16

When people play the game “Name three or four persons whom you would choose to have with you on a desert island,” they never choose the Delaneys. They don’t even choose us one by one as individuals. We have earned, not always fairly we consider, the reputation of being difficult guests. We hate staying in other people’s houses. We detest the effort of plunging into a new routine. Houses that are not ours, or where we have staked no claim, are like doctors’ houses, like dentists’ waiting rooms, like the waiting rooms at stations; we do not belong.

We are unlucky too. We catch the wrong trains and arrive late for dinner. Soufflés are ruined. Or we hire cars and then have to ask if the driver can be put up in the village. All this causes a commotion. We stay up much too late at night, at least Niall does, especially if there is brandy, and in the morning we lie in bed until past twelve. The maids—if there are maids, and in the old days there used to be—never can get into our rooms.

We hate doing the things our host and hostess want us to do. We loathe meeting their friends. Round games, cards, are abhorrent to us, and conversation worst of all. The only possible way of spending a weekend in another person’s house is to feign illness and hide all day in bed, or else to creep away into the garden.

We are bad at tipping. And our clothes are always wrong. In fact, it is preferable never to stay away unless violently in love. Then, Niall said, it is always worth it, because of creeping along a passage at 3 a.m.

When Maria first married Charles she stayed with him in house parties for about a year, because she was still acting her part of being the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham. But she never really enjoyed it. Not after the first few times of floating downstairs in evening dress. The men always stayed in the dining room far too long, and there would be that interminable business of talking to the women, who, with eager lips, plied her with questions on the theater. In the daytime the men disappeared with guns, or dogs and horses, and because Maria could neither shoot nor ride, nor do anything at all, she would be left with the women once again. And that to Maria was hell.

Celia’s problem would be a different one. People, finding her more sympathetic than either Niall or Maria, would pour out to her the story of their lives. “You have no idea what he does to me,” and she would find herself involved in another person’s troubles, her advice sought, her cooperation demanded, and it would be like a net closing round her from which there was no escape.

Everyone tried hard to behave well, that time at Coldhammer. It was one of those invitations that were given hurriedly, probably without real intention, at Maria’s reception. The whole courtship and wedding had been a rush affair, the poor Wyndhams were bewildered, they had really had no time to sort out the Delaney brood. All that had sunk into their confused minds was that their beloved son had decided to marry the lovely, ethereal girl who was playing in the revival of Mary Rose, and she happened to be the daughter of Delaney, whose beautiful voice had always brought tears to Lady Wyndham’s eyes.

“After all, the fellow is a gentleman,” Lord Wyndham must have said.

“And she is such a darling,” must have been the echo of his wife.

Lady Wyndham was tall and dignified, like an aristocratic hen, and her gracious manner had a curious frigidity about it, as though she had been dragooned into courtesy from birth. Maria declared that she was easy, and not a bit frightening; but when Maria said this Lady Wyndham had just given her a diamond bracelet and a pair of furs, and Maria was being starry-eyed as Mary Rose. Celia found Lady Wyndham forbidding and intense. She cornered Celia at the wedding reception and began to talk about the Thirty-nine Articles which Celia, in the first moment of madness, thought was some reference to the objects found in Tutenkhamon’s tomb. Only later, when she questioned Maria, did she discover that Lady Wyndham’s pet hobby horse was Prayer Book reform. Niall insisted that Lady Wyndham was perverted, and kept hidden in some secret closet, known only to herself, a riding whip and spurs.

Lord Wyndham was a bustling, busy little man, a great stickler for time. He was always dragging out a watch, with a huge fob and chain, and consulting the dial, and then comparing it with other clocks and muttering under his breath. He never sat down. He was eternally restless. His day was one long program with every second filled.

Lady Wyndham called him “Dobbin,” which was quite unsuitable. Perhaps it was this that had given Niall the idea about the riding whip and spurs.

“You must come down to Coldhammer directly Charles and Maria return from Scotland,” Lady Wyndham said to Pappy, in the maelstrom of the wedding, and Maria, her small face hidden by an enormous bunch of lilies, said, “Yes, Pappy, please,” not thinking what she was saying, not considering, in the excitement of the moment, that to see Pappy at Coldhammer would be like wandering in a bishop’s rose garden and coming suddenly upon the naked Jove.

Dynamic and robust, Pappy mixed well with kings and queens—especially those in exile—and Italian noblemen and French countesses, and the more Bohemian of what was termed London intelligentsia; but with the English “county”—and the Wyndhams were essentially “county”—Pappy seemed out of place. He was unaware of the fact. It was his family who suffered.

