“All ready to hang up,” said Mrs. Traill, displaying its neat chains and pointing to the nails she had hammered into the shed. Diana threw her arms round her and bestowed an impulsive kiss; it struck Christine, hovering on the edge of the group, that a little more kindness and the hard turquoise eye would film over.
Mrs. Traill was hanging the sign, and Diana was making the wheel’s drone now loud, now quieter; Antonia gave her a quick kiss and hastened away with the skirts of her evening-coat flying, and James Meredith looked with quiet satisfaction on the scene.
“Now,” said Mrs. Traill contentedly, “we must start arranging the party. Thank goodness,” to Diana, “she didn’t start going on about Chinese bowls. I’ve had such a time looking for my lanterns, I never want to hear about anything Chinese again.”
At the moment just before the first guest was due, Christine stood at one of the windows looking down on the garden, feeling full of gratitude that Mrs. Benson could not see it.
The Chinese lanterns—it had been worth all that trouble finding them, Mrs. Traill had been right—bloomed from the leafy branches like Oriental fruits, rounded and serene, in their gentle pink and orange light. The long buffet with its gay china and festive bottles glimmered in the middle of the lawn; little tables set with little gilt chairs stood about; the air was so still that the flames of their candles burned upwards without a flicker. And, as background to this dewy twilight and calmly shining lanterns and dim trees, there was London; sparkling and glittering like the malicious old fairy she was, far, far below.
The scene was unprofaned by activities on the part of the waiters, who, having seen to the last details, were standing about in their white jackets, motionless and in relaxed attitudes, sometimes exchanging a quiet remark, as if even they had been slightly entranced by the surroundings.
Lovely, thought Christine, leaning against the frame of the open window, really lovely. Oh, I am glad she can’t see it; she’d say something about being glad she hadn’t to wash all that lot up. I can never be thankful enough for living with nice people.
It also occurred to her, before she turned away from the fairy scene, that Banks would say there was plenty of room, wasn’t there? But she put him out of her mind.
Soon the cars began coming up, and the voices and greetings, and the affectionate kissing of wrinkled and familar faces began. The waiters started their professional gliding and darting like so many white-winged birds, and Christine was kept fully-occupied showing ladies upstairs and where to leave their fur coats.
She was standing in the hall, waiting for the bell to ring again; when it did, she opened it to Mrs. Marriot, in one of the fur coats, and accompanied by a stout old gentleman with a white moustache.
“Good-evening, Miss Smith,” Mrs. Marriott said clearly, “what beautiful weather for the party. Will you take Lord Belsize’s muffler? Percy, I will see you in the garden.”
Lord Belsize, who gave the impression of being
‘… a creature
Moving about in worlds not realised’
silently handed a dingy strip of wool to Christine and then made a slight movement indicating that he was ready to follow where she led.
She took him through the house to the iron steps that descended to the garden. They were narrow and dangerous and the biggest of the lanterns, hanging from the tree over-shading them, gave a light picturesque rather than sufficient. She wondered if she should utter a word of warning?
“Damned unsafe,” observed Lord Belsize in a melancholy mutter. “Can’t see. Take my time, you go on in, thank you.”
He began a descent so cautious as to arouse real apprehension in Christine, who lingered. A nice thing it would be if a lord fell down the iron stairs. Upset everything, and she would no doubt be blamed by that Mrs. Marriott, who, she was certain, did not like her, and ‘looked down’ on her.
“Go on in, hanging about, perfectly all right,” said Lord Belsize irritably, halfway down the steps, and at that moment Mrs. Marriott appeared at the top of them, crisp in taffetas, and, saying distinctly, “I am here, Percy,” marched past Christine and led him safely to the lawn.
Christine did not obey his lordship. She lingered by the open French windows for a moment, enjoying the scene, now illumined by candlelight, the very last gleam of day, and the first broad beams of a great moon rolling up over the city.
She felt that they could have managed nicely without Mrs. Marriott. Still, it was interesting to see the old lord she was intending to marry.
She was turning back into the twilit passage, when she saw a beautiful young lady coming down it towards her, advancing over the polished floor with a faint rustle of dragging, slender, skirt and a scent of flowers breathing from dark hair spread about bare shoulders. It was as much her transformed appearance as the faintness of the light that at first made Christine fail to recognise her, then, as she smiled and said with a kind of deliberate sweetness, “Good-evening, Miss Smith,” and swung the great ruffle about her neck, she saw who it was.
“Oh … good-evening … Miss Lennox.”
The transformation was so complete—beatnik into belle—that Christine was almost astonished into commenting on it. But at that moment Mrs. Marriott came up the steps again, calling reassuringly to Lord Belsize, who stood in some distress at the bottom of them, that she would be back in a moment—she had some in her coat pocket—and saw Glynis.
“Why, my dear,” she said briskly, her bright eye seeming to take in dress, hair, scent and manner in one blink, “how nice you look. I hardly recognized you.”
“Oh, I recognized you at once, Mrs. Marriott,” Glynis retorted, the deliberately-sweet style replaced by a steely one. “Two months older, of course. But otherwise just the same. Did you have a good holiday in Bermuda?”
