“Then he was talking through his hat,” cried Lucy hotly. “I’m perfectly certain Mr. Thornley never intended to pinch my credit. He thinks of all the Institute Productions as his: from his point of view this one was. He left me all instructions, and I merely had to carry them out — and I had no business to ignore them as I did. If I’d let him in for a dire failure, he would have shouldered the responsibility and billed himself as producer just the same. He wouldn’t have saddled me with the blame. He has a terribly good opinion of himself, but he’s not a mean man or a jealous man.”
All lingering suspicions of Lucy’s sincerity were stilled in Charles’ mind. She had evidently not set Hayter on. She was not involved in the intrigue against Thornley. He ventured on his next question.
“I do long to know — I won’t tell anybody — but did you and Mr. Thornley have a scene when he got back?”
“Oh, terrific! But I’d asked for it. I deliberately went against his wishes, and planned to have everything so far ahead, when he got back, that he wouldn’t be able to alter it. And I did. I got my way over nearly everything, and what’s more he got me out of the scrape with Ianthe — my big mistake. He had every right to be furious, and I was very meek and apologetic, because I knew he couldn’t do much. But after the first night he apologised and kissed me, and gave me an inscribed copy of His Eminence. There aren’t any hard feelings between us now. In his way he’s very, very generous.”
And so are you, thought Charles, liking her better for every word she said.
His warning was useful to Lucy during luncheon. She was put through a brisk cross-examination and took care to do the utmost justice to Mr. Thornley. She explained that she could never have undertaken the production without his notes and spade work, which was perfectly true. Very often she had reverted to his methods, discovering her own to be at fault.
“Then you don’t think,” asked Lady Frances bluntly, “that your name should have appeared with his, as co-producer?”
Lucy was cornered.
“I’d have liked it,” she admitted. “But truly I don’t think it worth any fuss. I mean … credit in the Institute … well, it’s not like the Professional Stage where one’s living depends on it. Everybody knows what one’s done. The credit ought to be communal….”
Lady Frances looked pleased, and a smile crossed her pain-racked face. It occurred to her that Matt would have liked this girl. When she rose, to hobble upstairs for her afternoon rest, she gave Lucy a little push which was almost a caress.
“I don’t wonder you get people to do what you want,” she said. “I must see this play of yours if I have to go on a stretcher. Now I must lie down. Goodbye, my dear, and thank you for coming. Charles will take you home.”
Penelope helped her out of the room. Charles and Lucy, left alone, smiled at one another.
“You got over that stile very well,” he commented. “You don’t have to hurry back, do you? Come and see the gardens.”
There was not very much to see at that time of year. Lady Frances had patriotically dug up everything she could during the war, planting cabbages instead of roses, and potatoes in the herbaceous borders. The lawns had run to seed for hay, and shortage of labour had since delayed any extensive restoration of the old magnificence. But the afternoon was fine and the young couple strolled along the neglected paths contentedly enough, talking of Matthew Millwood, concerning whom Lucy was always eager to know more.
“You must see the glass-houses,” said Charles. “They were one of his pet hobbies, so we kept them up all through the war, because my mother couldn’t bear to let them go. We used to shiver round a small oil stove while all our fuel allowance went into the orchid-house furnace.”
He led the way round the lake, and explained how his father had come to have this hobby.
“When my father bought Cyre Abbey they were in charge of a Scotch gardener who treated him very contemptuously, as an upstart who had never seen anything rarer than a potted geranium before. My father wouldn’t have minded that if the man had known his job — but he didn’t think the goods justified such airs. He told the man one day that he could grow better orchids himself, and proceeded to do so.”
Lucy laughed and said that Mr. Meeker believed Matthew Millwood could have done anything in the world, if he chose.
“Not in these days,” grumbled Charles.
