‘What did he say?’
‘He seemed almost apologetic about them. And yet defiant. He said that he considered they were as good work as ever he’d done, and that Sir Thomas could always whitewash the wall if he didn’t like it, but that he, James, wouldn’t alter them for anybody.’
‘Of course, they are all rather … bacchanalian, but I don’t think the Bragges seem to mind.’
The car swung into the long road leading up the Braxhall valley. Beside them the stream wound through the fields, and ‘Bragge’s Barracks’ frowned upon them from the heights. Agatha realized with a pang that her afternoon of happiness and freedom was nearly over; she was returning to a prison, and would soon be plunged afresh into that abyss of irritation, suspicion, veiled criticism, secret conclaves, tactful hints and plain speaking. The clarity of mood, the singleness of mind, which she could only achieve in Gerald’s company must inevitably be shattered. She had looked forward to taking him to Bramfield; she knew that he would like Dolly and James, and she revelled in the sense of companionship, of comprehension, which had been theirs since childhood. In her exaltation she could believe that they were both entire strangers to Braxhall, travellers from another world, gayer, simpler and more vital.
Anxious to prolong her reprieve, she suggested that they should walk up through the gardens.
‘We can cross by the footbridge,’ she said, ‘and send the car up by the road. There is plenty of time. It’s not six yet.’
He acquiesced and they stopped the car. A steep stile took them into a square field peppered with mushrooms. Gerald, the glare of the collector in his eye, immediately began to pick these, swearing mildly at deceptive puff-balls. She watched him, still possessed by the conviction, common to all lovers, that she had discovered the secret of the universe. Her amusement was tender and beguiling.
‘You are one of those people who can’t pass a mushroom. I know! My mother is like that. She will walk ten miles carrying one.’
‘Still,’ he protested, ‘even one is nice in a stew….’
‘They will be excellent in our hash tonight, I’ve no doubt. What will you do with them? Which chef will you give them to?’
‘It’s sheer waste to leave them.’
They crossed the little footbridge into the garden. Gerald held his hat full of mushrooms in both hands, very carefully, like a chalice. The silence and the sun absorbed and enfolded them; the extreme degree of isolation in which they walked was intensified by the fact that they were visible from every window on the south side of Braxhall. They ascended towards that observant, many-eyed façade as adventurers approach a hostile stronghold.
Slower and slower grew their pace as they mounted from terrace to terrace; longer each pause as they turned to look down the valley. Nothing stirred in the picture below them; not a cow or a sheep moved in the unbroken green of the fields and the heavy foliage on the opposite hillside was as massive, in the strong sunlight, as a tapestried picture.
‘How warm and tame these woods look!’ said Agatha suddenly. ‘You would never think that at night they are full of lost souls.’
‘Oh, those owls! Did you hear them?’
‘They went on all night. They were worst about half-past two.’
‘I know.’
Each had a vision of the other lying awake in those long haunted hours when the valley echoed to strange cries and a low mist from the stream lay over the fields. They resumed their climbing and did not pause again until they had reached the topmost terrace of all and stood close beneath the walls of Braxhall. Then Gerald spoke impulsively, in obedience to a decision which he had just reached:
‘I suppose lunch tomorrow will be over by three o’clock? I must get away by the three-forty.’
‘Oh, Gerald! You aren’t going? Not tomorrow?’
‘Yes.’ He spoke a little unsteadily this time and did not look at her. ‘I think I ought to be getting back.’
She stared at him, an icy terror spreading over her, so that she shivered in spite of the strong sun.
‘I really oughtn’t to be away at all, just now,’ he added. ‘But I wanted to see … to see those frescoes, you know.’
He regarded his mushrooms unhappily. He had made up his mind that another night of listening to the Braxhall owls would be as much as he could bear. To himself he repeated in mental reiteration:
‘Too risky! Altogether too risky!’
They moved on into the house. When they reached the marble corridor she had collected herself sufficiently to remark: ‘Oh, yes. I suppose you oughtn’t to leave your work for long.’
