Little sister

by Mary Burchell

  When Alix woke the next morning someone had pulled back the heavy blue curtains and the sun was pouring in through the cream cloud of the outer ones.

  For a moment she could not imagine where she was. Then the sight of Drayton, standing beside her bed with a breakfast tray, recalled a jumble of last night's events.

  "Why, good morning, Drayton. What time is it?"

  "Twelve-thirty, miss."

  •Twelve-thirty! It can't be!"

  To Alix, who always got up at eight unless she was ill, this announcement seemed almost sinful. To Drayton, however, it seemed completely natural.

  "I'm sorry, miss. Did you wish to be called early?"

  "No. Only—"

  "Well, will you take your breakfast now, miss? Madame said you might like it now."

  "Oh, thank you. But it's almost lunch time, isn't it? It scarcely seems worth while having breakfast."

  "Madame often doesn't have lunch until four o'clock,** Drayton said calmly.

  Lunch at four! Alix perceived that she had indeed entered a topsy-turvy world. Perhaps it was best just to take things as they came. And so, sitting up, she accepted the tray from Drayton and proceeded to make an excellent breakfast.

  Over the meal she made some effort to sort out the events of yesterday.

  One fact to which she clung with passionate eagerness was her mother's statement that she was to remain. Not that Alix liked what she had seen of the life here, or that she could imagine herself fitting into the queer scheme of things; not that she could think without wincing of parting with Betty and the cottage and everything she had ever known. In fact, it frightened her even to glimpse the immensity of the change. But over and above every other consideration whatever was the overwhelming, driving urge to stay with Varoni, live with her, be noticed and loved by her.

  Alix faced the fact in the morning light, with something of the calmness of the inevitable. If she stayed with Varoni she might be happy or unhappy, but if she went from her now she could never know content again.

  And at that point Varoni's voice called to her from the next room, interrupting her disturbing thoughts:

  "Are you awake, darling?"

  "Yes, M — Oh yes, I'm awake," Alix cried out eagerly in return, and pushing aside the tray, she jumped out of bed and ran to the half-open door between the two rooms. "May I come in?"

  "Of course." There was lazy but unmistakable pleasure and amusement in that, and as Alix came into the room Varoni leant up on her elbow, her fair hair falling in an extravagant cascade over one bare shoulder and all down her arm.

  She was evidently even now scarcely fully awake, and for a moment Alix was strangely reminded of a beautiful, sleepy animal stretching itself in the sun. The next moment she was across the room, eagerly accepting and returning

  Varoni's very sweet good morning kiss, and aware of nothing but how good it was to be with her again.

  "What are you going to do with yourself today, baby?'* Varoni leant back against the pillows again, one strong, warm hand still holding Alix's.

  Tm not quite sure. I'll have to go home, for one thing, of course."

  "Your home is here with me now," Varoni said with an indescribably attractive smile.

  "Oh—" Alix pressed the back of her mother's hand against her cheek, and was happily silent for a moment. Then she added: "But I'll have to go back and arrange all sorts of things with Betty. You see, we hadn't really decided anything. It's only just over a week since — since Grandma died."

  "Is it? That must have been very sad for you," Varoni said quite gently, but as though she had never known Grandma well. And then, before Alix could explain more than the barest outlines of how the end had come, she changed the subject completely, leaving the stunned Alix to realize that she just didn't want to discuss Grandma — not even the overwhelming fact that she was dead.

  She would much rather pretend that Grandma had passed out of her life twenty years ago and, above all, she would much, much rather pretend that such a thing as death had not really come very near her own bright, triumphant world.

  Alix was speechless, with a kind of cold puzzled dismay, but Varoni was speaking again, with that good-tempered briskness which seemed to take up Alix's disorganized life and shake it into strange but undeniable order once more.

  "You had better telephone during the day to your housekeeper — Betty? — whatever her name is — and explain that in future you will live with me. She can send you some clothes — whatever you want until I can get you properly dressed—" Varoni ran a thoughtful though not unkindly eye over her daughter, and then went on, "I can't get away until the weekend, but on Saturday or Sunday I will drive down with you and make all the necessary arrangements."

