‘Don’t, for God’s sake,’ said Gaunt. ‘It’s getting dark. Let’s go home.’
When they turned back, Dikon found that he had to make a deliberate effort to prevent himself from hurrying, and he thought he sensed Gaunt’s impatience too. The firm dry earth felt wholesome under their feet as once more they circled the hill. Behind them, in the native village, a drift of song rose on the cool air, intolerably plaintive and lonely.
‘What’s that?’
‘One of their songs,’ said Dikon. ‘Perhaps they’re rehearsing for your concert. It’s the genuine thing. You get the authentic music up here.’
The shoulder of the hill came between them and the song. It was almost dark as they walked along the brushwood fence towards Wai-ata-tapu. Steam from the hot pools drifted in wraiths across the still night air. It was only when she moved forward that Barbara’s dress and the blurred patches of white that were her arms and face told them that she had been waiting for them. Perhaps the darkness gave her courage and balance. Perhaps any voice would have been welcome just then, but it seemed to Dikon that Barbara’s had a directness and repose that he had not heard in it before.
‘I hope I didn’t startle you,’ she said. ‘I heard you coming down the path and thought I should like to speak to you.’
Gaunt said: ‘What is it, Miss Claire? More excursions and alarms?’
‘No, no. We seem to have settled down again. It’s only that I wanted to tell you how very sorry we all are about that frightful scene. We shan’t go on apologizing, but I did just want to say this: Please don’t think you are under an obligation to stay. Of course you know you are not, but perhaps you feel it’s rather difficult to tell us you are going. Don’t hesitate. We shall quite understand.’
She turned her head and they saw her in profile against a shifting background of steam. The dusk, simplifying her ugly dress, revealed the beauty of her silhouette. The profile lines of her head and throat were well-drawn, delicate and harmonious. It was an astonishing change. Perhaps if Gaunt had not seen her so translated, his voice would have held less warmth and friendliness when he answered her.
‘But there is no question of our going,’ he said. ‘We have not thought of it. As for the scene, Dikon will tell you that I have a lust for scenes. We are very sorry if you’re in difficulties, but we don’t in the least want to go.’
Dikon saw him take her arm and turn her towards the house. It was a gesture he often used on the stage, adroit and impersonal. Dikon followed behind as they walked across the pumice.
‘It’s awfully nice of you,’ Barbara was saying. ‘I—we have felt so frightful about it. I was horrified when I heard what Mr Questing had done, badgering you to come. We didn’t know what he was up to. Uncle James and I were horrified.’
‘He didn’t badger me,’ said Gaunt. ‘Dikon attended to Questing. That’s why I keep him.’
‘Oh.’ Barbara half turned her head and laughed, not with her usual boisterousness, but shyly. ‘I wondered what he was for,’ she said.
‘He has his uses. When I start work again he’ll be kept very spry.’
‘You’re going to write, aren’t you? Uncle James told me. Is it an autobiography? I do hope it is.’
Gaunt moved his hand above her elbow. ‘And why do you hope that?’
‘Because I want to read it. You see, I’ve seen your Rochester, and once somebody who was staying here had an American magazine, I think it was called the Theatre Arts, and there was an article in it with photographs of you as different people. I liked the Hamlet one the best because—’
‘Well?’ asked Gaunt when she paused.
Barbara stumbled over her next speech. ‘Because—well, I suppose because I know it best. No, that’s not really why, I didn’t know it at all well until then, but I read it again, lots of times and tried to imagine how you sounded when you said the speech in the photograph. Of course after hearing Mr Rochester it was easier.’
‘Which photograph was that, Dikon?’ asked Gaunt over his shoulder.
‘It was Rosencrantz…’ Barbara began eagerly.
‘Ah, I remember.’
Gaunt stood still and put her from him, holding her by the shoulder as he had held the gratified small-part actor who played Rosencrantz in New York. Dikon heard him draw in his breath as he always did when he collected himself to rehearse. In the silence of that warm evening, amidst the reek of sulphur and against the nebulous thermal background, the beautiful voice spoke quietly:
‘ “O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.” ‘
Dikon was irritated and disturbed by Barbara’s rapturous silence and infuriated by the whispered ‘Thank you’ with which she finally ended it. ‘She’s making a perfect little ass of herself,’ he thought, but he knew Gaunt would not find her attitude excessive. He had an infinite capacity for absorbing adulation.
