Читать книгу Pomfret Towers - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 6

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Pomfret Towers was the successor of Pomfret Castle, the Norman fortress built by Giles de Pomfret in the twelfth century, partially destroyed in the Wars of the Roses, rebuilt under Henry VII and battered by Cromwell. The first earl was created in 1689 for services rendered to the Prince of Orange, and in the same year a younger brother, who had rashly adopted the Roman Catholic faith, found it convenient to go to Italy, where his descendants still lived. In the eighteenth century the family, much impoverished by the third earl’s losses at play, moved into the dower house of Mellings, adding the south wing. The castle was allowed to fall into complete ruin, except for the old buttery, where a hermit was kept to attract visitors. The fourth earl, suddenly enriched by the discovery of coal under a northern property, had planned to build a Palladian mansion, and had gone so far as to pull down most of what remained of the old buildings, when he died from a fall when hunting, leaving an infant son, the fifth earl, whose premature death has already been mentioned. As this unlucky young man had already married a neighbouring heiress, their son, born after his father’s death, also came into a vast accumulation of wealth, which he increased by marriage. The sixth Earl of Pomfret was an affectionate husband and father, an excellent landlord, and one of the most insufferable prigs that Queen Victoria’s reign produced. While at Oxford he came under the influence of the Gothic revival. His first sight of St. Pancras station, when on his way north for some shooting, was a revelation, and a family mansion was erected from plans prepared in the office of Sir Gilbert Scott. This pile, for no less a name is worthy of this vast medley of steep roofs, turrets, gables, and chimney stacks, crowned by a Victorian clock tower, took four years to build and is said to have cost its owner first and last as many hundred thousand pounds. The interior decorations are of a richness that vies with the exterior. The walls of the great hall are painted in imitation of Gobelin tapestry. The various drawing-rooms are hung and in some cases roofed with the richest silks. Workmen from Italy were employed upon the carved marble of the balustrades and the plaster of the ceilings, while the copper utensils for the kitchen are estimated to have cost hundreds of pounds alone. Lord Pomfret had one son, the present earl, and two daughters, one of whom had died young, and the other, Lady Emily, was married to Mr. Leslie, a landowner in the next county.

In this magnificent home, where it was computed that an under footman might walk ten miles a day in the course of his duties, and the dining-room was separated from the kitchen by a serving room, a flight of stone steps, and a dark passage nearly fifty yards long containing several sharp corners, the sixth Lord Pomfret’s children had passed their childhood, and in it the present Lord Pomfret had lived for nearly eighty years. On his father’s death he succeeded to an estate that still had a very large rent-roll, in spite of the previous owner’s building extravagances, and had spent most of his life looking after it.

For many years the state-rooms had not been used, except on the rare occasions when Lord Pomfret, as Lord Lieutenant, entertained Royalty, for Lady Pomfret lived much abroad. So Lord Pomfret lived in the smallest and warmest corner he could find, and the rest of the rooms remained shut up, dismally sheeted, with shutters closed and curtains put away. Neither the young Bartons nor the young Wicklows had ever seen them in use, and professional curiosity was certainly part of Guy Barton’s reason for accepting. Roddy Wicklow, owing to his position in Mr. Hoare’s office, had occasion to visit the Towers more than once during the ensuing fortnight, and brought back all kinds of interesting news.

Two days before the great week-end Alice was having tea with her friend Sally Wicklow. The Wicklows lived in one of the Georgian houses half-way up Nutfield High Street. Mr. and Mrs. Wicklow were very sensible parents who knew their place. Sally had a delightful sitting-room of her own looking on to the street, so that she could shout to her friends about dogs or horses as they went by, and the use of the old stables at the back for her dogs and their puppies. Roddy always dropped into his sister’s room if he was back by tea-time, and his father and mother never came unless invited. But the young Wicklows were well disposed towards their parents and made no objection to partaking of breakfast, lunch, and dinner with them when not more amusingly engaged, or to spending the evening in the drawing-room if Sally’s wireless was out of action.

‘Of course the old earl didn’t think of bathrooms,’ said Roddy, who had just joined Sally and Alice. ‘At least he did put in one, but it was in the bachelors’ wing and ladies never used it.’

‘What do we do then?’ asked Sally. ‘Hip baths in front of the fire?’

‘You could if you liked,’ said Roddy. ‘I counted eighteen myself this morning in the Pink Room where they were stored, and ten of those funny flat ones.’

‘I don’t know those,’ said Alice.

‘You poor little rich girl,’ said Sally. ‘Fancy being so young that you’ve never seen a flat bath. Is that all, Roddy?’

‘Not at all. There are two more bathrooms now, at the end of the West wing. The housekeeper showed them to me this morning. Lord Pomfret had them put in for the hunting men before his son died, but they’re a bit communist. I mean he just cut one room in two and ran a partition up, but it doesn’t go up to the ceiling for some reason, and anyway it’s only a quarter of an inch thick, so you have a pretty good guess who’s next door.’

‘Shall I have to go there?’ asked Alice.

‘Well, there are two or three rooms that have baths built into them,’ said Roddy. ‘They were really meant for dressing-rooms, but they use them for bedrooms when the house is full. Seems a bit queer to sleep in your bathroom, but I daresay it’s all right. Get down, Wuffy.’

He pushed his sister’s Airedale, which was pawing his legs with a view to cake, down again.

‘Poor old Wuffy,’ said Sally. ‘Come up by mother then.’

She patted the sofa invitingly and Wuffy jumped up and settled himself. The fox terrier, seeing his rival exalted, began to growl. Wuffy barked contemptuously and Alice shrank into the far corner of the sofa. Roddy strode to the door, giving the whistle that meant he was going for a walk. Both dogs hurried after him and he opened the door and herded them out.

