‘Have you ever set eyes on the mysterious Austin Barnes?’
‘No.’
‘Why does he never appear?’
‘The coalition. He hates it.’
‘Oh yes. I heard about the coalition during Tea.’
‘Also he thinks he ought to be Prime Minister and not Leech.’
‘I see.’
‘Also he’s afraid of Mrs Hatch.’
‘I like the Ellensteins.’
‘Yes,’ said Louise. ‘The Ellensteins are good. One could not endure living with them, but they are really good. And that is most unusual.’
‘What about the Duchess’s dog?’
‘It was Stephanie.’
‘Who’s Stephanie?’
‘Stephanie des Bourges. She’s a ghost.’
‘So the house is haunted?’
‘Only occasionally. Stephanie comes only at certain times.’
‘I could wish the times weren’t the present.’
‘I could not. Stephanie was my only friend until you came.’ This now seemed to Griselda not even to call for acknowledgement. ‘In fact she came because I was here.’
‘Do you talk to her?’
‘Oh yes, often. She’s a lonely ghost.’
‘When did you last talk to her? Last night?’
‘This afternoon.’
‘Where?’
‘Here. I was talking to Stephanie just before you came in. I talked to her here yesterday too.’
‘Do you mean that I’ve been given the haunted room?’
‘Dear Griselda, you couldn’t expect a beautiful woman like Stephanie – for she is beautiful, fortunately – to come to my little turret and probably wake up the servants below into the bargain? Now could you?’
‘I suppose not,’ said Griselda. ‘But it explains why I slept badly last night.’
‘I don’t think so,’ said Louise. She was drawing on one of Griselda’s stockings and now paused for moment, kneeling at her feet. ‘It is not that this is the haunted room or anything so vulgar, if you will forgive me putting it so. You think of it like that because you think a ghost must be bad. This is merely the room where Stephanie and I meet because, being at the end of the corridor and usually unoccupied, it is quiet and seldom disturbed. And you mustn’t think of poor Stephanie as bad either. Ghosts only harm those who fear them. Stephanie is one whom I find it easy to love. And you must do the same, Griselda.’
‘I’ll try.’ Louise began attaching the stocking to its suspender. Griselda felt curious. ‘Do you see her by daylight?’
‘No. It is true that you can only see her at night. But I can talk to her sometimes by day.’
‘Could I?’
‘I don’t know. It depends.’
‘On what?’
But Louise was reflecting and did not answer directly. ‘Yes, Griselda,’ she said. ‘I think that you could see and talk to Stephanie. It occurs to me that it may have been because you also were here that she has come at this time. She hadn’t been seen or heard of before, they tell me, for more than twenty years. Not since the time something happened during that bloody silly war. I don’t precisely know what.’ She was on her feet again.
‘I’m afraid,’ said Griselda, ‘that nothing you say makes me very much less frightened of Stephanie. I’m not sure that I shall find thought very enjoyable – I mean, even after the dance, to which I’m not looking forward at all. She was even responsible for the poor Duchess losing her dog,’ added Griselda as an afterthought.
‘It’s difficult about animals,’ replied Louise. ‘But you can’t say that ghosts really treat them worse than we do.’
‘What colour is her hair?’ asked Griselda.
‘A gorgeous golden red,’ answered Louise. ‘And her eyes are, of course, green.’
‘I have never seen really green eyes outside a book.’
‘I think that Stephanie must be a mixture of races,’ said Louise. ‘Probably she has some Jewish blood. I should say quite a lot.’
She lifted Griselda’s dress from the bed where she had laid it. ‘Now for it,’ she said.
It was done.
‘You are truly beautiful,’ said Louise.
‘The girl who designed the dress should get most of the credit,’ said Griselda, looking away from Louise, and into the mirror.
‘What was her name?’
Griselda told her.
‘I might have known it,’ said Louise. ‘In fact, I really did know it. One of Hugo’s.’
‘I haven’t heard her mention him.’
