Ermyntrude had now to present him to the Prince. They made a sufficiently odd contrast, the one so thin, and handsome, and smiling, the other stocky, and rugged, and a little grim. Mary, who knew, and was sorry for, Steel’s silent adoration of Ermyntrude, was not surprised to see him look more uncompromising than usual, for Ermyntrude was hanging on the Prince’s lips. To make matters worse, Wally, although he had not lingered over the port, had fortified himself with a good many drinks before dinner, and was now looking a little blear-eyed. Steel’s lips had tightened when his glance had first fallen on him, and beyond giving him a curt good-evening he had not again addressed him.
If Vicky’s aim had been to provoke an atmosphere of constraint, she had succeeded admirably, Mary reflected. Nor, having introduced Steel into the party, did she show the least disposition to try to ease the tension. She remained standing backed against the amber-silk curtains, beside the radio, which she had turned down until the music became a faint undercurrent, a murmur behind the voices. It was left to the Prince to set the party at its ease, which outwardly he did, to Ermyntrude’s satisfaction, and Steel’s silent annoyance.
‘Well, Bob, how are the crops and things?’ inquired Ermyntrude kindly. ‘Mr Steel,’ she added, turning to the Prince, ‘farms his own land, you know.’
‘I’m a farmer,’ stated Steel, somewhat pugnaciously disclaiming the implied suggestion that he toiled for his pleasure.
‘Ah, perfectly!’ smiled the Prince. ‘Alas, I find myself wholly ignorant of the art!’
‘Precious little art about it,’ said Steel. ‘Hard work’s more like it.’
From her stance beyond the group, Vicky spoke thoughtfully. ‘I think there’s something rather frightening about farming.’
‘Frightening?’ repeated Steel.
‘Primordial,’ murmured Vicky. ‘The struggle against Nature, savagery of the soil.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ Steel demanded. ‘I never heard such rot!’
‘But no, one sees exactly what she means!’ the Prince exclaimed.
‘I’m afraid I don’t,’ replied Steel. ‘Struggle against Nature! I assure you, I don’t, young lady!’
‘Oh yes! Rain. And weeds,’ sighed Vicky.
‘That’s right,’ said Wally, entering unexpectedly into the conversation. ‘Getting earth under your nails, too. Oh, it’s one long struggle!’
‘It’s a good life,’ said Steel.
‘It may be your idea of a good life. All I know is that it isn’t mine. Fancy getting up in the middle of the night to help a sheep have a lamb! Well, I ask you!’
‘That’ll do!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘There’s no need to get coarse.’
It was generally felt that the possibilities of farming as a topic for conversation had been exhausted. An uneasy silence fell. The Prince began to recall to Ermyntrude memories of Antibes. As Steel had not been there, he was unable to join in. He said that his own country was good enough for him, to which the Prince replied with suave courtesy that it might well be good enough for anyone.
A diversion was created by the sound of footsteps on the flagged terrace outside. The evening was so warm that the long windows had been left open behind the curtains. These parted suddenly, and a face looked in. ‘Hallo! Anyone at home?’ inquired Harold White with ill-timed playfulness.
Only Wally greeted this invasion with any semblance of delight. He got up and invited his friend to come in, and upon discovering that White was accompanied by his son and daughter, said the more the merrier.
Neither White nor his son had changed for dinner, a circumstance which still further prejudiced Ermyntrude against them. Janet White, a somewhat insignificant young woman, whose skirts had a way of dipping in the wrong places, was wearing a garment which she designated as semi-evening dress. It was she who first addressed Ermyntrude, saying with an anxious smile: ‘I do hope you don’t mind us dropping in like this, Mrs Carter? Father wanted to see Mr Carter, you see, so I thought probably you wouldn’t mind if Alan and I came too. But if you do mind – I mean, if you’d rather we didn’t—’
Ermyntrude broke in on this indeterminate speech, her natural kindliness prompting her to say with as much heartiness as she could assume: ‘Now, you know I’m always pleased to see you and Alan, dear. This is Prince Alexis Varasashvili.’
