Death and the Dancing Footman

‘At the moment,’ said Chloris, ‘it has an air of formalized desolation, but I see what you mean.’

‘Wouldn’t you like to come for a nice bracing plunge with me, Chloris, before breakfast tomorrow?’ asked Nicholas. ‘Do say yes.’

‘No, thank you,’ said Chloris.

‘It would have been awkward for you,’ said William, ‘if Chloris had said yes.’ It was the first remark William had addressed directly to his brother.

‘Not at all,’ rejoined Nicholas, and he made his stiff little bow to Chloris.

‘I’ll bet ten pounds,’ William said to nobody in particular, ‘that nothing on earth would have got him into that water before or after breakfast.’

‘Would you?’ asked Nicholas. ‘I take you. You’ve lost.’

Mrs Compline instantly protested. She reminded Nicholas of the state of his heart. William grinned derisively, and Nicholas, staring at Chloris, repeated that the bet was on. The absurd conversation began to take an unpleasant edge. Mandrake felt an icy touch on his cheek and drew attention to a desultory scatter of snowflakes.

‘If that was our brisk walk,’ said Chloris, ‘I consider we’ve had it. Let’s go in.’

‘Is it a bet?’ Nicholas asked his brother.

‘Oh, yes,’ said William. ‘You may have to break the ice, but it’s a bet.

To the accompaniment of a lively torrent of disapprobation from Mrs Compline they walked towards the house. Mandrake’s interest in William mounted with each turn of the situation. William was as full of surprises as a lucky-bag. His sudden proposal of this ridiculous wager was as unexpected as the attitude which he now adopted. He looked hang-dog and frightened. He hung back and said something to his mother, who set that tragically distorted mouth and did not answer. William gave her a look strangely compounded of malice and nervousness, and strode after Chloris who was walking with Mandrake. Nicholas had joined them, and Mandrake felt sure that Chloris was very much aware of him. When William suddenly took her arm she started and seemed to draw back. They returned to the accompaniment of an irritating rattle of conversation from Nicholas.

As soon as they came out on the platform before the house, they found that someone else had arrived. Nicholas’s car had been driven away, and in its place stood a very smart three-seater from which servants were taking very smart suitcases.

‘That’s not Hersey Amblington’s car,’ said Mrs Compline.

‘No,’ said Nicholas. And he added loudly: ‘Look here; what’s Jonathan up to?’

‘What do you mean, darling?’ asked his mother quickly.

‘Nothing,’ said Nicholas. ‘But I think I recognize the car.’ He hung back as the others went into the house, and waited for Mandrake. He still wore Jonathan’s cape over his uniform, and it occurred to Mandrake that since Nicholas allowed himself this irregularity he must be very well aware of its effectiveness. He put his hand on Mandrake’s arm. The others went into the house.

‘I say,’ he said. ‘Is Jonathan up to anything?’

‘How do you mean?’ asked Mandrake, wondering what the devil Jonathan would wish him to reply.

‘Well, it seems to me this is a queerly assorted house-party.’

‘Is it? I’m a complete stranger to all the other guests, you know.’

‘When did you get here?’

‘Last night.’

‘Well, hasn’t Jonathan said anything? About the other guests, I mean?’

‘He was very pleased with his party,’ said Mandrake, carefully. ‘He’s longing for it to be an enormous success.’

‘Is he, by God!’ said Nicholas. He turned on his heel and walked into the house.

Mrs Compline and Chloris went up to their rooms; the three men left their overcoats in a downstairs cloakroom, where they noticed the twin of Jonathan’s cape. When they came back into the hall they could hear voices in the library. As if by common consent they all paused. There were three voices – Jonathan’s, a masculine voice that held a foreign suggestion in its level inflections, and a deep contralto.

‘I thought as much,’ said Nicholas, and laughed unpleasantly.

‘What’s up?’ William asked Mandrake.

‘Nothing, so far as I know.’

‘Come on,’ said Nicholas. ‘What are we waiting for? Let’s go in.’

He led the way into the library.