‘Now they’ll go and scratch at the drawing-room door and annoy the parents,’ said Sally. ‘You’d much better have left them here.’

‘I don’t understand you, my girl,’ said her brother. ‘A young woman like you that helps the huntsman and runs the beagles ought to know how to handle dogs. Think of others. Here is poor Alice practically having hydrophobia.’

‘Oh no, I’m not,’ said Alice, who had hoped that her evident dislike of Wuffy and the fox terrier was not noticeable. ‘I really like them very much, if only they wouldn’t bark and didn’t try to climb up me. I am really getting quite friendly with—’

‘There’s Chloe,’ said Sally, as a scratching and whining which had been going on ever since the dogs left the room was succeeded by several loud flaps against the door. ‘Isn’t she a lamb? She has taught herself to knock on the door with her tail. Come in, angel.’

She opened the door to the lurcher, who entered with a smile and stood waving her tail fatuously, then came straight up to Alice, put her forepaws on her lap and breathed affection into her face.

‘Nice Chloe,’ said Alice, in such a fainting voice that Roddy and Sally couldn’t help laughing. Overcome with dislike of the loving dog and shame of her own cowardice, Alice’s eyes began to swim. Roddy quietly removed Chloe and pushed her out of the room.

‘Roddy, you really are,’ said Sally indignantly. ‘Turning Chloe out of her own mother’s sitting-room.’

‘Mothers who can’t bring children up properly don’t deserve to have them,’ said Roddy, adding in a low voice to his sister as he got up to put more wood on the fire, ‘Remember Hero.’ This referred to a Great Dane which Sally had bought the year before, and which had so frightened Alice by putting its head over her shoulder when she was sitting in a low chair in Sally’s sitting-room, that she had actually fainted. Sally, who could not understand Alice’s feelings in the least, had nevertheless been extremely remorseful and sold the dog within the week at a very good profit.

‘Sorry, Roddy,’ she murmured, and her brother gave her a friendly squeeze.

Alice, mortified but relieved, asked Roddy several more questions about the Towers, but conversation became difficult because the maid came to take the tea away, which meant several journeys, and at each opening of the door dogs burst in like long lost relations, or were cajoled, kicked, and cuffed out into the hall again. Roddy then said that he must go back to the office, and offered to see Alice home.

‘Will it be very grand, do you think?’ asked Alice as they went down the High Street.

‘I shouldn’t think so,’ said Roddy cheerfully. ‘One party’s much like another. I’ll tell you what, though,’ he added hopefully, ‘there may be a few good bust-ups. Lord Pomfret hates that Mrs. Rivers he was talking about like hell, and her son and daughter are coming too. I met them once. The daughter’s all right, she acts or something, but the son’s a stinker. He’s an artist,’ said Roddy with fine contempt.

‘Don’t you like artists?’ said Alice, rather dashed.

‘I don’t mean you, you’re all right,’ said Roddy, ‘and anyway you don’t go about looking like a scarecrow, or a haystack, and you don’t expect one to look at your stuff. Julian Rivers is one of those stuck-up blokes. I mean he needn’t be an artist—they’re all quite well off and he could easily do some decent job, but he goes and lives in a studio and makes a song about it. Oh, and I believe the heir is coming.’

‘Who?’ asked Alice, not quite sure whether she ought to say which or what.

‘The heir. You know, the man who will succeed Lord Pomfret. At least not him, because Lord Pomfret won’t have him, but his son. I must say it must be jolly hard to see your place go to someone you don’t like.’

‘But Lord Pomfret won’t actually see it go, will he?’ asked Alice. ‘I mean he’ll be dead when it does.’

‘You never know what they’ll see,’ said Roddy, to propitiate any Unseen Powers that might be about.

‘Perhaps he wouldn’t care by then,’ said Alice hopefully.

‘I bet he’d care, wherever he was,’ said Roddy. ‘But anyway this man is coming and I suppose Mrs. Rivers will make a set at him for her girl. I think I ought to write him an anonymous letter and warn him. Are you sure Chloe didn’t frighten you?’

‘Oh no, I like her very much,’ said Alice politely, ‘if only she wouldn’t breathe.’

‘Well, if she breathes again I’ll jolly well tie her up,’ said Roddy, pushing the wrought iron gate of Mellings open for Alice. ‘Good night. I must hare down to the office. We’ve no end to do before Friday.’

Thursday passed with nightmare swiftness as far as Alice was concerned. She lay awake most of Thursday night imagining all the horrible things that might happen, such as forgetting to take a toothbrush, packing the stockings that had been darned instead of her best ones, whether to put the tip into the housemaid’s hand and say ‘Thank you’ or leave it on the dressing-table, and worst of all the probability, nay the certainty, that she would have to talk to the people next to her at dinner. She had a faint hope that on Friday morning she might see in the Times that Pomfret Towers had been burnt down the night before, though such an interesting piece of news would certainly have reached Mellings by the milk or the odd man long before the paper arrived, or that Lord Pomfret would ring up to say that Lady Pomfret had gone back to Italy and the party had been cancelled, or that by inconceivable good luck she herself might suddenly have a temperature or spots. None of these things happened. She and Guy were to arrive at the Towers in time for dinner, picking up the Wicklows on the way, so after tea she finished her packing in a kind of stupor, unpacked most of it to see if her golden shoes were really there, and packed it again, not quite so well. She looked at the tear-off calendar that hung over her writing-table and wondered if it would be tempting Providence to tear off to-day, Saturday and Sunday, so that Monday would seem nearer, but the risk of Providence’s taking offence and protracting the week-end indefinitely seemed too great. There was nothing else to be done, so she went downstairs to wait for the car. Her mother called her into the drawing-room, gazed piercingly at her and said she looked very nice. She then gave her a parcel which Alice was not to open till she was dressing for dinner.

