Читать книгу The Constant Nymph - Margaret Kennedy Kennedy - Страница 9

In spite of Sanger’s contempt for England, the mothers of the children at the Karindehütte had all been British. Vera Brady, his first wife, had been the leading lady of a third-rate opera company of which he was chef d’orchestre. He was then quite a young man and remarkably unsuccessful. They had gone on tour in the Antipodes, were married at Honolulu, and knocked about the world together for a good many years. She was an excellent woman, with a fine voice and extreme powers of endurance; her devotion to Sanger kept her beside him through misfortune, hardship and neglect. Of her children none survived their precarious infancy save the two youngest. These were born during a period of comparative prosperity when Sanger, who had begun to attract attention, held for a short time a permanent post in a German town with a famous Conservatorium. Vera was able to quit the stage and set up the respectable household for which she had always craved. All her instincts were domestic and she was very happy for a time, bustling round her little flat and passing the time of day with congenial housewives at church and market. Caryl was born and she was able to rear him in peace and decency. She believed that her other children had died because she had been forced to work so hard in those nightmare years when she had nursed her babies hastily, in draughty dressing-rooms, awaiting her call. Caryl lived, and grew plump and strong, and was a comfort to her. This interlude was brief; new troubles soon gathered round her. Sanger’s infidelities had become almost a commonplace in their wandering life, but she had always been able to fly from gossip and at least she was sure that each episode must be brief. Once or twice he had run away from her, but he always came back. Now that she was planted in one town she could no longer ignore the scandalous legends which collected round his name. It was hinted to her that the place would soon be too hot to hold him, and though she persistently shut her eyes and ears she could not help knowing all about Miss Evelyn Churchill. The entire district was ringing with it.

This young lady was Sanger’s pupil. She had come from England to study music and report had it that she was of very good family. She was talented, beautiful, and Sanger’s junior by twenty years, but she had lost her head and her heart and she was advertising the fact in the high-handed way peculiar to women of breeding who are bent upon flying in the face of accepted convention. The affair became an open scandal and the Churchill family threatened to come to Germany and stop it. The young lady replied by going to Venice, taking Sanger with her.

Poor Vera, brooding in the little home where she had expected to be so happy, began to decide that life was altogether too hard for her. She was not proof against this last blow. Sanger’s women were not, usually, of a calibre to occupy him for long, but Miss Churchill was a rival of a different order. She was exceptionally intelligent, her health and beauty were not impaired by long years of hardship, and she loved him to distraction. With such a mistress he had no further need for Vera, and the thought broke a heart which should by rights have cracked some fifteen years before.

Yet he did come back, upon the day that Kate was born. He had left a number of manuscripts in his wife’s keeping and wanted to collect them from her. She told him, not unkindly, that she was dying, and it soon became clear that she spoke the truth. Her constitution had been undermined by past privations; she had made up her mind, fatally, that she should not survive the birth of her baby. She spoke of Evelyn without rancour.

‘That young lady,’ she said, ‘will you marry her when I’m gone?’

Sanger, looking rather foolish, said he did not know.

‘Well, then don’t, Albert,’ whispered Vera. ‘Promise me that you won’t now!’

‘All right,’ he said agreeably.

‘I’ve never known you keep a promise yet,’ the tired voice toiled on, ‘but I’m glad to hear you say it. Not that she wouldn’t be good to my babies; I feel somehow that she would, which is more than I’d say of many women. But she’s no wife for you, Albert She’s been bred soft, poor thing! And I don’t wish her harm. I forgive her. I’d be sorry to think she should come to any harm. Mind you’re not to marry her, Albert.’

The good creature died and Albert immediately broke his promise. He married Miss Churchill in a very few weeks in consequence of a certain pressure from her brothers, who had come out to put an end to the affair and who stayed to pay Sanger’s debts and hurry up the wedding.

Evelyn, whose chief merit was a kind of reckless generosity, readily undertook the charge of Caryl and Kate and continued to love them when her own children came. She was indeed heard to regret that she could not pass off Antonia and Kate as twins; the six months which divided them made it just not possible, and strangers asked so many questions and were so stupidly slow in grasping things, that it would have been convenient. This was how she faced life in those early days – meeting her problems with an audacious levity. Sanger had lost his work, but they had not yet got through all her money.