“But of course we will come to Coldhammer,” said Pappy, who, towering above the other guests at the reception, dwarfed the assembly. “But I insist on sleeping in a four-poster bed. Can you produce one for me? I must sleep in a four-poster bed.”

He had cried all through the wedding. Celia, on the return from the vestry, had to support him down the aisle. It might have been Maria’s funeral. But now, at the reception, champagne had worked revival. He glowed with love for all. He kissed complete strangers. The remark about the four-poster was a jest to be tossed aside. Lady Wyndham treated it as serious.

“The Queen Anne suite has a four-poster,” she said, “but the rooms face north, over the drive. The view from the south is so much better, especially when our Prunus floribunda is in flower.”

Pappy laid his finger against his nose. Then he bent down to Lady Wyndham’s ear.

“Keep your Prunus floribunda for others,” he said in a loud whisper. “When I visit Coldhammer I expect only my hostess to be in flower.”

Lady Wyndham remained unmoved. Not a flicker of understanding passed across her features.

“I am afraid you are no gardener,” she said.

“No gardener!” protested Pappy. “Flowers are my passion. All things that grow in Nature, my delight. When we were young, my wife and I used to wander barefoot in the meadows, sipping the dew from the lips of buttercups. I shall do it again, at Coldhammer. Celia shall wander with me. We will all wander together. How many of us do you invite? My stepson, Niall? My old love, Freada?”

He waved a vague hand that seemed, in its largesse, to embrace a dozen heads.

“Of course,” said Lady Wyndham, “bring who you wish. We have, at a pinch, put up eighteen…”

A note of doubt crept into her voice. Aversion struggled with civility. As her eyes wandered towards Freada, wearing a more preposterous hat than usual, Niall knew she was trying to place the correct relationship between them all. Was Freada then a former wife and Niall her son? Or was everybody illegitimate? No matter. Let it pass. Manners came first. And Charles had married Maria, who at any rate seemed a sweet girl and so unspoiled.

“We shall be delighted,” said Lady Wyndham, “to see the whole family. Shan’t we, Dobbin?”

Lord Wyndham muttered something unintelligible and pulled out his watch.

“What are they doing?” he said. “They ought to go and change. That’s the worst of these things. So much hanging about. Young people always will hang about.” He eyed the clock on the wall. “Is that clock right?” Nobody answered.

And it was because of all this that the Delaneys found themselves at Coldhammer.

It was one of those large, imposing houses of indeterminate age, begun possibly before the Tudors and never finished. Wings had been thrown out from time to time. There were flights of steps at the front door, and pillars. The house was separated from the park into which it was plunged by a wide ditch, referred to by the Wyndhams as a “ha-ha.” The pleasure grounds lay at the back of the house, southward, beyond a terrace. Maria used to wonder, after the first flush of excitement had died down, what pleasure had ever been obtained from them. There were too many winding paths raked by assiduous gardeners, and the formal yew hedges, blanketing the view, were clipped every few yards or so into the tortured shapes of cocks. Nothing grew “au naturel.” Everything was planned. Two roaring lions of stone flanked the terrace on either side, their mouths wide open in a perpetual snarl. Even the spinney, the only possible walk on a wet day, which looked in the distance like a Rackham drawing, was spoiled in the center by a lily-pond that had no business to be there, beside which squatted a great toad in lead.

“The first thing I can remember in life is that old toad,” said Charles, the first time he had taken Maria to Coldhammer, touching it affectionately with his foot. And Maria, pretending to admire it, thought with sudden guilt that it bore an unfortunate, and rather malignant, likeness to Lord Wyndham himself. When Niall came he noticed it at once.

“Old clothes for the country,” Pappy said before the visit; “old clothes are always best. A man who goes down to the country in a London suit deserves to be blackballed from his club.”

“But not that cardigan darned with my stockings,” protested Celia. “And those pajama trousers have no seat.”

“I shall be alone in the four-poster,” said Pappy, “unless her ladyship deigns to visit me. What are the odds?”

“A hundred to one against,” said Celia. “Unless something happens like a fire. Pappy, not that tie. It’s far too red.”

“I must have color,” said Pappy. “Color is all. A red tie with a tweed jacket is correct, my darling. It strikes the casual note. Let us, at all costs, be casual.”