‘Something to cheer you up, darling,’ said Mrs. Barton.

Alice was very grateful and hugged her mother, feeling secretly that a good breakfast before one was hanged wasn’t really of much use.

Then Mr. Barton came in, asking where Guy was. Horton was sent to look for Mr. Guy in his room, and meanwhile Guy came into the drawing-room by the other door from his father’s study, where he had been helping himself to some cigarettes and stamps, and everything was confusion. When Horton had been reclaimed, showing well-bred umbrage at his vain errand, Mr. Barton had forgotten what he wanted Guy for.

‘You can ring up if it’s anything important, Walter,’ said Mrs. Barton. ‘And Guy, darling, please ask Lord Pomfret if he can lend me that book by his Italian cousin. He’ll know the one I mean. It was privately printed and I can’t remember the name, but tell him it’s about Ferrara and he’ll know the one I mean, because it’s very rare and I think he’s got the only copy in England. He doesn’t like lending books as a rule, but tell him I’ll be very careful with it, and ask for a piece of brown paper to put round it.’

‘I say, mother,’ said Guy, appalled at the prospect of having to face Lord Pomfret with this vague and probably unwelcome request, ‘couldn’t you write to Lord Pomfret? I mean I daresay I shan’t be seeing him much. It’s rather a big party.’

‘Do as your mother asks, my boy,’ said Mr. Barton, laying his hand on Guy’s arm.

Guy could willingly have killed both his parents on the spot, though he would have regretted it afterwards, but Horton, still registering umbrage, said the car was at the door and the luggage in, so they all said good-bye. Alice clung to her mother with the tenacity of a drowning man. Mrs. Barton, giving her an extra hug, unhooked her kindly and pushed her into the hall. Hardly had the car started, when Horton came running after them. Carter, the chauffeur, stopped.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Guy, putting down the window.

‘Mr. Barton wishes to speak to you, sir,’ said Horton.

Guy got out and went back to the front door.

‘Do you want me, father?’ he said.

‘It’s all right,’ said Mr. Barton. ‘I only wanted to say I thought I’d remembered what I wanted to say, but it’s gone again. You’d better hurry, or you’ll be late.’

Guy, amused and annoyed, ran back to the car and told Carter to go on. Horton went back to the house and relieved his feelings by treating his master for the rest of the evening with a supercilious contempt which no one took for anything but his usual manner.

When Guy and Alice got to the Wicklows’ house the young Wicklows were ready. Sally got in, followed by Roddy, and before Carter could shut the door, a wild yelp from the house was followed by the fox terrier, who hurled himself like a catapult into the car and stood barking at Carter, as a social inferior.

‘Naughty Chips,’ said Sally. ‘Isn’t he a clever boy to know where mother is?’

‘Instink, miss,’ said Carter. ‘He saw you getting into the car, miss, and came after you.’

‘Well, now he can go back,’ said Roddy. ‘Here, Carter, take him in, will you.’

‘Oh, Roddy, you can’t send him back,’ said Sally. ‘Look, he’s asking to come.’

As Chips was still barking furiously at Carter, his meaning was not so clear to others as it was to his mistress. Roddy, taking no notice of his sister’s plea, hauled Chips by the collar out of the car, carried him up the path, opened the front door and pushed him inside. For the rest of the journey Sally and her brother argued in a friendly way about dogs in cars, with Guy dropping in an argument on either side as it amused him. Half an hour later the car drove up the immense ramp in front of the Towers (for even to this detail had Scott’s masterpiece been imitated) and stopped under the portico. Guy, Sally and Roddy, still arguing loudly, got out, followed by Alice clutching her mother’s parcel. Carter whirled away and left them to their fate.

‘Sally,’ said Alice suddenly, while the men were giving their hats and coats to the footman, ‘Carter’s gone away with the luggage! What shall we do!’

‘What’s that?’ said Roddy. ‘The luggage? He’s taken it round to the service entrance. Come on.’

‘That’ll be all right, miss,’ said the footman, who was young and not yet trained to frighten guests. ‘He’s taken it round to the service door. You’ll find it in your room all right, miss.’

‘Oh, thank you so much,’ said Alice, who would willingly have given him ten shillings for the relief. The young footman stood aside for the butler, who, waiting with lofty patience at the inner door, had evidently heard the whole conversation. Alice looked round and felt rather than saw that Guy was ashamed of her. Roddy and Sally were taking it as a joke, but Guy evidently felt that she had let him down before the butler at the very outset of their visit. There was no time for explanations. The butler was moving before them in the direction of the drawing-room, and Alice followed with the rest. At the door the butler paused.

‘Miss Wicklow and Mr. Rodney Wicklow, I think, miss,’ he said, ‘and Miss Barton and Mr. Guy Barton. And shall I take your parcel, miss?’

Alice was too terrified to say anything but yes. The butler took her parcel, which she was immediately convinced she would never see again, and announced the whole party.

In the large yellow drawing-room about twenty people of various ages and sexes were talking, playing games, embroidering, reading, or otherwise occupying themselves. To Alice there appeared to be at least a hundred, all very noble, rich, smart, and scornful, but she was in no state to judge properly. At the butler’s announcement a few heads had been turned in the direction of the newcomers, but as no one seemed to know them the conversations had been resumed, and the little party stood marooned. At least there was safety in numbers, and though Alice knew in her bones that it was she who was the chief object of the other guests’ scorn and mockery, she could hide behind her brother and her friends. Suddenly Guy, seeing a girl of his acquaintance, daughter of a neighbouring archdeacon, among the very noisy players at a game of puff-ball, went over to her group, where he was immediately welcomed and absorbed. Roddy and Sally had also seen young friends among the party and tried to take Alice with them, but her shyness had by now so completely overpowered her that she could hardly walk. Just then a miracle happened. The very smartest, most exquisitely dressed girl Alice had ever seen, detached herself from the noisiest group of talkers and came strolling towards the new arrivals. She was tall and dark, with perfectly waved hair and scarlet finger nails. She was wearing the kind of frock technically known as ‘little,’ a name which bears no relation to its price, and had the most elegant legs, the thinnest stockings, and the highest heeled shoes imaginable. Removing a long cigarette holder from her mouth she said in a very attractive deep voice, ‘You must be Alice. How do you do. I’m Phoebe.’

