A Christmas Party: A Seasonal Murder Mystery/Envious Casca
A Christmas Party: Chapter 4

Joseph managed to tell Mathilda during the course of tea that he had (as he expressed it) tipped the wink to Valerie. She thought his impulse kind but misguided, but he triumphantly called her attention to the better relationship already existing between Stephen and Nathaniel. Whether this arose from the exertion of Valerie’s influence, or whether, faced by the prospect of having a play read aloud to them by its author, they had been drawn momentarily together by a bond of mutual misfortune, was a point Mathilda felt to be as yet undecided, but it was evident that Stephen was making an effort to please his uncle.

The thought of the approaching reading lay heavy on Mathilda’s brain. At no time fond of being read to, she thought the present hour and milieu so ill-chosen that nothing short of a miracle could save this party from disruption. Glancing at Roydon, who was nervously crumbling a cake, she felt a stir of pity for him. He was so much in earnest, torn between his belief in himself and his natural dread of reading his play to what he could not but recognise as an unsympathetic audience. She moved across the room to a chair beside him, and said, under cover of an interchange of noisy badinage between Valerie and Joseph: ‘I wish you’d tell me something about your play.’

‘I don’t suppose you’ll any of you like it,’ he said, with a sulkiness born of his nervousness.

‘Some of us may not,’ she replied coolly. ‘Have you had anything put on yet?’

‘No. At least, I had a Sunday-night show once. Not this play. Linda Bury was interested in it, but it didn’t come to anything. Of course, it was very immature in parts. I see that now. The trouble is that I haven’t any backing.’ He pushed an unruly lock of hair off his brow, and added defiantly: ‘I work in a bank!’

‘Not a bad way of marking time,’ she said, refusing to see in this belligerent confession anything either extraordinary or pathetic.

‘If I could only get a start, I’d – I’d never set foot inside the place again!’

‘You probably wouldn’t have to. Has your play got popular appeal?’

‘It’s a serious play. I don’t care about popular appeal, as you call it. I – I know I’ve got it in me to write plays – good plays! – but I’d sooner stick to banking all my life than – than –’

‘Prostitute your art,’ supplied Mathilda, unable to curb an irrepressible tongue.

He flushed, but said: ‘Yes, that’s what I do mean, though I’ve no doubt you’re laughing at me. Do you think – do you suppose there’s the least hope of Mr Herriard’s being interested?’

She did not, but although she was in general an honest woman, she could not bring herself to say so. He was looking at her with such a dreadfully anxious expression on his thin face that she began, almost insensibly, to turn over vague plans in her mind for cajoling Nathaniel.

‘It wouldn’t cost much,’ he said wistfully. ‘Even if he doesn’t care about art, he might like to give Paula a chance. She’s quite marvellous in the part, you know. He’ll see that. She’s going to do the big scene, just to show him.’

‘What is her part?’ Mathilda enquired, feeling herself incapable of explaining that Nathaniel profoundly disliked his niece’s association with the stage.

‘She’s a prostitute,’ said the author simply.

Mathilda spilt her tea. Wild ideas of imploring Roydon not to be fool enough to read his play gave way, as she dried the skirt of her frock, to a fatalistic feeling that nothing she could say would be likely to prevent this young man from rushing on to his doom.

Stephen, who had strolled across the room to the cakestand, saw her spill her tea, and tossed her his handkerchief. ‘Clumsy wench! Here, have this!’

‘Tea stains things absolutely fatally,’ said Valerie.

‘Not if you rub hard enough,’ returned Mathilda, using Stephen’s handkerchief vigorously.

‘I was thinking of Stephen’s hanky.’

‘I wasn’t. Thanks, Stephen. Do you want it back?’

‘Not particularly. Come over to the fire, and steam off!’

She obeyed, rejecting various pieces of helpful advice proffered by Maud and Paula. Stephen held out a plate of small cakes. ‘Take one. Always fortify yourself against coming ordeals.’

