“I know. I am so sorry. Have you any idea?”
“We cannot understand,” said Miss Pinkerton. “We cannot believe—”
“It can’t be deliberate,” said Tessa consolingly.
“Why don’t you ring for the manager?” asked Sydney, anxious to precipitate a crisis.
“I think it would be better for us, under the circumstances, to send for Madame.”
“But it may be a man.”
“It cannot be a gentleman…”
Mrs. Pinkerton appeared at the door of her bedroom. She looked expressionlessly out from under an Olympic cloud of hair and seemed immense. She said: “My sister may have told you of our own difficulty?”
“You’ve no idea?” Tessa said again hopefully.
Mrs. Pinkerton shook her head. “One doesn’t like to be seen standing here,” she said, and, an invitation seeming to be explicit, they followed her back into her room. They must have been the first in the Hotel to cross that threshold; it was a tribute to the humanity of Tessa. Keeping the door a little open, they listened and heard the uninterrupted crash of water from two taps turned full on. Sydney covertly pulled the Tatler towards her and glanced at its pages, but the stricken air of the two ladies pervaded the room and began to oppress her. She realized that this must be something worse for them than not, simply, getting what they paid for. It went deeper than that. They were stupid but not, she felt, vulgar; all this lace and leather, monograms everywhere and massive encrustations of silver meant less to them, probably, than to herself, to whom wealth and position would have been conveniences to be made use of. They were part of the immense assumption on which the Pinkertons based their lives. The Pinkertons imposed themselves on the world by conviction. The damage at which they now stood aghast was not a personal affront, and they were ennobled by the absence of personal resentment. The poor old things had, after all, ventured out into the world along a kind of promontory.
Lurgan came in and stood by the door. “You would ’ave thought,” said she, “that ’e would at least ’ave noticed Madame’s Shetlands, ’anging by the radiator.”
“I don’t see why you should assume that it’s—”
“Ark!” said Lurgan, putting up a hand peremptorily.
The taps had been turned off and a fine baritone voice rose clear at the cessation of the water. “Hail, gladdening Light…” he sang: it was an evening hymn.
“Singing!” said Lurgan. It was inexpressible.
“It’s a lovely hymn,” Tessa said, propitiatory. Her face lighted up; she looked round at them. “I expect,” she said, “it’s the clergyman. There was that Mr. Milton.”
“One would have expected greater delicacy,” said Mrs. Pinkerton, and indeed on that score Tessa did feel Milton to be indefensible. The testimony of the radiator…She looked helplessly at Sydney who, overcome at the moment by a simultaneous desire to yawn and to laugh, suggested that they should go back to their rooms—since there seemed nothing at all to be done—and leave the Pinkertons and Lurgan to their vigil.
“One could take steps…” Mrs. Pinkerton was saying, frozen into an attitude of reflection.
“Or would you wait till tomorrow to do so, and just let him finish his hymn now and come out?”
“There are situations in life,” said Mrs. Pinkerton, “face to face with which one is powerless.” Though she only meant that in the struggle for life one is sorely handicapped by the obligations of nobility. Tessa and Sydney gathered that Mrs. Pinkerton was prostrated. After a blank little silence intended to express the inexpressible they murmured a solicitous “Good night” and slipped through the door.
James Milton met them coming out. The asceticism of a lifetime in such matters had drawn him after ten minutes from his bath. He had stood and steamed in the warm air, then scrubbed himself dry and got into his dressing-gown sooner than he had expected. The water now receding from a rich black rim along the sides of the bath had done its work; he felt his own man again, clear-brained and vigorous. He looked forward to stretching out his limbs—cramped by last night in the train—in a bed again, when once he had unpacked and come to terms with his ridiculous room. He hoped to sleep till the palm trees outside were posed in blue air and white sunshine; when, on opening his eyes, a first picture should spring to them brilliantly, vivid, as he leant from his window, with all the vividness of ideality. He still had a childish pleasure in arriving at places at night, as though he had been brought there blindfolded. Humming a Gregorian chant he clicked back the bolt sharply and came face to face with two ladies, one in a dressing-gown, emerging simultaneously from an opposite room.
