‘But—would you mind—you see I’m just going to…’
‘What’s the big hurry?’ urged Mr Questing, in his best synthetic American. ‘Wait a bit, wait a bit. The lake won’t get cold. You ought to do some sun bathing. You’d look good if you bronzed, Babs. Snappy.’
‘I’m afraid I really can’t…’
‘Look,’ said Mr Questing with emphasis. ‘I said I wanted to talk to you and what I meant was I wanted to talk to you. You’ve no call to act as if I’d made certain suggestions. What’s the idea of all this shrinking stuff? Mind, I like it in moderation. It’s old-world. Up to a point it pleases a man, but after that it’s irritating and right now’s the place where you want to forget it. We all know you’re the pureminded type by this time, girlie. Let it go at that.’
Barbara gaped at him. ‘There’s a camp stool behind that bush,’ he continued. ‘Come and sit on it. I’ll say this better if I keep on my feet. Be sensible, now. You’re going to enjoy this, I hope. It’s a great little proposition when viewed in the correct light.’
Barbara looked back at the house. Her mother appeared hurrying along the verandah. She did not glance up, but at any moment she might do so and the picture of her daughter, tête-à-tête with Mr Questing instead of swimming in the lake, would certainly disturb her. Yet Mr Questing stood between Barbara and the lake and, if she tried to dodge him, might attempt to restrain her. Better get the extraordinary interview over as inconspicuously as possible. She walked round the manuka bush and sat on the stool; Mr Questing followed. He stood over her smelling of soap, cigars and scented cachous.
‘That’s fine and dandy,’ he said. ‘Have a cigarette. No? OK. Now, listen, honey, I’m a practical man and I like to come straight to the point, never mind whether it’s business or pleasure and you might call this a bit of both. I got a proposition to put up which I think is going to interest you a whole lot, but first of all we’ll clear the air of misunderstandings. Now I don’t just know how far you’re wise to the position between me and your dad.’
He paused, and Barbara, full of apprehension, hurriedly collected her thoughts. ‘Nothing!’ she murmured. ‘I know nothing. Father doesn’t discuss business with us.’
‘Doesn’t he, now? Is that the case? Very old-world in his notions, isn’t he. Well, now, we don’t expect ladies to take a great deal of interest in business so I won’t trouble you with a lot of detail. Just the broad outline,’ said Mr Questing making an appropriate gesture, ‘so’s you’ll get the idea. Now, you might put it this way, you might say that your dad’s under an obligation to me.’
‘You might indeed,’ Barbara thought, as Mr Questing’s only too lucid explanation rolled on. It seemed that five years ago when he first came to Wai-ata-tapu to ease himself of lumbago, he had lent Colonel Claire a thousand pounds, at a low rate of interest taking the hotel and springs as security. Colonel Claire was behind with the interest and the principal was now due. Mr Questing clothed the bare bones of his narrative in a vestment of playful hints and nudges. He wasn’t, he said, a hard man. He didn’t want to make it too solid for the old Colonel, not he. ‘But just the same—’ Cliché followed cliche, business continued to be business, and more and more dubious grew the development of his theme until at last even poor Barbara began to understand him.
‘No!’ she cried out at last. ‘Oh, no! I couldn’t. Please don’t!’
‘Wait a bit, now. Don’t act as if I’m not making a straight offer. Don’t get me all wrong. I’m asking you to marry me, Babs.’
‘Yes, I know, but I can’t possibly. Please!’
‘Don’t run away with the idea it’s just a business deal. It’s not.’ Mr Questing’s voice actually faltered and if Barbara had been less frantically distracted she might have noticed that he had changed colour. ‘To tell you the truth I’ve fallen for you, kid,’ he continued appallingly. ‘I don’t know why, I’m sure. I like ’em snappy and kind of wise as a general rule and if you’ll pardon my candour you’re sloppy in your dress and, boy, are you simple! Maybe that’s exactly why I’ve fallen. Now don’t interrupt me. I’m not dizzy yet and I know you’re not that way about me. I don’t say I’d have asked you if I hadn’t got a big idea you’d run this joint damn well when I showed you how. I don’t say I haven’t put you on the spot where it’s going to be hard to say no. I have. I knew where I could get in the fine work, seeing how your old folks are placed, and I got it in. I’ll use it all right. But listen, little girl!’—Mr Questing on a sudden note of fervour breathed out his final cliché—‘I want you,’ he said hoarsely.
