As Griselda entered, the sick man looked up from his escutcheons.
“Ah, my dear,” he said in a high musical voice, “in a world as near its end almost as I am, you at least do not fall short. You are as lovely as any of the dear women who performed your office for my ancestors. Kneel; there, where there is light.” He pointed to a patch of carpet, and Griselda knelt before his bed in the candlelight. Though the black curtains kept out the sun, the candles made the room very hot.
“Thank you. Now give me your hand.” He made a slight, weak gesture. “You are perfectly safe. It will only be for a minute. Though time was——” But his remarks were tiring him, and he broke off with a Buddha-like smile.
Griselda extended her left hand. He took it in long thin white fingers, like those of a high-born skeleton, and lightly drew her towards him. She found that a stool stood beside the bed and seated herself upon it.
“How are you, Sir Travis?” she asked gently.
“Listen, my dear. Listen to your answer.”
Griselda listened. The music was as of a very large orchestra very far off: too far off for any particular melody or instruments to be recognized.
“What is it?”
The dying man seemed to hear more than she did. “ ‘ ’Tis the god Hercules, whom Antony loved, now leaves him’.” He was listening intently.
“Sir Travis,” said Griselda, “tell me about life.”
“Lord Beaconsfield told me that men are governed either by tradition or by force. I have since found it to be true.”
“But,” said Griselda, a little disappointed, “that’s a rule for governing other people. What about yourself?” She noticed that the distant music was ebbing.
“You do not need to govern yourself, my dear, if you succeed in governing other people.”
Suddenly Griselda thought of something: something that it was past belief she had not thought of before.
“Sir Travis,” she said, eagerly; too eagerly for a sick-room.
He did not answer.
“Sir Travis!” She almost shook his hand and arm.
But Sir Travis’s mind was elsewhere. “Tell Venetia,” he said smiling wickedly, “that I’m leaving her for ever.” And his high musical voice died away.
“Sir Travis!”
“One more thing only,” said a voice from the shadows. “And then you will be free to go.”
A young man in a dark suit stood before Griselda on the other side of the huge bed. He was small and looked French. He seemed to hold some small object clasped in each of his hands.
“I thought we were alone.” Griselda looked over her shoulder. There was no sign of the tall woman, but the door through which she had entered, had disappeared behind the black hangings.
The young man smiled slightly; then stretching out his hands across the bed, opened the palms. In each lay a large gold piece, which glittered in the candlelight.
“You know what to do?” His alien mien was confirmed by a slight accent.
“Is he dead? How do you know?”
“I know.”
Looking at the man in the bed, Griselda knew too.
“Poor Sir Travis!”
“Of course. It is very sad.”
Griselda lifted the hand which had just held hers and laid it on the bed. She had never before touched a corpse. She almost expected the hand to be cold: it was much more shocking that it proved as warm as in life.
“You know what to do?” The young man still held out the gold pieces.
“I think so,” said Griselda. “But why me?”
“It is all that remains. Then you can go.”
Griselda took the pieces from his hand.
“They’re five-pound pieces! And quite new!”
“Sir Travis made a special arrangement with the Mint.”
“For this?” Griselda’s voice sank in awe.
“For what else? Gold coins are no longer taken in shops. Only pieces of paper.”
“They’re beautiful.”
But the young man indicated the slightest touch of impatience.
Very carefully and tenderly, Griselda laid the gold pieces on the dead man’s eyelids.
“Thank you, mademoiselle,” said the young man, indicating the slightest touch of relief. “Now if you will follow me.”
Coming round the bed, he drew a section of the black hangings, and Griselda followed him back to the dim hall.
At the top of the stairs, the tall woman awaited them in the shadows.
“Is all in order, Vaisseau?”
“But naturally.” His tone was as proud as hers.
“And she can go?”
“Immediately.”
Lena stood below. “Is everything all right, Griselda?”
