Little sister

by Mary Burchell

  Alix's peace of mind and heart was so perfect that she thought nothing could ever disturb them again, and it seemed that her life stretched in front of her like a pleasant open road.

  Even saying good-bye to Barry before the magnificent portico of the Gloria was almost without regret, for had he not said to his father that he would "bring her quite often"?

  As she went up in the lift, she wondered idly how the dress rehearsal had gone. Poor Nina! she was probably tired out by now, but perhaps she would like to have Alix come and talk to her for a while. Prescott would know. It would be better to ask her first.

  Prescott was in the study as usual.

  "Oh yes, she'd like to see you, I expect. She's in bed now, but she was asking after you half an hour ago."

  ''In bed already?" Alix was surprised.

  "She often goes straight to bed after a dress rehearsal," Prescott said. And then: "What's happened to you? Has someone left you a fortune?"

  "No." Alix laughed and flushed. "I've just had a very nice day, that's all."

  "I see. Well, go and see if Nina wants you."

  Alix went.

  Varoni was lying back in bed, sipping something from a tumbler, and, for once, she really looked pale and fagged.

  "Hello, darling. Where have you been all day?" She put down the glass and held out her hand to Alix.

  "I've been out motoring in the country — with Barry."

  It was stupid for her ever to have supposed she could keep that a secret. And anyway — why?

  Varoni said nothing for a moment, but her eyes never left her daughter. Alix couldn't know, of course, how youthful and radiant and joyous she looked to the tired singer.

  "Where did you go?" Varoni asked at last.

  "To his home in Warwickshire. He took me down to see his father and—"

  "To his home? Barry took you to see his people?"

  "Only — only his father." Alix was suddenly frightened. "There isn't anyone else. His mother—"

  "Now look here, Alix." Varoni raised herself on her elbow energetically. "I am not going to have you running round with Barry, making yourself conspicuous. You must stop this friendship, do you understand?"

  "I must — what?" AlLx, who was by nature the gentlest of girls, burnt with indignation at this injustice. She faced her mother, her eyes as bright and hard as Varoni's own.

  "I shall do nothing of the sort," she said flatly. "It's unkind and absurd even to suggest it."

  CHAPTER SIX

  ONCE THE words were out, Alix nearly fainted with astonishment that she had said them. But the effect on Varoni was even more stunning.

  No one, Alix supposed with a shiver, had refused her anything so brutally in all her life — certainly not during the last dozen years.

  She went quite white, and her eyes a hard, dark blue.

  "You will do what I tell you," Varoni said, her usually beautiful voice very cold and curt. "You don't suppose I have you here, spend money on you, make a fuss of you — in order to have you defy me over the first command I lay on you."

  "But it's so unreasonable," Alix pleaded, though much more softly this time. "Nina, why should I do it? Mother, why should I do it?" She leant forward eagerly, her arm on the side of the bed.

  But the unusual form of address stirred no response in Varoni. She even drew a little away from her daughter, breathing rather quickly in angry agitation.

  "I don't want to argue with you, Alix, and I don't expect you to argue with me. It's the first time I have asked you to do anything. It's ungrateful of you to refuse so violently and obstinately—"

  Alix made an attempt to interrupt, but Varoni raised her hand with an imperious little gesture for silence.

  "Wait a moment. It hasn't been specially easy to have you here, but you wanted to stay and so I let you. It would have been much easier for me tp have left you alone at the cottage. Most women in my position would have done that," she added with sincere conviction, "but I didn't. I let you have your wish to come here and be with me, but in return I expect to have some control over your friendships and your general behaviour. That isn't unreasonable."

  "I didn't mean that." Alix spoke eagerly. "Please, please don't think I'm ungrateful for ail you've done. You've been an angel to me — and of course you have a right to criticize my friendships or — or my behaviour if you think they are questionable. But where is the reason in this? You

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  introduced Barry to me yourself — he's one of your own friends. How can you object to him?"

  Alix paused, but as her mother made no answer, she went on again.

  "I've never made myself conspicuous—" she flushed angrily at the memory of that phrase. "I've been out to supper with him — with your permission. He's sent me flowers. And now he has taken me into the country for the day, to see his home and meet his father. What is there wrong in that? It's all as natural as it can be."

  "It isn't enough that I forbid you?" Varoni said coldly.

  "No, it isn't." Alix tried to soften that by the tone in which she said it, but it had to be said.

  The whole argument was incomprehensible to her. In all the years at the cottage Grandma had never asked or ordered her to do anything without a perfectly clear reason for doing so. Alix's implicit sense of obedience was founded on logic and a profound conviction that justice was being done. But this ordering for ordering's sake — with no foundation except caprice and perhaps jealousy — hurt and angered her more than anything she could remember.

  "Nina dear—" she made a desperate effort for peace — "don't you think I have some right to know what is at the back of your order?"

  "No."

  Alix made a gesture of helplessness.

  "Grandma never refused me an explanation," she pleaded. But that was an unfortunate move.