To Barbara the whole speech had sounded nightmarish. She quite failed to realize that Mr Questing thought on these standardized lines and spoke his commonplaces from a full heart. It was the first experience of its kind that she had endured, and he seemed to her a terrible figure, half-threatening, half-amorous. When she forced herself to look up and saw him in his smooth pale suit, himself pale, slightly obese and glistening, and found his eyes fixed rather greedily upon hers, her panic mounted to its climax, and she thought: ‘I shan’t like to refuse. I must get away.’ She noticed that his expensive watch chain was heaving up and down in an agitated rhythm about two feet away from her nose. She sprang to her feet and, as if she had released a spring in Mr Questing, he flung his arms about her. During the following moments the thing she was most conscious of was his stertorous breathing. She brought her elbows together and shoved with her forearms against his waistcoat. At the same time she dodged the face which thrust forward repeatedly at hers. She thought: ‘This is frightful. This is the worst thing that has ever happened to me. I’m hating this.’ Mr Questing muttered excitedly: ‘Now, now, now,’ and they tramped to and fro. Barbara tripped over the camp stool and rapped her shin. She gave a little yelp of pain.
And upon this scene came Simon and Dikon.
II
Gaunt had announced that he would do no work after all and Dikon, released from duty, decided to go for a walk in the direction of the Peak. He had an idea that he would like to see for himself the level crossing and the bridge where Smith had his escape from the train. He found Simon and asked him to point out the short cut to the Peak road. Simon, most unexpectedly, offered to go with him. They set out together along the path that ran past the springs and lake. They had not gone far before they heard a confused trampling and a sharp cry. Without a word but on a single impulse, they ran forward together and Barbara was discovered in Mr Questing’s arms.
Dikon was an over-civilized young man. He belonged to a generation whose attitude of mind was industriously ironic. He could accept scenes that arose out of crises of the nerves; they were a commonplace of the circle into which his association with Gaunt had introduced him. It was inconceivable that any young woman of those circles would be unable to cope with the advances of a Mr Questing or, for a matter of that, fail to lunch and dine off such an attempt when she had dealt with it. Dikon’s normal reaction to Barbara’s terror would perhaps have been a feeling of incredulous embarrassment. After all they were within a few hundred yards of the house in broad daylight. It was up to her to cope. He could never have predicted the impulse of pure anger that flooded through him, and he had time actually to feel astonished at himself. It was not until afterwards that he recognized the complementary emotion which arose when Barbara ran to her brother. Dikon realized then that he himself was a lay figure and felt a twinge of regret that it was so.
Simon behaved with more dignity than might have been expected of him. He put his arm across his sister’s shoulders and in his appalling voice said: ‘What’s up, Barbie?’ When she did not answer he went on: ‘I’ll look after this. You cut along out of it.’
‘Hey!’ said Mr Questing. ‘What’s the big idea?’
‘It’s nothing, Sim. Sim, it’s all right, really.’
Simon looked over her shoulder at Dikon. ‘Fix her up, will you?’ he said, and Dikon answered: ‘Yes, of course,’ and wondered what was expected of him. Simon shoved her, n
ot ungently, towards him.
‘Great hopping fleas,’ Mr Questing expostulated, ‘what’s biting you now! There’s not a damn thing a man can do in this place without you all come milling round like magpies. You’re crazy. I try to get a little private yarn with Babs and you start howling as if it was the Rape of the What-have-you Women.’
‘Go and boil your head,’ said Simon. ‘And Barbie, you buzz off.’
‘I really think you’d better,’ Dikon said, realizing that his function was to remove her. She murmured something hurriedly to Simon and turned away. ‘All right, all right,’ said Simon, ‘don’t you worry.’ They left Simon and Questing glaring at each other in ominous silence.
Dikon followed her along the path. She started off at a great rate, with her head high, clutching her raincoat about her. They had gone some little way before he saw that her shoulders were quivering. He felt certain that all she wanted of him was to leave her to herself, but he could not make up his mind to do this. As they drew nearer to the house they saw Colonel and Mrs Claire come out on the verandah and begin to set up their deck chairs. Barbara stopped short and turned. Her face was stained with tears.