Griselda squeezed her hand. “There’s nothing to keep us, Lena. Let us go.”
The tall woman and the young man silently, and almost invisibly, watched them go back into the hot sun.
Outside was a strange disturbance. The hatchment had gone and the dwarf, it seemed, with it; but looking round for the origin of an unaccountable noise which filled the summer air, the two women saw him crouched on the paving stones in a corner behind the porch. He was not weeping, since there were no tears; he was crying like an animal, but like no known animal, for, as they now perceived, he had hitherto been dumb.
They looked up from the distressing sight and saw that high above them, beneath the immense mailed fist, hung the hatchment, polished and varnished and renewed, until in the afternoon sunshine it shone the very pennant of death triumphant.
CHAPTER XXV
Griselda was unable to imagine why she had never thought to look up Hugo Raunds’s address in “Who’s Who”, or even in the Telephone Directory, and write to him for possible news of Louise’s whereabouts.
Distracted by the omission, and full of resolve to repair it as soon as possible, she imparted to Lena, who seemed pleasingly without over-pressing curiosity, a somewhat slender account of her recent experiences.
“But is it a madhouse?”
“I think it’s just a very old family.”
They were walking down the drive towards the main entrance to the park. As the big elaborately wrought gates came into view, it appeared also that a small crowd was assembled outside. The first idea that they were faithful tenants come to enquire about the course of their protector’s illness, or to mourn his passing, was dispelled by the way they stood packed together in the heat, by the fact that the lodge-keeper seemed to be remonstrating with them from behind the bars, and, most of all, by the noise they were making. In the end, Griselda saw that some of them carried placards, hideously lettered with slogans: “Aid To Abyssinia, Guatemala, Democratic Spain, And Chiang-Kai-Shek”; “Workers! The Intelligentsia Stands Behind You”; and, most immediate in its application, “Sir Travis Raunds Must Go”. The inclusion of the title struck Griselda as a courteous detail, inconsistent with much else; but perhaps it served to spur David by making Goliath look fiercer.
“I wonder you ’aven’t all something better to do on a nice day like this,” the lodge-keeper was saying. Clearly he had allowed himself to be drawn into unwise disputation. He was a mild elderly man with lank hair and an habitual air of having recently been rescued from drowning.
His remark was greeted with catcalls.
“Why don’t you join us in fighting the enemy of your class?” enquired a tall prematurely bald young man with spectacles. He carried a battered puppet dangling from a crude gallows, which he had looted, during a university rag, from a Punch and Judy stand. Two or three of his fellow demonstrators began to chant the Internationale.
“My tea’s waiting for me, you know.”
At this there was a burst of perceptibly forced laughter.
“I’ll send for a policeman.”
“Call out the Cossacks!”
Lena went up to the lodge-keeper and spoke in his ear. He stepped back. Lena raised her hand.
“Sir Travis Ra
unds is dead. He died this afternoon,” she said in her clear voice. “So go home.”
There were a few jeers, and a cry of “Why couldn’t you say so?” but the group began to retreat, more or less content in the knowledge that they were alive and that the future was theirs. It seemed to occur to none of them to doubt Lena’s statement.
“That was brave of you, Lena,” said Griselda.
“So it was, miss,” said the lodge-keeper. “But, of course, I ’ad old Cupid up my sleeve all the time.”
“Would Cupid have helped?”
“Torn ’em apart, miss. Cupid only needed a word from me to tear ’em apart. Just one word. That’s Cupid.” He indicated a vague black shape which looked too big for the white wooden kennel placed in the lodge-keeper’s miniature garden. “Sir Travis named him after a gentleman he used to know when he was in politics.”
“Good old Cupid.”
It seemed unnecessary to pat Cupid, as he was asleep. He wore a collar with large spikes, like a drawing by Cruikshank; and his muzzle was matted with some sticky substance. When Griselda mentioned his name, he growled in his sleep.
