When she walked into the dining-room presently, Mathilda found that her first waking fears were already being fulfilled. "Good morning, Tilda! A white Christmas, after all!" Joseph said.
Nathaniel had breakfasted early, and had gone away. Mathilda sat down beside Edgar Mottisfont, and hoped that he would not think it necessary to entertain her with conversation.
He did not. Apart from some desultory comments on the weather, he said nothing. It occurred to her that he was a little ill-at-ease. She wondered why, remembered that he had wanted a private interview with Nathaniel on the previous evening, and hoped, with a sinking heart, that more trouble was not brewing.
Valerie, breakfasting on half a grape-fruit and some dry toast, and explaining why she did so, wanted to know what they were all going to do. Only Joseph seemed to welcome this desire to map out the day's amusements. Stephen said that he was going to walk; Paula declared that she never made plans; Roydon said nothing at all; and Mathilda only groaned.
"I believe there are some very pretty walks in the neighbourhood," offered Maud.
"A good tramp in the snow! Almost you tempt me, Stephen!" Joseph said, rubbing his hands together. "What does Val say, I wonder? Shall we all brave the elements, and blow the cobwebs away?"
"On second thoughts," said Stephen, "I shall stay indoors." Joseph bore up under the offensiveness of this remark, merely wagging his head, and saying with a laugh: "Someone got out of bed on the wrong side this morning!"
"Aren't you going to read your play to us, Willoughby?" asked Valerie, turning her large blue eyes in his direction.
It never took Valerie more than a day to arrive at Christian names, but Roydon felt flattered, rather excited, at hearing his on her lips. He said, stammering a little, that he would like to read his play to her.
Paula at once threw a damper on to this scheme. "It's no use reading it just to Valerie," she said. "You're going to read it to everybody."
"Not to me," said Stephen.
Roydon bristled, and began to say something rather involved about having no desire to bore anyone with his play.
"I hate being read to," explained Stephen casually. "Now, now!" gently scolded Joseph. "We are all longing to hear the play, I'm sure. You mustn't pay any attention to old Stephen. What do you say to giving us a reading after tea? We'll gather round the fire, and enjoy a real treat."
"Yes, if Willoughby starts to read it directly after tea, Uncle Nat won't have time to get away," said Paula, brightening.
"Nor anyone else," interpolated her brother.
This remark not unnaturally involved Roydon in a declaration of his unwillingness to inflict the literary flowers of his brain upon an unsympathetic audience. Stephen merely said Good! but everyone else plunged into conciliatory speeches. Finally, it was agreed that Roydon should read his play after tea. Anyone, said Paula, casting a dagger-glance at her brother, incapable of appreciating Art might absent himself with her goodwill.
It next transpired that Joseph had instructed the head gardener to uproot a young fir tree, and to bring it up to the house for decoration. He called for volunteers in this festive work, but Paula evidently considered a Christmas tree frivolous, Stephen was apparently nauseated by the very mention of such a thing, Edgar Mottisfont thought it work for the younger members of the party, and Maud, plainly, had no intention of exerting herself in any way, at all.
Maud had been reading more of the Life of the Empress of Austria, and created a diversion by informing the company that the Hungarians had all worshipped Elizabeth. She feared, however, that her mind had not been stable, and suggested to Roydon that she would provide an excellent subject for a play.
Roydon appeared bewildered. He said that costume pieces (with awful scorn) were hardly in his line.
"She seems to have had a very dramatic life," persisted Maud. "It wouldn't be sword-and-cloak, you know."
Joseph intervened hastily, saying that he thought it would hardly be suitable, and could he not persuade Maud to lay aside the book and help him with the tree?
He could not. In the end, only Mathilda responded to his appeal for assistance. She asserted her undying love for tinsel decorations, and professed her eagerness to hang innumerable coloured balls and icicles on to the tree. "Though I think, Joe," she said, when the company had dispersed, "that no one else feels any sympathy with your desire for a Merry Christmas."
"They will, my dear; they will, when it comes to the point," said Joseph, incurably optimistic. "I have got a collection of little presents to hang on the tree. And crackers, of course!"
"Does it strike you that Edgar Mottisfont has got something on his mind?" asked Mathilda.
"Yes," Joseph replied. "I fancy there is some little matter connected with the business which has gone wrong. You know what a stick-in-the-mud Nat is! But it will blow over: you'll see!"
Judging from Mottisfont's crushed demeanour at luncheon, his interview with his sleeping partner had not been in keeping with the Christmas spirit. He looked dejected, while Nathaniel sat in disapproving gloom, repulsing all attempts to draw him into conversation.
Valerie, who seemed during the course of the morning to have made great headway with the dramatist, was unaffected by her host's blighting conduct, but everyone else seemed to feel it. Stephen was frankly morose, his sister restless, Mathilda silent, the dramatist nervous, and Joseph impelled by innate tactlessness to rally the rest of the guests on their lack of spirits.
The gloom induced by himself had the beneficent effect of raising Nathaniel's spirits at least. To find that his own ill-humour had quenched the gaiety of his guests appeared to afford him considerable gratification. Almost he rubbed his hands together with glee; and by the time the company rose from the table, he was so far restored to equanimity as to enquire what his guests proposed to do to amuse themselves during the afternoon.
Maud broke her long, ruminative silence by announcing that she would have her rest as usual, and very likely take her book up with her. Still cherishing the fancy that the life of the Empress would make a good play, she said that of course it would be rather difficult to stage that erratic lady's travels. "But I daresay you could get over that," she told Roydon kindly.
"Willoughby doesn't write that sort of play," said Paula.
"Well, dear, I just thought it might be interesting," Maud replied. "Such a romantic life!"
Nathaniel, perceiving from the expressions of weary boredom on the faces of his guests, that the Life of the Empress Elizabeth was not a popular subject, at once, and with ill-disguised malignity, affected a keen interest in it. So everyone, except Stephen, who lounged out of the room, had to hear again about the length of the Empress's hair, the circus-horses, and the jealousy of the Archduchess.
"Who would have thought," murmured Mathilda in Mottisfont's ear, "that we undistinguished commoners should be haunted by an Empress?"
He gave her a quick, perfunctory smile, but said nothing.
"Who cares about Elizabeth of Austria, anyway?" asked Paula impatiently.
"It's history, dear," explained Maud.
"Well, I hate history. I live in the present."
"Talking of the present," struck in Joseph, "who is going to help Tilda and me to finish the tree?"
He directed an appealing look at his niece as he spoke. "Oh, all right!" Paula said ungraciously. "I suppose I shall have to. Though I think it's nonsense myself."
Since it had begun to snow again, and no other entertainment offered, Valerie and Roydon also joined the tree-decorating party. They came into the billiardroom with the intention of turning on the radio, but they were quite unable to resist the lure of glittering tinsel, packets of artificial frost, and coloured candles. Roydon was at first inclined to lecture the company on the childishness of keeping up old customs, and Teutonic ones at that, but when he saw Mathilda clipping candlesticks on to the branches, he forgot that it was all very much beneath him, and said: "Here, you'd better let me do that! If you put it there, it'll set light to the whole thing."