‘Yes I am, thank you very much,’ said Alice, hardly able to believe her ears. Like the ugly duckling she had bowed her head to await a well-deserved death at those carmined hands, and now the glittering stranger was actually being kind.

‘And these are the Wicklows, aren’t they?’ said the girl, waving her cigarette towards Roddy and Sally with a self-possession for a hundredth part of which Alice would have given her soul. ‘I expect they know heaps of people. I’ve been waiting for you. You’d like to see your room, wouldn’t you?’

Taking no further notice of the Wicklows, she led Alice across the great hall, up a very wide staircase of terrifying slipperiness. At the top of the stairs was a wide landing from which one could look down into the hall, round which a corridor ran with bedrooms on one side and Gothic windows on to the hall on the other. Alice’s guide turned to her right and went down a short passage, at the end of which Alice could see a bright fire burning through the open door.

‘Here you are,’ said the girl, switching on the light. ‘They were putting you in the Pink Room, but I thought you’d like this better. I’m next door, and there’s a door through to my room but I’m not sure if it works. You never know here. Either you can’t bolt your enemies out, or you can’t let your friends in. Oh, that one’s all right,’ she went on, opening it. ‘I remember now. Last time I was here I was in your room, and I couldn’t bolt the door when I was having a bath and Micky came poking in from next door, and I threw a sponge at him, and he was dressed for dinner and was only looking round out of curiosity, and the sponge hit him bang in the chest, and it was the last night and he hadn’t a clean shirt, so he had to borrow one of Julian’s and it was much too big for him. Shall I help you to unpack? Blast them, they’ve not brought your luggage yet. I’ll ring.’

She seated herself on the wide fender, put her finger on the bell push and kept it there, while Alice, too shy to make any inquiries, stood fiddling with the two pens with clean nibs, the quill, and the newly-sharpened pencil that lay in a lacquer tray on the writing-table. A large card headed by an engraving of the Towers caught her eye. She picked it up and found it informed visitors of the hours of meals and posts. Below this were the words,

‘Visitors are requested not to ring for their servants between the hours of twelve and one, or six and seven.’

‘Did you see this?’ said Alice, showing it to her new friend.

‘Like their cheek,’ said the girl, glancing at it. ‘It’s some mouldy idea of old Lord Pomfret’s. He was a vegetarian or a philanderer or something and that’s how it took him.’

Alice, guessing that philanthropist or humanitarian were probably the words in her new friend’s mind, asked if it was out of kindness for servants.

‘Exhibitionism,’ said the girl, still keeping her finger on the bell. ‘So that everyone would know how noble he was. Anyway the servants all lived in the kitchen wing then and never heard the bells, and the bells usually didn’t work because they were that old kind like telegraph wires, and they had to go round about a hundred corners and usually broke or got stuck. This one seems to have passed out. I’ll have to shout.’

Followed by Alice, who was afraid of losing sight for a moment of such a valiant if peculiar ally, the girl went down yet another passage to the head of a stone backstair, where, leaning over the iron railing, she shouted ‘Hoy!’ several times at the top of her voice. Steps were presently heard, and an underling in a kind of porter’s waistcoat with sleeves came up the stairs carrying Alice’s suitcases, which he put down just inside the room.

‘You told me to look out for these, Miss Phoebe,’ said the underling grinning.

‘That’s right, Finch,’ said the girl approvingly. ‘Is that all your stuff?’

Alice said it was and thanked the underling, who grinned again and vanished.

‘Now’ll we unpack,’ said Alice’s mentor, shutting the door. ‘Wheeler will do your frocks and things. I’ll send her in to you as soon as she comes up, but you’d better do your own little bottles and whatnots because she has a mania for hiding small things. And whatever you do, don’t let her get at your belts and scarves, or you’ll never see them again.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Alice. ‘It’s most awfully kind of you.’

‘Not at all,’ said the girl. ‘Uncle Giles asked me to. He said you were shy, and I know how ghastly it is when you don’t know anyone.’

‘Do you mean Lord Pomfret?’ asked Alice, hardly able to believe what she heard.

‘That’s the one. Oh, I suppose you don’t know who I am. I’m Phoebe Rivers. My father is a kind of cousin of Lord Pomfret’s and my mother is Hermione Rivers that writes books. Father always lives in Herefordshire and won’t come up to London or anything, and when you see mother you won’t blame him. I say, do you mind if I use your bath? Otherwise I have to walk about a mile, and it’s no fun fighting the men for the bathroom after your first season.’

Seeing that Alice looked puzzled, Miss Rivers pulled aside a large screen in the far corner of the room. Behind it was a gigantic bath raised several steps above the ground. Alice remembered what Roddy had said about some of the rooms having baths in them, and could not be sufficiently grateful to her new friend, who had arranged things so well for her.

‘Yes, please do use my bath,’ she said. ‘I am so glad it’s here. I’d rather do without than have to walk a mile and fight people. Would you like it now?’

‘Well, I will if you don’t mind,’ said Miss Rivers, turning the taps on and pulling her frock over her head. ‘I hear Wheeler in my room,’ she continued in a muffled voice, ‘I’ll send her in.’