‘No. Hugo is a very secret man.’
‘Oh. Anyway I don’t know her very well. I wish I were a better dancer.’
‘Don’t worry about that.’
‘I wish something else. I so much wish, Louise, that you were coming to the political dance with me.’
Stretching out her hand, she touched Louise’s grey silk neck.
‘Yes,’ said Louise gravely. ‘To my utter surprise, I wish that too.’
IX
‘We mustn’t let things go to our heads,’ remarked Mrs Hatch as she seated herself at the dinner table. They settled to a substantial meal.
Griselda, for some reason, had come down rather late, and Mrs Hatch, whose practice as hostess it was always to appear for dinner last, had entered the dining room only just behind her. The absence of Louise might in any case have retarded her preparations.
Griselda, to whom Louise’s good opinion of her dress had given more confidence, carefully examined the company. The Duchess, in a very tight dress which, it had to be admitted, suited her much better than something looser would have done, was certainly the most striking; but Mrs Hatch, in a sense (not a sense that Griselda particularly cared for), ran her close, wearing a dress after the style favoured by Madame Rйcamier, but dark blue, and elaborated, perhaps somewhat inappropriately, with a full display of the famous Procopius jewellery, a fabulous, multi-coloured mкlйe. Pamela, in one of the quieter garments approved by Vogue, seemed slightly outshone by her seniors; and to be in a state of sulky suspicion, though her appetite remained good. Altogether Griselda felt rather pleased.
With the men it was simple: the Duke (bearing on his dress coat a tiny but conspicious token of some ancient chivalrous Order particularized in the Almanach de Gotha), and Edwin (in a dress suit the colour of night on the Cфte d’Azur, and wearing a rare flower in his buttonhole, which Mr Cork said grew only on the island of Tahiti and in his conservatory at Beams) were well-dressed; Mr Leech and George Goss were not. George Goss had not even brought a tail coat.
There was soup with wine in it; a large, but excellent, sole; roast duck, with apple sauce, and salad; a confused but rather rich concoction described as ‘Summer Pudding’ (though, as someone pointed out, it was not yet quite summer); mushrooms on toast; and dessert. ‘No cheese tonight,’ announced Mrs Hatch, ‘in view of what is before us. Those who are still hungry must make do with nuts; or go and see Brundrit privately in his pantry.’
Pamela had refused to take duck on the ground that her Father had always said that ducks were garbage eaters; and had had to have a small exquisite point steak specially cooked for her. When it came, she ate it, without a word, almost in a couple of mouthfuls.
It was not the gayest of meals. The Duchess, upon whom so much depended in that direction, was cast down by the death of Fritzi, though she struggled pathetically hard with her feelings, and though the slight air of grief (like most things) distinctly became her. The Duke, though he did all that could be expected of him with Griselda, complimenting her upon her dress and describing clothes worn by beautiful women he had met at now extinct German courts, was concerned about the Duchess. Mr Leech was concerned about his speech, apologizing to Griselda for his inattention to her remarks, apologizing to his hostess for making notes during dinner, dropping his food on his clothes, and from time to time muttering a possible rhetorical effect under his breath, then changing it with a stub of pencil and muttering it again. Edwin seemed almost more concerned than the Prime Minister, and his concern seemed more active or transitive; it was not that he deflected in the slightest from his habitual perfection of appearance and behaviour, but that a score of unconscious details disclosed his inner distress, and made him less than a contributor to the sodality of the occasion. Once even he had to ask for a second access to the salad, being unable to eat any more duck. Pamela was as negative as usuaclass="underline" and even Mrs Hatch seemed strung up, in her not very suitable dress and dangerously valuable jewels. It hung over all of them, perhaps, even over Mrs Hatch, dearly though she appeared to love a dance, that the gaiety ahead had an ulterior, and presumably important, end. George Goss merely leered at the Duchess’s bare bosom and ate, crouched over his plate like an octopus.