‘I can’t let them see,’ she said.
‘Come round by the other path.’
It was a track that skirted the springs and came out near the cabins. A brushwood fence screened it from the verandah. Halfway along, Barbara faltered, sat on the bank, buried her face in her arms and cried most bitterly.
‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ said Dikon confusedly. ‘Have my handkerchief. I’ll turn my back, shall I? Or shall I?’
She took the handkerchief with a woebegone attempt at a smile. He sat beside her and put his arm around her.
‘Never mind,’ he said. ‘He’s quite preposterous. A ridiculous episode.’
‘It was beastly.’
‘Well, confound the fellow, anyway, for upsetting you.’
‘It’s not only that. He—he—’ Barbara hesitated and then with a most dejected attempt at her trick of over-emphasis sobbed out: ‘He’s got a hold on us.’
‘So Colly was right,’ Dikon thought. ‘It is the old dope.’
‘If only Daddy had never met him! And what Sim’s doing now, I can’t imagine. If Sim loses his temper he’s frightful. Oh dear,’ said Barbara blowing her nose very loudly on Dikon’s handkerchief, ‘what have we all done that everything should go so hideously wrong with us? Really, it’s exactly as if we dotted scenes about the place like booby traps for Mr Gaunt and you. And he was so heavenly about the other time, pretending he didn’t mind.’
‘It wasn’t a pretence. He told you the truth when he said he adored scenes. He does. He even uses them in his work. Do you remember in the Jane Eyre, when Rochester, without realizing what he did, slowly wrung the necks of Jane’s bridal flowers?’
‘Of course I do,’ said Barbara eagerly. ‘It was terrible but sort of noble.’
‘He got it from a drunken dresser who flew into a rage with the star she looked after. She wrenched the heads off one of the bouquets. He never forgets things like that.’
‘Oh.’
‘You’re feeling a bit better now?’
‘A bit. You’re very kind, aren’t you?’ said Barbara rather as if she saw Dikon for the first time. ‘I mean, to take trouble over our frightfulness.’
‘You must stop being apologetic,’ Dikon said. ‘So far I’ve taken no trouble at all.’
‘You listen nicely,’ Barbara said.
‘I’m almost ghoulishly discreet, if that’s any recommendation.’
‘I do so wonder what Sim’s doing. Can you hear anything?’
‘We’ve come rather far away from them to hear anything. Unless, of course, they begin to scream in each other’s faces. What would you expect to hear? Dull thuds?’
‘I don’t know. Listen!’
‘Well,’ said Dikon after a pause, ‘that was a dull thud. Do you suppose that Mr Questing has been felled to the ground for the second time in a fortnight?’
‘I’m afraid Sim’s hit him.’
‘I’m afraid so too,’ Dikon agreed. ‘Look.’
From where they sat they could see the patch of manuka scrub. Mr Questing appeared, nursing his face in his handkerchief. He came slowly along the main path and as he drew nearer they saw that his handkerchief was dappled red. ‘A dong on the nose, by gum,’ said Dikon. When he arrived at the intersection, Mr Questing paused.
‘I’m going—He’ll see me. I can’t—’ Barbara began, but she was too late. Mr Questing had already seen them. He advanced a short way down the side path and, still holding his handkerchief to his nose, addressed them from some considerable distance.
‘Look at this,’ he shouted. ‘Is it a swell set-up, or is it? I like to do things in a refined way and here’s what I get for it. What’s the matter with the crowd around here? Ask a lady to marry you and somebody hauls off and half kills you. I’m going to clean this dump right up. Pardon me, Mr Bell, for intruding personal affairs.’
‘Not at all, Mr Questing,’ said Dikon politely.
Mr Questing unguardedly removed his handkerchief and three large red blobs fell on his shirt front. ‘Blast!’ he said violently and staunched his nose again. ‘Listen, Babs,’ he continued through the handkerchief. ‘If you feel like changing your mind, I won’t say the offer’s closed, but if you want to do anything you’ll need to make it snappy. I’m going to pack them up, the whole crowd of them. I’ll give the Colonel till the end of the month and then out. And, by God, if I’d got a witness I’d charge your tough young brother with assault. By God, I would. I’m fed up. I’m in pain and I’m fed up.’ He goggled at Dikon over the handkerchief. ‘Apologizing once again, old man,’ said Mr Questing, ‘and assuring you that you’ll very shortly see a big change for the better in the management of this bloody dump. So long, for now.’