She looked round, satisfying herself that Roydon, at the other end of the long room, was out of earshot, and said in an anguished undertone: ‘Stephen, it’s about a prostitute!’

‘What is?’ he asked, interested. ‘Not this misbegotten play?’

She nodded, shaken with inward laughter. Stephen looked pleased for the first time that day. ‘You don’t mean it! Won’t Uncle enjoy himself! I meant to go away, to write mythical letters. I shan’t now. I wouldn’t miss this for a fortune.’

‘For God’s sake, behave decently!’ she begged. ‘It’s going to be ghastly!’

‘Nonsense, my girl! A good time is going to be had by all.’

‘Stephen, if you’re unpleasant to the poor silly young ass, I shall have a shot at murdering you!’

He opened his eyes at her. ‘Sits the wind in that quarter? I wouldn’t have thought it of you.’

‘No, you fool. But he’s too vulnerable. It would be cruelty to children. Besides, he’s in deadly earnest.’

‘Over-engined for his beam,’ said Stephen. ‘I might get a rise.’

‘More than you’d bargained for, I daresay. I always play safe with that unbalanced, neurotic type.’

‘I never play safe with anyone.’

‘Don’t talk to me in that showing-off way!’ said Mathilda tartly. ‘It doesn’t impress me!’

He laughed, and left her side, returning to his seat beside Nathaniel on the sofa. Paula was already talking about Roydon’s play, her stormy eyes daring anyone to leave the room. Nathaniel was bored, and said: ‘If we’ve got to hear it, we’ve got to. Don’t talk so much! I can judge your play without your assistance. Seen more good, bad, and indifferent plays in my time than you’ve ever dreamt of.’ He rounded suddenly on Roydon. ‘What category does yours come into?’

The only weapon to use against these Herriards, Mathilda knew, was a directness as brutal as their own. If Roydon were to reply boldly, Good! Nathaniel would be pleased. But Roydon was out of his depth, had been out of it from the moment Nathaniel’s butler had first run disparaging eyes over him. He was wavering between the hostility born of an over-sensitive inferiority-complex and nourished by his host’s rudeness, and a desire, which had its root only in his urgent need, to please. He said, stammering and flushing: ‘Well, really, that’s hardly for me to say!’

‘Ought to know whether you’ve done good work or bad,’ said Nathaniel, turning away.

‘I’m quite sure we’re all going to enjoy ourselves hugely,’ interposed Joseph, with his sunniest smile.

‘So am I,’ drawled Stephen. ‘I’ve just told Mathilda I wouldn’t miss it for worlds.’

‘You talk as though Willoughby were going to read you a lively farce!’ Paula said. ‘This is a page out of life!’

‘A problem-play, is it?’ said Mottisfont, with his meaningless little laugh. ‘There used to be a great vogue for them at one time. You’ll remember, Nat!’

This was said in propitiating accents, but Nathaniel, who seemed still to be cherishing rancorous thoughts about his business-partner, pretended not to hear.

‘I don’t write problems,’ said Roydon, in rather too high a voice. ‘And enjoyment is the last thing I expect anyone to feel! If I’ve succeeded in making you think, I shall be satisfied.’

‘A noble ideal,’ commented Stephen. ‘But you shouldn’t say it as though you thought it unattainable. Not polite.’

This sally not unnaturally covered Roydon with confusion. He flushed deeply, and floundered in a morass of disclaimers and explanations. Stephen lay back, and watched his struggles with the interest of a naturalist.

The entrance of Sturry, followed by a footman, to bear away the tea-things saved Roydon, but it was evident that Stephen’s remark had shaken his already tottering balance. Paula rent Stephen verbally for several blistering minutes, and Valerie, feeling herself ignored, said that she couldn’t see what there was to make such a fuss about. Joseph, divining by what Mathilda could only suppose to be a sixth sense that the play was in questionable taste, said that he was sure they were all broad-minded enough not to mind.