Jonathan and his new arrivals stood before a roaring fire. The man had his back turned to the door, but the woman was facing it with an air of placid anticipation. Her face was strongly lit by a wall lamp, and Mandrake’s immediate reaction to it was a sort of astonishment that Jonathan could have forgotten to say how spectacular she was. In Mandrake’s world women were either sophisticated and sleek or hideous and erratic. ‘Artificiality,’ he was in the habit of saying, ‘is a fundamental in all women with whom one falls in love, and to so exquisite an extreme has artifice been carried that it sometimes apes nature with considerable success.’ This subtlety of grooming appeared in Madame Lisse. Her hair was straight and from a central parting was drawn back and gathered into a knot at the nape of her neck. It lay close to her head like a black satin cap with blue highlights. Her face was an oval, beautifully pale, her lashes needed no cosmetic to darken them, her mouth alone proclaimed her art, for it was sharply painted a dark red. Her dress was extremely simple, but in it her body seemed to be gloved rather than clothed. She was not very young, not as young as Chloris Wynne, not perhaps as pretty as Chloris Wynne either, but she had to the last degree the quality that Mandrake, though he knew very little French, spoke of and even thought of as soignée. And, in her own vein, she was exceedingly beautiful.

‘Madame Lisse,’ Jonathan was saying, ‘you know Nicholas, don’t you? May I introduce his brother, and Mr Aubrey Mandrake? Hart, do you know –?’ Jonathan’s introductions faded gently away.

Dr Hart’s bow was extremely formal. He was a pale dark man with a compact paunch and firm white hands. He was clad in the defiant tweeds of a firmly naturalized ex-Central European. Mandrake gathered from his manner that either he had not met Nicholas Compline and didn’t wish to do so, or else that he had met him and had taken a firm resolve never to do so again. Nicholas, for his part, acknowledged the introduction by looking at a point some distance beyond Dr Hart’s left ear, and by uttering the words ‘How do you do?’ as if they were a malediction. Madame Lisse’s greeting to Nicholas was coloured by that particular blend of composure and awareness with which Austrian women make Englishmen feel dangerous and delighted. With something of the same air, but without a certain delicate underlining, she held out her hand to William and to Mandrake. Mandrake remembered that Nicholas had known Madame Lisse was coming to the party, and saw him take up a proprietory position beside her. ‘He’s going to brazen it out,’ thought Mandrake. ‘He’s going to show us the sort of dog he is with the ladies, by heaven.’

Mandrake was right. Nicholas, with a sort of defiant showmanship, devoted himself to Madame Lisse. He stood beside her in an attitude reminiscent of a Victorian military fashion-plate, one leg straight and one flexed. Occasionally he placed one hand on the back of her chair, while the other went to his blond moustache. Whenever Dr Hart glared at them, which he did repeatedly, Nicholas bent towards Madame Lisse and uttered a loud and unconvincing laugh calculated, Mandrake supposed, to show Dr Hart how vastly Nicholas and Madame Lisse entertained each other. Madame was the sort of woman whose natural habitat was the centre of a group of men and, with the utmost tranquillity, she dominated the conversation and even, in spite of Nicholas, contrived to instil into it an air of genuine gaiety. In this she was ably supported by Jonathan and by Mandrake himself. Even William, who watched his brother pretty closely, responded in his own odd fashion to Madame’s charm. He asked her abruptly if anybody had ever painted her portrait. On learning that this had never been done, he started to mutter to himself, and Nicholas looked irritated. Madame Lisse began to talk to Mandrake about his plays, Jonathan chimed in, and once again the situation was saved. It was upon a conversation piece, with Madame Lisse very much in the centre of vision, that Mrs Compline and Chloris made their entrances. Mandrake thought that Mrs Compline could not be aware of the affair between Nicholas and Madame Lisse, so composedly did she acknowledge the introduction. But, if this was the case, what reason had Chloris given for the broken engagement with Nicholas? ‘Is it not impossible that everybody but his mother should be aware of l’affaire Lisse?’ Mandrake speculated. ‘Perhaps she sees him as a sort of irresistible young god, choosing where he will, and, without resentment, accepts Madame as a votaress.’ There was no doubt about Chloris’s reaction. Mandrake saw her stiffen and go very still when Jonathan pronounced Madame Lisse’s name. For perhaps a full second neither of the women spoke, and then, for all the world as if they responded to some inaudible cue, Chloris and Madame Lisse were extremely gracious to each other. ‘So they’re going to take that line,’ thought Mandrake, and wondered if Jonathan shared his feelings of relief. He felt less comfortable when he saw Mrs Compline’s reaction to Dr Hart. She murmured the conventional greeting, looked casually and then fixedly into his face, and turned so deadly white that for a moment Mandrake actually wondered if she would faint. But she did not faint. She turned away and sat in a chair farthest removed from the light. Caper brought in sherry and champagne cocktails.