In the course of time she stopped making jokes. Her lot was the harder because she had been, as Vera put it, bred soft. But she met odds with an uncomplaining courage and always recognised that she had only herself to blame for the dishonour, poverty and pain which were her fate. In a multitude of disasters she revealed a constant fortitude, and to the end, though a little battered by ill-fortune, she never quite lost the carriage of a gentlewoman. After bearing four children in six years she contracted heart disease and died rather suddenly upon the eve of her thirtieth birthday.

The household entered thereafter upon a period of storms and changes until Sanger fell in with Linda, who looked like a permanency. She had the strength of mind to ignore completely her six step-children, and for Caryl she even entertained a vague sort of affection. He had grown up into a handsome boy, very like his mother and sister in temper and complexion. His disposition was excellent; from an early age he managed all his father’s business and financial affairs, kept him out of debt as far as possible, and transcribed his manuscripts. In his rare intervals of leisure he wrote music on his own account, but very little attention was paid by the family to his career. He and Kate propped up the crazy household between them and were privately agreed as to its dreadfulness. Linda was grateful to them and tolerated the others.

Lately, however, a new cause for disturbance had arisen. Linda had begun to feel aggrieved at the ripening beauty of Antonia and disliked having to go about with her. This eldest of Evelyn’s children was by far the most handsome; she was born before retribution had fully overtaken her mother, and did not look as delicate as the rest. She was full of a changeful colour and brilliance, though her bloom was but just beginning and she had still the colt-like movements, the long limbs and loose joints of a very young creature. To the experienced eye her promise was infinite. She had a lovely vivid little face, with strange greyish eyes, sulky brows and a white forehead. Her mouth was childish and unformed, but the long curve of cheek and chin, the tilt of the nostrils, and the smooth modelling of the temples revealed a finely constructed skull, a beauty which was bone deep and which would survive the loss of youth. In character she also resembled her mother: was unbalanced, proud and at times impossibly generous. But she lacked Evelyn’s courage and was reckless rather than intrepid. She could only take a risk by deceiving herself as to its issue, and confronted by a reality she always went to pieces. She cried when she could not get what she wanted, boasted when she was frightened, and was, like her sisters, a deplorable little slattern.

She turned up at the Karindehütte on the afternoon of Trigorin’s arrival in a very uncertain state of mind, having been absent for a week. Unsure of the attitude of her family, she would not go in by the veranda for fear of meeting Linda. She slipped round to the back of the house and climbed through a window into the music-room, where she found Teresa and Paulina sitting on the dais step and devouring cherries. Immediately she put on a kind of defensive swagger and strolled carelessly across the room as though she had never been away at all. Her sisters opened their eyes very wide indeed and asked where she had been.

To give herself time she sat down beside them, snatched a handful of cherries from the basket, and stuffed them into her mouth. Then she mumbled.

‘Oh … in München.’

‘München,’ cried the others. ‘Who on earth did you stay with?’

She spat out her stones and would not answer; but, when they asked incredulously whether it was Ikey Mo, she nodded.

‘Himmel!’ gasped Teresa and Paulina together.

They referred to a young man, a friend of Sanger’s, whose real name was Jacob Birnbaum, but whom they had christened Ikey Mo on account of his nose and his shin bones. To this nickname he had not submitted with the best grace in the world. He was, for reasons of his own, naturalised a British subject; he dressed like an American, and talked four languages correctly but without much command of idiom. He belonged to an immensely rich family and had no regular profession, though he dabbled a good deal in finance. The reigning interest in his life was music; he sometimes acted as a sort of entrepreneur in the arts, financing genius if he thought it would repay him. It nearly always did, for his admirable taste was supplemented by the sharp, forcible intelligence of his race.

His connection with Sanger, however, had brought him no financial profit; he had even lost money over his friend’s productions and he was quite content to do so. For he had his ideals. He almost worshipped Sanger; regarded him as the greatest musician of the century – as one of those magnificent, unique figures which do not inspire every generation.