Nathaniel at once asserted that he was not at all broad-minded, if, by that elastic term, Joseph meant that he was prepared to stomach a lot of prurient nonsense, which was all any modern play seemed to consist of. For a minute or two, Mathilda indulged the hope that Roydon would feel himself sufficiently insulted to refuse to read the play at all; but although he did indeed show signs of rising anger, he allowed himself to be won over by Paula and Valerie, who both assured him, inaccurately, that everyone was longing to hear his masterpiece.

By this time, the butler and the footman had withdrawn, and the stage was clear. Joseph began to bustle about, trying to rearrange the chairs and sofas; and Paula, who had been hugging the typescript under one arm, gave it to Roydon, saying that he would replace her word-perfect when he wanted her.

A chair and a table were placed suitably for the author, and he seated himself, rather white about the gills, but with a belligerent jut to his chin. He cleared his throat, and Nathaniel broke the expectant silence by asking Stephen for a match.

Stephen produced a box from his pocket, and handed it to his uncle, who began to light his pipe, saying between puffs: ‘Go on, go on! What are you waiting for?’

‘Wormwood,’ said Roydon throatily. ‘A play in three acts.’

‘Very powerful title,’ nodded Mottisfont knowledgeably.

Roydon threw him a grateful look, and continued: ‘Act I. The scene is a back-bedroom in a third-rate lodging-house. The bedstead is of brass, with sagging springs, and two of the knobs missing from the foot-rail. The carpet is threadbare, and the wall-paper, which is flowered in a design of roses in trellis-work tied up with blue ribbons, is stained in several places.’

‘Stained with what?’ asked Stephen.

Roydon, who had never considered this point, glared at him, and said: ‘Does it matter?’

‘Not to me, but if it’s blood you ought to say so, and then my betrothed can make an excuse to go away. She’s squeamish.’

‘Well, it isn’t! I don’t write that kind of play. The wall-paper is just stained.’

‘I expect it was from damp,’ suggested Maud. ‘It sounds as though it would be a damp sort of a place.’

Stephen turned his mocking gaze upon her, and said: ‘You shouldn’t say that, Aunt. After all, we haven’t heard enough to judge yet.’

‘Shut up!’ said Paula fiercely. ‘Don’t pay any attention to Stephen, Willoughby! Just go on reading. Now, all of you! You must make your minds receptive, and absorb the atmosphere of the scene: it’s tremendously significant. Go on, Willoughby!’

Roydon cleared his throat again. ‘Nottingham lace curtains shroud the windows, through which there can be obtained a vista of slate-roofs and chimney-stacks. A tawdry doll leans drunkenly on the dressing-table; and a pair of soiled pink corsets are flung across the only armchair.’ He looked round in a challenging kind of way as he enunciated this, and appeared to wait for comment.

‘Ah yes, I see!’ said Joseph, with a deprecating glance at the assembled company. ‘You wish to convey an atmosphere of sordidness.’

‘Quite, quite!’ said Mottisfont, coughing.

‘And let us admit freely that you have succeeded,’ said Stephen cordially.

‘I always think there’s something frightfully sordid about corsets, don’t you?’ said Valerie. ‘Those satin ones, I mean, with millions of bones and laces and things. Of course, nowadays one simply wears an elastic belt, if one wears anything at all, which generally one doesn’t.’

‘You’ll come to it, my girl,’ prophesied Mathilda.

‘When I was young,’ remarked Maud, ‘no one thought of not wearing corsets. It would have been quite unheard-of.’

‘You corseted your minds as well as your bodies,’ interpolated Paula scornfully. ‘Thank God I live in an untrammelled age!’

‘When I was young,’ exploded Nathaniel, ‘no decent woman would have mentioned such things in public!’

‘How quaint!’ said Valerie. ‘Stephen, darling, give me a cigarette!’

He threw his case over to her. Roydon asked, trying to control his voice, whether anyone wished him to continue or not.

‘Yes, yes, for heaven’s sake get on!’ snapped Nathaniel testily. ‘If there’s any more about underwear, you can leave it out!’