II

The cocktails, though they did not perform miracles, helped considerably. Dr Hart in particular became more sociable. He continued to avoid Nicholas, but attached himself to Chloris Wynne and to William. Jonathan talked to Mrs Compline; Mandrake and Nicholas to Madame Lisse. Nicholas still kept up his irritating performances, now, apparently, for the benefit of Chloris. Whenever Madame Lisse spoke he bent towards her, and whether her remark was grave or gay, he broke out into an exhibition of merriment calculated, Mandrake felt certain, to arouse in Chloris the pangs proper to the woman scorned. If she suffered this discomfort she gave no more evidence of her distress than might be discovered in an occasional thoughtful glance at Nicholas, and it seemed to Mandrake that if she reacted at all to the performance it was pleasurably. She listened attentively to Dr Hart, who became voluble and bland. Chloris had asked if anyone had heard the latest wireless news. Hart instantly embarked on a description of his own reaction to radio. ‘I cannot endure it. It touches some nerve. It creates a most disagreeable – an unendurable frisson. I read my papers and that is enough. I am informed. I assure you that I have twice changed my flat because of the intolerable persecution of neighbouring radios. Strange, is it not? There must be some psychological explanation.’

‘Jonathan shares your dislike,’ said Mandrake. ‘He has been persuaded to install a wireless next door in the smoking room, but I don’t believe he ever listens to it.’

‘My respect for my host grows with everything I hear of him,’ said Dr Hart. He became expansive, enlarged upon his love of nature, and spoke of holidays in the Austrian Tyrol.

‘When it was still Austria,’ said Dr Hart. ‘Have you ever visited Kaprun, Miss Wynne? How charming it was at Kaprun in those days! From there one could drive up the Gross Glockner, one could climb into the mountains above that pleasant wein-stube in the ravine, and on Sunday mornings one went to Zelleum-Zee. Music in the central square. The cafés! and the shops where one might secure the best shoes in the world.’

‘And the best cloaks,’ said Chloris with a smile.

‘Hein? Ah, you have seen the cloak I have presented to our host.’

‘Nicholas,’ said Chloris, ‘wore it when we went for a walk just now.’

Dr Hart’s eyelids, which in their colour and texture a little resembled those of a lizard, half closed over his rather prominent eyes. ‘Indeed,’ he said.

‘I hope,’ said Jonathan, ‘that you visited my swimming pool on your walk.’

‘Nicholas is going to bathe in it tomorrow,’ said William, ‘or hand over ten pounds to me.’

‘Nonsense, William,’ said his mother. ‘I won’t have it. Jonathan, please forbid these stupid boys to go on with this nonsense.’ Her voice, coming out of the dark corner where she sat, sounded unexpectedly loud. Dr Hart turned his head and peered into the shadow. When Chloris said something to him it appeared for a moment that he had not heard her. If, however, he had been startled by Mrs Compline’s voice, he quickly recovered himself. Mandrake thought that he finished his cocktail rather rapidly, and noticed that when he accepted another it was with an unsteady hand.

‘That’s odd,’ thought Mandrake. ‘He’s the more upset of the two, it appears, and yet they’ve never met before. Unless – but no! That would be too much. I’m letting the possibilities of the situation run away with me.’

‘Lady Hersey Amblington, sir,’ said Caper in the doorway.

Mandrake’s first impression of Hersey Amblington was characteristic of the sort of man his talents had led him to become. As Stanley Footling of Dulwich, he would have been a little in awe of Hersey. As Aubrey Mandrake of the Unicorn Theatre, he told himself she was distressingly wholesome. Hersey’s face, in spite of its delicate make-up, wore an out-of-doors look, and she did not pluck her dark brows, those two straight bars that guarded her blue eyes. She wore Harris tweed and looked, thought Mandrake, as though she would be tiresome about dogs. A hearty woman, he decided, and he did not wonder that Madame Lisse had lured away Hersey’s smartest clients.

Jonathan hurried forward to greet his cousin. They kissed. Mandrake felt certain that Jonathan delayed the embrace long enough to whisper a warning in Lady Hersey’s ear. He saw the tweed shoulders stiffen. With large, beautifully shaped hands, she put Jonathan away from her and looked into his face. Mandrake, who was nearer to them than the rest of the party, distinctly heard her say: ‘Jo, what are you up to?’ and caught Jonathan’s reply: ‘Come and see.’ He took her by the elbow and led her towards the group by the fire.

‘You know Madame Lisse, Hersey, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ said Hersey, after a short pause. ‘How do you do?’