She kicked her shoes before her into the next room and disappeared to talk to Wheeler, who turned out to be not, as Alice had feared, a proud ladies’ maid, but a pleasant housemaid, who did the rest of the unpacking swiftly and efficiently.

‘And what will you wear to-night, miss?’ she asked Alice, as Phoebe came back in a ravishing apricot-coloured Shetland dressing-gown.

‘Hi, Wheeler, let’s look,’ said Phoebe. ‘What’s she got? Red, white, black. Red’s your colour, so we’ll have that to-morrow. White to-night, and black on Sunday.’

‘Yes, miss,’ said Wheeler.

Miss Rivers then plunged into her bath and from behind the screen shouted instructions to Wheeler about her own clothes. In a very short time she was out again and Wheeler began to get the bath ready for Alice.

‘It’s most awfully kind of you,’ said Alice, as Phoebe ran an expert’s eye over the things that Wheeler had laid out.

‘That’s all right. Fellow-feeling, you know,’ said Phoebe, throwing the rest of her clothes into her own room.

‘Do you mean—?’ Alice began.

‘Lord, yes,’ said Miss Rivers. ‘I’m as frightened as you are.’

‘But—’ said Alice.

‘It’s all put on, camouflage, you know,’ said Phoebe. ‘When you’re on the stage you have to put on side a bit, or no one notices you. The servants here are old friends. Mother brings us here every year, whether Cousin Giles likes it or not, so Wheeler and Finch and Peters—that’s the butler—know me quite well.’

‘Do you really act?’ asked Alice.

‘Yes, I’ve appeared in several dirty Sunday night shows,’ said Phoebe, whose air of detachment hardly masked a bitterness. ‘Anyway it’s a way of getting away from mother. Hurry up and I’ll come and give you the once-over.’

She slammed the door and Alice got into her bath, hoping that she hadn’t offended her next-door neighbour, but on the whole much happier than she had ever hoped to be. Lord Pomfret had actually remembered her and asked Phoebe Rivers to take care of her. The luggage had not been lost. Miss Rivers had approved her evening dresses and perhaps she would have Roddy, or someone kind, next to her. The white frock and gold shoes would make her feel safe. She had remembered her gold belt and her gold bag and—And then she was struck to stone. She had given her mother’s parcel to the butler, and where was it? Her mother had said she was to open it when she was dressing to cheer her up, and the awful thing was she had been so excited and interested by Phoebe’s ways that she had forgotten that she needed cheering up. In fact, she had forgotten about her mother and a judgment had fallen upon her. She would probably never see the parcel again. How could she ever get it back from the butler? He would be far too busy pouring out champagne and handing cigars for her ever to approach him. It would have been kicked into some corner by now. How could she ever face her mother? These and other miserable thoughts passed through her mind as she swiftly dried herself and began dressing. As soon as she had on what she hoped Miss Rivers would think a suitable amount of clothes, she knocked at the door and went in.

‘Oh, Miss Rivers,’ she began, ‘a most awful thing has happened.’

Phoebe, all in glistening black, looking more elegant than ever, turned round.

‘That’s very nice,’ she said, eyeing Alice’s scanty garb, ‘but you’d better get a move on. Here, I’ll help you.’

She hustled Alice back into her own room and held up her white dress for her to slip into.

‘And now, what’s the trouble?’ she asked, lighting a cigarette. ‘And don’t say Miss Rivers.’

Alice explained the awful thing. Phoebe appeared to think very lightly of the misfortune. It was no good ringing now, she said, but she’d send someone to find it. Accordingly she went down the passage and banged on the next door but one. Alice, standing fearfully in the background, saw the door open a little way and a man’s voice said what was it.

‘Look here, Gillie,’ said Phoebe Rivers. ‘Miss Barton here has lost a parcel. Peters has got it somewhere. Be an angel and go and find it.’

‘I haven’t tied my tie,’ said a gentle voice.

‘I can see that,’ said Phoebe. ‘Go and get the parcel and bring it back. There’s plenty of time for your tie.’

As Phoebe’s envoy set out on his mission, Alice shrank back into her room, not wishing him to hate her, and so did not see what he was like. Phoebe returned and gave Alice a final inspection.

‘Anyone ever told you what nice teeth you’ve got?’ she asked.

Alice said they hadn’t.

‘I’ll make you up a bit to-morrow,’ said Phoebe, whose own eyebrows, cheeks, and lips were as much a work of art as her finger nails. ‘You won’t look bad at all in that red dress. It’s just as well it’s got a coat. You look a bit skinny in that white. I wish I had something to give you, but I haven’t. I’d give you this fur,’ she said, alluding to her own wrap, ‘but it’s the wrong colour. It would look filthy on your dress. You haven’t got a scarf or anything, have you?’

Alice said she hadn’t and felt rather dashed again, when a gentle knock was heard at the door and a hand with a parcel came round the corner.

‘Here it is,’ said the gentle voice of what must be Gillie.

‘O.K.,’ said Miss Rivers. ‘And now you can do your tie.’

The hand withdrew, and Alice fell upon the parcel. What was in it but a charming white rabbit-skin cape, lined with very soft apricot velvet.

‘That’s the spirit,’ said Miss Rivers approvingly. ‘Put it on. Now you look twice the man. Your mother knows what’s what. No rat’s tails dipped in ink to make it look like ermine. Now, my girl, you listen to me. No one’s going to look at you: but if they do they won’t think about you, because you look just right. Come on.’

