nat, old fellow, you know you don't mean that! Let's talk the whole thing over quietly together!"
"I don't want to talk it over!" shouted Nathaniel. "And don't call me old fellow! You've done enough, inviting all these people to my house, and turning it into a damned bazaar! Paper-streamers! Mistletoe! I won't have it! Next you'll want to dress up as Santa Claus! I hate Christmas, do you hear me? Loathe it! abominate it!"
"Not you, Nat!" Joseph said. "You're just an old curmudgeon, and you're upset because you didn't like young Roydon's play. Well, I didn't care for it either, if you want to know, but, my dear old chap, youth must be served!"
"Not in my house!" snarled Nathaniel. "Don't come upstairs with me! I don't want you!"
Mathilda heard him stump up the four stairs which led to the first half-landing. A crash which she had no difficulty in recognising followed. Nathaniel, she deduced, had knocked over the steps.
She strolled to the door. The steps lay on the ground, -and Joseph was tenderly assisting his brother to rise from his knees.
"My dear Nat, I'm so sorry! I'm afraid it was my fault," he said remorsefully. "I'm a careless fellow! I had meant to have finished my poor little decorations before this!"
"Take them down!" ordered Nathaniel in a strangled voice. "All of them! This instant! Clumsy jackass! My lumbago!"
These dread words struck Joseph to silence. Nathaniel went upstairs, clinging to the handrail, once more a helpless cripple.
"Oh dear!" said Joseph ridiculously. "I never thought they would be in anyone's way, Nat!"
Nathaniel returned no answer, but dragged his painful way upstairs to his bedroom. Mathilda heard a door slam, and laughed.
Joseph looked round quickly. "Tilda! I thought you'd gone up! Oh dear, dear, did you see what happened? Most unfortunate!"
"I did. I knew those steps of yours would be the death of someone."
Joseph picked them up. "Well, my dear, I don't want to tell tales out of school, but Nat's a naughty old man. He deliberately knocked them over! All that fuss!"
"I could wish that you hadn't left them there." Mathilda said. "Lumbago, I feel, will be our only topic of conversation this evening."
He smiled, but shook his head. "No, no, that isn't quite fair! He has got lumbago, you know, and it is very painful. We must put our heads together, you and I, Tilda."