‘Can you go on?’ Gaunt was saying. ‘“Which dreams—”’
‘“Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.”’
‘“A dream itself is but a shadow!” Do you hear this, Dikon?’ cried Gaunt. ‘She knows the lines.’ He moved forward again, Barbara at his side. ‘You’ve got a voice, my child,’ he said. ‘How have you escaped the accent? Do you know what you’ve been talking about? You must hear the music, but you must also achieve the meaning. Say it again: thinking—“Which dreams indeed are ambition.” ’ But Barbara fumbled the second time, and they spoke the line backwards and forward to each other as they crossed the pumice to the house. Gaunt was treating her to an almost indecent helping of charm, Dikon considered.
The lights were up in the house and Mrs Claire was hurriedly doing the blackout. She had left the door open and a square of warmth reached across the verandah to the pumice. Before they came to its margin Gaunt checked Barbara again.
‘We say goodnight here,’ he said. ‘The dusk becomes you well. Goodnight, Miss Claire.’
He turned on his heel and walked towards his rooms.
‘Goodnight,’ said Dikon.
She had moved into the light. The look she turned upon him was radiant. ‘You’re terribly lucky, aren’t you?’ said Barbara.
‘Lucky?’
‘Your job. To be with him.’
‘Oh,’ said Dikon, ‘that. Yes, of course.’
‘Goodnight,’ said Barbara, and ran indoors.
He looked after her, absently polishing his glasses with his handkerchief.
v
Barbara lay in bed with her eyes wide open to the dark. Until this moment she had denied the waves of bliss that lapped at the edge of her thoughts. Now she opened her heart to them.
She passed the sequence of those few minutes in the dusk through and through her mind, examining each moment, feeling again its lustre, wondering at her happiness. It is easy to smile at such fervours, but in her unreasoned ecstasy she reached a point of pure enchantment to which she would perhaps never again ascend. The experience may appear more touching but its reality is not impugned if it is recorded that Gaunt, at the same time, was preening himself a little.
‘Do you know, Dikon,’ he said, ‘that strange little devil quivered like a puppy out there in the dusk?’ Dikon did not answer and after a moment Gaunt added: ‘After all, it’s pleasant to know that one’s work can reach so far. The Bard and sulphuric phenomena! An amusing juxtaposition, isn’t it? One lights a little flame, you know. One carries the torch.’
Chapter 5
Mr Questing Goes Down for the Second Time
The more blatant eccentricities of the first evening were not repeated during the following days, and the household at Wai-ata-tapu settled down to something like a normal routine. The Colonel fatigued himself to exhaustion with Home Guard exercises. His wife and daughter, overtaxed by the new standard they had set themselves, laboured incessantly in the house. Gaunt, following Dr Ackrington’s instruction, sat at st
ated hours in the Springs, took short walks, and began to work steadily on his book. Dikon filed old letters and programmes which had to be winnowed for use in the autobiography. Gaunt dictated for two hours every morning and evening, and expected Dikon’s shorthand notes to be translated into typescript before they began work on the following day. Dr Ackrington dealt austerely in his own room with the problems of comparative anatomy. On Wednesday he announced that he was going away for a week and, when Mrs Claire said gently that she hoped there was nothing the matter, replied that they would all be better if they were dead, and drove away. Colly, who had been a signaller in the 1914 war, recovered from the surprise of Simon’s first advance, and spent a good deal of time in the cabin helping him with his Morse. Simon’s attitude to Gaunt was one of morose suspicion. As far as possible he avoided encounters, but on the rare occasions when they met, his behaviour was remarkable. He was not content to remain altogether silent, but would suddenly roar out strange inquiries and statements. He asked Gaunt whether he reckoned the theatre did any good in the world and, when Gaunt replied with some heat that he did, inquired the price of seats. On receiving this information he said instantly that a poor family could live for a week on the price of a stall and that there ought to be a flat charge all over the house. Gaunt’s book had gone badly that morning and his leg was painful. He became irritable and a ridiculous argument took place.