He nodded and began to mount the wide, shallow stairs. She watched him until he had turned the corner. He was still carrying his hat reverently, like a chalice.
4.
He was scarcely out of sight before Lois came hurriedly through the folding doors of the banqueting hall. She advanced in the greatest agitation, calling softly to her sister-in-law. The pallor of her tear-stained cheeks roused Agatha, for a moment, from the stupor of misery which had overtaken her.
‘What is it? What is the matter?’ she cried.
Lois sank on to the bench beside her and began in a low voice:
‘Oh, Agatha! It’s so dreadful! Listen! Hubert is come … and …’
She paused to give a loud sob.
‘Dearest Lois! Tell me what it is. What can have …’
‘Can you come into the hall for a minute? No, wait! I’d better tell you first what has happened.’
‘Have you had bad news?’ asked Agatha, wondering if Hubert had been speculating.
‘No! No! He came, and I took him to see the frescoes. Oh, dear! Oh, Agatha, did you see anything wrong with them?’
‘My dear, I know absolutely nothing about pictures.’
‘But you don’t need to, to see this. How can we have been so blind? It’s incredible! I saw it directly he pointed it out to me. And you can’t think how angry he is. He says I am absolutely incapable of looking observantly at anything….’
‘But what is it? What is wrong with them?’
‘Oh, it’s perfectly wicked of James. It really is. He’s put in Tom and Cynthia.’
‘Put in?’
‘Into the fresco. They are quite unmistakable. Hubert says he doesn’t know when he’s seen anything more savage. He saw it the moment …’
‘Oh, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. I saw the frescoes myself. Where are they?’
‘In the centre panel, over the dais. Don’t you remember those people reclining at a sort of banquet … absolutely gorging….’
Agatha reorganized her memory and recalled with a shock of alarm an incredibly aldermanic figure, which she had set down for Silenus, taking his ease, if she remembered correctly, in the arms of a slender, blonde hussy…. A horrible doubt was born in her mind.
‘Let me look!’ she cried, and then asked: ‘Who is in the hall?’
‘Only Hubert. He’s the only person that knows, so far, except John. John saw it at once when we told him, and he just wants to murder James. And he said we’d better find you and consult what’s best to be done. So we both went to look for you. I don’t know where he’s gone; up to your room, I expect. I … I don’t think he knew you had gone out with Mr Blair. But I happened to look out of the window and saw you coming up the hill. So I ran out to stop you.’
‘I see,’ said Agatha, too much preoccupied to notice that Lois was blushing. ‘Let’s go into the hall.’
She followed Lois through the big doors. They discovered Hubert, in a transport of fury, pacing up and down and viewing the unspeakable paintings from every part of the room. Agatha looked at the panel over the dais and turned pale. It was quite undeniable that the central figures of the piece were more than reminiscent of Sir Thomas and Lady Bragge.
She looked for a long time in shocked silence and then said faintly:
‘I suppose it’s having no clothes on that makes one slow to recognize them.’
‘I suppose so,’ said H
ubert grimly. ‘But I found no difficulty in seeing it the moment I came into the room.’
‘But then, you know, the first time I saw it they were both here, with their clothes and everything … it distracted one’s attention a certain amount.’
‘I see it more strongly every minute,’ broke in Lois. ‘I’ve seen Cynthia look like that a dozen times, when she is a little anxious what Sir Thomas will say next. Late on in dinner, you know, when he’s rather …’
‘I’ll go down to Bramfield tomorrow and kill James,’ said Hubert.
Agatha was looking intently at the piece and now asked: ‘What are all those people doing on that little hill behind the group? What are they building?’
‘A temple?’ suggested Hubert uncertainly.
‘It’s Braxhall,’ she vowed. ‘It’s this house as you see it from the valley.’
‘Perhaps,’ he agreed. ‘But it doesn’t signify. It isn’t nearly so obvious as these people in the foreground. Among all these bosky hillocks and leafy groves it will pass unnoticed very probably. The other can’t.’