  "You will?" Alix had somehow never visualized her glamorous and wonderful mother coming anywhere near

  the cottage, and now she blushed with pleasure at the thought.

  "Why, certainly." Varoni looked amused, and drew a teasing forefinger down Alix's pink cheek. "Why are you blushing?"

  "Nothing. Only it's lovely to think of you coming home," Alix said innocently.

  Varoni gave her a queer, half-puzzled little look, and laughed.

  "Funny child! We need not stay long, of course. An hour or two should be enough to settle everything."

  "Y — yes." It didn't seem possible to Alix that an hour or two would suffice to tie up all the ends of her old life, and she thought, with a sudden terrible pang, of Betty, who had greeted her every day of her school-life, and who believed there was no one in the world so important as Alix now that Grandma had gone.

  "What about Betty?" she stammered breathlessly. "And the cottage? Has the cottage got to go?" The world of the utterly fantastic was closing in once more, and all security was going.

  "Are you very fond of Betty and the cottage?"

  "Yes. The cottage has been my home all my life. I love it. And I love Betty too," Alix explained earnestly. "I can't imagine life without them. It — it frightens me," she added with pathetic truth.

  Again Varoni's eyes rested on her with that half-puzzled expression.

  •Then we'll keep the cottage," she said carelessly. "And I suppose your Betty can go on living there, and have the place ready for you whenever you need a rest from trailing round Europe with me."

  "K — keep the cottage? Just because I want it? Even though I shall only be there occasionally!" Alix was stupefied., "Oh, but you shouldn't. It's so much expense for nothing," she said earnestly, all Grandma's careful and sensible training rising in her.

  "Why not? I can afford it." The air of a benevolent empress suddenly seemed to clothe Varoni. "I'd like you to have something you want so much."

  Emotion almost choked Alix. It seemed to her that such generosity could never have been known before. One flick

  of her mother's strong, white hand sufficed to keep her dear familiar home-life intact, while she herself explored the delicious terrors of something entirely new.

  She flung her arms round Varoni and kissed her afresh.

  "I can't understand — it's wonderful — such generosity. Oh, you're much too good to me!"

  Varoni gave that infinitely pleased, infinitely beautiful laugh.

  "Oh, there, there—" she ruffled up Alix's hair with amused tenderness. "What a fuss about a small yearly rent! Perhaps I'll buy your cottage and give it to you for a Christmas present. Now run along, baby, and get dressed. I must get up or Moerling will be here raising hell. I think I promised to go out with him this afternoon. You'll have to amuse yourself, Fm afraid. See Prescott and ask her for anything you want. You'll find her in the study."

  "Who is Prescott?" Alix managed to get out, though the incredible, careless hint about her owning the cottage almost deprived her of speech.

  "Prescott?" Varoni's laugh was faintly spiteful that time, "Prescott is officially my secretary. She's also the guide, philosopher and friend (or so I suppose) of all our circle. No one likes her, but we all use her, and I've never been a
ble to find whether she adores us or loathes us in consequence. Except Moerling, of course — she adores him. Now run along, pet, and don't keep me any more."

  Alix "ran along".

  While she bathed and dressed, she allowed her mind to go back over the scene which had just passed. There never could possibly have been anyone so generous or wonderful or incredibly glamorous as her mother. Everything she said and did.

  For a moment Alix's thought lingered unpleasantly over the strange, callous blankness about Grandma's death. But almost immediately she told herself that she must have been mistaken over that. Probably poor, beautiful Varoni had been more deeply moved than she felt willing to show.

  Yes, that was the explanation — a perfectly obvious explanation.

  And after that Alix hastened to finish her dressing, and then, with a slight feeling of trepidation, she went to make the acquaintance of Prescott.

  Standing in the small, square entrance hall, she made up her mind which must be the study door, and having rather timidly tapped, she opened the door and went in.