‘And Dr Hart?’

‘How do you do? Sandra, darling, how nice to see you,’ said Hersey, turning her back on Dr Hart and Madame Lisse, and kissing Mrs Compline. Her face was hidden from Mandrake, but he saw that her ears and the back of her neck were scarlet.

‘You haven’t kissed me, Hersey,’ said Nicholas.

‘I don’t intend to. How many weeks have you been stationed in Great Chipping, and never a glimpse have I had of you? William, my dear, I didn’t know you had actually reached home again. How well you look.’

‘I feel quite well, thank you, Hersey,’ said William gravely. ‘You’ve met Chloris, haven’t you?’

‘Not yet, but I’m delighted to do so, and to congratulate you both,’ said Hersey, shaking hands with Chloris.

‘And Mr Aubrey Mandrake,’ said Jonathan, bringing Hersey a drink.

‘How do you do? Jonathan told me I should meet you. I’ve got a subject for you.’

‘O God,’ thought Mandrake, ‘she’s going to be funny about my plays.’

‘It’s about a false hairdresser who strangles his rival with three feet of dyed hair,’ Hersey continued. ‘He’s a male hairdresser, you know, and he wears a helmet made of tin waving clamps and no clothes at all. Perhaps it would be better as a ballet.’

Mandrake laughed politely. ‘A beguiling theme,’ he said.

‘I’m glad you like it. It’s not properly worked out yet, but of course his mother had long hair, and when he was an infant he saw his father lugging her about the room by her pigtail, and it gave him convulsions, because he hated his father and was in love with his mother, and so he grew up into a hairdresser and worked off his complexes on his customers. And I must say,’ Hersey added, ‘I wish I could follow his example.’

‘Do you dislike your clients, Lady Hersey?’ asked Madame Lisse. ‘I do not find in myself any antipathy to my clients. Many of them have become my good friends.’

‘You must be able to form friendships very quickly,’ said Hersey sweetly.

‘Of course,’ Madame Lisse continued, ‘it depends very much upon the class of one’s clientele.’

‘And possibly,’ Hersey returned, ‘upon one’s own class, don’t you think?’ And then, as if ashamed of herself, she turned again to Mrs Compline.

‘I suppose,’ said William’s voice close to Mandrake, ‘that Hersey was making a joke about her subject, wasn’t she?’

‘Yes,’ Mandrake said hurriedly, for he was startled, ‘yes, of course.’

‘Well, but it might be a good idea, mightn’t it? I mean, people do write about those things. There’s that long play – I saw it in London about four years ago – where the brother and sister find out about their mother and all that. Some people thought that play was a bit thick, but I didn’t think so. I thought there was a lot of reality in it. I don’t see why plays should say what people feel in the same way as pictures ought to. Not what they do. What they do in their thoughts.’

‘That is my own contention,’ said Mandrake, who was beginning to feel more than a little curious about William’s pictures. William gave a rather vapid laugh, and rubbed his hands together. ‘There you are, you see,’ he said. He looked round the circle of Jonathan’s guests, and lowered his voice. ‘Jonathan has played a trick on all of us,’ he said unexpectedly. Mandrake did not answer, and William went on: ‘Perhaps you planned it together.’

‘No, no. This party is entirely Jonathan’s.’

‘I’ll bet it is. Jonathan is doing in the ordinary way what he does in his thoughts. If you wrote a play of him what would it be like?’

‘I really don’t know,’ said Mandrake hurriedly.

‘Don’t you? If I painted his picture I should make him egg-shaped, with quite a merry smile, and a scorpion round his head. And then, you know, for eyes he would have the sort of windows you can’t see through. Clouded glass.’

In Mandrake’s circles this sort of thing was more or less a commonplace. ‘You are a surrealist, then?’ he murmured.

‘Have you ever noticed,’ William continued placidly, ‘that Jonathan’s eyes are quite blank. Impenetrable,’ he added, and a phrase from Alice through the Looking Glass jigged Mandrake’s thoughts.

‘It’s his thick glasses,’ he said.

‘Oh,’ said William, ‘is that it? Has he told you about us? Nicholas and Chloris and me? And, of course, Madame Lisse?’ To Mandrake’s intense relief William did not pause for an answer. ‘I expect he has,’ he said. ‘He likes talking about people, and of course he would want somebody for an audience. I’m quite glad to meet Madame Lisse, and I must say it doesn’t surprise me about her and Nicholas. I should like to make a picture of her. Wait a moment. I’m just going to get another drink. My third,’ added William, with the air of chalking up a score.

