Sleep in Peace (23 page)

Perhaps Gwen felt, as Laura did, his lack of enthusiasm, for when the song was over she laughed pleasantly, dismissed the notion of an
encore
, and filled in the few minutes before Mildred came to announce supper by rather artificially bright chatter. Mr. Armistead gave her vigorous support but the moments lagged, and it was a great relief when at last the smell of coffee rose on the air, and Gwen led the way to the dining-room. The relaxation of tension was, indeed, somehow so great that Laura became altogether too lively; having installed Grace and herself on the window seat, whenever Ludo came near in the course of waiting on his guests she bounced up and down in front of him, and cried shrilly: “I want some orange cream.” Ludo at length
shoved a plateful of the marble delicacy into her hand and said savagely: “Take this and shut up.” Sobered and ashamed, Laura with hot cheeks withdrew to the side of Grace. Grace welcomed her with her wide smile; it was clear that she had witnessed Laura's social misdemeanour, thought it natural, regretted it as Laura did, and dismissed it. Grace was splendid; one was always at one's ease with Grace. But need Ludo have been quite so cross?
Ludo?
He must be feeling constrained and ill at ease, to snap so fiercely at his Laura. Why?

After supper there was dancing, for which Gwen, taking off her gold curb bracelet, played. Edward danced first with Laura. He was not a very good dancer, thought Laura irritably; he was jerky and bony and uncertain, yet quite savagely determined, and Laura felt nervous and breathless, and cross at being involved in such an inefficient display. “I'd rather dance with Grace,” she thought, looking for her. Abruptly the dance was over, and she was wedged into a corner between Edward and Papa, who actually began to talk about cloth. Before she could extricate herself the music began again, and Grace was already engaged. Disappointed, Laura wandered on the outskirts of the revolving couples; she discovered Frederick in a chair, looking more rumpled than ever but watching eagerly. She sat down beside him.

“What is that blue stuff your sister is wearing?” demanded Frederick.

“Poplin,” said Laura.

“Poplin,” repeated Frederick, exploding the word dramatically on his tongue.

“Do you like my accordion pleats, Frederick?” said Laura, extending their silky ripples for his inspection.

Frederick glanced at them absently. “Very pretty,” he said.

Laura sat beside Frederick a long time, and grew very tired of his society. Gwen gave her place on the music stool to another girl, and the girl presently to a young man; still nobody came to
dance with Laura. Considering what a good, and what an impassioned, dancer Laura considered herself, this was a disaster. Grace was very busy, dancing with all sorts of people—Papa, Ludo, a young man who played the violin; she flashed past, smiling. Now Laura began to wish very much that Edward would again ask her to dance; each time the music struck up afresh she looked for him eagerly, but he never came. Now it was close on midnight, and since to-morrow would be Sunday, the party must end. Papa clapped his hands and announced a
Sir Roger de Coverley
; the young man with the violin volunteered to play for the dance. Surely now Edward—but Edward was inviting Gwen. Laura simply could
not
bear to be left out of the
Sir Roger;
she sprang up and rushed across the room to Grace. “Have this with me, Grace,” she begged. A tiny contraction creased Grace's brow for a short moment, then her face cleared and she gave her fine wide smile. She seized Laura's hand, and the two girls entered the dance together. It was splendid! Laura danced as lightly as a feather; when it was her turn and she flew down the aisle to meet Ludo, there was not a shake of the floor, not a sound. Mr. Armistead, Frederick, and various fathers who had called to fetch their daughters home, stood in the doorway watching benevolently. The clock struck twelve; amid cries of regret and applause the dancing ceased; the violin player plunged into
God Save the King
, and everyone sang heartily; the party was over.

Soon the last guests had departed, and the Armisteads, returning from bidding them farewell at the front door, drifted one by one into the now dishevelled drawing-room. Gwen was the last to appear, treading with a light, measured step; her eyes, wide and starry, gazed unseeing ahead. Without speaking she sank into a chair, her blue frock falling about her in soft folds; her slender fingers moved on the chair's arms—perhaps in the Brahms legato, thought Laura idly, watching. There seemed a delicate bloom, an ethereal brightness, about her neat ash-blonde hair,
her cool cheek, her light fresh draperies. By contrast the other Armisteads looked homely and depressed. Papa in particular, as Laura noticed with a pang, looked old and sad.