He had too much luggage. One suitcase was entirely filled with medicines. Enos, cinnamon, Vapex, Taxel, friar’s balsam, even syringes and rubber tubes. “You never know, my darling,” said Pappy. “I may be taken ill. I may have to stay at Coldhammer for months, with two nurses, night and day.”

“But why, Pappy? We’re only going for a night.”

“When I pack,” said Pappy, “I pack for all eternity.”

And he shouted to André to bring up a malacca cane, presented to him once by the Lord Mayor; and a Hawaiian shirt and straw sandals in case of a heat wave. Also a volume of Shakespeare and an unabridged edition of the Decameron, illustrated by an unknown Frenchman.

“Old Wyndham might like this,” said Pappy. “I ought to take a present to old Wyndham. I paid five pounds for this at Bumpus yesterday.”

It was decided to hire a car for the occasion, because everybody could not fit into Pappy’s car. Not with the luggage.

And Pappy made the fatal mistake of buying a cap. He was convinced that because he sported a tweed suit he must wear a cap. The cap was new. It looked it. Not only did it look new, it looked common. It gave Pappy the appearance of a giant costermonger on Easter Monday.

“It came from Scott’s,” said Pappy. “It can’t be common.”

He planted the cap firmly on his head and took up his stance beside the driver, with an enormous map upon his knees giving none of the roads that mattered, but every bridle path in the immediate Coldhammer country. He argued the course of direction during the full seventy miles of the drive. The fact that his map was eighteenth century did not fluster him.

If Pappy had brought too much in the way of suitcases, Freada had erred to the opposite extreme, and had brought too few.

Her belongings were packed in paper parcels, and she had a sack, like a postman’s, thrown over her shoulder, in which was wrapped an evening dress. She and Niall had come over to London for the wedding, intending to stay two nights, and had stayed four weeks, and neither of them had bothered to buy suitcases. It was only when they were ready to start for Coldhammer that Niall had misgivings.

Freada was overdressed. Her long silk frock was striped, increasing her height, and she wore the large picture hat that she had bought for the wedding. White gloves, to the elbow, suggested a Royal garden party.

“What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” she said to Niall.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I think it’s the hat.”

She whipped it off. But they had done her hair badly at the hairdressers’. The man had been careless with the dye, and it was much too bright. Niall said nothing, but Freada understood.

“I know,” she said; “that’s why I’ve got to wear the hat.”

“What about tonight,” said Niall, “when we change for dinner?”

“Tulle,” said Freada briefly, “thrown round my head. I can tell Lady Wyndham it’s the latest fashion in Paris.”

“Whatever happens,” said Niall, “we must not let Maria down. We must remember, this is Maria’s show.”

He began biting his nails. He was nervous. The thought of seeing Maria again as a month-old bride distressed him. Living in Paris, living with Freada, knowing sudden, unexpected success with his catchpenny tunes, counted as nothing.

The ease of manner that had come to him had vanished. The Niall Delaney who was run after in Paris, and spoiled and petted, was nothing but a boy again with jittery hands.

“We’ve got to remember,” he repeated, “that though all this Coldhammer business seems false as hell to us, it’s terribly important to Maria.”

“Who says it’s false?” said Freada. “I have the greatest respect for English country life. Stop biting your nails.”

She walked down the steps to the waiting car, swinging the postman’s bag, and the long, white gloves came right above her elbows.

The party had been asked to arrive in time for lunch. Luncheon, Lady Wyndham called it. Luncheon at one fifteen. “But come about twelve-thirty,” she had said in her letter, “which will give you time to settle in.”

Because of Pappy’s eighteenth-century map, the car took a wrong turning after leaving Hyde Park Corner. There was no question of anybody settling in. The car did not arrive at Coldhammer until five minutes past two. Celia was in agony.

“We must pretend we have lunched,” she said. “They will have given us up. We can’t possibly ask for lunch now. Maria can get us some biscuits during the afternoon.”

“What do you take me for, a hound?” said Pappy, peering round at her from the front seat of the car, his spectacles on his nose. “I haven’t driven all this way to eat biscuits. Coldhammer is one of the stately homes of England. I intend to eat, and to eat well, my darling. Ah! What did I tell you…” He leaned forward and nudged the driver as the car bumped suddenly in a narrow lane. “This is one of the bridle paths. It’s marked quite clearly on the map.”

He brandished the map in the air, tremendously excited. Freada opened her eyes and yawned.

“Are we nearly there?” she said. “How wonderful the country smells. We ought to ask Lady Wyndham to let us sleep on the lawn. I wonder if they could produce camp-beds.”