‘I don’t think there are any other portraits,’ said Lois, who had been looking anxiously at the other panels. ‘Not of people we know, anyhow. That’s some comfort.’
‘I shall go round and kill him,’ repeated Hubert with gathering venom.
‘I wish you would,’ muttered Lois.
‘When you think it was on my recommendation … Of course, I ought to have known that he wasn’t to be trusted. I knew he was getting riled with the way Sir Thomas went on, and I half suspected that he had some dirty trick up his sleeve. But I depended on Lois to let me know if anything was wrong. I ought to have known that she is about as much use as a sick headache. I ought to have known, after all these years….’
‘But Lois wasn’t the only one,’ interrupted Agatha. ‘We’ve all been blind. Look at John! And my mother, and Lady Clewer, and the Bragges themselves! You are the first person to notice it, Hubert, as far as I know.’
‘Well, I can’t understand it! You simply can’t have looked at the thing.’
‘No. I don’t think we did. That’s it. At least it is in my case. There is always something in James’s work which makes me very reluctant to look at it. I couldn’t say why.’
‘Of course,’ said Hubert bitterly, ‘anybody could be excused for not recognizing their own portraits; and I suppose that the rest of you were so steeped in the Bragge atmosphere, don’t you know….’
He broke off with a shrug. He could not forgive them for not having warned him. His taunt was directed at his wife but it stung Agatha intolerably. Convinced that her cousin was fleeing from Braxhall because he could endure it no longer, she resented any implication which would put her in such a galley. It was an insult to say that she was steeped in Bragge atmosphere. Confronted with this epitome of it, she found it all as detestable as anybody could. Neither James nor Gerald could hate it worse.
‘But what about the party?’ Lois was saying. ‘That’s what we wanted to consult you about. What are we to do? Can it be put off? What shall we say to the Bragges?’
‘Couldn’t we persuade them to have lunch in the panelled room?’
‘It wouldn’t hold half the people. Besides, the whole thing is got up especially to exhibit the frescoes.’
‘Well,’ said Agatha, thinking swiftly, ‘we must let things take their chance. I would suggest that we say nothing to anyone. Not till after the party. It can’t be put off now.’
‘But supposing people see …’ began Lois.
‘Can’t we trust that the majority of the guests will be as unobservant as we have been? I don’t see why not. They won’t expect it, you know; and most people don’t see things they don’t expect. And they will all be eating lovely food; food good enough to absorb their attention completely. Besides, a lot of them will have their backs to that particular panel.’
‘I shall give myself away,’ said Lois. ‘I shall blush whenever I look at the thing.’
‘If ever I do anything for that fellow again,’ said Hubert, ‘I’ll be boiled alive!’
‘And for relations too!’ cried Lois. ‘It’s simply disgusting! When we have all been so …’
She was disconcerted by something in the faces of the other two, and did not attempt to specify what his family had always been to James. Instead she added:
‘I’m sure we all recognize, now, that he is justified in his claims as an artist.’
‘I never heard him make any,’ murmured Agatha.
Hubert was studying the fresco again and now commented: ‘I always did think that Sir Thomas looked like a satyr. I remember it struck me the first time I saw them sitting together under a tree. A satyr and a nymph! Oh, yes … but it wasn’t Cynthia though, it was you, Agatha.’
‘Cynthia or me!’ thought Agatha. ‘It doesn’t matter which. We are both the same type to James … and Gerald.’
‘But even if we get through this awful lunch safely,’ demanded Lois tearfully. ‘… What then?’
‘We’ll have to see,’ said Hubert. ‘I think I agree with Agatha. Since we can’t postpone the lunch we must go through with it, and in that case the fewer people who know the truth the better. Your mother doesn’t know, Lois?’
‘No. And what she’ll say when she finds out, I don’t know. She will make James sorry.’
‘What about your mother?’ went on Hubert, turning to Agatha. ‘Should we tell her? Would she help us to carry things off?’