Tessa, horrified, fled down the corridor; they heard her door slam. Sydney stared. She did not see why she should retreat, as she momentarily expected Milton to do so, and she could not help being amused at his discomfiture. Milton looked boiled; his face, neck and ears were bright scarlet; his fine hair stood erect and his damp moustache drooped at the ends like a sea-lion’s. He clasped his clothes and towels against him in an ungainly bundle.
Milton also stared; it did not occur to him to retreat and there seemed nowhere to go to. He felt quite sure he had met Sydney before. Her dark eyebrows, square forehead and arrogant chin seemed already familiar. On this evening of strangeness and new impressions she was out of place, stepping out as she did from among his own recollections. Unaware of himself he bowed gravely, while in the doorway behind her horrified faces appeared for the moment, then vanished again.
5
Picnic
The party for Mr. Lee-Mittison’s expedition was assembling as directed in the lounge, at the foot of the stairs. They stood in a group, eyeing one another a little blankly. Veronica Lawrence came downstairs, twisting her scarf round her throat nonchalantly and pulling down her felt hat over her eyes. Mr. Lee-Mittison clicked the lid of his watch at her playfully.
“Oh, sorry!” cried Veronica. “Am I keeping you all?”
Victor Ammering heaved himself out of an armchair and came sauntering up, hunched and indecisive-looking, ruffled about the head like a young thrush. He stood tugging at the flaps of his pockets, and Mrs. Lee-Mittison, hurrying to and fro in a last ecstasy of preparation, stumbled over his feet.
Mr. Lee-Mittison, his panama hat in his hand, was counting heads, making quick calculations, and checking over the parcels of lunch in the concierge’s desk. He called to his wife, who was advising everybody to take some kind of an alpenstock in case of difficult walking. “Now, are we all complete? Is there anyone else? I believe they’ve put out one too many packets of lunch.”
“Better than one too few,” observed one of the girls, and the rest laughed politely.
“Three—five—six—eight—No, there is no one to come, they have made a mistake. Now, Herbert, the girls are all ready, I think.”
“Then forward—march!” cried Mr. Lee-Mittison and the five girls, followed by Mr. and Mrs. Lee-Mittison, filed through the swing-door held back by James Milton, who brought up the rear. Glancing back through the glass he saw Victor, whose rather marked exclusion from the picnic-party he was at a loss to understand, pocket the remaining parcel of sandwiches. This was done calmly and not with the air of sudden resolve. Mr. Milton, puzzled, alert for experience, hurried after the others.
They went forward at a swinging pace, well spread across the middle of the road. Carriages jingled past them, and a motor rushed by containing Colonel and Mrs. Duperrier and Mrs. Kerr, who were driving over the frontier to visit some friends. They all waved and smiled at Mr. Lee-Mittison’s party. This was a moment of keen pleasure for Mrs. Lee-Mittison. She carried a mackintosh over her arm in contempt of the sky, a bag of knitting in case they should sit down for long, and a basket of delicacies, dates and chocolates, with which Herbert liked her to supplement the lunch. Under her hard hat she shone with happiness; she refused to allow Mr. Milton to carry the basket.
“Oh no, please,” she implored, “it’s our picnic,” and he saw that her day would be spoilt if she were not able to be the Martha.
Mr. Lee-Mittison was pleased with his wife, as with everybody, and now and then patted affectionately the folds of her mackintosh. The departure, always a fidgety piece of organization, had gone off magnificently with never a hitch, and he looked with satisfaction at the five girls with their short skirts and neat ankles walking in front of him. No one could have been less of a horrid old satyr than Mr. Lee-Mittison, but he loved to surround himself with bright faces, and the faces of young women are admittedly the brightest.