  By the window stood a large desk, covered with orderly piles of paper, correspondence, leaflets and all the paraphernalia of office life. Behind the desk sat a brisk, dark-haired, sallow woman of between thirty and forty, writing busily.

  She glanced up as Alix crossed the room.

  "Good morning," she said curtly, and went back to her work.

  "Good morning."

  The silence was unpromising, but Alix made another attempt to break it.

  "Are you Miss Prescott?"

  "You'd better call me Prescott," was the reply. "Everyone does."

  "Oh." It seemed to Alix a not very welcome familiarity, and, after a moment, she said curiously: "Why do they?"

  "I'm sure I don't know." Then, with a sardonic little smile, but still without looking up: "Unless it is that my parents chose to christen me Venus Prescott, and no one in their senses would call me Venus."

  This was so palpably true that Alix was embarrassedly silent, until Prescott raised those bright, snappy black eyes and looked at her with a slightly malicious amusement which showed she was perfectly aware of Alix's thoughts. It became pressingly necessary to say something else, and Alix plunged again rather desperately.

  "I'm Alix Farley, you know. Varoni's sister."

  "I know. I saw you last night at the supper party."

  "Did you? I didn't see you," Alix said in surprise.

  "No, I dare say not. That's part of my duties."

  "What is?"

  'To be overlooked. Secretaries of successful women bring inconspicuousness to a fine art — if they want to keep their jobs."

  And she bent her head over her work once more.

  Alix moved a step nearer to the desk. Then she saw something that riveted her attention. Several photographs of her mother were lying there, arranged in the neat piles which seemed characteristic of Prescott.

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  ,

  "Oh — may I look, please?"

  Prescott glanced up.

  "If you like. But don't get the sets mixed."

  "No. Are they arranged in different poses?"

  "No. Different messages," Prescott said laconically.

  "But—"

  "These are the 'Very sincerelies" Prescott indicated a pile. "These are just autographed and nothing else." She tapped much the largest pile. "Then these are 'Affectionately yours*. It depends on who asks and how they ask," she added in explanation.

  "I see."

  Alix touched them with awed care, turning them over and examining them carefully. Then, suddenly, she stopped. The colour flamed up in her face, for there were two or three in a little heap on their own, and across the corner of the top one ran the all-but-sacred message: "With all my love".

  "Th — these," Alix stammered in a stifled voice. "Whom are these for?"

  Prescott glanced up indifferently.

  "Anyone she specially hates or fears."

  "What?" Alix sat down abruptly. "But she says 'With all her love'."

  "Of course." Prescott smiled dryly. "It's a concise way of saying, 'Here you are, you cat. I know you sang well last Thursday, but I can still sing better. And, anyway, you'll have to pretend to gush over this because you can't afford to offend me yet, remember'."

  "It's not true!" The tears came into Alix's eyes.

  "It's quite true," Prescott said.

  "But how horrible — cynical."

  "Well, this life is cynical."

  "Is it?" Alix shivered involuntarily.

  "Yes." Prescott thoughtfully pushed little holes in her blotting pad with the point of her pen. "Yes, operatic life is the strangest mixture of cold cynicism and high romance."

  "Then the romance is there too?" Alix clung pathetically to the few illusions left.

  "Oh yes. That's why you never can get away from it, once you've felt its appeal. It's a deadly struggle and quite

  often the end is horrible. But—" Prescott's smile was almost human — "the radiance while it lasts!"

  "You mean the — triumph?"

  "Not only the public triumph. It's the triumph of music and drama over everything else. It doesn't matter what misery and pettiness go on behind the scenes first. If the singers really have God-given voices and temperaments they can only do what the composer meant them to do, once the performance has begun."

