From a View to a Death, page 12
As the worst seemed to be over Zouch thought that it would be a good moment to take charge of the situation.
‘Now then,’ he said to the Orphan who had disgraced himself, ‘what is all this about?’
The Orphan said nothing. He was sitting on one of the most rickety of the green chairs and was rocking himself slowly backwards and forwards. Zouch said sternly to Torquil:
‘You should not have allowed this to happen.’
Captain McGurk and Young Kittermaster saw at once that Zouch’s was the side to be on and they both glared at Torquil. Captain McGurk said:
‘Yes, I say, look here, why did you?’
‘Yes, I say!’ said Young Kittermaster, smoothing back his hair furiously.
‘Now then,’ said Betty, ‘don’t be tiresome, all of you. You know quite well that it wasn’t Torquil’s fault. And anyway there’s no great harm done, is there, Gertrude?’
Miss Braby could not speak for her sobs but she shook her head vigorously to show that she did not mind what had happened. Her sister was also crying a little by this time.
‘No, of course there isn’t,’ said Betty. ‘In fact it’s made the party more amusing.’
‘I think we ought to be getting back now, don’t you?’ said Mary, who was standing beside her sister and who looked fairly angry.
‘We’ll go in a minute,’ said Betty. ‘I must just say two words to Torquil.’
At that moment Jasper again took Zouch’s arm and once more drew him away from the others and down towards the river. He said:
‘By the way, old man, don’t think me a bore, but what about that five bob that you were going to come across with? You nearly forgot about it with all this fuss going on.’
‘Me?’
‘Yes.’
‘I wasn’t going to lend you five shillings. I said that I couldn’t.’
‘Oh come, look here, that’s a bit steep, saying that now you’re going to leave the party. You can’t go back on what you said.’
‘I never said anything of the sort. You said that you were going to try someone else.’
‘Where the dickens could I try? I ask you?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea. How should I know?’
‘Oh, come on. Be a sport.’
‘Not a bit of it.’
‘You are a stinge.’
‘Maybe I am.’
‘I’ll say you are.’
‘I don’t care what you think.’
‘All right, don’t get shirty.’
‘I don’t want to discuss it further.’
‘Shurrup!’
Zouch walked away from Jasper. As he came up to the rest of them he was in time to hear Betty say to Joanna:
‘But come up and stay the night at Passenger. Of course. You don’t want to totter about two miles in fancy dress or go in a bus or something like that. Come and stay for a couple of nights. That will be far the easiest way.’
He heard Joanna answer that she would like very much to stay at Passenger for the pageant. He tried to catch her eye but she looked away. Mary said:
‘I really think we ought to be going back now. There are some people coming to dinner and you know how much father grumbles if we are late when there is anyone there.’
They said good-bye to Torquil, who was in a highly nervous condition and full of apologies. The two better-behaved of the Orphans had so far recovered themselves as to play Les Cloches de Corneville but their brother’s lack of restraint had spoiled the party and now everyone had begun to say that they must be getting home. Zouch hung about trying to get a look from Joanna but she avoided him and at last he gave it up and went off with Betty and Mary. On the way back Mary said:
‘Betty, what made you ask Joanna Brandon to come and stay for the pageant? It will be very tiresome having her in the house all the time.’
‘She won’t do any harm. I like the girl.’
‘Well, I don’t.’
‘No, darling. I know you don’t. But I couldn’t help it. I suddenly felt like that. I expect it was the cocktails. Mother won’t mind, will she?’
‘No one minds. Only it will be rather a bore.’
‘I’ll talk to her all the time. It broke my heart to think of her coming by bus with her fancy dress in a suitcase or something like that.’
‘She could easily have got a lift from somebody.’
‘Well, perhaps she could, but there it is. I’ve asked her now and she has accepted, so I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with her.’ And Betty added to Zouch: ‘Anyway, you don’t mind, do you?’
‘Why should I?’
‘That’s all right then.’
Mary said: ‘You haven’t apologised to us all yet for taking us to the beastly, beastly, beastly party we have just come from. It was far, far worse than ever I thought it would be.’
Betty laughed. She said: ‘I didn’t see much wrong with it except that the cocktails were too strong. I expect it will do Gertrude Braby all the good in the world to be nearly kissed by one of the Orphans.’
When she considered her conduct in the privacy of her bedroom Joanna came to the same conclusion that Zouch had come to with regard to his own behaviour. She decided that she had made a fool of herself. She had stood on a dignity to which she liked to think that she attached no value. Her conduct had been of the very kind which in theory she most despised. She thought of her favourite heroine, Marie Bashkirtseff, and also about Madame Bovary which she had read in French with some difficulty. And then there was the whole of D. H. Lawrence’s works. Besides she knew now that she was in love with Zouch. She had never been in love before. This was what she had been waiting for. And now that it had come she had perhaps ruined everything by her own primness. She began to cry again. It seemed the only thing to do.
Downstairs in the drawing-room Mrs. Brandon was talking to Dadds. She was on one of her favourite subjects and she was saying:
‘Young people are so selfish nowadays. They think of nothing but enjoyment. They always want to be having a good time. In the old days it was different. It was thought right then to consider others. To do your duty. It wasn’t just yourself all the time. But things are different now. But all the same I’m very glad that I was born when I was. I should not be happy if I were young now.’