‘Heavens, no! On no account! She’s the very last person to tell. Though she’s generally so quick that I can’t think why she needs telling. But she would be so frightfully amused—you must forgive me for saying so, Lois. It wouldn’t be safe. She wouldn’t be able to help telling people, or at least prompting them to guess.’
‘Oh well, then, in that case …’
‘We must try to keep her very busy and animated all through lunch so that she simply doesn’t look at the thing….’
The dismayed trio stared at the thing and wondered how anyone could possibly be prevented from looking. They started guiltily as John flung open the door at the end of the hall and slammed it behind him. He joined them without a glance at the frescoes and addressed himself to his wife.
‘I didn’t know you had gone for a walk. I was looking for you.’
‘I went over to Bramfield to see Dolly and James,’ she replied in some surprise.
His face, at the mention of James, grew a shade blacker. ‘Oh, yes? I thought I saw you walking across the valley field just now.’
‘We got out of the car by the footbridge and walked up the garden.’
‘I know. I saw you from the staircase window.’
Hubert and Lois looked at each other, and Lois broke in:
‘I found Agatha in the hall, John, and brought her in here. I didn’t know you were still looking for her.’
‘I wasn’t. I was coming down to fetch her when I met Sir Thomas, who began to talk about his peach house. I couldn’t get away.’
‘About these frescoes …’ began Hubert timidly.
‘Eh? The frescoes?’ asked John vaguely. Then he recollected himself and exclaimed: ‘Oh, damn the frescoes. Do what you like about it. They are no business of mine.’
And he turned again upon his wife a regard which said that here was a business which touched him too nearly. Hubert seized Lois by the arm and almost ran her out of the hall.
‘Well, but,’ she whispered as soon as the door had closed behind them, ‘Agatha shouldn’t walk about in front of the windows with Mr Blair just when poor John is so ill.’
‘She doesn’t know he’s ill,’ returned Hubert violently. ‘It’s … it’s unfair not to tell her. It’s …’
‘Hush! Somebody will hear. Wasn’t it awful? I never saw anybody look so angry. His face was quite blue. It must be very bad for him.’
‘It’s not our business,’ said Hubert firmly.
They stole away.
John, left alone with his w
ife, turned upon her furiously. ‘You went to see Dolly and James, did you? Well, you won’t go again.’
‘John! What is the matter with you? You’ve no business to lose your temper like this. What do you mean? I shall certainly go if I please.’
‘I won’t have it. I forbid you to go there again. You are not to see James any more, or his wife. You must drop them, see? It’s the encouragement you give them that lets us in for this sort of thing.’
He waved a hand at the frescoes.
‘But I’m very fond of him,’ she protested vaguely, still at a loss.
‘You are fonder than is prudent of several of your relations, aren’t you?’
She started, stared, and grew very pale. He was, indeed, appalled at what he had said, and repented instantly. He had been stung beyond endurance by the sight of that slow, intimate ascent through the Braxhall gardens. He was determined to end, one way or the other, a situation which was becoming intolerable. The irrevocable words now lay between them like a flung gauntlet. Nothing could unsay them; but Agatha, after a moment’s consideration, made a visible attempt to ignore them.
‘We’ll discuss James later …’ she said. ‘The business before us now is the frightful party tomorrow….’
But he thought that he might as well go on as he had begun. ‘The party tomorrow won’t concern us,’ he told her, ‘because we shall not be here.’
‘John?’
‘We leave here first thing tomorrow morning.’
Her eyes questioned him and he flung the reason at her. ‘I won’t have you driving about the country with that … that fellow. You will leave Braxhall tomorrow and I won’t have you seeing him again.’
‘Do you mean Gerald Blair?’
‘I do.’
She considered this for a moment and then asked:
‘And what makes you take this line? What cause have I ever given you? What have I done?’
‘You’ve lost your head over him. It’s perfectly obvious to anyone. And it’s enough. I’m not taking any risks.’
She opened her lips for a denial which would not come. Instead she cried out:
‘Risks! What risks? Do you want to insult me?’
Ladies of Lyndon Page 21