‘It’s selfishness that’s at the bottom of it,’ Simon shouted. ‘The actors ought to have smaller wages, see? What I reckon, the thing ought to be run for the good of everybody. Smaller wages all round.’
‘Including the stage staff? The workmen?’ asked Gaunt.
‘They all ought to get the same.’
‘Then I couldn’t afford to keep your friend Colly.’
‘I reckon he’s wasting his time anyway,’ said Simon, and Gaunt walked away in a rage.
Evidently Simon confided this conversation to Colly, who considered it necessary to apologize for his new friend.
‘You don’t want to pay too much attention to him, sir,’ Colly said, as he massaged his employer’s leg that evening. ‘He’s a nice young chap. Just a touch on the red side. He’s a bit funny. It’s Mr Questing that’s upset the apple cart, really.’
‘He’s an idiotic cub,’ said Gaunt. ‘What’s Questing got to do with the price of stalls?’
‘He’s been talking big business, sir. Young Simon thinks he’s lent a good bit to the Colonel on this show. He thinks the Colonel can’t pay up and Mr Questing’s going to shut down on them and run the place on his pat. Young Simon’s that disgusted he’s taken a scunner on anything that looks like smart business.’
‘Yes, but—’
‘He’s funny. I had it out with him. He told me what he’d been saying to you, and I said he’d acted very silly. “I’ve been with my gentleman for ten years,” I told him, “and there’s not much we don’t know about the show business. I seen him when he was a small-part actor playing a couple-of-coughs-and-a-spit in stock,” I said, “and he may be getting the big money, but how long’ll it last?”’
‘What the hell did you mean by that?’
‘We’re not as young as we was, sir, are we? “You don’t want to talk silly,” I said. “Questing’s one thing and my gentleman’s another.” But no. “You’re no better than a flunkey,” he says. “You’re demeaning yourself.” I straightened him up about that. “There’s none of the blooming vally about me,” I says, “I’m a dresser and make-up, and what I do on the side is done by me own choice. I’m in the game with my gentleman.” “It’s greed for money,” he howls, “that’s ruining the world. Big business started this war,” he says, “and when we’ve won it us chaps that did the fighting are going to have a say in the way things are run. The Questings’ll be wiped right off the slate.” That’s the way he talks, you see, sir. Mind, I feel sorry for him. He’s got the idea that his dad and ma are going to just about conk out over this business and to his way of thinking Questing’s as good as a murderer. He says Smith knows something about Questing and that’s why he had to jump for it when the train come. You’ve had fifteen minutes on them muscles and that’ll do you.’
‘You’ve damned nearly flayed me alive.’
‘Yes,’ said Colly, flinging a blanket over his victim and going into the next room to wash his hands. ‘He’s morbid, is young Sim. And of course Mr Questing’s little attempts at the funny business with Miss Barbara kind of put the pot on it.’
Dikon, who had been clattering his typewriter, paused.
‘What’s that?’ said Gaunt, suddenly alert.
‘Had you missed the funny business, sir?’ said Colly from the next room. ‘Oh, yes. Quite a bit of trouble she has with him, I understand.’
‘What did I tell you, Dikon?’
‘The way I look at it,’ Colly went on, appearing in the doorway with a towel, ‘she’s capable. No getting away from it, and you can’t get domestic labour in this country without you pay the earth, so Questing thinks he’ll do better to keep her when the old people go.’
‘But damn it,’ Dikon said angrily, ‘this is insufferable. It’s revolting.’
‘That’s right, Mr Bell. That’s what young Sim thinks. He’s worked it out. Questing’ll try putting in the fine work, making out he’ll look after the old people if she sees it in the right light. Coo! It’s a touch of the old blood-and-thunder dope, isn’t it, sir? Mortgage and all. The villain still pursued her. Only the juvenile to cast, and there, as we say in The Dream, sir, is a play fitted. I used to enjoy them old pieces.’