In appearance he was not pretty, being short, fair and very stout. But he had benevolent little eyes, and a fine, thoughtful forehead. The Sanger children knew him very well, for he had a flat in Munich and often came up to the Karindehütte. Also he had spent part of the Spring with them in Italy, giving Sanger advice about some copyrights. Teresa, casting her mind back, remembered that he had looked a good deal at Antonia as he sat entertaining Linda in their Genoese garden.

Paulina was asking:

‘Did you have a good time?’

‘O—oh, yes! A lovely time! Anything I said I wanted, Ike got it for me at once. He just gave me anything I asked for. We used to go along the street and look at all the shops, and if we came to a flower shop he took me in and ordered all I wanted. And once in a sweet shop there was a basket in the window, all made of chocolate with marzipan fruits and gold ribbons; and I said I’d like that. And he said all right, and got it. And then, just to have him on, I said I wanted an enormous wedding cake in three tiers. But he said: “Oh, if you want it you can have it. It will be very …” ’

She broke off and bit her lip.

‘Did you bring any sweets back with you, Tony?’ asked Paulina eagerly.

‘Little greedy! No! I ate so many I got sick. So I gave them all to some children in the cellars. But Ike would have given me more if I’d wanted. He’d have given me anything. And we had lovely meals; sometimes in restaurants and sometimes sent in. Last night we had a vol-au-vent, and asparagus, and lobsters and an iced bomb and peaches, and Ike had a saddle of mutton as well. And we had champagne. I was drunk every night.’

‘Well, I don’t wonder he’s so fat if he eats all that,’ jeered Teresa.

‘That’s what I told him. I used to say, very loudly, in restaurants and places, “Now I know why you are so fat.” And all the people laughed. I said it in every language I knew. He got quite annoyed. He doesn’t like jokes about his figure.’

‘I wonder he kept you then,’ said Paulina.

‘Well, I said to him: “If you don’t like what I say I’ll go home. I can go this minute if I want to. Nobody can stop me.” So of course he had to put up with it.’

‘Did he give you that hat?’

Antonia wore the very ragged cotton gown in which she had left her home. But she had acquired a fine, flimsy town hat made of black lace with a wreath of gold flowers.

‘No,’ she said. ‘I bought it with my birthday money. Do you like it?’

‘It’s rather vulgar,’ said Teresa. ‘But it suits you.’

Antonia took it off and pinched the tawdry flowers lovingly. Her sisters exclaimed in excitement:

‘Why, you’ve got your hair up!’

‘Yes,’ she said carelessly. ‘Ike said I’d better.’

She had drawn it all off her forehead and pinned it at the back of her head. It was a style which revealed the subtle shadows and curves of brow and temple, giving her an appearance of character and intellect which the low-brimmed hat had destroyed. The calm, youthful beauty of her forehead contrasted strangely with the evasive defiance of her eyes, heavy with the weariness of a week’s frantic dissipation. She sat for a while making nervous grimaces, and then announced:

‘We went to the opera every night.’

‘Oh! Was it tolerable?’ asked Teresa, with very fair imitation of Lewis in his least agreeable manner.

‘Of course it was. It was very beautiful music. Only Ike has strange tastes. Just fancy! He likes Wagner! I told him that we don’t. I said that all savage races like loud noises.’

She paused to laugh heartily at this jibe, and Paulina asked in a puzzled voice:

‘But what did he have you there for if you were so rude? I don’t understand. What did he get out of it?’

‘You’d never take him for a lover,’ cried Teresa; then, catching sight of her sister’s face: ‘Oh, Tony! You didn’t!’

‘Yes I did,’ said Antonia, adding hastily: ‘Do you know he says I’ve the loveliest voice he’s ever heard in his life! He says I’m miles better than Kate; he says I’ve got more temperament than Kate and my interpretations are more sympathetic. So that’s one for Kate isn’t it? Always stodging away! She’ll never do anything very much I expect.’

‘He was just making fun of you,’ said Teresa. ‘Or else he’s as mad as you are. Because no sane man, even if he was your lover, could think that you sing better than Kate. But I wonder at your taste, Tony. He’s so fat!’