‘You’ll have to, anyway,’ added Stephen.

Roydon ignored this, and read aloud in an angry voice; ‘Lucetta May is discovered, seated before her dressing-table. She is wearing a shoddy pink négligée, which imperfectly conceals –’

‘Careful!’ Stephen warned him.

‘It is grimy round the edge, and the lace is torn!’ said Roydon defiantly.

‘I think that’s a marvellous touch!’ said Valerie.

‘It’s surprising what a lot of dirt you can pick up from carpets, even where there’s a vacuum-cleaner, which I don’t suppose there would be in a place like that,’ said Maud. ‘I know those cheap theatrical lodging-houses, none better!’

‘It is not a theatrical lodging-house!’ said Roydon, goaded to madness. ‘It is, as you will shortly perceive, a bawdy lodging-house!’

Maud’s placid voice broke the stunned silence. ‘I expect they’re just as dirty,’ she said.

‘Look here!’ began Nathaniel thunderously.

Joseph intervened in a hurry. ‘Too many interruptions! We shall be putting Roydon off if we go on like this! I’m sure we’re none of us so old-fashioned that we mind a little outspokenness!’

‘Speak for yourself!’ said Nathaniel.

‘He is speaking for himself,’ said Stephen. ‘To do him justice, he is also speaking for most of the assembled company.’

‘Perhaps you would rather I didn’t read you any more?’ suggested Roydon stiffly. ‘I warn you, it is not meat for weak stomachs!’

‘Oh, you must go on!’ Valerie exclaimed. ‘I know I’m going to adore it. Do, everybody, stop interrupting!’

‘She sits motionless, staring at her reflection in the mirror,’ suddenly declaimed Paula, in thrilling accents. ‘Then she picks up a lipstick, and begins wearily to rub it on her mouth. A knock falls on the door. With a movement of instinctive coquetry, she pats her curls into position, straightens her tired body, and calls, “Come in!”’

The spectacle of Paula enacting these movements in the improbable setting of a respectable drawing-room proved to be too much for Mathilda. She explained between chokes that she was very sorry, but that recitations always had this deplorable effect on her.

‘What you can possibly replace to laugh at I fail to see!’ said Paula, a dangerous light in her eyes. ‘Laughter was not the reaction I expected!’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ Mathilda assured her penitently. ‘In fact, the more tragic recitations are the more I feel impelled to laugh.’

‘I know so well what you mean!’ said Joseph. ‘Ah, Paula, my dear, Tilda is paying you a greater tribute than you know! You conveyed such a feeling of tension in those few gestures that our Tilda’s nerves frayed under it. I remember once, when I was playing in Montreal, to a packed house, working up to a moment of unbearable tension. I felt my audience with me, hanging, as it were, on my lips. I paused for my climax; I knew myself to be holding the house in the hollow of my hand. Suddenly a man broke into laughter! Disconcerting? Yes, but I knew why he laughed, why he could not help laughing!’

‘I wouldn’t mind hazarding a guess myself,’ agreed Stephen.

This pleased Nathaniel so much that he changed his mind about banning the reading of Wormwood, and bade Roydon, for the third time, to get on with it.

Roydon said: ‘Enter Mrs Perkins, the landlady,’ and doggedly read a paragraph describing this character in terms revolting enough to have arrested the attention of his hearers had not this been diverted by Maud, who was moving stealthily about the room in search of something.

‘The suspense is killing me!’ Stephen announced at last. ‘What are you looking for, Aunt?’

‘It’s all right, my dear: I’m not going to disturb anyone,’ replied Maud untruthfully. ‘I just wondered where I had laid my knitting down. Please go on reading, Mr Roydon! So interesting! It quite takes one back.’

Stephen, who had joined Mathilda in the search for the knitting, remarked, sotto voce, that he had always wondered where Joe had picked Maud up, and now he knew. Mathilda, unearthing an embryo sock on four steel needles from behind a cushion, told him he was a cad.