Any fears that Ermyntrude might have nourished that Janet would try to monopolise her exalted guest were soon dispersed. Janet looked flustered, and retreated as soon as she could to Mary’s side. Janet was engaged to be married to a tea-planter, living in Ceylon; and although she had so far been unable to reconcile it with her conscience to abandon her father and brother, she was a constant young woman, and found every other man than her tea-planter supremely uninteresting. The Prince alarmed her a little, for she was a simple creature, quite unused to cosmopolitan circles, and instead of listening to his conversation, she began to give Mary an account, in a tiresome undertone, of the tea-planter’s adventures, as exemplified in his last letter to her.
Her brother, however, a willowy youth, who cultivated an errant lock of hair, took up a determined position on the sofa beside the Prince, and proclaimed himself to be a fervent admirer of the Russian School.
‘And what school might that be?’ asked Ermyntrude, bent on putting him in his place.
‘My dear Mrs Carter!’ said Alan with a superior smile. ‘Literature!’
‘Oh literature!’ said Ermyntrude. ‘Is that all!’
‘All! Yes, I am inclined to think that it is indeed all!’
White, who was waiting by a side-table while Wally mixed a drink for him, overheard this, and said, with a laugh: ‘That young cub of mine getting astride his hobby-horse? You snub him, Mrs Carter, that’s my advice to you! If he read less and worked more, he’d do well.’
‘Oh well!’ said Wally tolerantly. ‘I’m very fond of reading myself. Not in the summer, of course.’
Alan apparently considered this remark beneath contempt, for he turned his shoulder to the rest of the room, and fixing the Prince with a stern and penetrating gaze, uttered one word: ‘Tchekhov!’
Vicky, who thought she had been out of the limelight for long enough, and had once seen The Cherry Orchard, said thrillingly: ‘The psychology of humanity! Too, too marvellous!’
‘Oh, Vicky, you’re doing your hair a new way!’ exclaimed Janet, suddenly noticing it.
‘Yes,’ said Vicky, firmly putting the conversation back on to an elevated plane. ‘It’s an expression of mood. Tonight I felt as though some other, stranger soul had entered into me. I had to fit myself to it. Had to!’
‘You look beautiful!’ Alan said, in a low voice. ‘I sometimes think there must be Russian blood in you. You’re so sensitive, if you know what I mean.’
‘Storm-tossed,’ said Vicky unhappily.
‘No, no, duchinka!’ said the Prince, amused. ‘I find instead that you are youth-tossed.’
‘One must believe in youth,’ said Alan intensely.
With the exception of Vicky, none of his audience showed much sign of agreeing with this dictum. White told him that he talked too much, and Steel said that, speaking for himself, he had no use for Tchekhov.
‘Good God!’ exclaimed Alan, profoundly disgusted. ‘That mastery of under-statement! That fluid style! When I saw The Three Sisters, for instance, it absolutely shattered me!’
‘Well, if it comes to that, it pretty well shattered me,’ said Wally. ‘In fact, had anyone told me what sort of a show it was, I wouldn’t have gone.’
‘I must say, that was a dreary piece,’ admitted Ermyntrude. ‘I dare say it was all very clever, but it wasn’t my idea of a cheery evening.’
‘To my mind, The Seagull was yet finer,’ said Alan. ‘There one had the crushing weight of cumulative gloom pressing on one until it became almost an agony!’
&
nbsp; ‘When I go to the theatre,’ said Ermyntrude flatly, ‘I don’t want to be crushed by gloom.’
It was plain that Alan thought such an attitude of mind contemptible, but the Prince threw Ermyntrude one of his brilliant smiles, and said: ‘Always you are right, Trudinka. Indeed, you were made for light and laughter.’
‘Take Gogol!’ commanded Alan. ‘Think of that subtle union of mysticism and realism, more especially in Dead Souls!’
‘Well, what of it?’ asked Wally. ‘It’s all very well for you to say “take Gogol”, but nobody wants to, and what’s more we don’t want to talk about dead souls either. You run along with Vicky and have a game of billiards, or something.’
‘The panacea of the inevitable ball!’ said Alan, with a bitter smile. ‘Does it puzzle you, Prince, our obsession with Sport?’
‘But I find that you are not obsessed with Sport, my friend, but on the contrary with the literature of my country. Yet I must tell you that in translation something is lost.’