He knew himself to be a success with young people: he could spin yarns and imitate animals by the hour, and tell graphically of life in the East, bearing his descriptions out with photograph albums. He found that he need never want for young society; girls seemed to take to him naturally. He did not care for young married women, while widows depressed him—poor little souls. On this occasion, the capitulation of Sydney Warren had been a particular triumph. She walked before him with her characteristic quick step, a little out of time with the others—her hands pushed deep down into the pockets of her jersey. It was true that in the glimpse he had had of her face she had not looked merry and that her back now did little to correct that impression. But if so, Mr. Lee-Mittison thought, a jolly day in the hills would be all the better for her.
The five girls had been all rather silent, but suddenly Eileen Lawrence burst into song; a chant in tune with their marching:
I had a good home that I left—left—left.
Now don’t you think I was right—right—right?
Me father was drunk, so I packed me trunk,
And I left—left—left—
“Oh, get into step, Sydney!”
“Really, Eileen!” said Mrs. Lee-Mittison, smiling with gratification at this burst of high spirits but glancing up at the villa windows under which they were passing. The Lawrences were such dear girls, Herbert loved them so, but she did hope they were not going to be too rowdy.
“This feels like school again,” said Eileen. “Left—left—left.”
“I can’t think what one would do,” observed Veronica, “if one’s father really were drunk.”
“Doctors daren’t—”
Two other girls, a pair of pale Miss Bransomes, giggled ecstatically.
“Specially Dad,” continued Eileen. “But as far as I know Dad’s never killed anybody.”
“Oh, Eileen!” said Mrs. Lee-Mittison.
“I dare say,” said Veronica, “that if we pretended to everybody here that Dad did drink everybody here would believe us. They’re a cheery crowd.”
“Not a very kind joke, I’m afraid,” said Mrs. Lee-Mittison, pink with diffidence.
James Milton, in whose late parish most of the people had been elderly, looked with interest at these modern girls. Sydney, turning round suddenly, caught him watching them all with pleased curiosity, and felt as his eye lingered hopefully on her that he was expecting a further contribution, still more picturesque, from herself. She was silent sardonically, partly to disappoint him, partly because she never felt in line with the Lawrences, and partly because she was self-conscious and felt stiff and clumsy at this sort of ragging.
Mr. Milton had been introduced to them all in the lounge by Mr. Lee-Mittison, who commended him to their good graces with a general wave of the hand. The Lee-Mittisons always went out of their way to be pleasant to strangers, making efforts to draw them as soon as possible into the social life of the Hotel centering round Mr. Lee-Mittison. They had been predisposed in Milton’s favour by the fact that he had come downstairs to breakfast and ordered an egg: this seemed to them virile. Very few people came down to breakfast, a discouraging meal to which the Lee-Mittisons by a punctual appearance and bright nods round tried in vain to impart an atmosphere. Accordingly they had buttonholed Milton and told him that he positively must join their expedition this morning; they would take no denial. Milton looked flattered and bothered. “As jolly a set of girls as you’ll meet anywhere,” said Mr. Lee-Mittison, winking chastely.
Milton was a big man of about forty-three with the clear, ruddy-and-white complexion of a wax model from which the moustache and expressive mouse-coloured eyebrows unconvincingly sprouted, looking darker than they were. He was long-limbed and strongly built but evidently out of training, for he began to pant and be silent sooner than any of them when they took the steep path up the side of the hill. He had intelligent, bright eyes, creased at the corners with humour, and the assured, affable, occasionally rather inane manner of the innately shy and diffident man who has never had to venture outside a society where he is secure and appreciated, and who has brought himself to believe, in spite of a deep-down protest, that such a society is the world. One felt that it should be easy to impress, affect, or discompose Mr. Milton, and yet that he had seldom been impressed, affected or discomposed.
The path was cobbled; it went up glaring white beyond the edge of one’s vision, relieved only here and there by the shadow of an olive tree. After some time it intersected a road that ran high up along the side of the hill, and the party staggered a short way along the road and sat breathlessly down on the parapet. James Milton and the Lawrences took out their cigarette-cases and Milton offered his round.