‘Thank you, my dear,’ said Maud, settling herself by the fire again. ‘Now I can be getting on with it while I listen.’

The rest of Roydon’s play was read to the accompaniment of the measured click of Maud’s needles. It was by no means a bad play; sometimes, Mathilda thought, it hovered on the edge of brilliance; but it was no play to read to a drawing-room audience. As she had expected, it was often violent, always morbid; and it contained much that could with advantage have been omitted. Paula enjoyed herself immensely in the big scene; and neither she nor Roydon seemed capable of realising that the spectacle of his niece impersonating a fallen woman under tragic circumstances was unlikely to afford Nathaniel the least gratification. Indeed, it was only by a tremendous effort of will-power that Nathaniel was able to control himself; and while Paula’s deep voice vibrated through the room, he grew more and more fidgety, and muttered under his breath in a way that boded ill for both dramatist and actress.

It was past seven o’clock before the play ended, and during the last act Nathaniel three times consulted his watch. Once, Stephen said something in his ear which made him smile grimly, but when Roydon at last laid down his typescript there was no trace of a smile on his face. He said in awful tones: ‘Very edifying!’

Paula, carried away by her own performance, was deaf to the note of anger in his voice. Her dark eyes glowed; there was a lovely colour in her cheeks; and her thin, expressive hands were restless, as always when she was excited. She started towards Nathaniel, holding out those hands. ‘Isn’t it a wonderful play? Isn’t it?’

Mathilda, Joseph, Valerie, and even Mottisfont, whom Wormwood had profoundly shocked, hurried into speech, drowning whatever blistering things Nathaniel meant to say. Stephen lounged at his ease, and watched them derisively. Dread of what Nathaniel might yet say to Roydon made them praise the play in exaggerated terms. Roydon was pleased, and triumphant, but his eyes kept travelling to his host’s face with an expression on them of so much anxiety that everyone felt sorry for him, and repeated that the play was arresting, original, and quite made one think.

Paula, with an obtuseness which made Mathilda want to shake her, brushed aside the compliments she was receiving on her acting, and again attacked her uncle. ‘Now that you’ve heard it, Uncle Nat, you will help Willoughby, won’t you?’

‘If by that you mean will I give you the money to squander on a piece of what I can only call salacious balderdash, no, I won’t!’ he responded, not, however, in a loud enough voice to be overheard by the author.

Paula stared at him, as though she scarcely grasped his meaning. ‘Can’t you see – can’t you see that the part is made for me?’ she asked, with a little gasp.

‘Upon my soul!’ exploded Nathaniel. ‘I should like to know what the world is coming to when a girl of your breeding can stand there and tell me the part of a harlot is made for her!’

‘That out-of-date rubbish!’ Paula said contemptuously. ‘We are talking of Art!’

‘Oh, we are, are we?’ said Nathaniel, in a grim voice. ‘And I suppose that is your idea of Art, is it, young woman? Well, all I have to say is that it isn’t mine!’

It turned out, unfortunately for everybody else, that this was an understatement. Nathaniel had a good deal more to say, on subjects which ranged from the decadence of modern drama and the puppyishness of modem dramatists to the folly of all women in general and of his niece in particular. He added a rider to the effect that Paula’s mother would have done better to have stayed at home to look after her daughter than to spend her time gadding about marrying every Tom, Dick, and Harry she met.

It was now felt by all who were privileged to hear these remarks that it would be advisable to get Roydon out of the way until Nathaniel’s wrath had had time to cool. Mathilda very nobly put herself forward, and told Roydon that she had been immensely interested in Wormwood, and would like to have a talk with him about it. Roydon, who, besides being rather impressed by Mathilda, was naturally eager to talk about his play, allowed himself to be manoeuvred out of the room just as Joseph joined the stricken group about his brother, and, with ill-timed jocosity, smote him lightly on the back, saying: ‘Well, well, Nat, we’re a couple of old-stagers, eh? A crude, sometimes a violent piece of work. Yet not without merit, I think. What do you say?’