  "Don't throw your grandmother's perfections up at me," Varoni retorted furiously. "I know she was everything wonderful, and I am cruel and unreasonable and wicked." And flinging herself down against the pillows, she turned her back on her daughter.

  Alix swallowed that as best she could.

  "Will you please tell me why I mustn't see Barry any more? — why it's so unsuitable that we should be friends."

  There was silence, and after a moment Alix tried generously again.

  "1*11 own you must know him much better than I do. But if you have something definite against him you must tell me — it's only fair. Otherwise, why should I blindly obey such a peremptory order?"

  "Don't my wishes count for anything at all?"

  "Darling, you know they do! But, you see, I — I like Barry very much, and so even your wishes must have some reason in them if I'm to do something that will hurt both him and me very much."

  Varoni turned her head and looked at Alix with great sullen eyes that had a suspicion of shadows round them.

  "Does he — like you very much too?"

  "I think so." Alix coloured, but she answered quite firmly.

  There was a long silence. Then Alix said gently:

  "You've known him many years, haven't you? Is there really something which happened during that time that makes you speak like this now?"

  "Yes," Varoni said slowly, and again there was that strange expression as though she was listening to an inner voice, "there is something. You are quite right — I have known Barry very many years. But there is something else. You have never asked me how well I knew him."

  Alix stared at her mother in extreme puzzlement.

  "Never asked how well you knew him?" she repeated stupidly. "But I don't see—"

  She stopped suddenly, for it seemed to her that a little trickle of ice ran down her spine, making her shiver all over.

  What was it Prescott had said?

  Oh, but that was absurd. Idle, impatient words which had no meaning. Something about Barry being in love with Varoni's voice. Yes, yes, of course that was possible. No harm in that. As Prescott said, many people were "in love" with that heavenly voice.

 
Only there had been something else as well.

  "I don't know whether he's in love with her or with her voice—" Something like that.

  Had Barry been in love with Varoni once?

  Alix glanced at her mother again, but her face was utterly inscrutable. Those clear blue eyes looked almost opaque at the moment, and indescribably secretive.

  "What — are you trying to tell me?" she said in a whisper.

  "Must I be even more explicit?" Varoni was breathing quickly again, as though she had been running.

  "Yes." Alix spoke almost harshly. "Do you mean that Barry loved you — really loved you — once?"

  That "once" was a good deal more painful than Alix could imagine.

  "You little fool, must you have it in black and white?"

  "No!" Alix cried. "I don't even want to hear about it ■— and anyway, I don't care. Whatever he felt for you is over now — over long ago."

  In her fear and anger she didn't stop to choose her words, nor notice the way her mother caught her breath at what she said.

  Varoni's hand moved across the coverlet, as though she literally groped for a weapon.

  "I suppose," she said in a curiously choked voice, "it never struck you that you might be related to Barry?"

  To Alix it was as though the whole world suddenly stopped. A frozen silence seemed to fall on everything, and she thought that even her heart lay still in her breast.

  Her mother couldn't possible have said that terrible sentence, of course. Or, if she had, it didn't mean the awful thing which her senses were clamouring to break through the silence and tell her.

  "I don't understand," she murmured dully at last, and it was almost literally true. Her mind refused to draw any understanding from those strange, shattering words.

  "Then you must be very stupid," Varoni retorted harshly, without looking at her. "I knew Barry well — a little too well — before you were born. Now do you see why you must not conceive some romantic attachment for him?"

  "Oh, God," Alix said very quietly, "how terrible! How utterly terrible."

  She got to her feet a little unsteadily. One part of her mind told her that she should say something else to her mother, but she was unable to find words. She thought Varoni bade her good night, but even that made no real impression. She went slowly into her own room, closing the door behind her, and, going over to her bed, she fell on it.

  For a long time Alix lay there in a sort of nightmare stupor.

  It was not so much the wreck of her immediate happiness that pressed this black cloud down on her. It was the

  awful, unnatural idea that she had harboured such thoughts about Barry — however innocently.

  She wondered despairingly what Grandma would have thought — and then dragged her scalded mind away from that. To Grandma it would have appeared exactly what it was: A horrible, unnatural tangle — something which left mud on everyone concerned.

  Alix groaned faintly and moved as though in physical pain.

  She must think of the way out. Only by finding the quickest, sharpest solution to the tangle could she ever feel decent again — and perhaps not then.

  There could be no explanations with him, of course. There must only be the break — clean, complete, brutal — so that he would never even think of her with tenderness again. There should surely be some way of doing it. She had only to think carefully and she would find it.

  When would she see him again? That was the first thing.

  She supposed — tomorrow night, after Don Carlos. Probably she would see him in the Opera House first, but there would be no chance of doing anything there. No — it must be afterwards. She would think of something.

  Alix had no idea when it was that she crawled off the bed and undressed. The night had no divisions for her — one hour was just like another. Sometimes she slept for a little while, but never deeply enough to escape the horror and dread hanging over her — and then she would lie awake again for a measureless time, going over and over the same set of tormenting thoughts.