‘Why shouldn’t he be? There isn’t any law that the first lover anybody takes has to be thin is there?’

‘N—no,’ said Teresa with a rare blush. ‘You know you’ll have a terrible time with Sanger. He said he’d beat you when you came back; and I don’t know what he’ll say when he hears what you’ve done. What will you tell him?’

‘Nothing, or Linda either. I don’t think he’ll ask. He never asks questions unless he’s sure he’s going to like the answer.’

This was true and the little girls nodded. She went on:

‘I expect it will be all right. Ike came back with me, you know. He’s up with Sanger now, and he brought him some cognac for a present. That ought to put him in a good temper. I advised him to bring it and he said it was a good idea, but he was still afraid that Caryl might call him out. So I said: “Caryl never does silly things and that would be silly. Because if he started fighting over us his life wouldn’t be worth a sick headache by the time Soo-zanne’s grown up.” And Ike said that was probably true. I told him I didn’t wonder he was frightened, for he’d make a splendid target. And Caryl’s a good shot. If he fought anybody he’d kill them, I think. I shouldn’t like poor little Ike to be killed. But I don’t see why Caryl should mind, do you? It isn’t as if I was likely to have a baby or anything.’

They rather resented the swagger with which she made this assertion and Teresa said crushingly:

‘Did you walk all about Müchen with that enormous hole in your stocking? I wonder Ike put up with it!’

Antonia turned over her little foot and looked at it. Most of her pink heel stuck out of her stocking. She said instantly:

‘Ike gave me stockings. He gave me twelve pairs, all silk and all different colours.’

‘Fancy taking clothes from him!’

‘I didn’t. I threw them out of the window. I asked him what he took me for. And they all got caught in the telegraph wires, and the people in the street looked so surprised. It was windy, you know, and they waved about like little flags. I laughed till I nearly fell out of the window myself.’

‘Liar!’

‘I did. It’s true. I said to Ike: “If I have a hole in my stocking, what’s that to you? My clothes are my own affair, I should hope. If I’m not grand enough for you to take me out, leave me alone and I’ll go home.” And he said I could throw them out of the window if I liked. So I threw them. And he said he didn’t mind. He said he wouldn’t mind if I threw all my clothes out of the window. He said …’

She pulled herself up with a little gasp as if she had again stumbled upon a recollection which terrified her. But she went on, boastfully elaborating the details of her escapade, and heaping insults upon Birnbaum as though by abuse she could revenge the humiliations of her surrender. She seemed to be bent upon representing him in as ridiculous a light as possible, and Lewis, who joined them in time to hear some of her most highly coloured sallies, was struck by their apt cruelty – at the edge which this episode seemed to have put upon her somewhat primitive wit. He sat on the piano stool, applauding her waggery and encouraging her to fresh efforts until something in her desperate spirits made him uneasy. He observed her more closely, got a glimpse of the disaster in her eyes, and laughed no more; turning round abruptly he began to play the piano and ended the conversation. The girls, immediately silent, listened to him with the grave attention which his music merited. He played sitting very stiff and upright, staring thoughtfully at the notes with a faint, preoccupied smile. The immobility of his body seemed to contribute somehow to the violent activity of his hands as he flung them about the keyboard. He had charged into the last movement in the Appassionata, and for some minutes the room was full of its resistless, onward sweep. Then he broke off, commanding Paulina, with some irritation, not to breathe down his neck.

‘Finish it, Lewis,’ cried Antonia. ‘Play the Presto bit.’

‘I can’t play that piece,’ he demurred. ‘It’s too difficult.’

‘Oh, Lewis! How can you? I’ve often heard you.’

‘Well,’ said Teresa maliciously, ‘I must say I’ve heard it better done.’

He spun round on the music stool as if somebody had stuck a pin into him, and looked at her. She gave him such an innocent little grin that he could not help laughing. He said that they had better lose no time in rehearsing ‘Breakfast with the Borgias’ now that Antonia was back, and went off to fetch it. Paulina said:

‘He didn’t like you saying that you’d heard the Appassionata better done, Tessa.’