Niall did not answer. He was feeling sick. He always felt sick in the back of a car. It was one of those wretched things that he had not yet outgrown. Presently the car came to a standstill before a pair of wrought iron gates. Two columns stood at either side, and on top of the columns a pair of stone griffons rampant.

“This must be it,” said Pappy, still following an eighteenth-century coach road on the map. “Look at the griffons, Celia darling. They may be historical. I must ask old Wyndham. Sound the horn, driver.”

The driver sounded the horn. He had aged years during the drive of seventy miles. A woman came running from the lodge and opened wide the gates. The car swept through. Pappy bowed to her from the window.

“A nice touch, that,” he said. “Probably an old retainer. Been with the Wyndhams for years. Dandled Charles upon her knee. I must find out her name. Always a good thing to know these people’s names.”

The drive wound across the park towards the house that stood blank and impassive at the far end.

“Adams,” said Pappy promptly. “Doric columns.”

“Don’t you mean Kent?” said Freada.

“Kent and Adams,” said Pappy generously.

The car swerved in a circle and drew up before the gray façade. Maria and Charles were waiting, with linked arms, upon the steps. There were far too many dogs, all of different breeds.

Maria broke away from Charles and ran down the steps to open the car. Her natural feelings were too strong for her after all, and she could not keep up the Tatler pose that she had planned. She had been standing on the steps, the dogs grouped about her, for nearly two hours.

“You’re terribly late. What happened to you?” she said.

Her voice sounded high-pitched and unnatural, and Niall guessed, from the expression on her face that he knew so well, that she was as nervous as he was himself. Only Pappy remained unperturbed.

“My darling,” he said. “My beautiful,” and he stepped out of the car, scattering rugs, cushions, walking sticks, and volumes of Shakespeare onto the drive, while the dogs barked furiously.

Charles, with the quiet, firm manner of one used to dealing with disciplined men, began explaining to the driver, who was on the verge of a breakdown, the best approach to the garage in the stable yard.

“Leave everything in the car,” said Maria, her voice still high. “Vaughan will deal with it. Vaughan knows where it all has to go.”

Vaughan was the footman. He stood to attention behind Maria.

“What a disappointment,” said Freada, a shade too loud. “I hoped the servants would be powdered. A fine-looking creature all the same.”

She stepped out of the car, but, in doing so, her heel caught in a piece of loose rubber on the running board, and she fell full length at the footman’s feet, her arms spread wide as in a swallow-dive.

“That was effective,” said Pappy. “Do it again.”

Vaughan and Charles assisted Freada to her feet. Smiling broadly with a cut lip and laddered stockings, she assured them both that to fall on entering a strange house spelled good luck to the owners.

“But your lip is bleeding,” said Pappy, his interest quickening. “Where is that case of medicines?”

He turned to the boot of the car to fumble for his luggage.

“I don’t think it’s much,” said Charles, proffering his handkerchief with Raleigh courtesy. “Just a scratch at the corner.”

“But, my dear fellow, she might get lockjaw,” said Pappy. “Never neglect a scratch. I heard of a man in Sydney who got lockjaw within twenty-four hours. He died in agony, bent backwards like a hoop.” In a fever he began throwing the luggage onto the drive. His medicine case was at the bottom. “Ah! I have it,” he said, “iodine. Never travel without iodine. But the lip must be washed first. Charles, where can Freada wash? It is imperative that Freada should wash.”

Lord Wyndham advanced to the top of the steps, his watch in his hand.

“Glad to see you. Glad to see you,” he muttered, his face set in hard, grim lines. “We feared an accident. Luncheon is just going in. Shall we eat at once? The time is exactly eight and a half minutes past two.”

“Let Freada wash afterwards,” whispered Celia. “Lockjaw can’t act as swiftly as all that. We’re keeping everybody waiting.”

“I also wish to wash,” said Pappy loudly. “Unless I wash now it will mean leaving the luncheon table after the first course.”

As the group swept up the steps and past the pillars into the house, Niall glanced back over his shoulder to the car. He saw Vaughan staring at the postman’s bag.

It was after half-past two when the party finally settled down into their seats in the large, square dining room. Pappy, on Lady Wyndham’s right, talked without ceasing. Celia felt this was a great relief to Lady Wyndham, who wore upon her face the haunted, abstract expression of the hostess who knows that the menu she ordered the day before with confidence has been thrown completely out of gear.