III
Long after the events recorded in this tale were ended, Dikon, looking back at the first fortnight at Wai-ata-tapu, would reflect that they had suffered collectively from intermittent emotional hiccoughs. For long intervals the daily routine would be interrupted and then, when he wondered if they had settled down, they would be convulsed and embarrassed by yet another common spasm. Not that he ever believed, after Mr Questing’s outburst, that there was much hope of the Claires settling back into their old way of life. It seemed to Dikon that Mr Questing had been out for blood. A marked increase in Colonel Claire’s vagueness, together with an air of bewildered misery, suggested that he had been faced with an ultimatum. Dikon had come upon Mrs Claire on her knees before an old trunk, shaking her head over Edwardian photographs and aimlessly arranging them in heaps. When she saw him she murmured something about clinging to one’s household gods wherever one went. Barbara, who had taken to confiding in Dikon, told him that she had sworn Simon to secrecy over the incident by the lake, but that Questing had been closeted with her father for half an hour, still wearing his bloodstained shirt, and had no doubt given the Colonel his own version of the affray. Dikon had described the scene by the lake to Gaunt and, halfway through the recital, wished he had left it alone. Gaunt was surprisingly interested. ‘It really is most intriguing,’ he said, rubbing his delicate hands together. ‘I was right about the girl, you see. She has got something. I’m never mistaken. She’s incredibly gauche, she talks like a madwoman, and she grimaces like a monkey. That’s simply because she’s raw, uncertain of herself. It’s the bone one should look at. Show me a good bone, and a pair of eyes, give me a free hand, and I’ll create beauty. She’s roused the unspeakable Questing, you see.’
‘But Questing has his eye on the place.’
‘Nobody, my dear Dikon, for the sake of seven squalid mud puddles is going to marry a woman who doesn’t attract him. No, no, the girl’s got something. I’ve been talking to her. Studying her. I tell you I’m never mistaken. You remember that understudy child at the Unicorn? I saw there was something in her. I told the management. She’s never looked back.
It’s a flair one has. I could…’ Gaunt paused and took his chin between his thumb and forefinger. ‘It would be rather fun to try,’ he said.
With a sensation of panic, Dikon said: ‘To try what, sir?’
‘Dikon, shall I make Barbara Claire a present? What was the name of the dress shop we noticed in Auckland? Near the hotel? Quite good? You must remember. A ridiculous name.’
‘I don’t remember.’
‘Sarah Snappe! Of course. Barbara shall have a new dress for this Maori concert on Saturday. Black, of course. It must be terribly simple. You can write at once. No, perhaps you should go to Harpoon and telephone, and they must put it on tomorrow’s train. There was a dress in the window, woollen with a dusting of steel stars. Really quite good. It would fit her. And ask them to be kind and find shoes and gloves for us. If possible, stockings. You can get the size somehow. And underclothes, for God’s sake. One can imagine what hers are like. I shall indulge myself in this, Dikon. And we must take her to a hairdresser and stand over him. I shall make her up. If Sarah Snappe doesn’t believe you’re my secretary you can ring up the hotel and do it through them.’ Gaunt beamed at his secretary. ‘What a child I am, after all, Dikon, aren’t I? I mean this is going to give me such real pleasure.’
Dikon said in a voice of ice: ‘But it’s quite impossible, sir.’
‘What the devil do you mean!’
‘There’s no parity between Barbara Claire and an understudy at the Unicorn.’
‘I should damn well say there wasn’t. The other little person had quite a lot to start with. She was merely incredibly vulgar.’
‘Which Barbara Claire is not,’ said Dikon. He looked at his employer, noted his air of peevish complacency and went on steadily. ‘Honestly, sir, the Claires would never understand. You know what they’re like. A comparative stranger to offer their daughter clothes!’
‘Why the hell not?’
‘It just isn’t done in their world.’