‘Well, he shouldn’t have said it was too difficult for him in that silly voice. It was just to show off. I can’t help teasing him when he asks for it like that.’

‘I wish,’ said Antonia with a shiver, ‘that he wouldn’t look at a person as if he saw all in one second everything that had ever happened to them.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ stated Teresa. ‘He only thinks of his own concerns. The other things he hastily forgets, so they shan’t get on his mind.’

Lewis reappeared with the score, which he propped up on the piano, saying:

‘Now I propose to play over the tunes to you until you know them and you can supply your own words. Who will be Cesare Borgia? He’s a tenor.’

‘Roberto,’ said Paulina. ‘He’s got the best voice here.’

‘And Ikey Mo must be Pope,’ broke in Antonia. ‘It will suit him so very well.’

‘Oh! He’s here is he?’ asked Lewis.

‘Upstairs with Sanger.’

‘Good! He can double the parts of Pope and Friar. They don’t come on together. Then the flea trainer … what’s his name … Linda’s follower … Trigorin … he can be the servant, Scaramello. It’ll be just the part for him. He has a good deal of business with a poisoned tooth-pick. Just fetch him, Tessa! You’ll find him, I expect, on the veranda. And you, Lina, produce Roberto for me.’

Teresa ran out and found Trigorin engaged in desultory conversation with Linda. He was looking a trifle crestfallen and uneasy; he had been disappointed not to see Sanger at lunch. Lewis and Kate had discussed ‘The Mountains’ across him, without taking any notice of his attempts to join in. Their conversation reminded him of all his joyful anticipations as he drove up the valley and roused him from the brief delirium occasioned by Linda’s blue eyes. He had not climbed this heavy hill merely to make himself agreeable to a fine woman. She would be very well anywhere else, but here she was not seemly, and to become entangled with her would be to profane the dreams which he had woven about this visit. She found him much less promising after lunch.

He jumped up with alacrity when he heard that Lewis wanted him and followed Teresa as she skipped back into the house. He was radiantly at their service, but his face fell when he heard that they wanted him to sing.

‘It is impossible,’ he exclaimed. ‘I cannot sing.’

‘Everybody has got to,’ said Lewis. ‘You needn’t be a Caruso. No! None of your modesty! Here, sing this!’

He played the opening bars of Scaramello’s song. Trigorin stood, fat and mute, spreading out hands of deprecation.

‘I cannot,’ he repeated.

‘Sing this then,’ commanded Lewis, playing the first bar.

Trigorin produced a voice so small and reedy that Teresa and Paulina rolled on the floor with laughter.

‘No, you’re quite right, you can’t sing,’ said Lewis crossly. ‘But who is to take the part then?’

‘I could play?’ suggested Trigorin diffidently. ‘Then you, perhaps, shall sing.’

‘Play? I doubt it. It’s all in pencil and vilely written at that. It would be sheer guess work.’

‘To me it will be clear,’ Trigorin assured him. ‘Often I must read such scores.’

And, sitting down, he began to play the little overture with great smoothness and spirit, interpreting the scrawls which stood for chords without much difficulty. Lewis listened impatiently and then said:

‘Yes, that’ll do. But don’t play it as if it was Chopin!’

Trigorin began to play much louder, as the only amendment he could think of. Teresa, who had been admiring the excited agility of his fat hands, put an arm round Lewis’s neck and drew his head close down to hers.

‘Lewis,’ she whispered, derisively confidential, ‘sometimes, you know, you talk … poppycock!’

He pulled her ears and called her something unrepeatable, but he went over to Trigorin and told him how much obliged they all were for his timely skill in playing for them. Trigorin beamed and played louder than ever.

‘Now,’ said Lewis. ‘I’ll be Scaramello. So we needn’t rehearse the opening song. Where’s Roberto?’

‘Please?’ said Roberto, who had been waiting politely by the door until called for.

He was a small, thin Italian, clad invariably in blue linen overalls. He had a brown, good-natured face, with a little beard and moustache. He was devoted to all the Sangers. He did the whole work of the house and undertook any odd job that turned up, darned Sanger’s socks, prepared Linda’s bath, and interviewed the Press. Sanger asserted that he had once acted as accoucheur when Sebastian arrived rather unexpectedly into the world, but this was so long ago as to be almost legend.