She sat at the head of the table watching her butler and his assistant hand the dishes, and her guests eating what was before them, much as the uneasy producer of a play watches his team of actors in a rehearsal that has started ill.

Freada, on Lord Wyndham’s left, had launched into a discussion on Swedish pewter that was to prove abortive. She had noticed an old tankard on a console table in the far corner of the room, but Lord Wyndham refused to be drawn.

“Swedish?” he muttered. “Possibly. I’ve no idea. It may be Swedish. Can’t say I care very much whether it’s Swedish or Japanese. The tankard has always stood there since I was a boy. Probably before.”

Niall was watching Maria, who, having recovered her equanimity now that the party was settled, was busy playing the Hon. Mrs. Charles. Because she was the bride she sat, as guest of honor, on Lord Wyndham’s right. A Wyndham relative or neighbor, with a sandy, bushy mustache, sat on the other side of her.

“But you’re coming to us for Ascot, aren’t you?” Maria was saying. “Oh, but you must. We have a box. Leila will be with us, and Bobby Lavington, and we have the Hopton-D’Arcys coming over with their party from Windsor. Did you know that Charles and I are moving into our house at Richmond in two weeks’ time? It’s Regency. We’re mad about it. Father and Mother have been so sweet. We’re having some of the lovely stuff from here to help furnish it.”

She put out her hand affectionately to Lord Wyndham, who muttered something under his breath. Father and Mother. She called the Wyndhams Father and Mother. “We think it’s so right,” Maria went on, “to be just on the fringe of London. Then we can see all our friends.”

She caught Niall’s eye, and looked away hurriedly, crumbling a piece of bread. She had done her hair in a new way. It was a little longer than before, caught up and swept behind her ears. And she was thinner in the face. She looked lovelier, Niall thought, than she had ever done, the vague blue of her dress took on the color of her eyes, and because she knew Niall was watching her she lifted her chin in an arrogant, half-defensive manner, and began talking even louder than before about the plans for Ascot. He loved her so much that it hurt, and he could not eat. And he wanted to hit her very, very hard.

Lunch over, at a quarter to four, an intolerable lethargy stole upon the house party, but Pappy, mellow with port and Stilton cheese, announced his firm intention of seeing every inch of Coldhammer, from the attics to the kitchens. “Not forgetting the grounds,” he said, waving his hands towards the terrace, “the farmeries, the piggeries, the still-rooms, the venison chambers. I must see all.”

“The Home Farm is quite three miles from the house,” said Lady Wyndham, her eye searching her husband’s, “and there have never been any deer at Coldhammer. I think possibly that, if we put off tea till five, you would have time for a stroll round the pleasure grounds as far as the spinney. That is, unless Dobbin has arranged something else?”

Her glance wavered from her husband towards the butler. A flash of understanding, like a secret code, passed between them. Celia knew that this meant “tea at five,” although the words did not frame themselves on Lady Wyndham’s lips.

“Too late to follow my arrangements now,” snapped Lord Wyndham. “According to my arrangements, we should have done the pleasure grounds by three o’clock. At a quarter to four we were to have driven to see the view from Beacon Hill of the three counties, above Huntsman’s Folly.”

“Huntsman’s Folly? That sounds like folklore and fairies,” said Freada. “Can’t we visit it tonight, by moonlight? It might be just what you want, Niall, for that ghost dance you were planning?”

“It’s only a broken piece of wall,” said Lady Wyndham. “I don’t think it would inspire anyone to dance. Perhaps in the morning, though, if you wish to see the view…”

Lord Wyndham compared his watch with the clock on the drawing room mantelpiece, and Lady Wyndham seized a sunshade. Grim, determined, suffering, with the faces of crusaders, they led us all out onto the terrace, with Pappy in the van wearing his new tweed cap, and brandishing his malacca cane.

The day dragged onto evening. The exhaustion of the walk to the spinney and the tour of the house was followed by tea, heavy and indigestible, and the arrival of more guests who had been bidden for this meal only. Pappy, who never touched tea, began to feel the need of stimulant. Celia caught his eye and watched it rove towards the dining room. The question was, how well did he know Charles? Would Charles prove helpful? Or would asking for a whiskey at a quarter to six look odd, coming from the father of the bride? There was a flask upstairs, of course, in case of high emergency, but a pity to touch that too soon. Celia knew all these thoughts were passing through Pappy’s mind. She moved over to the window by Maria and pulled her sleeve.

“I know Pappy wants a drink,” she whispered. “Is there any hope?”

Maria looked anxious.