Nathaniel at once became a cripple. He said: ‘My lumbago! Damn you, don’t do that!’ and tottered to a chair, one hand to the small of his back and his manly form bent with suffering.

‘Why, I thought it was all right again!’ said Valerie innocently.

Nathaniel, who had closed his eyes, opened them to cast a baleful glance in her direction, and replied in the voice of one whose days were attended by anguish bravely borne: ‘The least touch brings it on!’

‘Rubbish!’ said Paula, with quite unnecessary emphasis. ‘You weren’t even thinking about your lumbago a minute ago! You’re a miserable humbug, Uncle Nat!’

Nathaniel rather liked being abused, but he resented having his lumbago belittled, and said that the day might come when Paula would be sorry she had said that.

Maud, who was rolling up her knitting-wool, said in her sensible way that he had better have some antiphlogistin, if it was really bad.

‘Of course it’s bad!’ snapped Nathaniel. ‘And don’t think I’m going to have any of that muck on me, because I’m not! If anyone had the least consideration – But I suppose that’s too much to expect! As though it isn’t enough to have the house filled with a set of rackety people, I’m forced to sit and listen to a play I should have thought any decent woman would have blushed to sit through!’

‘When you talk about decent women you make me sick!’ flashed Paula. ‘If you can’t appreciate a work of genius, so much the worse for you! You don’t want to put your hand in your pocket: that’s why you’re making all this fuss! You’re mean, and hypocritical, and I despise you from the bottom of my soul!’

‘Yes, you’d be very glad to see me laid underground! I know that!’ said Nathaniel, hugely enjoying this refreshing interlude. ‘Don’t think I don’t see through you! All the same, you women: money’s all you’re out for! Well, you won’t get any of mine to waste on that young puppy, and that’s flat!’

‘All right!’ said Paula, in the accents of a tragedienne. ‘Keep your money! But when you’re dead I shall spend every penny you leave me on really immoral plays, and I shall hope that you’ll know it, and hate it, and be sorry you were such a beast to me when you were alive!’

Nathaniel was so pleased by this vigorous response to his taunt that he forgot to be a cripple, and sat up quite straight in his chair, and said that she had better not count her chickens before they were hatched, since after this he would be damned if he didn’t Make a Few Changes.

‘Do as you please!’ Paula said disdainfully. ‘I don’t want your money.’

‘Oho, now you sing a different tune!’ Nathaniel said, his eyes glinting with triumph. ‘I thought that that was just what you did want – two thousand pounds of my money, and ready to murder me to get it!’

‘What are two thousand pounds to you?’ demanded Paula, with poor logic, but fine dramatic delivery. ‘You’d never miss it, but just because you have a bourgeois taste in art you deny me the one thing I want! More than that! You are denying me my chance in life!’

‘I don’t care for that line,’ said Stephen critically.

‘You shut up!’ said Paula, rounding on him. ‘You’ve done all you can to crab Willoughby’s play! I suppose your tender regard for me makes you shudder at the thought of my appearing in the rôle of a prostitute!’

‘Bless your heart, I don’t care what sort of a rôle you appear in!’ replied Stephen. ‘All I beg is that you won’t stand there ranting like Lady Macbeth. Too much drama in the home turns my stomach, I replace.’

‘If you had a shred of decency, you’d be on my side!’

‘In that case, I haven’t a shred of decency. I don’t like the play, I don’t like the dramatist, and I object to being read to.’

‘Children, children!’ said Joseph. ‘Come now, this won’t do, you know! On Christmas Eve, too!’

‘Now I am going to be sick,’ said Stephen, dragging himself up, and lounging over to the door. ‘Let me know the outcome of this Homeric battle, won’t you? I’m betting six to four on Uncle Nat myself.’

‘Well, really, Stephen!’ exclaimed Valerie, with a giggle. ‘I do think you’re the limit!’