“It’s sad news about Sir Travis.”
“Yes and no, miss. Times have changed since the Old Queen’s day. Not that either of you young ladies will care about that. But up at the house it’s just as if the Old Queen was still with us. Just like Windsor Castle, it is.”
“You don’t say so?” said Griselda sympathetically.
“I expect you young ladies believe in being modern and up-to-date?”
“You can tell at a glance,” said Lena.
“It’s the best thing. But Sir Travis, he never would see it.”
Outside the park, they found their way without particular difficulty to where they had left the rest of the party.
“You’re good at it,” said Griselda. “You must have what is known as a sense of direction.”
“These little jaunts are symbolical,” replied Lena. “Instead of leaving the organization to me, who, as you rightly say, am good at it, they will always leave it to Geoffrey, because they like him and because he’s no good at it at all, which saves them the anguish of envying him. Not that I greatly care,” she added. “I really only come to watch.”
“I’m not bad at finding the way myself, you know, Lena. Women often are better at things than men, aren’t they?”
“Men have uses, all the same.”
Griselda said nothing; because at that moment the place where they had lunched came into view.
There was no sign of the party. Instead, a troop of Boy Scouts were learning about the Arctic.
“Was there anyone here when you arrived?” asked Griselda. “Sitting on the grass?”
“No one at all,” replied the scoutmaster. “Only rather a lot of litter, I regret to say.”
A rustle went round the troop at Griselda’s good looks and Lena’s trousers.
“Come to the pictures, miss,” cried out one of the more precocious scouts.
So Griselda and Lena had to find their way back to London unattended; which they did with much pleasure. The day ended with Lena accompanying Griselda back to Greenwood Tree House for coffee and anchovies. It was after midnight when Lena departed, but there was still no sign of Peggy.
CHAPTER XXVI
Hugo Raunds was not in the Telephone Directory, and even in “Who’s Who” he figured solely as his father’s heir, without even an address of his own. To Sir Travis were ascribed four different residences, one in each of the four kingdoms; but Griselda wrote to Sir Hugo at the one she knew. She asked simply if he had any knowledge of the possible whereabouts of a girl named Louise, whom she had met at Mrs. Hatch’s house, Beams, had since lost touch with, and wished to meet again. “In the course of conversation she mentioned you several times; so I venture to trouble you.”
One day in the shop a pleasant young man made a really determined attempt to engage Griselda’s interest. Entering merely in order to enquire for a copy of “The Last Days of Pompeii”, he had not departed before, in Mr. Tamburlane’s temporary absence, he had persuaded her to accompany him that evening to the Piccadilly Hotel for drinks.
“We might dance somewhere afterwards.”
“I don’t dance.”
“Then we’ll go somewhere else and have some more drinks.”
It proved all too true. By the time they had migrated from the Piccadilly Hotel to Oddenino’s and from Oddenino’s to the Criterion and from the Criterion to the Bodega, Griselda had begun to feel faint.
“Eat?” said the young man. “Of course. Come back to my place and my girl will run us something up. She’s Italian, you know, or, more accurately, Sardinian.”
He was out of the Bodega (Griselda had felt faint between drinks) and into a taxi with such dexterity that Griselda could not escape without an absurd and embarrassing scene before the cynical eye of the taxi-driver.
“By the way, my name’s Dennis Hooper. You’ve probably heard of me? I should have told you before.”
Griselda hadn’t. She said nothing. The motion of the taxi was suddenly making her feel really ill; and also there seemed a case for reticence.
He didn’t seem to mind that she hadn’t heard of him.
“I bet your name’s Anne?”
“How can you tell?”
“Every single girl I meet’s called Anne these days. There’s a positive Anne epidemic.”
Griselda could for the moment do nothing but groan.
“What’s your other name?”
Griselda clutched at a wisp of what she took to be worldly wisdom.
“Musselwhite.”
“So you’re Anne Musselwhite. One of the Brigade of Guards people?”