Full of humble gratitude, Alice followed her benefactress downstairs to a smaller drawing-room, decorated with green brocade and hung with pictures bought by the sixth earl from contemporary artists. The furniture was in the highest style of Pre-Raphaelite discomfort; sofas apparently hewn from solid blocks of wood and armchairs suited to no known human frame, both with thin velvet cushions of extreme hardness. All was of the very best workmanship, and it was so obvious that the brocade on the walls, the velvet on the chairs, and the heavy olive green curtains that hid the windows would never wear out, that Lord Pomfret had long ago given up any idea of altering them. It was a room that Lady Pomfret particularly disliked, but as she had never had the energy to say this aloud, no one knew it.

Phoebe introduced Alice to four or five young men and women, and then left her, evidently considering that she had done enough for the time being. The young people looked incuriously at her, and went on with their own conversation, which was, Alice thought, very dashing but rather dull, being chiefly about the chances for Monday. What kind of chances they were, she didn’t know, so she tried to look interested and intelligent, succeeding so well that Guy, who had repented his unkindness, and meant to be specially nice to his sister, had a relapse, and talked very loudly with the archdeacon’s daughter, so that no one should suspect him of having a sister who wasn’t being a success.

‘Heard the latest?’ said one of the men. ‘They’re deepening the drain at Pomfret Madrigal. That means the Monday country will go to hell.’

‘They’ll flood Starveacres, just as they did in ’23,’ said a slightly older man with a brick red face. ‘Drowned half the vixens in the country.’

The rest of the group shook their heads and said according to their various sexes and mental capacities that it was a damned shame, or too sickening, or a bit over the odds. Gloomy silence then fell on everyone.

‘Didn’t they change the sluice at Starveacres Hatches last year?’ said Alice.

Though her voice was not loud, and she stammered slightly at finding herself talking alone, her announcement could not have caused a greater sensation. The man with the brick red face said, ‘Gad! you’re right, Miss Er,’ thus proving to Alice’s intense interest that people said Gad in real life, while the rest of the chorus said Of course they had heard it, or How stupid of them, or Gosh, fancy my forgetting that, or Damn good thing too. The waves of their conversation then flowed over Alice again, but she felt that she was one of them, even though she still didn’t know what the chances for Monday were, or could possibly be.

‘How did you know that?’ said a voice at her elbow, and turning she saw Roddy.

‘You told Lord Pomfret the other day when he came to tea,’ said Alice.

‘So I did,’ said Roddy, ‘but I didn’t think you noticed things like that.’

He smiled at her, not displeased that his words about Starveacres Hatches should have made such an impression.

‘Well, you see,’ said Alice, ‘I was so terrified that Lord Pomfret was going to say something about my coming for the week-end that I noticed everything. Do you think I’ll be next to you at dinner, Roddy?’

But at this moment Lord Pomfret came up, glared, shook hands, and without a word took her away, steering her uncomfortably by the upper part of her arm, while Roddy was left to the chastening reflection that Alice’s interest in Starveacres Hatches had been caused more by fear of Lord Pomfret than regard for himself.

‘Enjoying yourself, eh?’ said Lord Pomfret, continuing to push Alice through his guests. ‘Never mind. I want my wife to meet you. Hope she’s enjoying all this fuss. I’m not.’

Alice realised with a shock that she had quite forgotten her hostess’s existence and looked anxiously about for her. A tall woman, with fine eyes and a discontented, eager expression, stopped them. ‘Oh, there you are,’ she said to Lord Pomfret, taking no notice of Alice. ‘I want to speak to you.’

Alice felt sorry that Lady Pomfret was like this and thought she would have been rather older and perhaps kinder looking, but to her relief Lord Pomfret continued to urge his way through his guests, saying to the tall woman, ‘All right, all right, another time.’ Alice had an uncomfortable impression that the tall woman was looking with hatred at her back, but her rabbit cape protected her. At last Lord Pomfret got to the far end of the room and stopped before what was so obviously Lady Pomfret that no one could have thought she was anything else. She was wearing jewels and must once have been very lovely, though it was now a sad, declining beauty. A pleasant-faced woman was standing beside her, listening to what she said. Lord Pomfret waited until his wife had finished speaking and then introduced Alice to her.

‘She doesn’t quite know what to make of all this,’ said his lordship. ‘It’s her first party, Edith, so I want her to have a friend.’

Lady Pomfret smiled very kindly at Alice and gave her a thin hand covered with rings, saying that she had known her mother very well in Florence.

‘Dinner will be ready soon, I suppose,’ said Lord Pomfret. ‘Are we waiting for anyone?’

‘Only for Mr. Johns,’ said the pleasant-faced woman.

‘Hermione again,’ said his lordship angrily. ‘Why does she want to have that fellow down here? She’s after me about something or other, tried to buttonhole me just now.’

‘Mrs. Rivers wanted to sit next to Mr. Johns,’ said the pleasant-faced woman, ‘but Lady Pomfret had made a different arrangement and I’m afraid we can’t alter all the name cards now.’

‘Of course not,’ said Lord Pomfret. ‘Have your own guests where you want them, Edith. There’s Peters at last.’

The butler came up and announced dinner and Lady Pomfret rose, saying that they would go in as they were as it was an informal party. She then drifted off with some older women. Alice moved nervously after them, feeling that as the most insignificant and perhaps the youngest person there, she ought to go in after all the older women, yet terrified at the idea of getting mixed up with the men. The handsome, discontented woman whom she had by now discovered to be Mrs. Rivers, and therefore Phoebe’s mother, was also lingering behind, and Alice almost knocking into her apologised humbly and was told it didn’t matter in a way that annihilated her. Just then she was rescued by the pleasant-faced woman, who took her arm and led her in the wake of the other women towards the dining-room.

‘You are Miss Barton, aren’t you?’ said the pleasant-faced woman. ‘My name is Merriman; but everyone calls me Merry. I’m Lady Pomfret’s secretary. I hope you are comfortable in your room. Let me know if you aren’t.’

