“I’m on,” said Troy.
“Glory!” said Fenella. “So’m I. Let’s.”
“O.K.,” said Paul, gingerly wrapping the brush in rag. “We’ll lock up the brush and box.”
“I’ll take them up with me.”
“Will you? That’s grand.”
They locked the portrait in the property-room, and said good night conspiratorially. Troy felt she could not face another session with the Ancreds, and sending her excuses, went upstairs to her room.
She could not sleep. Outside, in the night, rain drove solidly against the wall of her tower. The wind seemed to have got into the chimney and be trying uneasily to find its way out again. A bucket had replaced the basin on the landing, and a maddening and irregular progression of taps compelled her attention and played like castanets on her nerves. Only one more night here, she thought, and then the comfort of her familiar things in the London flat and the sharing of them with her husband. Illogically she felt a kind of regret for the tower-room, and in this mood fell to revising in their order the eccentricities of her days and nights at Ancreton. The paint on the banister. The spectacles on the portrait. The legend in grease-paint on Sir Henry’s looking-glass. The incident of the inflated bladder. The flying cow.
If Panty was not the authoress of these inane facetiae, who was? If one person only was responsible for them all, then Panty was exonerated. But might not Panty have instituted them with the smearing of paint on the banister and somebody else have carried them on? Undoubtedly Panty’s legend and past record included many such antics. Troy wished that she knew something of modern views on child psychology. Was such behaviour characteristic of a child who wished to become a dominant figure and who felt herself to be obstructed and repressed? But Troy was positive that Panty had spoken the truth when she denied having any hand in the tricks with paint. And unless Miss Able had told a lie, Panty, quite definitely, had not been the authoress of the flying cow, though she undoubtedly had a predilection for cows and bombs. Troy turned uneasily in her bed, and fancied that beyond the sound of wind and rain she heard the voice of the Great Clock. Was there any significance in the fact that in each instance the additions to her canvas had been made on a dry area and so had done no harm? Which of the adults in the house would realise this? Cedric. Cedric painted, though probably in water-colours. She fancied his aesthetic fervour was, in its antic way, authentic. He would, she thought, instinctively recoil from this particular kind of vandalism. But suppose he knew that no harm would be done? And where was a motive for Cedric? He appeared to have a kind of liking for her; why should he disfigure her work? Bleakly Troy surveyed the rest of the field, and one by one dismissed them until she came to Miss Orrincourt.
The robust vulgarity of these goings-on was not out of character if Miss Orrincourt was considered. Was it, Troy wondered with an uneasy grin, remotely possible that Miss Orrincourt resented the somewhat florid attentions Sir Henry had lavished upon his guest? Could she have imagined that the sittings had been made occasions for even more marked advances, more ardent partings of the hand, closer pilotings by the elbow? “Crikey,” Troy muttered, writhing uncomfortably, “what an idea to get in the middle of the night!” No, it was too far-fetched. Perhaps one of the elderly maids had lost her wits and taken to this nonsense. “Or Barker,” thought the now sleepy Troy. In the drumming of rain and wind about her room she began to hear fantastical things. Presently she dreamed of flying bombs that came out of the night, converging on her tower. When they were almost upon her they changed into green cows, that winked broadly, and with a Cedric-like flirt dropped soft bombs, at the same time saying very distinctly: “Plop, plop, dearest Mrs. Alleyn.”
“Mrs. Alleyn. Dearest Mrs. Alleyn, do please wake up.” Troy opened her eyes. Fenella, fully dressed, stood at her bedside. In the thin light of dawn her face looked cold and very white. Her hands opened and shut aimlessly. The corners of her mouth turned down like those of a child about to cry. “What now, for pity’s sake?” cried Troy.
“I thought I’d better come and tell you. Nobody else would. They’re all frantic. Paul can’t leave his mother, and Mummy’s trying to stop Aunt Dessy having hysterics. I feel so ghastly, I had to talk to someone.”
“But why? What is it? What’s happened?”
“Grandfather. When Barker went in with his tea. He found him. Lying there. Dead.”
iii
There is no more wretched lot than that of the comparative stranger in a house of grief. The sense of loneliness, the feeling that one constantly trespasses on other people’s sorrow, that they would thankfully be rid of one; all these circumstances reduce the unwilling intruder to a condition of perpetual apology that must remain unexpressed. If there is nothing useful to be done this misery is the more acute, and Troy was not altogether sorry that Fenella seemed to find some comfort in staying with her. She hurriedly made a fire on top of last night’s embers, set Fenella, who shivered like a puppy, to blow it up while she herself bathed and dressed, and, when at last the child broke down, listened to a confused recital which harked back continually to the break between herself and her grandfather. “It’s so awful that Paul and I should have made him miserable. We’ll never be able to forgive ourselves — never,” Fenella sobbed.
“Now, look here,” said Troy, “that just doesn’t make sense. You and Paul did what you have every right to do.”
“But we did it brutally. You can’t say we didn’t. We grieved him frightfully. He said so.”
Sir Henry had said so a great many times and with extreme emphasis. It was impossible to suggest that anger rather than grief had moved him. Troy went off on another tack. “He seemed to have got over it,” she said.
“Last night!” Fenella wailed. “When I think of what we said about him last night. In the drawing-room after you’d gone up. Everybody except Mummy and Paul. Aunt Milly said he’d probably have an attack, and I said I didn’t care if it was fatal. Actually! And he did feel it. He cut Aunt Pauline and Mummy and me and Paul out of his Will because of our engagement and the way we announced it. So he did feel it deeply.”
“The Will,” thought Troy. “Good heavens, yes. The Will!” She said: “He was an old man, Fenella. I don’t think, do you, that the future was exactly propitious? Isn’t it perhaps not so very bad that he should go now when everything seemed to him to be perfectly arranged? He’d had his splendid party.”
“And look how it ended.”
“Oh, dear!” said Troy. “That. Well, yes.”
“And it was probably the party that killed him,” Fenella continued. “That hot crayfish. It’s what everybody thinks. Dr. Withers had warned him. And nobody was there. He just went up to his room and died.”
“Has Dr. Withers—?”
“Yes. He’s been. Barker got Aunt Milly and she rang up. He says it was a severe attack of gastro-enteritis. He says it — it happened — it must have been — soon after he went up to bed. It’s so awful when you think of all the frightful things we were saying about him down there in the drawing-room. All of us except Cedric, and he was simply gloating over us. Little beast, he’s still gloating, if it comes to that.”
The gong rumbled distantly. “You go down to breakfast,” said Fenella. “I can’t face it.”
“That won’t do at all. You can at least choke down some coffee.”
Fenella took Troy’s arm in a nervous grip. “I think I like you so much,” she said, “because you’re so unlike all of us. All right, I’ll come.”
The Ancreds in sorrow were a formidable assembly. Pauline, Desdemona and Millamant, who were already in the dining-room, had all found black dresses to wear, and Troy was suddenly conscious that she had without thinking pulled on a scarlet sweater. She uttered those phrases of sympathy that are always inadequate. Desdemona silently gripped her hand and turned aside. Pauline dumbfounded her by bursting into tears and giving her an impulsive kiss. And it was strange to find an unsmiling and pallid Millamant. Thomas came in, looking bewildered. “Good morning,” he said to Troy. “Isn’t it awful? I really can’t realise it a bit, you know. Everybody seems to realise it. They’re all crying and everything, but I don’t. Poor Papa.” He looked at his sisters. “You’re not eating anything,” he said. “What can I get you, Pauline?”