“Possibly not.”
“No. Although he’s quite nice to me.” The thin voice hardened. “And, don’t you worry, I know why,” Miss Orrincourt added. “He’s stuck for cash, silly kid, and he wants me to use my influence. He’d got the burns on his doorstep when the jitterbugs cleaned up his place, and then he went to the Jews and now he doesn’t know where to go. He’s scared to turn up at the flat. He’ll have to wait till I’m fixed up myself. Then we’ll see. I don’t mind much,” she said, moving restlessly, “which way it goes, so long as I’m fixed up.”
They faced each other across the bucket-cart. Troy looked at her companion’s beautifully painted face. Behind it stood wraithlike trees, motionless, threaded with mist. It might have been a sharp mask, by a surrealist, hung on that darkling background, thought Troy.
A tiny rhythmic sound grew out of the freezing air. “I can hear a cat mewing somewhere,” said Troy, pulling Rosinante up.
“That’s a good one!” said Miss Orrincourt, laughing and coughing. “A cat mewing! It’s my chest, dear. This damn night air’s catching me. Can you hurry that brute up?”
Troy stirred him up, and presently they clopped sedately down the one street of Ancreton village and pulled up outside a small chemist’s shop, that seemed also to be a sort of general store.
“Shall I get whatever it is?” Troy offered.
“All right. I don’t suppose there’s anything worth looking at in the shop. No perfume. Thanks, dear. It’s the stuff for the kid’s ringworm. The doctor’s ordered it. It’s meant to be ready.”
The elderly rubicund chemist handed Troy two bottles tied together. One had an envelope attached. “For the children up at the Manor?” he said. “Quite so. And the small bottle is for Sir Henry.” When she had climbed back into the governess-cart, she found that he had followed her and stood blinking on the pavement. “They’re labelled,” he said fussily. “If you’d be good enough to point out the enclosed instructions. The dosage varies, you know. It’s determined by the patient’s weight. Dr. Withers particularly asked me to draw Miss Able’s attention. Quite an unusual prescription, actually. Thallium acetate. Yes. Both labelled. Thank you. One should exercise care… So sorry we’re out of wrapping paper. Good evening.” He gave a little whooping chuckle and darted back into his shop. Troy was about to turn Rosinante when Miss Orrincourt, asking her to wait, scrambled out and went into the shop, returning in a few minutes with a bulge in her pocket.
“Just something that caught my eye,” she said. “Righty ho, dear! Home John and don’t spare the horses.” On their return journey she exclaimed repeatedly on the subject of the children’s ringworm. She held the collar of her fur coat across her mouth and her voice sounded unreal behind it. “Is it tough, or is it tough? That poor kid Panty. All over her head, and her hair’s her one beauty, you might say.”
“You and Panty are rather by way of being friends, aren’t you?” said Troy.
“She’s a terrible kiddy, really. You know. The things she does! Well! Scribbling across Noddy’s mirror with a lake-liner and such a common way to put it, whatever she thought. A few more little cracks like that and she’ll cook her goose if she only knew it. The mother’s wild about it, naturally. Did you know the kid’s favourite in the Will? She won’t hold that rôle down much longer if she lets her sense of comedy run away with her. And then the way she put that paint on your banister! I call it the limit.”
Troy stared at her. “How did you know about that?”
A spasm of coughing shook her companion. “I was crazy,” gasped the muffled voice, “to come out in this lousy fog. Might have known. Pardon me, like a ducks, if I don’t talk.”
“Did Panty tell you?” Troy persisted. “I haven’t told anyone. Did she actually tell you she did it?”
A violent paroxysm prevented Miss Orrincourt from speaking, but with her lovely and enormous eyes fixed on Troy and still clasping her fur collar over the lower part of her face, she nodded three times.
“I’d never have believed it,” said Troy slowly. “Never.”
Miss Orrincourt’s shoulders quivered and shook. “For all the world,” Troy thought suddenly, “as if she was laughing.”
CHAPTER VI
Paint
i
It was on that same night that there was an open flaring row between Paul and Fenella on the one hand and Sir Henry Ancred on the other. It occurred at the climax of a game of backgammon between Troy and Sir Henry. He had insisted upon teaching her this complicated and maddening game. She would have enjoyed it more if she hadn’t discovered very early in the contest that her opponent disliked losing so intensely that her own run of beginner’s luck had plunged him into the profoundest melancholy. He had attempted to explain to her the chances of the possible combinations of a pair of dice, adding, with some complacency, that he himself had completely mastered this problem. Troy had found his explanation utterly incomprehensible, and began by happily moving her pieces with more regard for the pattern they made on the board than for her chances of winning the game. She met with uncanny success. Sir Henry, who had entered the game with an air of gallantry, finding pretty frequent occasions to pat Troy’s fingers, became thoughtful, then pained, and at last gloomy. The members of his family, aware of his mortification, watched in nervous silence. Troy moved with reckless abandon. Sir Henry savagely rattled his dice. Greatly to her relief the tide turned. She gave herself a “blot” and looked up, to find Fenella and Paul watching her with an extraordinary expression of anxiety. Sir Henry prospered and soon began to “bear”, Paul and Fenella exchanged a glance. Fenella nodded and turned pale.
“Aha!” cried Sir Henry in triumph. “The winning throw, I think! The winning throw!”
He cast himself back in his chair, gazed about him and laughed delightedly. It was at this juncture that Paul, who was standing on the hearthrug with Fenella, put his arm round her and kissed her with extreme heartiness and unmistakable intention. “Fenella and I,” he said loudly, “are going to be married.”
There followed an electrified silence, lasting perhaps for ten seconds.
Sir Henry then picked up the backgammon board and threw it a surprising distance across the drawing-room.
“And temper,” Paul added, turning rather pale, “never got anybody anywhere.”
Miss Orrincourt gave a long whistle. Millamant dropped on her knees and began to pick up backgammon pieces.
Pauline Kentish, gazing with something like terror at her son, gabbled incoherently: “No, darling! No, please! No, Paul, don’t be naughty. No! Fenella!”
Cedric, his mouth open, his eyes glistening, rubbed his hands and made his crowing noise. But he, too, looked frightened.
And all the Ancreds, out of the corners of their eyes, watched Sir Henry.
He was the first man Troy had ever seen completely given over to rage. She found the exhibition formidable. If he had not been an old man his passion would have been less disquieting because less pitiable. Old lips, shaking with rage; old eyes, whose fierceness was glazed by rheum; old hands, that jerked in uncoordinated fury; these were intolerable manifestations of emotion.
Troy got up and attempted an inconspicuous retreat to the door.
“Come back,” said her host violently. Troy returned. “Hear how these people conspire to humiliate me. Come back, I say.” Troy sat on the nearest chair.
“Papa!” whispered Pauline, weaving her hands together, and “Papa!” Millamant echoed, fumbling with the dice. “Please! So bad for you. Upsetting yourself! Please!”
He silenced them with a gesture and struggled to his feet. Paul, holding Fenella by the arm, waited until his grandfather stood before him and then said rapidly: “We’re sorry to make a scene. I persuaded Fen that this was the only way to handle the business. We’ve discussed it with you in private, Grandfather, and you’ve told us what you feel about it. We don’t agree. It’s our show, after all, and we’ve made up our minds. We could have gone off and got married without saying anything about it, but neither of us wanted to do that. So we thought—”