And offered his chip for her inspection, just as he had offered it to Mr. Meeker. Lucy listened politely. She longed to ask him if there was really anything which he violently wished to do and could not. He spoke of experiments which he might not attempt, but he did not strike her as much of an experimenter. He complained that his Liberalism forbade all hope of a political career, but she could not imagine him as a Liberal Minister, even though the electoral tide should turn. It seemed to her that his situation was ideal for a young man who believed himself destined to do much, but who preferred to do as little as possible.
His lament and her silent comment were still going on when they reached the glass-houses. He opened a door for her and they passed from the bracing afternoon into damp warmth and a forest of camelias. She stared at the rosetted trees and tried to admire them, but she never could care for glass-houses. The rich mouldy smell stifled her.
They strolled through the blossoming aisles of two more houses and came at last to an inner one, where the temperature was tropical, and the famous Cyre Abbey orchids stunned the beholder with a fantastic variety of colour and shape. She duly marvelled and wondered if they had been beautiful in the lands from which they came. Here they were not. But, in the Himalaya, so Patrick had said — Patrick, who was so very different from this peevish Charles! For oh, she thought, she did like a man to be deedy and high-spirited; that was why Patrick had charmed her and why stories of Matt Millwood were so captivating. I can’t … I mayn’t…. Here was Charles still keeping up his low-spirited grumble, when his father would have discovered a dozen grounds for saying I can … I’m going to….
“What a lot you know about orchids!” commented Charles, when, for the third time, she had identified a blossom without referring to its label. “Are you a botanist?”
“I … I was interested in botany at one time,” said Lucy.
She had been several times to the orchid house at Kew with Patrick, and a sudden memory of him came back to her now, a clearer picture than she had had of him for many months. He had stooped over a spray of flowers and then looked round at her, saying something about the Amazon.
Poor Patrick!
A wave of sorrow and pity went over her. She never now wanted to see him again, but she was sad because she knew that he would never go hunting for flowers, that he was not a Matt Millwood, and that his high spirits during the months of their engagement had been deceptive. She no longer loved him, but she was filled with that compassion which is the fruit of love and which survives it, when love has been untainted by bitterness. In all her troubles she had never felt bitter towards Patrick, had never wanted him to suffer, and now she found herself wishing quite passionately that he might fare well, and ever well — that he might find freedom.
She lifted her eyes to Charles, who was asking her some question. He thought that he had never in his life seen such beautiful eyes, though he could not put a name to the light which shone in them. The turn of her head, her smile, and this luminous tenderness of her glance, made him feel giddy; they tingled through his nerves like a shock. His question unanswered, he led the way through the orchid aisles. The other man, he thought, must have been a botanist. Though why he should call this shadowy individual the other man he did not immediately realise.
He took her back to Ravonsbridge. It was a silent journey. Lucy was thinking of Patrick, caught up in a mood of sharp recollection which could sadden but had no longer power to wound her. Charles was wishing that she would look at him. He wanted to see those eyes again. The memory of that glance made him thirsty, as though he had had one sip of some celestial drink which had then been s
natched away. He must have more of it.
He was to get no more. When he had set her down in Sheep Lane he drove off, feeling parched. Nor could he see how he was ever to slake this thirst. There was little prospect of seeing her again, save in a crowd. She would not be invited to Cyre Abbey. And if he took to haunting the Institute, if he invited her to come out with him, the whole of Severnshire would gossip. To see her again was just another of those things which he was not to be allowed to do.
Unless, of course, she should leave Ravonsbridge. If she went to London, if she were to be offered a much better job in London, they might meet in comfort. Such a thing would not be impossible to arrange. His name need never appear in the transaction. He had obliging friends, and the barest hint would produce, in due course, some attractive and unexceptionable offer to Lucy — some work, he supposed, in connection with stage production.
But there was a flavour of intrigue about such a ruse which would never blend with the pleasure of looking into Lucy’s eyes. Her candour was her great charm; he could not simultaneously enjoy it and impose upon it. Nor could he imagine how he was to phrase even the barest hint so as to escape the inference that he wanted to smuggle the girl out of Ravonsbridge in order to seduce her.
