Envious Casca Read online

  ‘Ah, the days when I was young!’ Joseph said.

  But Roydon wasn’t interested in Joseph’s Hamlet. He shrugged Shakespeare aside. He said that he himself owed a debt to Strindberg. As for Pinero’s comedies, which Joseph had played in, he dismissed them with the crushing label: ‘That old stuff!’

  Joseph felt depressed. He had a charming little anecdote to tell, about the time he had played Benedick, in Sydney, but it didn’t seem as though Roydon would appreciate it. A conceited young man, thought Joseph, dispiritedly eating his savoury.

  When Maud rose from the table, Paula was obliged to stop telling Nathaniel about Roydon’s play. She glowered at being interrupted, but went out with the other women.

  Maud led the way to the drawing-room. It was a big room, and it felt chilly. Only two standard-lamps, placed near the fireplace, lit it, and the far corners of the room lay in shadow. Paula gave a shiver, and switched on the ceiling-lights. ‘I hate this house!’ she said. ‘It hates us, too. You can almost feel it.’

  ‘Whatever do you mean?’ asked Valerie, looking round half-fearfully, half-sceptically.

  ‘I don’t know. I think something happened here, perhaps. Can’t you feel how sinister it is? No, I suppose you can’t.’

  ‘You don’t mean that it’s haunted, do you?’ Valerie asked, her voice rising slightly. ‘Because nothing would induce me to spend a night here, if it is!’

  ‘No, I don’t mean that,’ Paula answered. ‘But there’s something about it – I’m always conscious of it. Cigarette, Mathilda?’

  Mathilda took one. ‘Thank you, my love. Shall we gather round the fire, chicks, and tell ghost stories?’

  ‘Oh, don’t!’ shuddered Valerie.

  ‘Don’t let Paula impress you!’ Mathilda advised her. ‘She is just being fey. There’s nothing wrong with this house.’

  ‘It is a pity that there are no radiators in this room,’ said Maud, ensconcing herself by the fire.

  ‘It isn’t that,’ said Paula curtly.

  ‘I expect that’s what gives Nat lumbago,’ said Maud. ‘Draughts –’

  Valerie began to powder her nose before the mirror over the fireplace. Paula, who seemed to be restless, drifted about the room, smoking a cigarette, and nicking the ash on to the carpet.

  Mathilda, taking a chair opposite to Maud, said: ‘I wish

  you wouldn’t prowl, Paula. And if you could refrain from badgering Nat about your young friend’s play I feel that this party might go with more of a swing.’

  ‘I don’t care about that. It’s vital to me to get Willoughby’s play put on!’

  ‘Love’s young dream?’ Mathilda cocked a quizzical eyebrow.

  ‘Mathilda! Can’t you understand that love doesn’t come into it? It’s art!’

  ‘Sorry!’ Mathilda apologised.

  Maud, who had opened her book again, said: ‘Fancy! The Empress was only sixteen when Franz Josef fell in love with her! It was quite a romance.’

  ‘What Empress?’ demanded Paula, halting in the middle of the room, and staring at her.

  ‘The Empress of Austria, dear. Somehow one can’t imagine Franz Josef as a young man, can one? But it says here that he was very good-looking, and she fell in love with him at first sight. Of course, he ought to have married the elder sister, but he saw Elizabeth first, with her hair down her back, and that decided him.’

  ‘What on earth has that got to do with Willoughby’s play?’ asked Paula, in a stupefied voice.

  ‘Nothing, my dear; but I am reading a very interesting book about her.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t interest me,’ said Paula, resuming her pacing of the room.

  ‘Never mind, Maud!’ said Mathilda. ‘Paula has a one-track mind, and no manners. Tell me more about your Empress!’

  ‘Poor thing!’ said Maud. ‘It was that mother-in-law, you know. She seems to have been a very unpleasant woman. The Archduchess, they called her, though I can’t quite make out why she was only an Archduchess when her son was an Emperor. She wanted him to marry Hélène.’

  ‘A little more, and I shall feel compelled to read this entrancing work,’ said Mathilda. ‘Who was Hélène?’

  Maud was still explaining Hélène to Mathilda when the men came into the drawing-room.

  It was plain that Nathaniel had not found the male company congenial. He had apparently been buttonholed by Roydon, for he cast several affronted glances at the playwright, and removed himself as far from his vicinity as he could. Mottisfont sat down beside Maud; and Stephen, who appeared to sympathise with his uncle, surprised everyone by engaging him in perfectly amiable conversation.

  ‘Stephen being the little gentleman quite takes my breath away,’ murmured Mathilda.

  Joseph, standing near enough to overhear this remark, laid a conspiratorial finger across his lips. He saw that Nathaniel had observed this gesture, and made haste to say, in bracing accents: ‘Now, who says Rummy?’

  No one said Rummy; several persons, notably Nathaniel, looked revolted; and after a pause, Joseph, a little crestfallen, said: ‘Well, well, what shall it be?’

  ‘Mathilda,’ said Nathaniel, fixing her with a compelling eye, ‘we want you to make up a fourth at Bridge.’

  ‘All right,’ said Mathilda. ‘Who’s playing?’

  ‘Stephen and Mottisfont. We’ll have a table put up in the

  library, and the rest of you can play any silly – can do anything you like.’

  Joseph, whose optimism nothing could damp, said: ‘Just the thing! No one will disturb you earnest people, and we frivolous ones can be as foolish as we like!’

  ‘It’s no good expecting me to play!’ announced Roydon. ‘I don’t know one card from another.’

  ‘Oh, you’ll soon pick it up!’ said Joseph. ‘Maud, my dear, I suppose we can’t lure you into a round game?’

  ‘No, Joseph, I will do a Patience quietly by myself, if someone will be kind enough to draw that table forward,’ replied Maud.

  Valerie, who had not been at all pleased to hear that her betrothed proposed to spend the evening playing Bridge, bestowed a dazzling smile upon Roydon, and said: ‘I’m simply dying to ask you about this play of yours. I’m utterly thrilled about it! Do come and tell me all about it!’

  Since Willoughby, sore from the lack of appreciation shown by Nathaniel, at once moved across to Miss Dean’s side, only Paula was left to make up Joseph’s round game. He seemed to feel the impossibility of organising anything very successful under such conditions, and with only a faint, quickly suppressed sigh, abandoned the project, and sat down to watch his wife playing Patience.

  After continuing to walk about the room for some time, occasionally joining in Roydon’s conversation with Valerie, Paula cast herself upon a sofa, and began to flick over the pages of an illustrated paper. Joseph soon moved over to join her, saying in a confidential tone: ‘Tell your old uncle all about it, my dear! What sort of play is it? Comedy? Tragedy?’

  ‘You can’t label it like that,’ Paula answered. ‘It’s a most subtle character-study. There isn’t another part in the world I want to play more. It’s written for me! It is me!’

  ‘I know exactly how you feel,’ nodded Joseph, laying a hand over hers, and pressing it sympathetically. ‘Ah, how often one has been through that experience! I daresay it seems funny to you to think of your old uncle on the boards, but when I was a young man I shocked all my relations by actually running away from a respectable job in a solicitor’s office to join a travelling company!’ He laughed richly at the memory. ‘I was a romantic lad! I expect a lot of people called me an improvident young fool, but I’ve never regretted it, never!’

  ‘I wish you’d make Uncle Nat listen to reason,’ said Paula discontentedly.

  ‘I’ll try, my dear, but you know what Nat is! Dear old crosspatch! He’s the best of good fellows, but he has his prejudices.’

  ‘Two thousand pounds wouldn’t make any difference to him. I can’t see why I shouldn’t have it now, when I need it