The House of Discontent (22 page)
Read The House of Discontent Online
Authors: Esther Wyndham
There is at all times a certain fascination about moving furniture, but when it is done in company with the man you love it takes on an intimate domestic significance. This Patricia found, and she was as happy during the next hour or so as she had ever been in her life.
When Anthony said, “I think that desk looks better as it is now than it did before,” they both stood and contemplated it critically.
“I think I should like it better with that lamp on it” Patricia said.
“We’ll try it,” Anthony replied. The lamp was moved over. “Yes, you’re right,” he said “It looks much better; but what shall we put on the table instead?”
“The flowers. They’ll be safer. I was always a little bit afraid that they would get knocked off on the edge there.” And she picked up the flowers and moved them of her own accord. It was extraordinary how at home she felt.
“I’m exhausted,” he said at the end of an hour and a half of intensive furniture moving. “Come and sit down.” He flopped on to a sofa which had been pushed back against the wall and Patricia sat down beside him. “I’d go and get you a drink,” he said, “but I’m too tired to move for the moment. I think we’ve done everything, haven’t we? How much more fun it is preparing for a party than the actual party itself.”
“But you’ll enjoy this one,” she said. It was half a question, half a statement.
“Yes, I shall enjoy this one,” he agreed, and there was a certain deliberate meaning in his tone which brought the blood to her cheeks.
It was time to dress. The party from the White House were the only people coming to dinner. All the others had been invited for afterwards at ten o’clock.
Patricia felt very guilty that the maid had been obliged to iron four dresses, but now that they were all ready to wear she could not resist trying on three of them after her bath. The fourth she had worn at the Grey’s party, so she did not consider wearing it again. Of the remaining three there was a flame-coloured taffeta which she had worn quite a lot in Hongkong; a multi-coloured flowered chiffon which looked both gay and summery, and one of pale lavender blue which her father had particularly admired.
Even before trying on the others she had practically made up her mind to wear the lavender blue for her father’s sake. She tried on the others first so as to save time if she should ultimately decide, as she was sure she would to wear the blue one. She put on the flame-coloured dress first. What memories it brought back to her! It might almost have been another world, another planet on which she had been living. If it had not been for the thought of Anthony, and her excitement at the prospect of the coming evening, she would have felt a great nostalgia for that past life, but for the moment Anthony so occupied her heart that the idea of a life when she had not known him seemed totally insipid. Wherever Anthony was, there she would feel at home, for home is the place where your heart is most engaged, and if you have with you the person you love best you will be at home wherever you are.
She took off the flame-coloured dress and slipped the flowered one over her head. It was tight in the waist and billowed out to her feet. It must have had yards and yards of material in it.
She glanced at her watch at that moment and found, to her consternation, that she had only five minutes before dinner. She quickly took off the flowered dress and slipped on the blue. It fitted closely to her figure, and as she pulled it down and wriggled herself comfortable in it, she said to herself: “Yes, this is the right dress for me.”
She had that gift, which few women possess, of knowing not only what is smart but what suited her. She would never wear an unbecoming dress just because it was fashionable. Men, as a rule, have a greater instinct for these things than women. They always know when a woman is becomingly dressed; they do not always know, and very often do not care, when she is in fashion. They refuse to admire a hat just because it is
the thing
to wear. Women would do well to bow to men’s judgement in such matters. They are seldom wrong.
Patricia only had her shoes to put on now—a pair of satin shoes which had been dyed the exact colour of the dress—and then her bag to change and her hair to comb. She had already done her face directly after her bath, but she was not quite satisfied with the almost perfect result, and after combing her hair she spent a few more minutes touching herself up quite unnecessarily with powder-puff and lipstick.
It so happened that her clock had been slow and when she got downstairs she found that they had all started dinner.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THE party from the White House consisted of Mrs. Grey, Mary and Johnny, Camilla and Jim Ossory. Patricia had forgotten Jim Ossory’s very existence, and was surprised to see him. She did not know that Camilla’s friendship with him had been ripening all this time.
Anthony sat at the head of the table, and Mary, in acknowledgment that she was the guest of honour, sat on his right. On his other side was Mrs. Grey. Lady Brierleigh was at the other end of the table, and a place had been left for Patricia between her and Johnny. Johnny had Mary on his other side, while Jim and Camilla were opposite.