“No.”
“I say, would you rather have gone to Scott’s and had lobsters?”
“No.”
“Not under the weather are you?”
“No.”
“Shall we stop and have a drink? Might pull you round.”
“No, thank you.”
“We’re there anyway. There’ll be time for one or two quick ones before we eat. We might go somewhere afterwards and dance.”
The taxi drew up at an exceedingly splendid block of flats. Hooper gave the driver a ten shilling note and waved away the thought of change.
They ascended by lift to the top floor. The flat had fashionable furniture, no pictures, and a view.
“Gioiosa! Do sit down.”
Griselda seated herself upon a geometrical sofa, upholstered in a strident, headachy green, and applied herself to watching the rotating dome of the Coliseum through the long low windows.
The Sardinian girl entered. She was brown and luscious, and, bearing in mind the characteristics of her people, could not have been more than fourteen. She wore a black satin dress cut alarmingly low, and no stockings.
“We want to eat. What can you do for us?”
“A spiced omelette with sauerkraut? Some hot meat served in oil?”
“Anne Musselwhite. Which?”
“You haven’t any fish?”
“Some potted squille only, signorina. Non troppo fresche.”
“Could I just have a little bread and butter with some warm milk?”
Gioiosa looked at her employer.
“Anne Musselwhite, you’ve been deceiving me. You are under the weather. You must permit me to prescribe. All right,” he said to Gioiosa, “anything you like.”
“Anything you say, signore.” She smiled bewitchingly and departed.
Hooper produced a bunch of keys and unlocked a vast antique cabinet bearing the Hat and blazon of some fourteenth or fifteenth century Prince-Bishop. He mixed a complicated drink, with ingredients derived from the interior.
“This’ll make your blood run cold.”
“No thank you. Could I just sit for a few minutes?”
“Of course. I’ll leave it by you.” He drew up a three-legged occasional table in cream aluminium.
“I’m sorry
to be such a nuisance.”
“I expect you’ve been overdoing it in the shop. We’ll have to see about that.” He poured himself a big round brandy-glass of neat whisky.
“If I could be quiet for a while, I’ll be perfectly all right.”
“I’ll leave you by yourself.” She smiled at him gratefully. Taking his whisky he opened a door into the next room. The door was decorated with scarlet zig-zags. In the doorway, Hooper looked back and said “Darling Anne Musselwhite.” Then he withdrew, shutting the door. Instantly there was the sound of dance music. Hooper’s gramophone was such a good model that it might have been in the room with Griselda.
Griselda removed her feet from the carpet (which was covered with representations of the Eiffel Tower in different colours) and placed them on the sofa. The dome of the Coliseum began to rotate faster and faster, and almost at once, despite the music, Griselda was asleep.
She first dreamed that she was climbing Mount Everest with Mrs. Hatch, who was dressed as a lama; then that Epping Forest was ablaze and Sir Travis Raunds’s catafalque, four times life-size, reared itself incombustible in the midst; and lastly that she was dressed rather mistily in white and had just been married to Kynaston. Kynaston had insisted on removing her shoes in the Church Vestry; was embracing her and about to kiss her. It was, she felt, a perfectly agreeable prospect, because for some reason, not very clear, no responsibility attached to the transaction. But before the transaction was completed, Griselda awoke.
Hooper’s arm was round her waist. With his free hand, he was unbuttoning her blouse. Moreover, he had already removed her shoes. Griselda felt it was a situation which Lotus (for example) would have managed better than she.
As she awoke, Hooper sat back a little.
“I do hope you are feeling cured.”
“Yes, thank you.” She was rebuttoning her blouse. “Well enough to go.”
“But Gioiosa has prepared some food for us.”
“Where are my shoes?”
“Please don’t misunderstand me. I’m very fond of you, Anne Musselwhite.”
The Late Breakfasters and Other Strange Stories Page 22