Marriage never occurred to him as a solution. He did not intend to marry. Some years earlier he had been rebuffed by a very lovely girl, augustly connected, who had queened it in the set which he then frequented. Common sense should have warned him not to address her without emphatic encouragement. This he never got, but, having a very good opinion of himself, he persisted, and then chose to regard his rejection as a humiliating snub. He suspected, with some truth, that people were laughing at him; a certain self-consequence in his manners impaired the popularity which he was otherwise well qualified to command. Dislike of meeting her, and she was to be met everywhere, began to embitter his social life. He retired to sulk in Severnshire, where he was bored but where he was certain to be treated with deference. His vanity had been more severely wounded than his heart, but Lady Flora still set his standard for a wife — the kind of wife whom he believed himself to deserve. Lucy, unabashedly middle class, fell as far below that standard as she soared above his requirements in a mistress. Such a girl could have no place in his life. He must forget about her eyes.
4
“MR. HAYTER! Might I speak to you for a minute?”
Any customer less cool than Hayter might have been intimidated by Lucy’s aspect when she made this request. But he was all accommodating cordiality. His cigarette-case was out in a moment, and his enormous, efficient lighter. A comfortable chair was pushed forward and enquiries were made after Lady Frances.
“You were lunching out there yesterday, weren’t you?”
“Yes,” admitted Lucy. “I thought she looked very ill. And she seemed to have got hold of some very stupid ideas about the play — that I had quarrelled with Mr. Thornley and that I was dissatisfied with the programme. And I understand that she got that impression from you, Mr. Hayter.”
She looked accusingly at the Executive Director, who shook his head in a puzzled way, and denied having ever suggested such a thing.
“Then what did you say?” demanded Lucy.
“She asked me if I thought it was fair that your name should be omitted from the programme. I said I thought it unfair. I’m sorry. I had to say what I think.”
“She asked you? Who can have first put the idea into her head then?”
“I can’t imagine,” said Hayter, with perfect truth.
They stared at each other. Lucy wondered if he was a liar. He wondered who on earth Lucy’s pigeon at Cyre Abbey could be. He had gone out there the very moment her ladyship got back and was immediately asked about that programme, before anybody else at the Institute had had a chance to say a word. By some means, Carmichael had got in with her story first. But how? Carmichael might look simple but she was a very, very clever girl. She had got the Millwoods eating out of her hand and yet had managed to keep on good terms with old Thornley. However things fell out, she was sitting pretty. But what was she after now?
“I know you didn’t mean to give a wrong impression,” said Lucy doubtfully. “But, as a result of what you told her, she sent for me first, before Mr. Thornley, which wasn’t a very good idea.”
Hayter smiled and refused to agree that there could be any harm in this.
“We did talk a good deal about you,” he admitted, “but I don’t think we said much about recent happenings. I really don’t remember that we did. We were talking of the future. In confidence, I’ll tell you that she wanted my opinion. You see … it’s a question of Thornley’s successor, when he retires. Your work this autumn has impressed everybody. You only need a little more experience. I think we all hope you’ll eventually get a chance to run that theatre.”
“I shall have had masses of experience,” said Lucy, “by the time Mr. Thornley retires. I shall be at least forty.”
Hayter laughed.
“Unless he’s run over by a bus,” she added, and was surprised by the sharp look she got.
“That might happen,” he agreed. “Or Mr. Thornley might be lured from us by work which interests him more. He has so much to call him away, nowadays. If that should happen, should you care to stay in Ravonsbridge?”
She meditated, and realised that she might enjoy it. The work was beginning really to interest her, and if ever she got an opportunity of trying out her own ideas, it might absorb her. But the students and the Drama School were not the chief attraction; she wanted to follow up her friendship with Owen Rees and other cronies in the lower town. She wanted to interest Ravonsbridge in its own Institute. She tried to explain this to Hayter.