This infelicitous intervention seemed to remind Nathaniel of her existence. He glared at her, loathing her empty prettiness, her crimson fingernails, her irritating laugh; and gave vent to his feelings by barking at Stephen. ‘You’re as bad as your sister! There isn’t a penny to choose between you! You’ve got bad taste, do you hear me? This is the last time either of you will come to Lexham! Put that in your pipe, and smoke it!’

‘Tut-tut!’ said Stephen, and walked out of the room, greatly disconcerting Sturry, who was standing outside with a tray of cocktails, listening with deep appreciation to the quarrel raging within.

‘I beg your pardon, sir; I was about to enter,’ said Sturry, fixing Stephen with a quelling eye.

‘What a lot you’ll have to regale them with in the servants’ hall, won’t you?’ said Stephen amiably.

‘I was never one to gossip, sir, such being beneath me,’ replied Sturry, in a very grand and despising way.

He stalked into the room, bearing his burden. Paula, who was addressing an impassioned monologue to her elder uncle, broke off short, and rushed out; Joseph urged Valerie, and Maud, and Mottisfont to go up and change for dinner; and Nathaniel told Sturry to bring him a glass of the pale sherry.

While this family strife had been in full swing, Mathilda, in the library, had been explaining to Willoughby, as tactfully as she could, that Nathaniel was not at all likely to finance his play. He was strung up after his reading, and at first he seemed hardly to understand her. Plainly, Paula had led him to suppose that her uncle’s help was a foregone conclusion. He went perfectly white when the sense of what Mathilda was saying penetrated his brain, and said in a trembling voice: ‘Then it’s all no use!’

‘I’m afraid it’s no use as far as Nat is concerned,’ Mathilda said. ‘It isn’t his kind of play. But he isn’t the only potential backer in the world, you know.’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t know any rich people. Why won’t he back it? Why shouldn’t p-people like me be g-given a chance? It isn’t fair! People with money – people who don’t care for anything but –’

‘I think you’d be far better advised to send your play to some producer in the usual way,’ said Mathilda, in a bracing voice calculated to check hysteria.

‘They’re all afraid of it!’ he said. ‘They say it hasn’t got box-office appeal. But I know – I know it’s a good play! I’ve – I’ve sweated blood over it! I can’t give it up like this! It means so much to me! You don’t know what it means to me, Miss Clare!’

She began gently to suggest that he had it in him to write other plays, plays with the desired box-office appeal, but he interrupted her, saying violently that he would rather starve than write the sort of play she meant. Mathilda began to feel a little impatient, and was quite glad to see Paula stride into the room.

‘Paula!’ said Roydon despairingly, ‘is it true, what Miss Clare says? Is he going to refuse to put up the money?’

Paula was flushed and bright-eyed, stimulated by her quarrel with Nathaniel. She said: ‘I’ve just told him what I think of him! I told him –’

‘Well, we don’t want you to tell us,’ said Mathilda, losing patience. ‘You ought to have known that there wasn’t a hope!’

Paula’s gaze flickered to her face. ‘I shall get the money. I always get what I want, always! And I want this more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life!’

‘Judging by those of Nat’s remarks which I was privileged to hear –’

‘Oh, that’s nothing!’ Paula said, tossing back her hair. ‘He doesn’t mind having rows. We none of us do. We like rows! I shall talk to him again soon. You’ll see!’

‘I hope to God I shan’t!’ said Mathilda.

‘Ah, you’re so un-understanding!’ Paula said. ‘I know him much better than you do. Of course I shall get the money! I know I shall!’

‘Don’t buoy yourself up with false hopes: you won’t!’ said Mathilda.

‘I’ve got to get it!’ Paula said, looking rapt, and tense. ‘I’ve got to!’

Roydon glanced uncertainly from her glowing face to Mathilda’s discouraging one. He said in a dejected voice: ‘I suppose I’d better go and change. It doesn’t seem much use –’

Paula said: ‘I’m coming too. It is of use, Willoughby! I always get my own way! Really!’

