Envious Casca Read online

  It turned out, unfortunately for everybody else, that this was an understatement. Nathaniel had a good deal more to say, on subjects which ranged from the decadence of modern drama and the puppyishness of modem dramatists to the folly of all women in general and of his niece in particular. He added a rider to the effect that Paula’s mother would have done better to have stayed at home to look after her daughter than to spend her time gadding about marrying every Tom, Dick, and Harry she met.

  It was now felt by all who were privileged to hear these remarks that it would be advisable to get Roydon out of the way until Nathaniel’s wrath had had time to cool. Mathilda very nobly put herself forward, and told Roydon that she had been immensely interested in Wormwood, and would like to have a talk with him about it. Roydon, who, besides being rather impressed by Mathilda, was naturally eager to talk about his play, allowed himself to be manoeuvred out of the room just as Joseph joined the stricken group about his brother, and, with ill-timed jocosity, smote him lightly on the back, saying: ‘Well, well, Nat, we’re a couple of oldstagers, eh? A crude, sometimes a violent piece of work. Yet not without merit, I think. What do you say?’

  Nathaniel at once became a cripple. He said: ‘My lumbago! Damn you, don’t do that!’ and tottered to a chair, one hand to the small of his back and his manly form bent with suffering.

  ‘Why, I thought it was all right again!’ said Valerie innocently.

  Nathaniel, who had closed his eyes, opened them to cast a baleful glance in her direction, and replied in the voice of one whose days were attended by anguish bravely borne: ‘The least touch brings it on!’

  ‘Rubbish!’ said Paula, with quite unnecessary emphasis. ‘You weren’t even thinking about your lumbago a minute ago! You’re a miserable humbug, Uncle Nat!’

  Nathaniel rather liked being abused, but he resented having his lumbago belittled, and said that the day might come when Paula would be sorry she had said that.

  Maud, who was rolling up her knitting-wool, said in her sensible way that he had better have some antiphlogistin, if it was really bad.

  ‘Of course it’s bad!’ snapped Nathaniel. ‘And don’t think I’m going to have any of that muck on me, because I’m not! If anyone had the least consideration – But I suppose that’s too much to expect! As though it isn’t enough to have the house filled with a set of rackety people, I’m forced to sit and listen to a play I should have thought any decent woman would have blushed to sit through!’

  ‘When you talk about decent women you make me sick!’ flashed Paula. ‘If you can’t appreciate a work of genius, so much the worse for you! You don’t want to put your hand in your pocket: that’s why you’re making all this fuss! You’re mean, and hypocritical, and I despise you from the bottom of my soul!’

  ‘Yes, you’d be very glad to see me laid underground! I know that!’ said Nathaniel, hugely enjoying this refreshing interlude. ‘Don’t think I don’t see through you! All the same, you women: money’s all you’re out for! Well, you won’t get any of mine to waste on that young puppy, and that’s flat!’

  ‘All right!’ said Paula, in the accents of a tragedienne. ‘Keep your money! But when you’re dead I shall spend every penny you leave me on really immoral plays, and I shall hope that you’ll know it, and hate it, and be sorry you were such a beast to me when you were alive!’

  Nathaniel was so pleased by this vigorous response to his taunt that he forgot to be a cripple, and sat up quite straight in his chair, and said that she had better not count her chickens before they were hatched, since after this he would be damned if he didn’t Make a Few Changes.

  ‘Do as you please!’ Paula said disdainfully. ‘I don’t want your money.’

  ‘Oho, now you sing a different tune!’ Nathaniel said, his eyes glinting with triumph. ‘I thought that that was just what you did want – two thousand pounds of my money, and ready to murder me to get it!’

  ‘What are two thousand pounds to you?’ demanded Paula, with poor logic, but fine dramatic delivery. ‘You’d never miss it, but just because you have a bourgeois taste in art you deny me the one thing I want! More than that! You are denying me my chance in life!’

  ‘I don’t care for that line,’ said Stephen critically.

  ‘You shut up!’ said Paula, rounding on him. ‘You’ve done all you can to crab Willoughby’s play! I suppose your tender regard for me makes you shudder at the thought of my appearing in the rôle of a prostitute!’

  ‘Bless your heart, I don’t care what sort of a rôle you appear in!’ replied Stephen. ‘All I beg is that you won’t stand there ranting like Lady Macbeth. Too much drama in the home turns my stomach, I find.’

  ‘If you had a shred of decency, you’d be on my side!’

  ‘In that case, I haven’t a shred of decency. I don’t like the play, I don’t like the dramatist, and I object to being read to.’

  ‘Children, children!’ said Joseph. ‘Come now, this won’t do, you know! On Christmas Eve, too!’

  ‘Now I am going to be sick,’ said Stephen, dragging himself up, and lounging over to the door. ‘Let me know the outcome of this Homeric battle, won’t you? I’m betting six to four on Uncle Nat myself.’

  ‘Well, really, Stephen!’ exclaimed Valerie, with a giggle. ‘I do think you’re the limit!’

  This infelicitous intervention seemed to remind Nathaniel of her existence. He glared at her, loathing her empty prettiness, her crimson fingernails, her irritating laugh; and gave vent to his feelings by barking at Stephen. ‘You’re as bad as your sister! There isn’t a penny to choose between you! You’ve got bad taste, do you hear me? This is the last time either of you will come to Lexham! Put that in your pipe, and smoke it!’

  ‘Tut-tut!’ said Stephen, and walked out of the room, greatly disconcerting Sturry, who was standing outside with a tray of cocktails, listening with deep appreciation to the quarrel raging within.

  ‘I beg your pardon, sir; I was about to enter,’ said Sturry, fixing Stephen with a quelling eye.

  ‘What a lot you’ll have to regale them with in the servants’ hall, won’t you?’ said Stephen amiably.

  ‘I was never one to gossip, sir, such being beneath me,’ replied Sturry, in a very grand and despising way.

  He stalked into the room, bearing his burden. Paula, who was addressing an impassioned monologue to her elder uncle, broke off short, and rushed out; Joseph urged Valerie, and Maud, and Mottisfont to go up and change for dinner; and Nathaniel told Sturry to bring him a glass of the pale sherry.

  While this family strife had been in full swing, Mathilda, in the library, had been explaining to Willoughby, as tactfully as she could, that Nathaniel was not at all likely to finance his play. He was strung up after his reading, and at first he seemed hardly to understand her. Plainly, Paula had led him to suppose that her uncle’s help was a foregone conclusion. He went perfectly white when the sense of what Mathilda was saying penetrated his brain, and said in a trembling voice: ‘Then it’s all no use!’

  ‘I’m afraid it’s no use as far as Nat is concerned,’ Mathilda said. ‘It isn’t his kind of play. But he isn’t the only potential backer in the world, you know.’

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t know any rich people. Why won’t he back it? Why shouldn’t p-people like me be g-given a chance? It isn’t fair! People with money – people who don’t care for anything but –’

  ‘I think you’d be far better advised to send your play to some producer in the usual way,’ said Mathilda, in a bracing voice calculated to check hysteria.

  ‘They’re all afraid of it!’ he said. ‘They say it hasn’t got box-office appeal. But I know – I know it’s a good play! I’ve – I’ve sweated blood over it! I can’t give it up like this! It means so much to me! You don’t know what it means to me, Miss Clare!’

  She began gently to suggest that he had it in him to write other plays, plays with the desired box-office appeal, but he interrupted her, saying violently that he would rather starve tha