‘Listen, Roberto,’ said Lewis. ‘Can you act?’

‘Scusa!’

‘Which of you girls can talk Italian? Tony! You explain to him what he’s got to do. You, Trigorin, play him his tune. Get him along to Lucrezia’s entrance. It’s marked on the score, there. Where’s Kate? I want her. She must be Lucrezia.’

‘Oh, Lewis! Let me be!’ cried Antonia. ‘Kate can’t act.’

‘She can sing. I won’t have my music spoilt. No, Tony.’

He went to the door and shouted for Kate.

‘But she’ll ruin the part, Lewis.’

‘Not a bit of it.’

‘She can’t interpret. She’s got no temperament.’

‘All the better,’ said Lewis drily. ‘Temperament is like vinegar in a salad; a little goes a long way. I’d sooner have none than too much. Kate! Where are you?’

‘Oh, Lewis, do let me be. I can sing! I can really! Everybody says I’ve come on a lot.’

‘They may, Tony. I don’t say you sing badly. But Kate sings better.’

‘Oh, well then! I hope she’ll spoil your silly old play. Standing stuck in the middle of the stage looking like a sofa cushion like she always does. I never heard anything funnier in all my life than Kate trying to act Lucrezia Borgia.’

‘Birnbaum as Pope will be much funnier. No! Kate must be our diva. You must be her victim; a beautiful creature who is poisoned and dies writhing. You’ll like that won’t you? You can work off a temperamental contrast to Kate’s stolid villainy.’

‘Oh, well,’ said Antonia, somewhat mollified. ‘But what will Tessa and Lina be?’

‘Tessa must be the confidential waiting maid and Lina and Sebastian are to be pages. They’ve a duet.’

‘And what about Suzanne? Had you forgotten her? Oh, that doesn’t matter. We don’t want her.’

Lewis clapped a hand to his head in dismay and exclaimed:

‘If I hadn’t forgotten Soo-zanne. Will your father …’

‘Sanger won’t mind her being left out,’ Paulina assured him. ‘He nearly is sick when she sings and so are we.’

‘Very well. There isn’t time to alter it, anyhow. Kate!’

‘She cook supper,’ volunteered Roberto. ‘She say she come after or you get nothing to eat.’

‘What a plague! Well, I’ll take her later, and Caryl too. He is our heavy bass. We must do what we can now without them. Come, Tessa! You and I have a love scene together. If you’ll come down to the end of the room with me I’ll hum you the tune and we’ll concoct the words, while Trigorin coaches Roberto.’

They went and sat in a distant window, composing their libretto with a good deal of hilarity. She supplied the rhymes, while he attended to the metre, and they soon became very ribald indeed. Presently Roberto, who was getting hold of his part, struck a tremendous attitude and burst into his first air. As he sang he stalked about the stage with fiery Italian gestures.

‘There,’ said Lewis. ‘That is exactly what I want. You will all of you observe that this is a very Latin piece. This fellow does it to perfection. Copy him and you’ll please me. That’ll do, Roberto. Up with you, Tessa, and we’ll sing our duet.’

They mounted the dais. Trigorin’s hands softened on the keys as Teresa’s little treble and Lewis’s inconspicuous baritone rose through the room. Neither had much voice but they sang with spirit, and it was obvious that Teresa was straining to do her very best In that house she could do no less. Music there was a sacred thing; perhaps the only sacred thing. Even in an absurd charade like this it might not be cheapened by carelessness or economy of effort. The Sanger children were ignorant of obedience, application, self-command or reverence save in this one cause. And of Lewis the same thing might have been said.