‘Oh yes,’ said Alice. ‘Miss Rivers—Phoebe—was very kind to me.’

‘Let’s see,’ said Miss Merriman, looking at a card she was holding; ‘you are between Mr. Rivers and Mr. Foster. Mr. Rivers is an artist; you know his mother and his sister. Mr. Foster is very nice. He is—’

But now they were all in the dining-room, and what with the guests all talking and the sight of a long table stretching away to infinity, covered with what looked to Alice like six thousand shining knives and forks and spoons, and more carnations in more silver vases than she had ever seen in her life, she was unable to concentrate on what Miss Merriman had said. A man smiled at her, which made her jib, but it turned out to be Mr. Hoare, the agent, whom she really knew quite well; Peters approached her saying, ‘At the far end on the left, miss,’ Phoebe gave her a kindly shove, and somehow she found herself sitting in her place with a card in front of her which bore her own name. She realised that a man was sitting on each side of her and then became unconscious, alternately hoping and fearing that she would wake up at Mellings.

She was brought to again by soup being placed in front of her in a silver plate. She had often heard and read of such things, but here it was, actually happening. She, Alice Barton, was sitting in Pomfret Towers, wearing a white rabbit cape, among hundreds of people who were evidently very interesting and important, about to eat soup from a silver plate. She looked for Guy and Roddy and Sally, thought she saw them far away, and decided that from this moment, deserted as she was by her brother and her friends, she must make a new life of her own. Accordingly she looked cautiously to her left. Her neighbour on this side was a very tall young man; if his legs were as tall as the rest of him he must be very tall indeed, though of course sometimes when people stood up it made them quite short again. All she could see of his face was a hawk-like profile and a mop of untidy, wavy black hair. By craning her neck she was able to see the name Mr. Rivers on the card. This was then the son of the terrifying Mrs. Rivers, the young man who was an artist, of whom Roddy had spoken in slighting terms as a stuck-up bloke. Alice’s whole being revolted against stuck-up blokes. On the other hand this Mr. Rivers was an artist, and Alice, struggling alone with her paints, had an admiration approaching awe for anyone who was a real artist and had exhibitions, and was disposed to make large allowances for genius. But if Mr. Rivers were going to look straight in front of him and say nothing, she would never know what he was really like.

‘Excuse me,’ said a voice on her right, very diffidently, ‘I think you dropped this,’ and a hand pushed her gold bag at her.

‘Oh, thank you so much,’ said Alice, taking the bag nervously. ‘It must have fallen off my lap.’

‘Yes, it must,’ agreed her neighbour, a fair, rather delicate-looking young man, who as he was not Mr. Rivers must be the unknown Mr. Foster. ‘They will starch the table napkins, and then everything falls off.’

‘Mother is always trying to make them put less starch in,’ said Alice, feeling on safe ground, but Mr. Foster seemed to have nothing more to say, so Alice, feeling that he was nearly as shy as she was, made an effort and asked him where he lived. He said he had a flat in London, but had lived abroad a good deal. Alice said her mother had lived abroad too, but that was a long time ago. Perhaps, said Mr. Foster, that was before he went abroad. Alice said she thought perhaps it was, and they both drank some water and crumbled some bread. This slight refection revived them to that extent that they both began to speak at once, both said they were sorry, and both forgot what they were going to say. By the time Alice had recovered her wits she was being handed vegetables, and when this was over Mr. Foster had been claimed by the guest on his other side, so she was again reduced to looking at Mr. Rivers’s profile and wondering what she could say to him. Mr. Rivers himself shortly saved her any further trouble by turning towards her and remarking that his sister had told him to look out for her.

‘You are Miss Barton, aren’t you?’ he asked, looking intently at her.

On hearing these remarkable words Alice at once fell in love. It had never happened to her before except with people like Charles I, or Sydney Carton, but she knew at once that it was the real thing. As Julian Rivers turned his face towards her, gazing with deep-set dark blue eyes into her very soul, his delicate mouth twitching, only that was not quite the right word, with sensitiveness, his black locks flung recklessly and very untidily above his marble brow, a romantically dark shade on his cheeks, upper lip and chin, because he had told his mother before dinner that he was hanged if he would shave twice a day to please anyone, as those staggering phenomena met her eyes, Alice felt that the culminating point of her whole visit had been reached in one blinding, searing moment. In that flash of ecstasy she suddenly knew what all poetry, all music, all sculpture, except things like winged Assyrian bulls, or the very broken pieces in the British Museum, meant.

‘Your sister was very kind to me,’ she said.

‘Oh, she’s all right,’ said Julian Rivers, adding, ‘I could make a picture of you, you know. I was looking at you in the drawing-room before dinner. Your face is all out of drawing, and I like that purple tint under your jawbone, and there’s a splendid green bit under your eyes. God! how I could put in your nose with my thumb. I must do it.’

He sketched a face in the air while he spoke, fingers lightly crooked, an expressive thumb modelling imaginary planes. From this Alice was able to deduce that his remark about her nose was not so much a personal threat as an artist’s manner of speech. She felt tremendously flattered by his kind words, and began to wonder what she really looked like. Guy sometimes called her walnut-face, and Sally had once told her as a compliment that she looked like a liver cocker spaniel to whom Sally was at the time much attached. Phoebe had just told her that she had nice teeth, but no one had ever told her that her face was green and purple and out of drawing, and she knew she had never been really understood before.

‘Do you mean paint me?’ she asked.

‘Paint!’ said Julian contemptuously, ‘I want to use you as the means of expression for an idea. Green Hell I might call it. I’d put your eyes on quite a different plane, to help the idea, and get some rose madder into the eyelids. We’ll get on well together.’