“Get me a whisky and soda, Ludo,” he said wearily.

Ludo in silence obeyed.

“Well, Spencer,” said Gwen, coming out of her trance and speaking in an unusually jocular and friendly tone: “I hope you enjoyed your party.”

Ludo hesitated, and it was quite clear to Laura that he hadn't enjoyed it any more than she had.

“I'm sure
everyone
enjoyed it,” she lied with emphasis.

“A great success—they all enjoyed it,” chimed in Papa and Ludo.

Gwen smiled, deceived; but Laura knew that none of the Armisteads save Gwen had enjoyed the party at all. Why? She had no idea.

After that the Hinchliffes and the Armisteads were often together. Laura did not know quite how it happened, or who arranged it; but the families seemed always to be at each other's houses for tea, or taking walks together, or visiting the pageant at York together, or something of that kind. Laura knew, however, without any doubt, that it was a very uncomfortable arrangement, owing to the incompatibility of the temperaments concerned. To begin with, Edward and Ludo. Ludo detested Edward, Edward despised Ludo. Laura was in anguish whenever they spoke to one another. Then, Ludo and Frederick. Each time they met, Frederick made the most persistent, determined and friendly efforts to find some common ground with Ludo, but each time withdrew foiled, unable to discover a single topic on which Ludo had any ideas at all except politics, which after one frightful quarrel about the reform of the House of Lords was by
tacit consent avoided, and tennis, which Frederick could not play. On the other hand, Ludo thought Frederick a talkative ass. “Great talkers are small doers,” said Ludo with a world of meaning in his tone. Ludo objected particularly, too, to Frederick's hair: “They'd soon teach him to cut that hair of his,” said Ludo grimly, “at Shrewsbury.” Then there were the further complications supplied by the three girls. Grace and Laura were never themselves in Gwen's presence; Grace became stately, cold and rather affected, Laura sullen and reserved. Somehow when Gwen was there Edward and Frederick became different too, though it was difficult to say in just what respects, except that Edward's tongue became even more intolerably wounding than usual. Sometimes the three-cornered bickering between the Hinchliffe brothers and Ludo rose to serious heights, in spite of the conciliatory efforts of Laura and Grace. On these occasions Laura trembled and Grace froze, but Gwen said nothing, casting down her eyes demurely, her little malicious smile playing about her lips.

Never would Laura forget, for instance, the day of King Edward VII's death—or rather, the day after, since he passed away just before the midnight hour. It was a Saturday in May, and in the afternoon the Armisteads and the Hinchliffes walked to Haworth together across the moors. Ludo, that ardent monarchist, who had already bought himself a black tie, was saddened and depressed by the august event of the night, and he observed at rather too frequent intervals, out of a very genuine feeling:

“Well, this has quite spoilt my weekend!”

“Is that a reason for spoiling everyone else's?” snapped Edward at length, weary of his repetition.

“I'm not aware that I'm spoiling anything for anybody,” said Ludo with dignity. “But if so, of course, I'll leave you at once.”

He turned about; Laura, thus divided in her loyalty, halted in anguish.

“If Ludo goes, of course I shall go,” she trembled.

“I'll come with you, Laura,” said Grace in an icy tone.

There was a pause. Everyone waited for Frederick and Gwen to declare their allegiance. But Frederick, looking flushed and angry, was silent, and Gwen, looking into the distance, merely smiled.

Suddenly Frederick flashed out: “It's you who are spoiling everything, Edward. If our company doesn't suit you, why don't you stay at home?”

“Yes, why don't you?” muttered Ludo.

Edward, looking very pinched about the mouth, replied coldly: “Because I don't choose.” “Come along, Armistead,” he added impatiently. “Don't let's waste time here—I didn't mean my observation to be taken seriously.”

Ludo grumbled, but accepted the apology, and to Laura's relief the party moved on as a whole.