“Very pleasant, thank you. So nice to be out of our tiresome east winds … Will you go down and talk to Lord Belsize for me? He doesn’t like my leaving him.”
Having thus shown Glynis that she had no fear of exposing her old nobleman to the charms of a girl, and that he was lost without her, Mrs. Marriott went composedly up the stairs, leaving Glynis to proceed slowly down them to Lord Belsize and, with a return of the glucose manner, present herself and entertain him with chat about what she was doing and where.
It appeared that Lord Belsize had a great-nephew, one Harry, who had some idea of making himself into an actor and was attending the Academy where Glynis herself was studying. When Mrs. Marriott returned with the tissues of which she had been in search, she found the two in something like conversation, and looked slightly annoyed.
“… shocking life, I should think,” Lord Belsize was mumbling, gazing haggardly at the vision of warm youth before him, “and very overcrowded, so they say. I can’t make it out, his father was in some sort of bank and did very well, liked it, cash coming in regularly, and this acting’s very precarious, they say. Of course I suppose it’s all right for that chap Olivier and that sort of chap … must make quite a packet. But it takes time, getting up there. Harry’s not twenty yet. You know Harry? Harry Aldenham. Come across him at all?”
Glynis now recollected a gangling youth with a fiercely-melancholy expression who had made a set at her during a recent social occasion at the Academy, and indicated that she had not. She foresaw nothing but dead tedium in any Belsize-Aldenham connection.
“Ah, … large premises, no doubt, Well, here’s Nellie … good luck with the acting. We’ll be seein’ you in The Mousetrap in a couple of years, eh?” And Lord Belsize, temporarily resuscitated by the presence of glowing seventeen and crowing feebly at his small jest, was borne away into the crowd by Mrs. Marriott.
It was not an encouraging beginning to the evening.
Glynis stood by the steps, studying the scene, which made her think of the first act of an old-fashioned musical, and deciding that the average age at the party must be between two hundred and two hundred and seventy. She wondered why she had been so crazy as to fall in with her father’s
casual suggestion that she should look in for an hour: she had wanted to try out the effect of her dress, and also to test her acting powers in the part of an ardent and sweet young girl, but she had not reckoned with quite so much grey hair and eld.
I’m ardent all right but anything but sweet, she reflected. Nevertheless, the dim grass shadowed by trees where lanterns bloomed, and the stilly flames of the candles spiring, as though painted, into the unstirring air, and the moonlight—warm, flooding, magic, all the old words for moonlight—began to affect her senses. Hell, thought Glynis fashionably, they’d call it corny—‘they’ were her friends—but it’s romantic. No one, she thought, looking seriously across the garden at the moon’s colossal disc floating above the mad glitter of the city, no one could say it isn’t romantic.
The music must have begun to steal out on to the air before she heard it, and at first, when she did hear it, she thought it was someone up in the Long Room playing and singing Lost Moonlight. Then, she realized that the song was gay, without a touch of the nostalgia in that song of her father’s: the accompanying chords were firm and strong, and the air seemed to be mounting in triumph. Now a voice—a man’s—was singing, and she could distinguish words through the chatter of elderly tongues muffled by the canopy of leaves
“In spring for sheer delight I set the lanterns swinging
through the trees,
Bright as the myriad argosies of night that ride the
clouded billows of the sky.”
A pause, while soft chords in the bass throbbed like drums.
Red dragons leap and plunge in gold and silver seas,
in gold and silver seas.”
Then a sudden change of pace, bringing a thrilling joy that ran unstumbling up to the last triumphant note—
“And oh my garden gleaming cold and white
Thou hast outshone the far faint moon on high.
In spring—for sheer delight—
I set the lanterns swinging through the trees—
For sheer delight!”
The chords mounted, soared, throbbed—then ceased. A man singing, she thought: beautiful. For sheer delight!
She noticed the chancy light of candle and moon on cheeks deeply scored with lines, grey heads and bald heads, bodies stiffly thin or bulgingly fat, and although everyone was pleasingly dressed, and their voices softed by the open air to notes that did not affront the stillness, she suddenly felt that not for one moment longer could she endure being there.
There was the voice again—
“Red dragons leap and plunge in gold and silver seas,
in gold and silver seas—”
It was soaring among the lanterns and leaves, hovering above them in showers of dancing chords—
“For sheer delight I set the lanterns swinging through
the trees,
For sheer delight!”
She turned quickly away, and ran lightly up the steps and through the house, dodging surprised groups, snatching up her cloak from the hall as she ran.
“Not going, Miss Lennox?” actually cried out Christine, who was lingering in the hall in case of late arrivals, “Why, you’ve only just come!”
“Oh yes … I simply must … it’s a lovely party but I’ve got a date … ‘for sheer delight!’”
Laughing, she ran down the steps, and Christine stood at the door, smiling sympathetically as she watched her hail a cruising taxi and scramble into it and be borne away.
Really, she looked so nice it was a pleasure to see her. What a pity she didn’t always take the trouble, thought Christine, with some complacency smoothing the jacket of her polished cotton burgeoning with its orange and purple flowers.
A moment later, Antonia Marriott came into the hall.