  When it was almost light, she drifted into a heavy sleep, and then slept on until late into the morning. But there was nothing remarkable about that, of course, in a household where hours were so irregular, and no one even thought to ask whether she was ill or unhappy.

  The rest of the day passed somehow — she scarcely knew how — and at last she was dressed and ready to go to the theatre.

  This time Prescott was to go down to the Opera House with her. Moerling had already gone on with Varoni.

  "He usually does when it's a first performance/' Prescott explained. "She gets nervous and likes him to be around, I suppose."

  Alix tried to imagine Varoni nervous.

  "Does she really suffer from nerves?" she asked Prescott.

  "Well, of course. They all do. That is, if they're worth anything at all."

  "Oh."

  She wondered if Varoni were "worth anything at all". Prescott meant artistically, of course. But there were other things too.

  Then Alix stopped herself.

  What was the good of thinking these harsh things of her mother now? She had not discovered anything against her blacker than she had vaguely imagined before. What Varoni had done had taken on a terrible personal significance which neither of them could have foreseen, it was true. But that didn't make the fault of her girlhood any deeper. Perhaps she too regretted it all the more bitterly—

  "Goodness, child! Do you often go into a trance like this?"

  The exasperated voice of Prescott interrupted her thoughts, and Alix realized that they had arrived. With a murmured apology, she got out of the taxi and went into the Opera House.

  It was all very much as it had been before, except that there was even more brilliance and excitement, since it was a first performance, and the place was crowded.

  She found herself looking round for Barry, even while she nervously dreaded the moment when she should see him. Then she wondered with cowardly hope if he had been prevented from coming, and if she might have a few hours' reprieve.

  But two minutes before Moerling came to the conductor's desk, she saw Barry making his way to a seat on the other side of the gangway. He w x as looking round, as though trying to find someone, but she dropped her eyes to her programme and kept them determinedly there.

  At least, he could not speak to her now until the first interval. So much at least was gained.

  It was very difficult to concentrate on the opera — very difficult to take pleasure in Varoni, wonderful though she was.

  The curtain came down amidst tremendous applause. MiK mechanically added her own tribute of clapping. He

  would come over now, of course. Short though this interval was, he would come over to greet her.

  But she was mistaken. Few people moved from their seats, and he had no opportunity to join her. Determinedly he caught her eye, however, and this time she could not avoid him. She gave him a cool little nod in answer to his smile, and even from where she was, she thought he looked puzzled.

  He glanced away, and for a moment she studied his profile. He was a sophisticated type, of course — a man of the world, perhaps a trifle too experienced. But there had been that endearing, boyish side to him too. It was that which had misled her so terribly, both with regard to his character and his age.

  She saw now — there was the slightest touch of grey at his temples. Perhaps more than a touch. It was difficult to tell with anyone who was fair.

  With a sigh she turned her attention to the stage, for the curtain was rising again.

  "She's in wonderful voice tonight," Prescott said with something like content, at the end of the act. "Never heard her better."

  Alix murmured some agreement.

  The voice, the voice, the voice — that was all any of them ever thought of. What about the woman who went with that voice? Prescott didn't really care if she were good or bad, happy or wretched. She was merely the necessary human creature attached to the Voice. No wonder Varoni could b
e strange and inhuman at times. Everyone encouraged her to be.

  "Good evening, Alix. Am I in disgrace""

  With a tremendous thump of her heart, Alix realized that the first encounter had come. Barry was standing beside her, smiling but still a little puzzled. Prescott had gone off to speak to someone else, so there was no chance of a safe three-cornered conversation.

  "No, of course not," Alix replied lightly, though her spirits felt like lead. "Why should you be in disgrace?"

  "I couldn't imagine. My conscience was unusually clear," Barry declared gaily. "But I thought you eyed me coldly in the first interval and ignored me in the second. Come, confess you were trying to provoke me."

  "Don't be silly." Aiix was surprised herself at the amused boredom of that. "You attach much too much importance to how I looked at you."

  He sat down beside her then, and said with unusual gravity:

  "Not too much importance, Alix. I couldn't, you know. Every time you — Are you listening to me?"

  "Urn?" Alix's gaze came back from the second row of boxes with an air of irritated amusement that would have done her mother credit. "Sorry, I missed that. Whoever do you suppose that old woman is in all those diamonds? She's got up like a*Christmas tree fairy."

  He was staggered, she saw, and the quick, unusual flush told her that he was put out too. "That doesn't sound a bit like you," he said slowly. "And, anyway, don't you really mind what I was saying?"

  "You can tell me again if you like."

  "Alix!" He looked so bewildered that she wanted to put her arms round him and assure him feverishly that it was. all right. "I don't think I understand you this evening."

  "Oh, nonsense! Surely the simple little country flower hasn't suddenly become enigmatic?" She somehow infused an odd hint of malice into that, although it was all very casually done. And then, to her overwhelming relief, Pres-cott came back.

  Barry stood up, still not knowing what on earth to make of the situation, she saw, and half relieved himself at the return of Prescott. He spoke a word or two to her about the performance and prepared to move away. Then, turning back, he addressed Alix almost diffidently.