The mention of sport put Ermyntrude in mind of the borrowed shot-gun, and she at once turned to catch Wally’s eye. Failing, she was obliged to nudge Mary, and to whisper: ‘Tell him to ask about the gun!’
Mary, who saw no reason for such stealth, at once said: ‘Oh, Uncle Wally, don’t forget you were going to ask Mr White for the shot-gun!’
Ermyntrude thought such a direct approach rather rude, and blushed; but White was at once profuse in apologies. ‘It slipped my memory,’ he said. ‘If you’d only given me a ring I could have brought it over tonight! I’ll tell you what, Mrs Carter, I’ll pop across with it first thing in the morning.’
‘Oh, I’m sure I didn’t mean— That is, Wally’s shooting tomorrow, you see!’ said Ermyntrude, flustered. ‘Naturally, you’re very welcome, what with Wally using it so seldom, and that.’
Wally spoilt the effect of this generous speech by giving vent to his annoying snigger. ‘Well, that’s not what you said this morning. A nice slating I got for lending you the gun, I can tell you, Harold!’
Ready tears of mortification sprang to Ermyntrude’s eyes. Mary saw Steel watching her steadily, a little angry pulse throbbing in his temple, and said quickly: ‘I suggest we get up a game of snooker! You’ll play, won’t you, Janet?’
Janet, however, said that she was so bad at it that she would prefer to watch. Steel was more obliging, and the Prince announced that nothing could give him greater pleasure. After a good deal of argument, Janet was persuaded to overcome her diffidence, and everyone but Ermyntrude, Vicky and Alan consented to play. Vicky volunteered to mark, and Alan, refusing to play on the score that the sides were even without him, attached himself to her, and tried to hold her attention with a description of the wealth of sordid misery to be found in the works of Maxim Gorky. The billiard-room was a very large room, one end of it being furnished to constitute what Ermyntrude called a smoking-lounge. Here Ermyntrude ensconced herself, in a deep armchair. Between shots, the Prince stood beside her, conversing in low tones, a circumstance which did not find favour in Steel’s eyes.
The game was necessarily a light-hearted affair, for the Prince and White were the only really skilled players, and Janet insisted upon being told continually which ball to aim at, which pocket to put it in, and how to handle her cue. White took no part in the coaching of his daughter, but seized the opportunity afforded by the Prince’s patiently instructing her, to draw Wally aside, and say to him in a confidential undertone: ‘If you’re looking for a good thing – mind you, when I say good I mean a regular snip! – I think I can put you on to it.’
Wally, who was imbibing his third whisky since dinner, was feeling slightly querulous, and replied in a complaining voice: ‘What about that money I lent you?’
‘That’ll be all right, old man,’ said White soothingly. ‘No need for you to worry about that.’
‘Oh, there isn’t, isn’t there? That’s what you think, but I don’t. Nice to-do there’d be if Ermy found out about it.’
‘Well, she won’t. I tell you it’s all right!’
‘No, she won’t find out because now I come to think of it you’ve got to pay it back next week,’ said Wally triumphantly.
These words, which were spoken in an unguarded tone, reached Mary’s ears. At that moment, Janet, taking painstaking aim, miscued, and it became White’s turn to play. As he walked over to the table, Mary caught Steel’s eye, and realised, with a curious sinking of her spirits, that he also had overheard Wally’s last speech. He was standing beside Mary, and asked in an abrupt undertone whether Wally had lent money to White.
‘I don’t know,’ Mary replied repressively.
Steel’s hard gaze travelled to Ermyntrude’s unconscious profile. He muttered: ‘Exploiting her! By God, I—’ He checked himself, remembering to whom he spoke, and said briefly: ‘Sorry!’
Mary thought it wisest to disregard his outburst, and began to talk of something else, but she was privately a good deal perturbed by what she had heard, and contrived, soon after the departure of the Whites, to get a word with Wally alone. Knowing that evasive methods would not answer, she asked him bluntly whether he had lent money to White, and refused to be satisfied with his easy assurance that it was quite all right.
Questioned more strictly, Wally said bitterly that things were coming to a pretty pass now that his own ward spied upon him.