Her movements were never truly hurried, but she came towards Christine in such agitation that her dress, of black chiffon that in its clinging lines and wraith-like drifting panels was almost a parody of current modishness, seemed to swirl about her like smoke from some miniature explosion: the loops of ash-blonde hair drooping from her lovely head seemed about to cascade down in disorder.
“Oh … Christine … what … did you see anyone go out just now—just this minute?”
“Only Miss Lennox. She just went off, by taxi. Said she had a date. I was surprised; she’d only just …”
“No—no—a man …”
“Nobody went out except her, Miss Marriott.” Christine was already imagining burglary, an inclusive haul of all those fur coats, for Antonia’s manner was agitated enough to suggest headlines in next morning’s papers.
They stood looking at one another. Miss Marriott’s heartbeats were shaking the chiffon covering her breast; Christine could see it trembling, and suddenly she glanced wildly up the staircase to the landing, where under Mrs. Traill’s instructions the electric light had been replaced by a solitary tall candle burning in an old pottery sconce on her little brass-rimmed table, in front of an open window where the moon was shining through.
“Did you hear anyone singing? she demanded. “A … a man’s voice?”
Christine shook her head. Irritation began to replace alarm.
“I never heard anything, Miss Marriott, and there was only Miss Lennox … I told you. I’m sure I should have seen anyone go out. I haven’t left the hall this evening except just to see his lordship—” Christine, not having had occasion to use these words before in their proper context brought them out with satisfaction, though they did remind her of the unsatisfactory Smith nephew always thus referred to—“down the steps, and I was ever so careful to shut the door after anyone came in … has anything been missed, then?”
Antonia laughed hysterically.
“Of course not. It …” she hesitated, and went on with more her usual manner, “it isn’t that kind of thing at all … Has anyone been up in the Long Room, do you know?”
They were both looking up the staircase now, at the stilly-burning flame of the candle, blue and yellow as the ancient glass in some cathedral window, and the motionless folds of the curtain behind it, and the whitening moon floating out there in the remote sky. It all looked so peaceful. Christine’s heart grew calmer as she watched it. She shook her head.
“I don’t think so, Miss Marriott.” Her eyes were fixed—kindly now—on Miss Marriott’s white face. “I should have seen them, if they had …”
“Will you come up there with me?” Antonia said suddenly; in a pleading tone like a child’s, “I … I just want to look at something … it won’t take a minute …”
“Of course!” Christine Smith said sturdily. “It’s always best to have a look … and there’s plenty of men in the garden.” Recollecting the years of most of the guests, she added, “Those waiters, too … shall I just nip out and ask two of them to come along with us?”
“Oh, no … no …” Antonia was already poised on the stairs. Christine glanced towards the corner where Clive and James kept the sticks they took with them on their walks, but, in response to a distracted shake of Antonia’s head, gave up any idea of arms, and silently followed. Miss Marriott suddenly turned and smiled tremulously at her and said, “Don’t be frightened, Christine, there’s nothing to be frightened of, really … You’re sure you’re all right?”
Christine could only smile and shake her head. She was all right; she was more concerned about Miss Marriott than anything that might be in the Long Room. Only, as she opened its door, she did for a second wish that one of those waiters, the stout one with the thick neck, was standing behind her. Surprised, she felt chilly fingers steal into her own; Antonia was holding her hand.
The room was empty, of course. It was lit by candles, like all the house that evening, and it looked peaceful and charming and not even lonely, and of course it was empty. It looked just as it had two hours ago, when Christine had shut its door, with the satisfactory thought that if was quite ready for company.
Yet something was different; just a little different. They stood, Christine slightly in adv
ance of Antonia with the latter peering over her shoulder, and Christine, her senses made more perceptive, perhaps, by her months in Pemberton Hall did feel that something was different …
“The piano …” Antonia said in a low voice. Christine could feel her fingers trembling, as she pointed with the other hand. “Didn’t you leave it shut?”
“Oh, no, Miss Marriott.” Christine glanced at her over her shoulder in a little mild surprise. “I did want to. I thought it looked tidier, but Mrs. Traill said to leave it open, and she put out some music in case anyone should want to play.”
Antonia dropped her hand and went slowly, draggingly, across to the piano and began to turn over the music stacked there. Christine stood by the door, watching. The room had felt different, she decided, because there was a feeling someone had just been there … a second before they came in. But how could you tell? The other feeling had gone before you had time to make up your mind that it was really there.
“It’s here.” Antonia looked across at her and spoke in the same rather low voice.
“The song … he … was singing. ‘A Feast of Lanterns’. It was one of … I thought I heard it … perhaps I imagined the whole thing … I don’t know.” She turned away from the scattered music, “Let’s go back, shall we? And I could use a drink … couldn’t you?”
“I would like some of that cup, Miss Marriott. I made it, so I know it’s good.” Christine laughed as she shut the door.
“Well, let’s …” Miss Marriott put her hands up to her hair. “Mercy, what’s happening … I must look an utter mess, I’ll go and fix myself … I’m sorry about all this, Christine. I must have been dreaming … Oh, I wish … Mr. Lennox were here …” She drifted away, towards her own flat.