‘You talk too much, Colly,’ said Gaunt mildly.
‘That’s right, sir. Beg pardon, I’m sure. Associating with young Mr Claire must have brought out the latent democracy in me soul. I tell him there’s no call to worry about his sister. “It’s easy seen she hates his guts,” I said, if you’ll excuse me.’
‘I’ll excuse you altogether. I’m going to work.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ said Colly neatly, and closed the door.
He would perhaps have been gratified if he had known how accurately his speculations about Barbara were to be realized. It was on that same evening, a Thursday, nine days before the Maori concert, that Questing decided to carry forward his hitherto tentative approach to Barbara. He chose the time when, wearing a shabby bathing dress and a raincoat, she went for her four-o’clock swim in the warm lake. Her attitude towards public bathing had been settled for her by her mother. Mrs Claire was nearly forty when Barbara was born, and her habit of mind was Victorian. She herself had grown up in an age when one ducked furtively in the ocean, surrounded by the heavy bell of one’s braided serge. She felt apprehensive whenever she saw her daughter drop her raincoat and plunge hastily into the lake clad in the longest and most conservative garment obtainable at the Harpoon Co-operative Stores. Only once did Barbara attempt to make a change in this procedure. Stimulated by some pre-war magazine photographs of fashionable nudities on the Lido, she thought of sun-bathing, of strolling in a leisurely, even a seductive manner down to the lake, not covered by her raincoat. She showed the magazines to her mother. Mrs Claire looked at the welter of oiled limbs, glistening lips and greased eyelids. ‘I know, dear,’ she said, turning pink. ‘So very common. Of course newspaper photographers would never persuade the really, really quite to be taken, so I suppose they are obliged to fall back on these people.’
‘But Mummy, they’re not “these people”! Look, there’s…’
‘Barbara darling,’ said Mrs Claire in her special voice, ‘some day you will understand that there are folk who move in rather loud and vulgar sets, and who may seem to be very exciting, and who I expect are all very rich. But, my dear,’ Mrs Claire had added, gently, exhibiting a photograph of an enormously obese peer in bathing shorts, supported on the one hand by a famous coryphée and on the other by a fashionable prize fighter—‘my dear, they are not Our Sort.’ And she had given Barbara a bright smile and a kiss, and Barbara had stuck to her ra
incoat.
On the occasion of his proposal, Mr Questing, who did not care for sitting on the ground, took a camp stool to the far end of the lake, placed it behind some manuka scrub near the diving board and, fortified by a cigar, sat there until he spied Barbara leaving the house. He then discarded the cigar, and stepped out to meet her.
‘Well, well, well,’ said Mr Questing. ‘Look who’s here! How’s the young lady?’
Barbara clawed the raincoat about her and said she was very well.
‘That’s fine,’ said Mr Questing. ‘Feeling good, eh? That’s the great little lass.’ He laughed boisterously and manoeuvred in an agile manner in order to place himself between Barbara and the diving board. ‘What’s your hurry?’ he asked merrily. ‘Plenty of time for the bathingbeauty stuff. What say we have a wee chin-wag, You, Me and Co, uh?’
Barbara eyed him with dismay. What new and odious development was this? Since the extraordinary scene on the evening of Smith’s accident, she had not encountered Questing alone and was almost unaware of the angry undercurrents which ran strongly through the normal course of life at Wai-ata-tapu. For Barbara was carried along the headier stream of infatuation. She was bemused with calf-love, an infant disease which, caught late, is doubly virulent. Since that first meeting in the dusk, she had not seen much of Gaunt. She was so grateful for her brief rapture and, upon consideration, so doubtful of its endurance, that she made no attempt to bring about a second encounter. It was enough to see him at long intervals, and receive his greeting. Of Questing she had thought hardly at all, and his appearance at the lake surprised as much as it dismayed her.
‘What do you want to see me about, Mr Questing?’
‘Well, now, I seem to have the idea there’s quite a lot I’d like to talk to Miss Babs about. All sorts of things,’ said Mr Questing, dropping his voice to a fruity croon. ‘All sorts of things.’