‘You know I don’t spy on you. I couldn’t help hearing what you said to Mr White tonight. You spoke quite loudly. Robert Steel heard you as plainly as I did.’
Wally looked a little discomposed at this. ‘I wish that fellow would stop poking his nose into my business! It’s my belief he’d like nothing better than to see me knocked down by a tram, or something.’
‘Nonsense!’ said Mary.
‘It isn’t nonsense. Any fool can see with half an eye that he’s after Ermy. He wants her money, you mark my words.’
‘It’s Aunt Ermy’s money that I want to speak about,’ said Mary. ‘You’ve no right to get money out of her to lend to Harold White.’
Wally looked offended. ‘That’s a nice way to talk to your guardian!’
‘I know, but I must. I can’t bear to see Aunt Ermy cheated. If she were mean I mightn’t mind so much, but she gives you whatever you ask for without a murmur, and to be frank with you, Uncle, it makes me sick to hear the lies you tell her about what you want money for. What’s more, she’s beginning to realise – things.’
‘I must say, I didn’t much like that crack of hers at breakfast today,’ agreed Wally. ‘Think she meant anything in particular?’
‘I don’t know, but I’ll tell you this: if she finds out that you’re lending her money to White, there’ll be trouble. She’ll stand a lot, but not that.’
‘Well, all right, all right, don’t make such a song and dance about it!’ said Wally, irritated. ‘As a matter of fact, I was a bit on at the time, or naturally I wouldn’t have been such a fool. Lending money is a thing I never have believed in. However, there’s nothing to worry about, because Harold’s going to pay it back next week.’
‘What if he doesn’t?’
‘Don’t you fret, he’s got to, because I’ve got his bill for it.’
Mary sighed. ‘You’re so hopeless, Uncle: if he tries to get out of it, you’ll let him talk you over.’
‘Well, that’s where you’re wrong. I may be easy-going, but if it comes to parting brass-rags with Harold, or getting under Ermy’s skin, I’ll part with Harold.’
‘I wish you would part with him,’ said Mary.
‘Yes, I dare say you do, but the trouble with you is that you’ve got a down on poor old Harold. But as a matter of fact he can be very useful to me. You’ll sing a different tune if you wake up one morning and find I’ve made a packet, all through Harold White.’
‘I should still hate your ha
ving anything to do with him,’ said Mary uncompromisingly.
Three
Harold White redeemed his promise of returning the shot-gun early on the following morning by arriving with it in a hambone-case just as Ermyntrude was coming downstairs to breakfast. Following his usual custom, he walked in at the front-door, which was kept on the latch, without the formality of ringing the bell, and bade Ermyntrude a cheerful good morning. Ermyntrude said pointedly that her butler could not have heard the bell, but White was quite impervious to hints, and said heartily: ‘Oh, I didn’t ring! I knew you wouldn’t mind my just walking in. After all, we’re practically relations, aren’t we? You see, I’ve brought Wally’s gun.’
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Ermyntrude, ‘it’s not Wally’s gun. It belonged to my first husband.’
‘Ah, sentimental value!’ said White sympathetically. ‘Still, I’ve taken every care of it. Wally won’t find his barrels dirty, for I cleaned them myself, and oiled them.’
Ermyntrude thanked him frigidly. She was slightly mollified by the discovery that White had kept the gun in his hambone-case, but remarked with some bitterness that it was just like Wally not to have lent the gun in its own case. However, when White, who always made a point of agreeing with her, said that Wally was a careless chap, she remembered her loyalty, and remarking severely that Wally had more important things to think about, sailed into the breakfast-room, leaving White to restore the gun to its own case in the gun-room at the back of the house. ‘For since he makes so free with my house, I’m sure I don’t see why I should dance attendance on him,’ she told Mary.
The entrance of the Prince into the room diverted her thoughts, and she at once asked solicitously how he had slept. It appeared that not only had he slept better than ever before in his life, but upon awakening he had been transported by the sound of a cock crowing in the distance. He knew then, perhaps for the first time, the magic of the English countryside. He gave Ermyntrude his word that he lay listening to cock answering cock in a sleepy trance of delight.