Mrs. Dadds sniffed to mark her agreement. She did not break in because she knew from experience, having heard Mrs. Brandon speak on other occasions of this contemporary problem, that her mistress had not yet finished all she had to say on this matter and that by waiting until she had run herself down she, Mrs. Dadds, would have a longer conversational innings herself. Mrs. Brandon said:
‘We have our grey days, all of us, and our bright days too, and we must try to make the best of both and do what we can to smile through, even when the sky looks dark and things seem as if they won’t come right. That’s what I’ve learnt to do. I’ve had trials to bear as much as anyone I know. Look at my poor health. I’m debarred from living an active life. And yet I always look for the best in what the world offers. And if you do that you’ll find that at last the sun breaks through the clouds.’
Mrs. Dadds sucked her teeth in affirmation. Mentally she was preparing her own stuff.
‘But young people won’t see that,’ said Mrs. Brandon. ‘They think that life should be all sunshine. They want the silver lining without the clouds.’
‘That’s all they want nowadays, pleasure,’ said Mrs. Dadds. ‘I used to tell my husband that. That was all he lived for, pleasure. I was saying so to Miss Joanna the other day. I said she must remember that when she got married. The men, they’re all the same at heart. Every one of them.’
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right. Miss Joanna will be getting married soon.’
‘Certain as winter following summer.’
‘She’ll find a husband.’
‘All the same. The whole lot of them.’
‘One of these days,’ said Mrs. Brandon, ‘a handsome young prince will come along and take my little daughter away from me. He will steal her away and I shall be left all alone. But perhaps I shall be gone even before the handsome young prince comes riding past. I haven’t been feeling at all well lately. I have had pains in my legs. Perhaps they are the beginning of the end.’
‘I got an earwig in my ear yesterday,’ said Mrs. Dadds, ‘I had to put a lighted match inside before I could get it out. It was something terrible. Terrible it was. Couldn’t hear a sound. But it doesn’t do any good to grumble. That’s what I’ve always said and I’ll go on saying to the end. That rotten husband of mine was a born grumbler. He wasn’t happy when he wasn’t grumbling, which was never.’
‘Grumbling has never done anyone any good and it never will. We must learn to face life as it comes.’
That’s right.’
‘That’s what young people nowadays won’t do.’
‘Course they won’t.’
‘It’s a great pity.’
Mrs. Dadds did not answer. She was thinking of her husband. Mrs. Brandon continued to expound her theories and she and Mrs. Dadds had quite a long talk together. Both of them felt better at the end of it and the pleasant way the time had passed was marred only by the discovery that Mrs. Dadds had forgotten about the things she had left in the oven, all of which were badly burnt. Joanna sitting in her bedroom also felt better. She had had a good cry and had thought things over. She went to her table and wrote a long letter to Zouch.
Torquil and Betty were alone in the drawing-room of the Fosdicks’ house. Jasper was out playing golf with Young Kittermaster and Major Fosdick had gone off immediately after tea saying he had to tot up some accounts somewhere where he would not be disturbed. Mrs. Fosdick was away paying a call on someone. Betty, who had dropped in uninvited, sat on, talking to Torquil about the party.
‘Then you don’t think it was a failure?’ Torquil said.
He sat curled up in a large armchair and peered nervously at Betty through his own cigarette smoke.
‘A failure?’ Betty said. ‘Why, if you’d seen some of the parties fail that I’ve seen fail you wouldn’t be here to talk about them. You’d have died of it. I’ve seen failures in the way of parties that you couldn’t even imagine. Why your party was a tremendous success. Parties aren’t failures just because one of the band gets plastered and tries to kiss a guest. That means the party has been a success. It’s been a bit different and gone with a swing. People want to talk about it after. They remember it among all the other parties they have been to. Goodness knows I’m not ambitious and I’ve never cared tuppence what happened at my own parties so long as I’ve enjoyed them myself, but I’ve known plenty of people who have wanted to get on, and they would never have minded a little thing like that.”
Torquil said: ‘Of course I knew what Oxford parties were like but I didn’t know that people went on feeling the same about that sort of thing.’
‘You’ve got a lot to learn,’ said Betty. ‘But you’re a nice boy and I expect you’ll learn it all in time.’
‘I’ve learnt a lot from you, Betty.’
‘I expect you have.’
‘A great deal. You have a wide experience of life.’
‘Oh, chase me!’
‘I mean it.’
‘Come off it.’
‘You know, Betty, I think you are one of the few people who understand me. We have the same point of view.’
Betty leaned across towards him. She said:
‘Torquil, shall we get engaged?’
‘Engaged?’
‘Yes. I haven’t been engaged for ages. Wouldn’t it be rather fun?’