Patricia could not see Anthony from where she was sitting without leaning forward, and although she leant forward as often as she dared, she could not sit in that position all the time.
She was very disappointed that she was not sitting next to him. She had hoped to talk to him at dinner. In fact, she had so counted on it that she had even thought out in the bath things she wanted to say to him and questions she wanted to ask him. It was certainly in the expectation of sitting next to him that she had spent those extra few moments with her powder-puff and lipstick. She would not have taken quite so much trouble for either Johnny or Lady Brierleigh!
“How charming you look, my dear,” said Lady Brierleigh. “You didn’t mind our beginning dinner? It all has to be cleared away before ten.”
“It’s very nice of you not to mind my being late,” Patricia replied. “I can’t apologize enough.”
Had she been sitting next to Anthony it is probable that she would have wanted the meal to go on for ever, but as things were, she was glad when it was over.
The men stayed behind in the dining-room, though Lady Brierleigh warned them that they were not to stay long, while the ladies went into the drawing-room, which Patricia and Anthony had cleared of furniture before dinner. The band had already arrived. It was the band from the Camel in Shrewsbury, which was generally considered to be the best band in the county.
The three girls stood in a huddle and talked about each other’s dresses while Lady Brierleigh spoke to the members of the band.
Mary looked really lovely in the white dress. Her eyes were sparkling with excitement and the pupils so enlarged that they almost looked black.
Camilla was also looking her best that evening. She was dressed in grey chiffon, with a coral-coloured sash and coral bracelets and a coral necklace. Her eyes also were bright, and the colour in her cheeks almost exactly matched her necklace.
Patricia was the only one of the three who temporarily lacked that lustre which happiness and excitement bring to the face. She, too, had had that look before dinner when she was sitting on the sofa beside Anthony, but it had died away now, just as her spirits had drooped a little. She was conscious of feeling tired even before the party had begun. She had been up since seven, and this was the time when she was accustomed to going to bed. Her body was trying to insist that it should be put to rest at the accustomed hour.
When the men came into the room, and Anthony at once came up to the girls, his closeness acted on Patricia as a violent stimulant. Her fatigue was immediately forgotten; the light which had momentarily gone from her eyes came back to them, and it would have been difficult for an outsider to decide which of the three girls looked as if she was most enjoying life at that moment.
Camilla (perhaps to show Anthony that she no longer cared for him) immediately began to flirt with Jim Ossory for all she was worth; Mary and Johnny drifted together naturally, as two people must who are both longing to stay close to each other, and have no reason for hiding that longing, and Patricia, suddenly isolated from the other girls found herself alone with Anthony—as much alone, that is, as it is possible to be in a room full of people. But for a moment, before the guests began to arrive, they were alone in the sense that they were undisturbed.
“It looks pretty good, our room, now that it is dark,” he said.
“You mean now that it is lit up,” she answered.
“You know quite well what I mean. Don’t quibble.”
She smiled up at him. “You should be more accurate then,” she said.
“Are you always going to take me up over every little slip I make?” His voice was much gentler than his words and his eyes were not serious.
“Always is a long time,” she replied.
“It has come to mean just a lifetime,” he said.
“I shan’t be there to take you up for the rest of your life.”
“You mean you may die first?” he asked.
“No, that wasn’t what I meant.”
He was just about to say something else when Lady Brierleigh came up to them. “What about getting the band to make a start?” she asked. “I think people will like to hear music when they arrive.”
“Is zero hour upon us already?” Anthony asked. ‘Yes, by all means let the band start.”
“Will you go and tell them?” Lady Brierleigh said. “I hear people arriving and I must be there to receive them.”
Anthony and Patricia moved over to the band. She felt that by that interruption something of inestimable value had been lost for ever. Their conversation seemed to have been charged with immense significance, and yet the words themselves had been trivial enough.
But Anthony had the gift—or was it the habit?—of seeming to impart a hidden meaning to everything he said. His words always seemed to say two things. They could be taken at their face value or else the inner significance could be looked for—but not always found.