“Oh, you girls, you girls!” cried Mr. Lee-Mittison, “you do it charmingly, but how I wish that you wouldn’t!”
Sydney merely bent forward to the flame of a match that Milton was sheltering for her, but the Bransomes, a pair of pale cousins, turned paler still with dismay. They had recently arrived and had been much gratified by an invitation to the picnic; they did not care if they smoked or not, having only wished to resemble as closely as possible the Lawrences and the alarming Miss Warren. They waved the cigarettes away and shook their heads mulishly.
Mr. Lee-Mittison ignored their sacrifice. He was sitting astride on the parapet facing his protégées; now he leant forward, extending and thumping his chest. “Look at me!” he shouted. “Sixty-four and never smoked, never touched a drop in my life. Sixty-four, I tell you!” He stuck out his chest still farther and invited one of the Bransomes to thump it also, but she declined. “Regular habits, the fear of God, and water from the spring!”
“—Perrier when we are abroad,” said Mrs. Lee-Mittison, knitting.
The olives below the parapet sighed and twinkled; between the branches the party looked down at the miniature roofs of the town and realized how far they had come. Little distinct shadows from branches above their heads shivered over their figures and faces. Veronica moved closer up to Sydney confidentially. She thought Sydney queer, rather interesting, and wondered what she could possibly be thinking so hard about all the time. Sydney’s remoteness intrigued the fêted Veronica. She supposed with sincere generosity that the sort of man who did not admire herself might find Sydney very attractive. The absence of such a man here seemed bad luck on Sydney. But then, on the other hand, Sydney had curious ties.
“I never thought he’d get you,” said Veronica. “You always seem to be doing something else.” She placed a foot of her own beside a foot of Sydney’s and noted that while Sydney’s was the bettershaped, her own must be by half a size smaller. “You seem to be wonderfully busy,” she said with a sigh.
Sydney glanced into the irreverent, sentimental boy’s eyes of Veronica. There was something pleasantly hard about her; at every contact one was conscious of the blade in her deep down with a fine edge on it.
“Constant dripping,” she said. “For twenty-four hours I seemed to meet no one but Mr. Lee-Mittison and every time we met he was so sure—I wonder if she, or the first wife, ever wanted to marry him, or whether they had to.”
“How do you mean?” said Veronica with a spurt of laughter. She never waited to grope for one’s meaning, which instinct generally prompted one to
offer her on the flat of the palm, like a lump of sugar to a pony. “I can’t think,” she continued, “why he’s so determined to have you. You don’t effervesce. You’re not breathlessly modern (on his level!) every minute like we are. You can’t think how tired we get. That’s why Joan struck at coming this morning. She said she felt old…”
Sydney looked along at Mr. Lee-Mittison. “Ape!” said she. Mr. Lee-Mittison was trumpeting like an elephant and waving an imaginary trunk at the delighted Bransomes.
“Oh, I don’t know; the old blighter rather amuses me,” said Veronica tolerantly, and squinted down at the tip of her cigarette. “Joan’s off colour; as a matter of fact,” she suddenly confided, “I believe she is keen on Victor Ammering.”
“But isn’t he—”
“Yes, he’s keen on me,” said Veronica indifferently. “But you get used to that if you’re three sisters more or less the same age. Between us, we generally manage to keep people in the family.”
Sydney pondered; she had no sisters, and the ethics of the situation were beyond her. “You mean,” she said, “it would be more trying for Joan if I wanted Victor Ammering?”
“Oh, I don’t want him, if that’s what you mean,” said Veronica, with the crudeness of sincerity. “Anyone can have him, as far as I am concerned.” She dangled an imaginary Victor airily, as though he were a marionette. “But I can’t imagine what you and poor old Victor would find to say to each other,” she added.
“He did once try and kiss me, ages ago, at a dance,” Sydney said, reminiscently smiling.
“I know, he told me: he said you were rather annoyed.”
“I know I was—I hate being messed about.”
“I said to him at the time: ‘Victor, you are the limit: you’ve no instinct.’ ”
The Hotel Page 4