‘Would it take long?’ asked Alice, pleased at the thought of inspiring an artist, but wondering what her mother would say.

‘You can’t tell,’ said Julian, suddenly becoming sombre in a very marked way. ‘It might all come in half an hour, or it might take weeks, months, years. Did you ever know Bolikoff?’

Alice said she didn’t.

‘Practically no one does,’ said Julian. ‘He lives in Camden Town and never goes out. His art is entirely subjective. He had a model called Billie.’

Here he paused, partly for effect, partly to catch up with his food before someone took his plate away.

‘Was he a good model?’ Alice asked, fascinated by this story of Bohemia.

‘It wasn’t a he. Billie, I said. I believe she was wonderful. She did everything for Bolikoff, cooked, mended, went out as a model to earn money for him.’

‘But how did she have time to sit for him?’ said Alice.

‘She didn’t,’ said Julian. ‘She hadn’t time. But he spent years over a picture that was to represent her emotional effect upon him. Years.’

‘Was it good?’ asked Alice.

‘Oh, good!’ said Julian, rather impatiently. ‘Good and bad have nothing to do with it. It was a pure abstraction. He put a sewing machine in one of her eyes and a kidney in the other. Of course her eyes weren’t in her face, you understand, because he hardly ever looked at her and wasn’t sure what her eyes were like; in fact he didn’t want to know; he could get nearer the truth by intuition than by actual physical vision.’

‘Then what was her face like if her eyes weren’t in it?’ said Alice.

‘There wasn’t any face. I told you, it was only a representation of the emotional effect she had on him. But he painted a broken egg with a hand coming out of it. The hand had only three fingers, and the thumb was full of worms,’ said Julian in a voice of devout worship.

‘Did Billie mind?’ asked Alice, feeling that a portrait of herself on those lines would hardly give her acute pleasure.

‘She was dead, long before he had finished,’ said Julian. ‘It was just as well. She interfered with his mental concept of her. But it all shows you how impossible it is to say how long any picture will take. When shall we begin?’

‘Well, I’m only here till Monday,’ said Alice.

‘One couldn’t do anything here,’ said Julian. ‘The whole feeling is wrong, and mother would want to interfere. You don’t know what that means. Just because she has written some novels she thinks she can understand me. Understand!’ and Julian laughed mirthlessly.

Alice said she knew Mrs. Rivers’s books were very good, but she hadn’t read any of them.

‘I read her first novel,’ said Julian. ‘One had to. It’s about a middle-aged woman who goes on a cruise to Norway and has a terrific comeback with a young professor. Wish fulfilment, of course. And there was a lot about fiords and salmon fishing. Where she gets her ideas from I can’t think. I couldn’t read any of the others. And she writes funny things about her friends and gets their backs up. You don’t know what it is to have a literary mother. Literary!’

‘But I do,’ said Alice, roused in defence of her mother. ‘My mother writes books. But she never interferes at all. She and daddy let me have a studio of my own, and they are very sweet about always waiting to be asked before they come up.’

‘Oh, have you a studio?’ said Julian. ‘Then I’ll come and start work next week. Say on Tuesday.’

Alice hardly knew whether to be relieved or hurt that he took not the faintest interest in the fact that she painted. She said it would be very nice, but she must ask her mother if it would be all right. Her attention was then distracted by the difficulty of cutting some grapes from the bunch that was being handed to her. The gold grape scissors twisted and mangled the stalk, but cut they would not. Alice, too shy to give up the task she had begun, uneasily conscious that she was holding up the traffic of the table, was almost in tears, when Mr. Foster’s gentle voice said to the footman,

‘Bring the grapes to me, please. I’ll cut them.’

The footman withdrew the dish from the thankful Miss Barton and handed it to Mr. Foster, who pulled a little cluster from the bunch and told the footman to hand it again.

‘Thank you very much,’ said Alice, when the grapes were safely on her plate. ‘Those scissors are so very lovely, but they don’t cut at all.’

‘I was so sorry for you,’ said Mr. Foster. ‘Those gold scissors never cut, and I saw Julian couldn’t help you. The footman was between you and he couldn’t see what was happening. I hope I didn’t interrupt your talk.’

‘Oh no,’ said Alice. ‘Do you know Mr. Rivers much?’

‘Fairly well,’ said Mr. Foster. ‘His father’s a kind of relation of mine. He has a place in Herefordshire and never goes anywhere. I suppose you’ve read Julian’s mother’s books.’

Alice said she hadn’t and were they nice.

‘Quite nice I should think,’ said Mr. Foster, ‘but I’ve only read one. It was about a woman who had a husband and family but she thought they didn’t understand her, so she went with a travelling party to Northern Africa and had a very motherly affair with a young Moor who had a French mother. Of course it all came right in the end, and there was some very highbrow stuff about Roman ruins. I think she rather fancied herself as the heroine.’

‘Miss Rivers is very nice too, isn’t she?’ said Alice.

‘Yes, Phoebe is a splendid girl, but a bit of a bully,’ said Mr. Foster. ‘She came banging at my door before I had finished dressing just now, and made me go and find a parcel that one of the guests had lost. Of course I didn’t mind doing it a bit,’ he added hastily, ‘because I know how awful it is when you lose anything in a strange house, but she wouldn’t even let me wait to get my tie straight.’

As he finished speaking the ladies were already leaving the room, so Alice had no time to thank him for his chivalrous rescue of her rabbit cape. She had been sympathetically attracted by his diffident manner when he first spoke to her, and now she was full of admiration for his courage in speaking to a footman and his kindness in fetching a parcel for a stranger. Although Julian Rivers was undoubtedly her ideal man, she felt she would very much like to make friends with Mr. Foster.