“It won’t go awfully well,” she whispered back. “They never have anything here until just before dinner, and then it’s always sherry. Didn’t he bring his flask?”

“Yes. But he might want that for later.”

Maria nodded. “I’ll try to get hold of Charles,” she said.

Charles was nowhere to be seen. Maria had to go to look for him. Celia’s anxiety mounted. Pappy would never hang on until after six. He was like a baby with a bottle. He had to keep to his regular time for his whiskey or his whole system became disorganized.

Presently Charles appeared again with Maria. He went over to Pappy and bent his head in furtive consultation. The two of them left the drawing room together. Celia sighed with relief. There must be a kind of freemasonry between men about these things.

“Your father has not touched his tea,” said Lady Wyndham. “He has let it go quite cold. Shall I pour it away and order fresh? Where has he gone?”

“I think Charles is showing him the pictures in the dining room,” said Celia.

“There is nothing very good to see in there,” said Lady Wyndham. “If it’s the Winterhalter he wanted to look at, it’s at the head of the stairs, and the light is just wrong for pictures at the moment.”

Her duties at the tea tray kept her from pursuit, and soon Pappy came back into the drawing room, bland innocence upon his face.

The dressing gong sounded at a quarter to seven, and with relief the weary guests, and their hosts as well, sought sanctuary within their rooms. Niall flung himself on his bed and lit a cigarette. The need of it at that moment was like cocaine to a drug fiend. He had smoked below, but smoking below was not like smoking alone, in an empty room.

Scarcely had he closed his eyes than there came a cautious tap on his door. It was Freada.

“I can’t find my clothes,” she said. “I’ve got an enormous bedroom like something at Versailles, but not a sign of any paper parcels, or the postman’s bag. Dare I ring?”

“Yes,” said Niall. “But not in here. You’re not supposed to come into my room.”

“That’s all right,” said Freada. “They all think I’m your mother. I’m Pappy’s divorced wife. It’s terribly confusing, but it serves.”

“I think it’s rather shocking,” said Niall. “Why must you be anything?”

“These people like a tag for everything,” said Freada. “Be a lamb and go down to look for the postman’s bag. It must be somewhere. I want to have a bath. I have an amazing bathroom, with a step beside the bath. And there are prints by Marcus Stone all round the room. True emblems of the Victorian age. I love this sort of house.”

Niall did not have the courage to ring the bell. Nor to question the servants. He finally discovered the postman’s bag in the downstairs cloakroom, standing discreetly beside several bags of golf clubs.

As he carried it upstairs Lord Wyndham, dressed for dinner, and looking at his watch, came out upon the landing.

“Dinner in fifteen minutes,” he muttered. “You have exactly fifteen minutes in which to change. What do you want to do with that sack?”

“It has something in it,” said Niall. “It’s rather precious.”

“Ferrets, did you say?” snapped Lord Wyndham. “We never allow ferrets in the house. Ring for Vaughan. Vaughan will take them.”

“No, sir,” said Niall, “precious. Something rather precious belonging to—my mother.” He bowed his way backwards along the passage. Lord Wyndham stared after him. “Extraordinary youth!” he muttered. “Composer… Paris. All alike.” He hurried down the stairs to compare his watch with the clocks below.

Freada’s bathroom was full of steam. She was standing up in the bath singing loudly, soaping herself all over. She uttered a cry of triumph at the sight of the postman’s bag.

“Good for you,” she said. “Hang it up on the door, pet, will you? The steam will take out the creases. I found the paper parcels. They had all been put in one drawer at the bottom of the wardrobe.”

“You’d better buck up,” said Niall. “We’ve only a quarter of an hour left before dinner.”

“I’m reveling in this soap,” said Freada. “It’s brown Windsor. A good, old-fashioned brand. I shall take it back with me. They’ll never miss it. Give my back a scrub, angel, between the shoulder blades.”

Niall attacked her with her battered loofah, and she turned on the hot and cold taps together so that the water gushed like fountains.

“Let’s have our money’s worth of water,” said Freada. “I know when we get back to Paris we shall find that damn tap has died on us. The concierge will never think of seeing to it.”

“There, will that do for you?” said Niall, shaking his cuffs. “I must go and change, I shall be terribly late.”

He went back into Freada’s bedroom, wiping his eyes because of the steam. The running water had prevented them both from hearing the tap on the door. Lady Wyndham, in black velvet, stood on the threshold.