Mandrake had had one drink and was of the opinion that Jonathan’s champagne cocktails were generously laced with brandy. He wondered if in this circumstance lay the explanation of William’s astonishing candour. The rest of the party had already responded to the drinks, and the general conversation was now fluent and noisy. William returned, carrying his glass with extreme care.

‘Of course,’ he said, ‘you will understand that Chloris and I haven’t seen Nicholas since we got engaged. I went to the front the day after it was announced, and Nicholas has been conducting the war in Great Chipping ever since. But if Jonathan thinks his party is going to make any difference …’ William broke off and drank a third of his cocktail. ‘What was I saying?’ he asked.

‘Any difference,’ Mandrake prompted.

‘Oh, yes. If Jonathan, or Nicholas for that matter, imagine I’m going to lose my temper, they are wrong.’

‘But surely if Jonathan has any ulterior motive,’ Mandrake ventured, ‘it is entirely pacific. A reconciliation …’

‘Oh, no,’ said William, ‘that wouldn’t be at all amusing.’ He looked sideways at Mandrake. ‘Besides,’ he said, ‘Jonathan doesn’t like me much, you know.’

This chimed so precisely with Mandrake’s earlier impression that he gave William a started glance. ‘Doesn’t he?’ he asked helplessly.

‘No. He wanted me to marry a niece of his. She was a poor relation, and he was very fond of her. We were sort of engaged but I didn’t really like her so very much, I found, so I sort of sloped off. He doesn’t forget things, you know.’ William smiled vaguely. ‘She died,’ he said. ‘She went rather queer in the head, I think. It was very sad, really.’

Mandrake found nothing to say and William returned to his theme. ‘But I shan’t do anything to Nicholas,’ he said. ‘Let him cool his ardour in the swimming pool. After all, I’ve won, you know. Haven’t I?’

‘He is tight,’ thought Mandrake, and he said with imbecile cheerfulness: ‘I hope so.’

William finished his drink. ‘So do I,’ he said thoughtfully. He looked across to the fireplace where Nicholas, standing by Madame Lisse’s chair, stared at Chloris Wynne.

‘But he always will try,’ said William, ‘to eat his cake and keep it.’

III

Madame Lisse fastened three of Jonathan’s orchids in the bosom of her wine-coloured dress, and contemplated herself in the looking-glass. She saw a Renaissance picture smoothly painted on a fine panel. Black, magnolia, and mulberry surfaces, all were sleek and richly glowing. Behind this magnificence, in shadow, was reflected the door of her room, and while she still stared at her image this door opened slowly.

‘What is it, Francis?’ asked Madame Lisse without turning her head.

Dr Hart closed the door, and in a moment his figure stood behind hers in the long glass.

‘It was unwise to come in,’ she said, speaking very quietly. ‘That woman has the room next to yours, and Mrs Compline is on the other side of this one. Why have you not changed? You will be late.’

‘I must speak to you. I cannot remain in this house, Elise. I must find some excuse to leave immediately.’

She turned and looked fixedly at him.

‘What is it now, Francis? Surely you cannot be disturbed à cause de Nicholas Compline. I assure you …’

‘It is not solely on his account. Although …’

‘What, then?’

‘His mother’s!’

‘His mother’s!’ she repeated blankly. “That unfortunate woman? Have you ever seen a more disastrous face? What do you mean? I wondered if perhaps Mr Royal had thought that by inviting her he might do you a service.’

‘A service,’ Dr Hart repeated. ‘A service. Gott im Himmel!’

‘Could you not do something?’

‘What you have seen,’ said Dr Hart, ‘I did.’

‘You! Francis, she was not –’

‘It was in my early days. In Vienna. It was the Schmitt-Lipmann treatment – paraffin wax. We have long ago abandoned it, but at that time it was widely practised. In this case – as you see –’

‘But her name. Surely you remembered her name?’

‘She did not give her own name. Very often they do not. She called herself Mrs Nicholas, after her accursed son, I suppose. Afterwards, of course, she made a great scene. I attempted adjustments, but in those days I was less experienced, the practice of plastic surgery was in its infancy. I could do nothing. When I came to England my greatest dread was that I might one day encounter this Mrs Nicholas.’ Dr Hart uttered a sort of laugh. ‘I believe my first suspicions of that young man arose from the associations connected with his name.’

‘Obviously she did not recognize you.’