The best way to keep its jarring elements apart was, Grace and Laura discovered, to separate into three pairs: Edward and Gwen, Laura and Frederick, Ludo and Grace. But both Grace and Laura found this arrangement tedious, nor were Frederick and Ludo much more enthusiastic; and the four younger members of the party tended to reunite (sprawling across the road, with the two schoolgirls in the middle) or separate, according as their several limits of irritation or tedium were reached. What Edward and Gwen thought, of this or any other arrangement, was not discoverable; as the eldest of their respective families they exercised a kind of co-authority over the rest, and seemed to hold themselves aloof.

The happiest moments of the Hinchliffe-Armistead group occurred when they were playing cards. Ludo played cards well, and this facility gave him confidence and ease; the feeling between himself and Edward became almost friendly rivalry when they faced each other across a green baize table. A good deal of argument always went on, however, before a game was safely chosen. Laura preferred the old, simple, childish games—partly,
perhaps, because she had played them with the Hinchliffes before Gwen came on the scene, partly because they were the only ones in which she was not hopelessly outclassed by her sister. (Grace and Frederick, those dreamers, hardly knew whether they won or lost.) But presently even in these Gwen triumphed, for she was always introducing new and subtle rules, so that Laura abandoned the contest, and sometimes even tried to distinguish herself by seeming the most stupid player. There was one game in which Gwen particularly excelled, which Laura particularly disliked; it was called
Cheating
, and appealed to the Hinchliffes by its thoroughgoing immorality, since it consisted of getting rid of one's cards by fair means or foul, and permitted any amount of lying except when one was directly challenged. Laura, across whose face every emotion visibly flickered, unless she controlled it to a sullen reserve of which she was ashamed, was always found out and penalised by piles of the others' cards, but Gwen's fair face never stirred, her little smile remained the same, it was impossible to guess whether she lied or no. This game always exasperated Laura, and the others usually tried to calm her, after a round or two, by turning to some favourite game of hers.

“Let's play
Old Maid,”
said Edward soothingly on one such occasion, naming the simplest and feeblest of their repertoire.

“That's Laura's game.”

“Yes,
Old Maid,”
agreed Ludo, gathering and shuffling the cards.

The condescension in their tones angered Laura, and she exclaimed peevishly: “I don't
want
to play
Old Maid.”

“Why not? I believe you object to its name, Laura,” Edward teased her.

“Why should I?” snapped Laura.

“He means,” began Gwen in a superior explanatory tone.

“I know what he means,” said Laura crossly, “and I don't object to the name at all.”

“Do you intend to be an old maid, then, Laura?” said Frederick
with a friendly, impersonal air, as if asking her whether she meant to adopt teaching as her career.

“Of course,” said Laura.

“Laura!” cried Gwen, colouring. “Don't talk such nonsense.”

“Do you seriously mean that, Laura?” demanded Edward in a grave, astonished tone. “Don't you mean to marry?”

“Good heavens, no!” said Laura emphatically. What, marry? Become a housewife? Like Gwen? Impossible!

Edward gave her an odd look, and was silent.

“What is your ambition, then, Laura?” asked Frederick.

“I should like to leave the world better than I found it,” hesitated Laura.

“We all want that,” said Ludo simply.

“And not merely keep my curtains clean and have a lot of children,” concluded Laura, defiant.

“Laura!” exclaimed Gwen. Her cheeks flamed.

“Let's have some music,” said Frederick hastily.

But here again was a source of discomfort. Edward would not play serious music to the combined Armistead and Hinchliffe families, and when Gwen played or sang, if it were in Cromwell Place, he often slipped quietly from the room. The Hinchliffes soon discovered this, then Ludo, much later Laura; whether Gwen never discovered it, or knew it from the first, Laura could not be sure. She was accustomed to assume in her sister a certain insensitiveness to other people's feelings, which as a working hypothesis usually proved sound; but on the other hand, Gwen was capable of knowing Edward's dislike for her music, and continuing to sing in order to provoke him.

One summer afternoon, when Laura came in from school hot and tired, she heard her sister practising in the drawing-room, and went in to announce her return. Gwen seemed disconcerted at sight of her, and exclaimed, with an impatience Laura did not understand, that she had no idea it was so late.

“There's some raspberry blancmange on a plate for you in the kitchen,” she began, “But, Laura! Laura!”