A merry Christmas! Mathilda thought, watching them go. She took a cigarette from the box on the table, and lit it, and sat down by the fire, feeling quite limp. All this emotional strain! she thought, with a wry smile. It was not her affair, of course, but the threadbare playwright, tiresome though he was, had roused her pity, and Paula had a disastrous way of dragging even mere onlookers into her quarrels. Besides, one couldn’t sit back and watch this ill-starred party going to perdition. One had at least to try to save it from utter ruin.

She was forced to admit that she could not immediately perceive any way of saving it from ruin. If Paula’s folly did not precipitate a crisis, Joseph’s balm-spreading would. There could be no stopping either of them. Paula cared only for what concerned herself; Joseph could never be convinced that his oil was not oil but vitriol. He saw himself as a peacemaker; he was probably peacemaking now, Mathilda reflected: infuriating Nat with platitudes, making bad worse, all with the best intentions.

A door opened across the wide hall; Nathaniel’s voice came to Mathilda’s ears. ‘Damn you, stop pawing me about! For two pins, I’d turn the whole lot of them out of doors, bag and baggage!’

Mathilda smiled to herself. Joseph at it again!

‘Now, Nat, old fellow, you know you don’t mean that! Let’s talk the whole thing over quietly together!’

‘I don’t want to talk it over!’ shouted Nathaniel. ‘And don’t call me old fellow! You’ve done enough, inviting all these people to my house, and turning it into a damned bazaar! Paper-streamers! Mistletoe! I won’t have it! Next you’ll want to dress up as Santa Claus! I hate Christmas, do you hear me? Loathe it! abominate it!’

‘Not you, Nat!’ Joseph said. ‘You’re just an old curmudgeon, and you’re upset because you didn’t like young Roydon’s play. Well, I didn’t care for it either, if you want to know, but, my dear old chap, youth must be served!’

‘Not in my house!’ snarled Nathaniel. ‘Don’t come upstairs with me! I don’t want you!’

Mathilda heard him stump up the four stairs which led to the first half-landing. A crash which she had no difficulty in recognising followed. Nathaniel, she deduced, had knocked over the steps.

She strolled to the door. The steps lay on the ground, and Joseph was tenderly assisting his brother to rise from his knees.

‘My dear Nat, I’m so sorry! I’m afraid it was my fault,’ he said remorsefully. ‘I’m a careless fellow! I had meant to have finished my poor little decorations before this!’

‘Take them down!’ ordered Nathaniel in a strangled voice. ‘All of them! This instant! Clumsy jackass! My lumbago!’

These dread words struck Joseph to silence. Nathaniel went upstairs, clinging to the handrail, once more a helpless cripple.

‘Oh dear!’ said Joseph ridiculously. ‘I never thought they would be in anyone’s way, Nat!’

Nathaniel returned no answer, but dragged his painful way upstairs to his bedroom. Mathilda heard a door slam, and laughed.

Joseph looked round quickly. ‘Tilda! I thought you’d gone up! Oh dear, dear, did you see what happened? Most unfortunate!’

‘I did. I knew those steps of yours would be the death of someone.’

Joseph picked them up. ‘Well, my dear, I don’t want to tell tales out of school, but Nat’s a naughty old man. He deliberately knocked them over! All that fuss!’

‘I could wish that you hadn’t left them there,’ Mathilda said. ‘Lumbago, I feel, will be our only topic of conversation this evening.’

He smiled, but shook his head. ‘No, no, that isn’t quite fair! He has got lumbago, you know, and it is very painful. We must put our heads together, you and I, Tilda.’

‘Not me,’ said Mathilda vulgarly.

‘My dear, I’m relying on you. Nat likes you, and we must smooth him down! Now, I’ll just put these steps out of harm’s way, and then we’ll think what can be done.’

‘I,’ said Mathilda firmly, ‘am going upstairs to change.’