He was looking wild and weary. His red hair, damp with sweat, was pushed up into a crest on the top of his head. He had flung aside all his waistcoats and the muffler and was directing the rehearsal in his shirt sleeves. Having Teresa in his arms, he was making love to her with a business-like competence which showed that he had quite forgotten for the moment who she really was. He was busy listening to the effect of the duet and considering the sequence of this song with the next; in his preoccupation he hardly remembered that she was not the Roman waiting wench for whom he had written the part. His eyes were grave and intent, and saw nothing at all, but in voice and gesture he was using the absent-minded mastery of a practised lover. Teresa did not like such handling; she was no actress and could not throw herself into her part sufficiently for its demands. A certain stolidity in her, an absence of the invariable response, brought him to himself with a start; he remembered that he had got poor little Tessa and not the full-blooded contadina he had framed. He laughed at her reassuringly, and finished the scene with a kind of bantering gaiety which put her at her ease.

They worked away until Susan, sidling round the door, told them that supper was ready. Very hungry and happy they all trooped into the hall, where Kate, flushed and dishevelled, was helping soup from an enormous tureen. Linda, already seated at the table, had begun her meal. She raised her eyes contemptuously to look at the musicians, but at the sight of Antonia she remained fixed in a stare.

‘Oh!’ she said slowly. ‘So you’ve come back?’

‘Yes. I’ve come back. What soup is it, Kate?’

‘We mayn’t ask where you’ve been, I suppose,’ asked Linda.

‘I’ve been on a visit.’

‘Oh, indeed! I hope you enjoyed yourself.’

‘Very much, thank you.’

‘You never know,’ murmured Linda thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes girls don’t enjoy visits as much as they think they will. Sometimes they come back … quite changed.’

‘Will Sanger be down to supper, Kate?’ interrupted Lewis hastily.

‘Yes,’ said Kate. ‘Jacob Birnbaum is with him. I went up to tell them and they are just coming down.’

‘Jacob,’ stated Linda, ‘came the same time Tony did. You’ll tell me, I suppose, that you didn’t travel together.’

Antonia took no notice and began to eat her soup.

‘She’s been stopping with ’im,’ piped Susan. ‘I heard her telling Tessa and Lina. Ah … oh … Mammy! Tessa pinched me!’

‘Oh, God! Will you leave the child alone!’ exclaimed Linda, angrily leaning forward to box Teresa’s ears. ‘Come here, Suzanne, and tell us what you heard.’

‘Tessa and Lina was eating cherries and they wouldn’t give me any and shut me out of the room. So I climbed up into the balcony and listened to everything they said to spite them. And Tony came in and said she’d been stopping at Ike’s flat …’

‘Yes? Be quiet, Lewis, please! I want to hear this. Kate! I wonder at you, interrupting in that rude way. You can tell Mr Trigorin about the landslide afterwards. Just all of you be quiet and let me hear this. Go on, lovey! What next?’

‘She’s a filthy little liar!’ burst out Antonia. ‘I never said anything of the sort, did I girls?’

‘No!’ asserted her sisters loyally.

‘Didn’t you? We’ll see. When Suzanne’s finished telling me all she heard she can repeat it over again to your father.’

At that moment Sanger appeared at the head of the stairs, an enormous, infirm figure. His son Caryl supported him. Jacob Birnbaum strolled thoughtfully along the passage behind them and peered over their shoulders at the scene going on in the hall below. Linda rose and pointed at Antonia.

‘Look at her, Albert!’ she bawled. ‘Just look at her. She’s come back, if you please. D’you want to know what she’s been up to?’

Sanger descended the stairs with difficulty, leaning heavily on Caryl’s arm and preceded by Gelert, his boarhound. Birnbaum, looking a trifle nervous, brought up the rear of this procession. Lewis and Trigorin forgot Antonia and her troubles in the shocked surprise with which they viewed their host. In the months that had elapsed since they saw him last, disease and decay had made rapid advances. His huge frame looked shrunken: the flesh sagged heavily on a face half hidden by grizzled hair. The splendid vitality of the man was gone, leaving this mountainous wreck, blinking at them with dim, bloodshot eyes.

When he reached the hall his mistress began to upbraid him and Antonia, calling them by every discreditable name in her very extensive vocabulary. Lewis and Birnbaum, used to these scenes, greeted each other with long faces and tried to create a diversion by announcing that the corkscrew had been lost. But Sanger paid no heed to any of them; he continued to stare at his daughter as if waiting for her to speak. She had gone very white, but was steadily drinking her soup as if nothing had happened.