  Alix was absolutely silent, astounded by this outburst from the apparently inhuman Prescott, and after a moment Prescott went on, still more reminiscently:

  "I've seen a woman who was dying go on and sing Mozart so that it was the promise of eternal life to the fifteen hundred people listening. She was terribly afraid herself, and she didn't believe in a hereafter, but Mozart did

  — that was the point. And when she opened her mouth and sang, no one heard her fears. They only heard the beauty of Mozart's music, and in that, vaguely sensed the promise of eternity."

  Prescott stopped speaking, but still Alix made no attempt to break the silence. She could not have believed that such a flame of almost poetic enthusiasm burnt behind the sallow, rather expressionless face of Prescott

  "Do you mean," she said slowly at last, "that there is even more romance and thrill in a great singer singing than in a great actor acting?"

  "Infinitely more."

  The answer didn't come from Prescott, and, turning sharply, Alix saw that Dieter Moerling was standing in the outer doorway, his hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, his heavy eyes regarding her not unkindly.

  Alix instinctively got to her feet — she had no idea why

  — and, as she did so, he took the inevitable cigar from his mouth and came across the room in his leisurely way — oddly graceful for such a big man, Alix thought.

  'Tell Nina she is already late." Moerling gave a nod of dismissal to Prescott, who went without a word.

  Alix sat down again, rather nervously, exceedingly overwhelmed at being left alone with the great man. She didn't expect Moerling to enlarge on his smilingly autocratic assertion, but after a moment he spoke to her again, a little

  abruptly, as though that odd shyness had descended on him once more.

  "See here, my child — What is your name, by the way? I forget."

  "Mix."

  "Alix?" He repeated it. "It is pretty," he said, giving it his lordly approval. And then, returning to the really important subject: "Suppose you have a book of Shakespeare's plays. You can read them and enjoy them — you can find for yourself a great deal of the beauty and meaning. Not perhaps so much as if you see and hear them acted as they were meant to be, but — a certain amount. You are not entirely dependent on the actors for your joy in them. You follow me?"

  Alix nodded, her eyes on his lively, interesting face.

  "But now—" he emphasized his point with the cigar, like someone used to giving explanations and instructions — "Suppose I give you a score of Beethoven's Fidelio. What does it mean to you unless the singers, the orchestral players, the c
onductor, are there to interpret it for you? Look—" he opened the score he had been holding under his arm — "What do these lines and dots convey to you? Perhaps nothing at all. Perhaps you can read music — I do not know — but in that case, no doubt you can hum or whistle or croak some of the airs — no more. But you are not hearing what Beethoven meant you to hear."

  Alix watched the conductor's extremely beautiful hand as it flicked over the pages.

  "Yes, I see."

  "Now you can make a good orchestra by hard work — you can even, to a certain extent, make a good conductor by hard work. But the voice you must wait for. Only God or fate or whatever it is can give that. Then one day God or fate is kind and presents the world with a truly great voice. Someone trains that voice instead of ruining it. The divine circle is complete. The dots on that paper become the flame of the composer's genius as he himself lit it. It is the nearest thing we know to a raising from the dead. That is why, to those who have ears to hear, a great voice singing great music partakes of the glory of God."

  Alix gazed in silent fascination at Dieter Moerling. She had never in her life heard people talk as he — and indeed

  Prescott — talked. She had an idea that Grandma would have thought it faintly blasphemous, but it was so indescribably thrilling that she could only listen, spellbound. It was like having crossed the borders of an unknown and fascinating country.

  "And — is Nina's voice truly great?** she got out at last

  "Nina's voice is truly great,** he agreed. "That is why we sometimes forget she is only a woman and—** he smiled grimly — "treat her a little too much as though she were a goddess.'*

  "I see.** Alix stared down at the photographs on the desk, and again the meaning of that loving message struck at her. That was the other side of the picture, she supposed. The cold cynicism of which Prescott had spoken.

  Moerling gave a slight sound of interest, and picked up one of the photographs.

  "That is new," he remarked, and then, in that final way of his: "It is good." Evidently there was no appeal from his expressed opinion. " 'With all my love*,** he read out amusedly. "Hm-hm. Very charming.**