“I beg your pardon,” she said. “I understood from my maid that there was some misunderstanding about your—your mother’s luggage.”

“It’s all right,” swallowed Niall. “I found it.”

“Hoi!” shouted Freada from the bath. “Bring me my towel, baby, from the chair, before you go. I’ve half a mind to pinch that too. The Wyndhams must have towels galore.”

Not a muscle moved on the face of Lady Wyndham. But there was a strange, baffled look at the back of her eyes.

“Then your mother has everything she wants?” said Lady Wyndham.

“Yes,” said Niall.

“In that case I’ll leave you both to dress,” said Lady Wyndham. “Your room, as I think you know, is on the other corridor.”

She moved away, majestic, forbidding, just as Freada, stark and dripping, pattered with wet feet into the bedroom.

None of the Delaneys were on time for dinner. Even Maria, who should have known better, floated downstairs some ten minutes after the gong had sounded. Her excuse was a new dress from her trousseau, that fastened in some curious fashion, from the back. And Charles, she said, had clumsy hands and could not hook her up. Niall felt this story to be fabrication. Had he been in Charles’s place, Maria would never have been hooked at all. Nor would they have dined…

Pappy, with heightened color and black tie a trifle crooked, betrayed the fact, to his immediate family, that the sustenance between tea and dinner had not proved sufficient to carry him through, and he had been forced to have access to his flask. His smile was broad and tolerant. Celia watched him like a young mother uncertain of the behavior of her child. The fact that she had forgotten to pack her evening shoes did not worry her. Her bedroom slippers were mules and must suffice. As long as Pappy behaved himself nothing mattered.

Freada made her entry last. Not with intention, because she was without vanity of any sort, but because the winding of the tulle about her hair had taken time. The effect was a little startling, and not what she had intended. It was like the flight into Egypt by an indifferent primitive. Lord Wyndham snapped his watch as she arrived.

“Twenty-three and a half minutes after eight,” he muttered.

The party filed into the dining room in silence, and Freada, who always lit a cigarette with her soup, lacked the courage to do so for the first time in her life.

It was Pappy’s warm, genial voice, always more Irish in intonation at this hour of the evening than at any other time, which broke in above the icy trickle of conversation soon after the fish was served and the champagne had been poured into the glasses.

“I’m sorry to distress you, my dear fellow,” he called down the table to his host, “but I have a pronouncement to make. The fact of the matter is your champagne is corked.”

There was instant silence.

“Corked? Corked?” said Lord Wyndham. “It should not be corked. It has no business to be corked.” The butler hurried to his side in consternation. “Never touch the stuff myself,” said Lord Wyndham. “My doctor won’t allow it. Who else says the champagne is corked? Charles? What is wrong with the champagne? We must not have it corked.”

Everyone tasted the champagne. No one knew what to say. To agree with Pappy seemed impolite to Lord Wyndham. To disagree made Pappy seem a cad. Fresh bottles were brought. Fresh glasses handed round. We waited in agony while Pappy tasted his.

“I’d say this was corked too,” he said, his head a little on one side. “It must be a dud case. You must wire your wine merchant on Monday morning. He has no business to palm you off with corked champagne.”

“Take it away,” snapped Lord Wyndham to his butler. “We’ll drink hock.” The glasses were all removed for the second time.

Celia gazed steadfastly at her plate. Niall concentrated upon the silver candlesticks. And Maria, the bride, forgot about being the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham, and relapsed once more into her role of Mary Rose. She sat listening to her voices…

“I think a little music would be very soothing,” said Lady Wyndham after dinner, a note of real sincerity creeping into her voice, and Niall, fortified by hock, escaped to the piano at the far end of the drawing room. And now, he thought, it really does not matter very much what happens. I can do what I like, play what I like, nobody cares, nobody wants to listen, they all want to forget the agony of dinner. This is really where I come into my own, because my sort of music is like a drug to sap the senses, and old Lord Wyndham with his clicking watch can beat time if he cares to, it will take away the memory of the corked champagne. Lady Wyndham can shut her eyes and think of tomorrow’s program. Pappy can go to sleep. Freada can kick her shoes off under the sofa. Celia can relax. The other people can dance or not as they damn well please, and Maria can hear the songs I write for her that she will never sing.

It was no longer the stiff drawing room at Coldhammer, but any piano in any room where he might be alone. He went on playing, and there was no sound but the sound of Niall’s music, which was dance music different from any other. There was something savage about it and something sweet, it was partly foreign and partly sad, and whether you liked it or not, thought Maria, you wanted to dance; you wanted to dance more than anything in the world.