‘Well, my girl,’ he said at last. ‘I had intended to beat you when you got home. But it’s too much trouble; too … much … trouble. Besides, I’m hungry.’

And he collapsed into his chair at the head of the table.

‘When I’m less busy,’ he promised Linda, ‘I’ll institute a disciplinary system. I’ll thrash all the girls for half an hour every morning, including Susan.’

And he shot a ferocious look at his youngest, who shivered in her chair, though, as a matter of fact, she was the only child in the house who escaped his blows.

‘Thrash all the girls every day?’ asked Sebastian, who had joined them in time to hear this remark. ‘What for?’

‘For their incontinent behaviour,’ replied their father. ‘Beating, Sebastian, is the only remedy. You can beat Susan if you like.’

‘I would like,’ said Sebastian.

‘If the men of this family co-operate, we may manage to introduce a little order into the household. Caryl shall beat Kate.’

‘Kate doesn’t need it,’ said Sebastian gravely.

‘I daresay not. But a little undeserved beating does them no harm. Kate will be all the better for it.’

And Sanger looked affectionately into Kate’s distressed face and asked her for some soup.

‘You’d better let Jacob beat Antonia,’ said Linda sourly. ‘He’s been keeping her this past week.’

‘Is that so?’ Sanger shifted his morose regard from his daughter to his friend. ‘Is that so, Jacob?’

‘I hope that you have no objection,’ said Birnbaum, with as much effrontery as he could muster. ‘Some day, perhaps, some more of the children will come down. We amused ourselves so much. But Tony was anxious to be at home for the birthday.’

Sanger sighed gustily and said:

‘Very friendly of you, Jacob!’

At which Birnbaum looked uncomfortable. Antonia, lifting her head for the first time, looked at her father and then at her lover with stony, scornful eyes. In the uneasy pause which ensued the voice of Trigorin was heard in a speech which had gone on, unheeded, ever since Sanger appeared on the stairs.

‘There is no privilege,’ he was saying,’ which I have more desired than to be a guest at this house.’

‘Bless my soul! Trigorin!’ exclaimed Sanger. ‘I’d forgotten you were here. I must apologise. But you’re a family man yourself, I believe, so you’re probably accustomed to this sort of thing. I hope Kate is making you comfortable. Look! Have you met Birnbaum?’

But Trigorin did not want to talk to Birnbaum, who was, obviously, no musician. And Birnbaum did not want to talk to anyone. He occupied himself sulkily in pulling corks and glancing furtively at Antonia. Sanger was very silent and ate little. He sat staring at his plate in such a moody abstraction, heaving such melancholy sighs, that nobody liked to speak to him. Lewis talked to Caryl in undertones, the children giggled at their end of the table, and Trigorin was thrown once more upon the melting glances of Linda.

The gloomy meal proceeded calmly enough save for a scene in which Paulina and Sebastian were ordered from the room for spitting at each other across the table. But even this was accomplished without the tumult and gusto of other days. Sanger had lost his love of life. He was a sick man, absorbed in his last desperate struggle; too ill to resent the conduct of his children and his friends. He saw the looks which Linda cast upon Trigorin; he guessed that Birnbaum had seduced his daughter, but he could not rouse himself to any protest. Towards the end of supper, however, having drunk a good deal of the cognac which Birnbaum had brought him, he brightened up a little. He began to tease Lewis about the ‘Revolutionary Songs’, and told how at an early rehearsal the tenors had taken their first lead a bar late and how they had remained a bar late throughout the piece, whereat Lewis determined that it sounded better that way. Later in the evening he became very good company indeed and told them funny stories about Brahms. For an hour he was himself again, and his friends forgot their gloom; they caught the old sense of space and heroic joviality – felt that they were assisting at something epic and earning a sort of immortality simply by listening to Sanger and laughing with him. But as the night advanced he became less intelligible, and when Caryl and Lewis took him up to bed he was speechless. Trigorin and Birnbaum, who did not find much to say to each other, retired to the spare bedroom which they were to share.