Torquil faltered. For a moment he felt as if he had been hit hard on the head. Getting married was one of the aspects of life which he had never even considered. There were hardly half a dozen women whom he could name as his friends. Apart from Betty there was Mary, whom he always found difficult to talk to, and Joanna, who was easy. Then there were a few amorphous girls with whom he had sometimes danced at the local hunt ball and whose conversation was entirely about local matters. But here was Betty, who had lived dangerously and who was a duchess anyway, suggesting that they should get engaged. All his spirit of adventure was aroused. He said:
‘Yes, Betty. Let’s get engaged.’
When he had said this he had no idea what he ought to do, but before he had had time to think about this he found that Betty had jumped up from her chair and, after kissing him, was lying back again and laughing a great deal. The situation seemed to him to be too important and even too ominous to laugh at but, taking his cue from her, he laughed a little himself.
‘I never thought I should marry,’ he said, to steady himself.
But Betty only laughed. She said:
‘Really, you know, my pet, you’re quite the sweetest boy I’ve ever come across.’
Zouch had decided that if he must indeed paint a portrait of Bianca it would be preferable, however unpleasant a tete-a-tete might be, to deal with her by himself rather than in the presence of her mother, or any of the rest of her relations. He had arranged her therefore at the end of the schoolroom in one of his stock settings and, although she strayed once or twice across the room, on the second occasion squeezing out on to the floor almost the whole of a tube of burnt umber, he found that she was less difficult to control by herself than when she was in the company of her nurse or family. She had been sitting still for nearly a minute and a half, holding her Mickey Mouse, but now she began to fidget again. She said:
‘Do you like paint?’
‘Yes,’ said Zouch, though the marks on the canvas belied his answer.
‘Do you like gran’dad?’
‘Yes. I like him too. Of course I do. Why, don’t you?’
As a general principle he believed in acting with children as circumspectly as with adults. Bianca said:
‘Gran’dad says he’ll be glad when you get out of the house.’
‘Does he?’ said Zouch, to whom the news came as no great surprise.
‘Yes. He says he wouldn’t trust you round the corner.’
‘Oh?’
‘What would you do round the corner?’
‘I might do a lot of things.’
‘What sort of things?’
‘All sorts of things.’
Bianca occupied herself for a short time with her own reflections. She frowned to herself, thinking evidently of the gravity of Mr. Passenger’s feelings with regard to Zouch. Then she altered her position, trailing her Mickey Mouse along the ground. She said:
‘Granny doesn’t like you either.’
This information Zouch learnt with definite annoyance. It was not so much that he minded whether or not Mrs. Passenger felt well disposed towards him, although it would have pleased him to have found that she did not share her husband’s unfriendly attitude. It was more the disappointment of knowing that all his conversations about the harvest and the garden had been wasted. He had imagined that he had been a success with her. For the moment he forgot his discretion and was goaded into saying:
‘And why not?’
‘She says she doesn’t know. She says there’s just something about you that she doesn’t like.’
‘Is that all?’
‘She says it’s just that. You’re the sort of young man she doesn’t like. Mummy doesn’t like you either. She says she’ll be glad when you’re gone.’
‘Is there anyone in the house who does like me, Bianca?’
‘Yes, Mary likes you. Mary is my aunt. Did you know that Mary was my aunt?’
‘Yes. I knew that,’ said Zouch, and had difficulty in preventing himself from adding: ‘Worse luck.’
‘Mary says you’re rather sweet. She gets angry when Mummy says you’re a tuft-hunter.’
‘Does she?’
‘Yes. Mary gets very angry.’
‘I’m glad to know that.’
‘What is a tuft-hunter?’
‘Someone who hunts tufts, I suppose.’
‘What is a tuft?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Zouch, rather bitterly.
‘But how can you be a tuft-hunter if you don’t know what a tuft is?’
‘I can’t, of course. I’m not one. Mary said I wasn’t one, didn’t she?’
‘No. Mary said she didn’t mind if you were.’
‘I see.’
‘Is gran’dad a tuft-hunter?’
‘I shouldn’t be surprised.’
‘Why wouldn’t you be surprised?’
‘Because—because ’ Zouch was at a loss for words. He did not attempt to finish his speech. He was too angry.
‘Shall I ask him?’
‘Ask who, what?’
‘Ask gran’dad if he’s a tuft-hunter?’
‘I shouldn’t if I were you.’
‘Why not?’
‘He might not like it.’
‘Don’t people like being tuft-hunters?’
‘Your grandfather wouldn’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Zouch. ‘Perhaps he would. I don’t really know anything about tuft-hunters, Bianca, and I think you must have made a mistake about the word altogether.’
Bianca shook her head. She knew that she was right. She was prevented from saying more at that moment by her mother coming into the room, followed by Mary. She jumped up at once and ran towards them. Betty took both her hands, and said:
‘Well, how’s it getting on?’
All four of them looked at the picture, which had not yet reached an advanced stage in its presentation of Bianca owing to the difficulties of catching the sitter in any one position for more than a few seconds. There was a silence. Bianca spoke first. She said:
‘Isn’t it awful?’
‘Bianca!’ said Mary.
‘It’s not a bit like,’ Bianca said.
Betty said: ‘Well, I agree with Bianca that it isn’t yet, but I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt at present as to what it may look like when it is finished.’
Zouch said: ‘Thanks awfully.’