Or was it entirely imagination on Patricia’s part to think that there was an inner meaning in them? As far as she could interpret him that evening, she believed that he was trying to say something to her, but was afraid of giving himself away. With a courage born of the excitement of the evening she made up her mind to help him to say what was really in his mind. If there was anything he wanted to tell her, she would try to draw it out of him.
Lady Brierleigh had been quite wrong when she had said earlier in the evening that she did not suppose half the guests would come. They turned up in force. A dance was too rare in the neighbourhood not to be eagerly snatched at by all the young people, and not a few of their parents.
Lady Brierleigh had arranged for bridge in her sitting-room upstairs for the more sedate elements of the party, and after staying downstairs for nearly half an hour to welcome her guests, she left that duty to Anthony and took the bridge players upstairs. Peter Leslie was one of the latter. He had brought with him a letter from Dorothy to Lady Brierleigh in which she apologized for her former letter. Lady Brierleigh read it there and then, and then she drew Peter aside. “Please thank your wife very, very much for her charming letter,” she said. “I will answer it tomorrow. I quite understand her first annoyance. I should have felt just the same myself. I am only so sorry that she is not here with us this evening.”
“I have been asked to ask you on her behalf whether you will come and have dinner with us one evening,” Peter said. “We are going away for a short holiday at the end of next week, but if you have a free evening before then ...”
“I should be delighted to come on Monday if you can have me,” Lady Brierleigh replied.
“That will be splendid,” Peter answered. “I will tell Dorothy.”
He was a very happy man that evening. Mary’s radiant looks pleased him beyond measure, but over and above all there was a new peace in his home. Dorothy had suffered a great deal from Mary’s running away, but it had given her a jolt which had brought her to her senses. She had suddenly had a clear view of herself and her own conduct, and had become bitterly regretful that she had driven her daughter from home. Peter was not the man to throw up the past in her face. He was only too anxious to bury it, and it seemed to him now perfectly possible that he and Dorothy, middle-aged though they were, could start life anew together. They had been happy before; he saw no reason why they should not be happy again.
Dorothy, for her part, was determined to try her best to overcome those faults in her character which had led to this crisis. The hardness of her heart had been melted, and renewed love for her family had flowed out from it, and with the love all the bitterness and jealousy had been washed away. The source of the love was inexhaustible, but the bitterness and jealousy were, she hoped gone for good. Bitterness and jealousy cannot exist where the heart is being continually washed with purer feelings.
Meanwhile the young people were dancing downstairs.
Anthony was dutifully and impartially dancing with all the girls in turn, and Patricia, though she had no lack of partners, was not really happy because she was not dancing with him. She had not somehow expected him to be quite such a dutiful host, though she could not help admiring him for the effort he was making.
Mary danced with nobody but Johnny, except the first dance which she had with Anthony, and when they were not dancing they were sitting out together in the library. Camilla was one of the first people that Anthony danced with, but after that she stuck to Jim for the rest of the evening. Anthony knowing Camilla well, and knowing her usual tendency to flirt with all and sundry, would have been surprised by this exclusiveness, but they did not know that Jim was not a man to brook competition, though Camilla guessed this instinctively. She knew that he would not stand calmly by and watch her flirting with someone else. What action he would take she was not sure, but she was not going to give him the opportunity to take any. The only flirting she did that evening was with Jim himself, and that he did not seem to mind.
The truth was that Jim had swept Camilla off her feet in a way no other man had ever done before, and she was beginning to have a half-ecstatic and half-frightened realization that this was the real thing at last
She was on her guard because she had all too recently been hurt by Anthony Brierleigh and she had no wish to get hurt again, but it was, of course, different this time because Jim was showing every sign of being madly in love with her, whereas Anthony had never shown anything more than a half-playful affection.
It was she who had wooed Anthony, and wooed him unsuccessfully. It was Jim who was wooing her. But she was, nevertheless, more than a little frightened of showing him how much she cared. She took refuge behind a gay, flirtatious, bantering attitude which disguised the seriousness of her real feelings. But he was determined to overcome her defences, and she was beginning to find it increasingly difficult to keep up the light-hearted attitude in face of his battering sincerity.
“You’ve led me on like this quite long enough,” he was saying to her as they danced. “Tonight you’ve got to tell me what you really feel or I shan’t see you again.” And she knew that this was no idle threat. He was quite strong-minded enough to carry it out.