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Ermyntrude’s luncheon was carried into the drawing-room on a tray, an arrangement which met with Wally’s undisguised approval, but although she was clearly too unwell to attempt to take her place in the dining-room, she felt just strong enough, after she had disposed of a nourishing and varied repast, to welcome the Prince to a chair beside her sofa, and to hold him in sad, low-voiced converse for over an hour.
‘And I quite think that she’s doing her Great Renunciation scene,’ said Vicky, sprawling, all legs and arms, in the hammock. ‘She definitely had that look on her face, hadn’t she?’
‘I don’t know, and I think the way you talk about her is perfectly disgusting!’ replied Mary.
‘Oh, darling, do you? Are you feeling foul?’
‘I’m feeling utterly fed-up with the whole situation!’
‘Never mind, sweet! We’re getting rid of Alexis for tea,’ said Vicky.
‘If your mother lets him go.’
‘Well, if she does, it’ll be a pretty sure sign that she’s sacrificed him to Duty,’ said Vicky cheerfully.
Whether Ermyntrude had indeed done this, or not, she put no obstacle in the way of the Prince’s keeping his engagement with Dr Chester. When Mary interrupted her tête-à-tête with him, to suggest to her that she should rest on her bed until tea-time, she made no demur, but allowed herself to be supported upstairs to her room. She had had a disturbed night, an exhausting quarrel, and a large luncheon, and she felt extremely sleepy. She cherished no illusions about the appearance presented by middle-aged ladies overtaken by post-prandial slumber, and had no intention of sleeping anywhere but in the privacy of her bedroom. Moreover, she wanted to take off her corsets.
Mary waited to see her comfortably bestowed, and retired to her own apartment. She felt that she was entitled to a respite, and she did not emerge until it was nearly time for tea.
Vicky was still in the hammock, and the Prince, very natty in a grey-flannel suit and wash-leather gloves, was inquiring the way to Dr Chester’s house of his host.
‘You can’t miss it,’ said Wally. ‘It’s in the village. Ivy-covered place standing right on the road, with a lot of white posts in front of it.’
‘Ah, yes, I will remember. But the village, in effect, where is that?’
‘Turn to the right when you come out of the garage entrance, and left when you get to the T road, past the Dower House,’ said Wally, in the tone of one who found the subject tedious. ‘And it’s no good expecting anyone to drive you, because my wife’s got a lot of silly ideas about giving the chauffeur the day off every Sunday. Of course, if I weren’t going out myself I wouldn’t mind running you there,’ he added handsomely.
No amount of rudeness seemed to have the power of ruffling the Prince’s temper. He replied with his inevitable smile: ‘It is unnecessary, I assure you, for Vicky lends me her car. It is I who may perhaps drive you to this Dower House which you say I shall pass?’
‘Very good of you, but you needn’t bother. I always walk over by way of the bridge,’ said Wally. ‘Short cut through the garden,’ he explained.
‘Then I will say au revoir,’ bowed the Prince.
‘So long!’ replied Wally, adding when his guest was out of earshot: ‘And if you have a head-on collision with a steam-roller it?
?ll be all right with me!’
Six
Ermyntrude would have been extremely indignant had she known that her dislike of the intimacy prevailing between Wally and Harold White was shared by Janet White. Filial piety forbade Janet to ascribe her father’s vagaries to any inherent weakness of character. She said sadly that Mr Carter had led him into bad ways, a pronouncement that enraged her brother, who did not suffer from filial piety, and who had never shown the slightest hesitation to proclaim his undeviating dislike of his parent. This shocked Janet very much, for she was a girl who believed firmly in doing one’s duty, and what more certain duty could there be than that of loving one’s father? As it was clearly very difficult to love a father who showed only the most infrequent signs of reciprocating her affection, but more often wondered aloud why he should have been cursed with an unsatisfactory son, and a damned fool of a daughter, Janet was forced to weave round him a veil of her own imagination. She decided that her mother’s death had embittered him, conveniently forgetting the quarrels that had raged between the pair during the much-enduring Mrs White’s lifetime. It was more difficult to find excuses to account for Harold White’s predilection for low company, and Janet preferred not to think about this. When Alan spoke his mind on the subject of finding the house invaded by bookmakers and touts, she said that poor father had to mix with all sorts and conditions of men in the course of his duties at the colliery, and so had perhaps lost the power of discrimination. Her tea-planter, who privately considered that Harold White was what he called, tersely, ‘a wrong ’un’, was anxious to remove her from the sphere of his influence; but Janet, though generally indeterminate, was firm on one point: until Alan was earning money, and could thus escape from the parental roof, her duty was to remain at home, and to keep the peace between father and son.
She was well aware that White had more than once managed to borrow money from Wally, and that the two men very often entered together into schemes for getting-rich-quick which were, she suspected, as dubious as they were unsuccessful. The information, therefore, that Wally Carter and Samuel Jones, of Fritton, were both coming to tea at five o’clock on Sunday, made her feel vaguely disquieted, since it drew from Alan a highly libellous estimate of Mr Jones’s character and reputation.
‘A man not fit to be in the same room with my sister!’ he said dramatically.
His father was not unnaturally annoyed, and said angrily: ‘Shut up, you young fool! You don’t know what you’re talking about, and if you think I’m going to put up with your bloody theatrical ways, you’re wrong! What’s more, Sam Jones is a Town Councillor, and goes to chapel regularly.’
‘Yes,’ sneered Alan. ‘Votes against Sunday games in the park, too, not to mention Colonel Morrison’s scheme for better housing for the poor devils in the Old Town. God, it makes me sick!’
‘Perhaps it isn’t true,’ said Janet charitably.
‘Perhaps it isn’t! And perhaps it isn’t true that he gets his own employees into trouble, and doesn’t pay a brass cent in maintenance!’
‘Oh dear!’ said Janet. ‘Not at the dinner-table, Alan, please!’
‘I believe in facing facts unflinchingly,’ said Alan superbly. ‘If that greasy swine’s coming here, I shall go out, that’s all. I suppose, if the truth were told, he’s got some shady scheme on foot, and you and Carter think you’re going to benefit by it.’
‘Alan dear, you oughtn’t to talk to father like that.’