She leaned against the piano watching him, and she was not the Hon. Mrs. Charles Wyndham or Mary Rose or any other character she had thought out on the spur of the moment, she was Maria, and Niall knew this as he played, and he laughed because they were together now and he was happy.

Celia looked at them both, and then at Pappy, who had fallen asleep in his chair, and suddenly she heard a voice beside her say softly, and with infinite regard: “I would give everything in the world to possess that gift. How lucky he is. He will never know how lucky.” It was Charles. And he was staring across the long drawing room at Niall and Maria.

It was close on midnight when we all dispersed to bed. The music had done what the hostess had demanded. Everyone was soothed, except the player. He alone would not sleep with deep content.

“Come and see my room,” said Maria, coming out onto the corridor in her nightgown, as he was passing by the door on the way to the bathroom. “It’s paneled. It has a carved ceiling.” She took his hand and pulled him inside the room.

“It’s lovely, isn’t it?” she said. “Look at that molding over the fireplace.” Niall looked. He cared nothing about molding.

“Are you happy?” he said.

“Madly,” said Maria. She tied a blue ribbon round her hair. “I’m going to have a baby,” she said. “You’re the first person I’ve told. Except Charles, of course.”

“Are you sure?” said Niall. “It’s a bit soon, isn’t it? You’ve only been married a month.”

“It must have happened bang off at once, in Scotland,” said Maria. “It sometimes does, you know. It’s smart, isn’t it? Like royalty.”

“Why royalty?” said Niall. “Why not a young cat with kittens?”

“I think it’s like royalty,” said Maria.

She climbed into bed and patted the pillows.

“Does it make you feel any different?” asked Niall.

“No, not really. A bit sick, that’s all,” said Maria. “And I have funny little blue veins all over my top. Look.”

She shook her nightdress off her shoulders, and he saw what she meant. Pale blue veins stood out clearly on her small white breasts.

“How queer,” said Niall. “I wonder if that always happens.”

“I don’t know,” said Maria. “It rather spoils them, doesn’t it?”

“Yes, I think it does,” said Niall.

Just then Charles came into the room from his dressing room. He stood staring, while Maria pulled her nightdress up again with unconcern.

“Niall was just saying good night,” said Maria.

“So I see,” said Charles.

“Good night,” said Niall. He went out of the room, shutting the door behind him.

He felt very wide awake and very hungry, but it would be simpler to eat the furniture in his room than to creep downstairs and seek out the mysteries of the Coldhammer larders. It was always possible, of course, that Freada, knowing his habits, had secreted the rolls from dinner in her evening bag, and had them hidden at the moment under her pillow. Niall turned along the corridor towards Freada’s room, but at the top of the staircase he found his way barred by Lady Wyndham. More formidable than ever in a quilted dressing gown, and gray with fatigue, she was in consultation with two housemaids who carried cloths and pails.

“Your mother left the taps running in the bathroom,” she said to Niall. “The water has overflowed, of course, and seeped down into the library below.”

“I’m terribly sorry,” said Niall. “How very careless of her. Is there anything I can do?”

“Nothing,” said Lady Wyndham, “nothing at all. We have done what we can, for the moment. The men must see to it in the morning.” She disappeared towards her own apartments, followed by the housemaids.

“At least one thing is certain,” thought Niall, as he crept to Freada’s door, “and that is that none of the Delaneys will be asked again. Except Maria. Maria will go on coming to Coldhammer week after week, month after month, until she dies, a dowager, in that bed.”

He did not knock on Freada’s door. He went and felt under the pillow. Yes, she had remembered. There were two rolls there and a large banana. He began to unpeal the banana, silently, in the darkness.

“You know what you’ve done?” he said to Freada.

But she was nearly asleep. She yawned and turned her back.

“I sopped up most of it with my evening dress,” she said. “I gave the tulle to the housemaid. She was pleased.”

Niall finished his banana.

“Freada.”

“What?”

“Does it hurt very much to have a baby?”

“It depends upon the hips,” she murmured, heavy with sleep. “They must be wide.”

Niall threw the banana skin under the bed, and composed himself for sleep. But sleep eluded him. He kept wondering about Maria’s hips.

At three in the morning a crash in the corridor brought him to the door. Pappy could not sleep either. But not for the same reason. Disturbed by Lord Wyndham’s staircase clock, he had tried to stop it, forcing back the hands, and the pane of glass lay shattered at his feet.