“I quite agree,” he said, nodding. “That aspect of the theatre has been neglected and it’s very important. But I think Lady Frances intends to make a lot of changes. This is absolutely in confidence, for I don’t know if she’s discussed it with Mr. Thornley yet. She wants to separate the theatre from the School. Miss Frogmore can take over the School. For the theatre, she would eventually like a young producer who would work very much on the lines you’ve indicated — putting on shows in which local talent could be supplemented by the students. And then she thought she might get some distinguished London producer as titular Senior Director, who would visit us, from time to time, and keep us in touch with the outside world. Now … would you care to take on the theatre? There would, of course, be a larger salary, since less would have to be paid to a part-time Senior Director.”
Lucy thought it sounded a delightful idea and sighed. For she was sure that Mr. Thornley, when it came to the point, would never be lured out of Ravonsbridge. She said so.
“Oh … I don’t know,” laughed Hayter. “The traffic gets more dangerous every day.”
There was a pause. Lucy was quite unaware that she had been sounded. Hayter was wondering how far he had been sounded. Had she come to him in order to find out how the land lay? If so, she had forced him to put several cards on the table without revealing any of her own. What if she now took all this to Thornley? And why had she come at all?
She had come to scold Mr. Hayter for making mischief, but she realised that he had managed somehow to elude her. She rose to go and he came with her to the door of his office. He stood looking after her as she crossed the quadrangle to the theatre, and admitted to himself that he did not understand her. If he could have read her mind at that moment he would have saved himself some anxious moments, later on, by packing her off with Thornley. But honesty will always be a little mysterious to a rogue.
The wretched, petty business of the programme was not yet to be forgotten, as Lucy discovered when she got back to the theatre. Mr. Thornley had just heard of it for the first time, from the malicious Emil, and he was in a state of miserable consternation. It had never occurred to him that he ought to have billed her as co-producer, and he was deeply shocked when Angera accused him of unfairness.
“I don’t know why I didn�
��t think of it myself,” he told Lucy. “If I had, of course I’d have put in your name. You did so much of the work. Why didn’t you mention it to me?”
“Because I never thought of it either,” said Lucy unhappily. “You know what Emil is. Please don’t worry about it!”
“It’s the last thing I’d ever want to do….”
The telephone rang and Lucy answered it. Penelope Millwood’s voice barked an abrupt demand for Mr. Thornley. He took the receiver, in so courtly a manner that Lucy nearly laughed, and assured it that of course he would — he would be at Cyre Abbey in half an hour, and how was Lady Frances?
“She’s too unwell to come in,” he explained, as he hung up. “She wants me to go out there. I expect she wants to know all about the play. If your ears burn, Lucy, you’ll know why.”
“I was out there yesterday,” said Lucy quickly.
He was astonished, and looked it.
“She wanted news of Ianthe,” explained Lucy, “and she asked a good bit about the play.”
This was partly true. Lady Frances had asked after Ianthe. But it was so evasive that Lucy felt guilty and more than ever uneasy at this atmosphere of intrigue which seemed to hang round them all.
Mr. Thornley, however, was satisfied. He was flattered by this early summons to Cyre Abbey and looked forward to describing his triumphs in Geneva. He had not the faintest foreboding of the rod in pickle which was waiting for him. As he put on his overcoat and scarf he said:
“I’ll tell you what, Lucy! You shall do the Nativity Play this year. You shall be billed as sole producer. I shan’t be here for it anyway, as I’m going North before the end of term, on a lecture tour. You deserve a production of your own, my dear, and you shall have it.”
And he went off gaily to the slaughter-house.
Lucy had a fit of quiet hysterics. The Nativity Play! What hell on earth! Bloody angels, bloody shepherds, bloody star, God Rest You Bloody Gentlemen! PRODUCER: L. CARMICHAEL.
Lucy Carmichael Page 21
