Cluny Brown (25 page)

About five minutes earlier, indeed, Betty Cream had woken up, switched on the bedside light, and seen Mr. Belinski standing just inside her door. He shut it quietly behind him.

“Please can you lend me a good book?” he asked politely.

Before answering Betty switched on a second light, which thoroughly illumined the whole room. The conjunction of a highly desirable appearance with a great deal of sense had inevitably taught her much that young girls were not commonly supposed to know: for instance, that a strong light is almost as good as a chaperon. Adam Belinski blinked under it.

“No,” said Betty.

“I cannot sleep, and I wondered—”

“Mr. Belinski, you're making a fool of yourself. If I scream—”

He looked astonished.

“Scream? But why should you scream?”

“Because I don't like people coming into my room.”

“Then why did you not lock your door?” asked Belinski reasonably.

“One doesn't, in private houses.”

“Then it is very misleading,” complained Mr. Belinski. “If I found a door locked, I would naturally go away again—”

“And I don't want to hear about your experiences in hotel corridors,” added Betty. “I want to go to sleep.”

“When you danced with me, you were awake for the first time.”

Betty sighed. She felt it an unfair paradox that her excellent dancing—an accomplishment so insisted upon by mothers, governesses, and other guardians of the young—should so often lead her, as it did, into this sort of misunderstanding. She said patiently:—

“Mr. Belinski, I don't want to scream, but if I do, do you know what would happen?”

“Nothing would happen. At least nothing that is not going to happen—”

“That's just where you're wrong,” explained Betty kindly. “If I scream, you'll be turned out of the house to-morrow. It's an old English custom. Then what will you do?”

“I shall go to America. I
am
going to America. That is what I came to remind you,” said Mr. Belinski resourcefully, “since you seem to forget. Soon you will never see me again.”

“Good,” said Betty.

There was a short pause. (It was while they were thus silent that Andrew as silently passed along the corridor outside.) Then Belinski said earnestly:—

“If you wish to marry me, of course we will get married. But honestly I cannot advise it, I have no income, I am a stranger, your family would undoubtedly and rightly object. I would not advise it at all.”

“My dear, I wouldn't dream of marrying you,” said Betty.

“You have sense as well as everything else. I adore you. But love is something quite different—”

“Nor am I in love with you. Not in the least.”

“Not even while we are dancing? Besides,” argued Belinski, “how can you tell, if you will not let me make love to you? How can you tell if you are going to love any one? Such an attitude is ridiculous!”

“In this country, yours is considered immoral.”

“In this country, it is a wonder to me how the race survives. Has anything I say sounded shocking to you?”

“No,” admitted Betty. “In fact, I've heard it before, and it always sounds like sense. But I'll tell you something I've noticed. Quite a number of people I know keep having casual affairs, and they do it just as you say, to find out if they're in love, and what type suits them, and so on. And they nearly all get rather tatty.”

“Tatty?”

“Mothy. Shabby. Like a fur when you keep sending it to the cleaners,” explained Betty. “I don't know how it is, but they do. Now look at Andrew's mother and father—”

But Belinski knew too well the dangers, at such a point as this, of rational conversation. Already he had lost the advantage of surprise; Betty, now really interested in what she was saying, became with every moment less vulnerable to reckless emotion. Belinski put his hand to the switch by the door and moved very quickly; but it took even less time for Betty to scream.

IV

In the great bedroom, and just as Andrew's hand encountered the swan, Lady Carmel sat up and ate a biscuit. She usually woke once or twice in the night, and it did not worry her. As a rule she lay quietly and contentedly waiting for sleep to take her again, enjoying the perfect comfort of the great bed and the familiar warmth of Sir Henry's solid rump. Night-thoughts had no terrors for Alice Carmel: from old habit she often said a prayer or two at these times, because the words were pleasant to her, but the notion that they might penetrate to the Almighty's ear would have distressed her very much. She made no claim on His attention, she prayed as a child hums a hymn. Then she ate a biscuit, being careful not to get crumbs under the sheet, and went to sleep again.

On this night, however, something troubled her. She had the impression that something needed attending to. Had any one tapped at her door? It was possible; possible that Syrett (for instance) still stood without, reluctant to knock again. Perhaps Mrs. Maile, or one of the girls, had been taken ill.…

Lady Carmel glanced at her soundly sleeping spouse, and instead of calling out crept carefully from the bed and pattered to the door. No one stood behind it, neither Syrett nor Mrs. Maile in agony; but paddling along the corridor and looking towards the landing Lady Carmel observed, on the floor beneath the window, a vague pale shape like a small cloud. A bough of white lilac had fallen from the swan. “So that's it!” thought Lady Carmel; and hastened, as to the scene of an accident, to put it back in water. She had just picked it up when some one switched on the light, and there stood Andrew.

For a moment mother and son stared at each other in mutual surprise. Lady Carmel in particular presented an odd appearance: the lilac in her hand gave her a vaguely allegorical look, like a figure strayed out of a pageant. (Sir Henry would have known at once whom she represented: the goddess Flora.)

“Oh, it's you,” said Andrew. “Mother, you're not still doing the flowers!”

“No, of course not,” said Lady Carmel. “But I heard this fall out. Aren't you quite well, dear?”

“I wanted a cigarette.”

“Then be careful of the sheets, for the Professor has made two great holes already. Isn't he quite well?”

“So far as I know. Why?”

“I just thought,” explained Lady Carmel, “that as you were coming from the east corridor, and there's no one there but the Professor, and there were two hundred cigarettes in your room this afternoon, perhaps he had been taken ill and you didn't want to worry me. Champagne does sometimes upset the stomach.”

“Darling,” said Andrew earnestly, “I wish you'd go back to bed.”

“I'm going. I just want to hear the house settle down again.…”

She turned and looked over the carved railing, into the shadowy hall beneath. Andrew moved to her side, rather touched, rather impatient; so they stood, mother and son, mistress and heir, listening to the clock's tick, the flick of a leaf falling from a flower-pot. There were no other sounds. The old house was solid, and the old furniture. No ghosts walked at Friars Carmel. Its inhabitants, having done their duty in one world, were presumably busy with their duty in the next.

“Andrew,” said Lady Carmel, “don't sell it.”

“No, Mother,” replied Andrew automatically; and then, still staring down into the hall, he added, “But I'm going to join the Air Force.”

There was so long a silence that he wondered whether she had heard; but when he turned and looked at her, her face told him that she had. She said:—

“Does your father know?”

“Not yet. I'll talk to him to-morrow. You don't mind, Mother?”

“No,” said Lady Carmel steadily. “I suppose it's logical … Thank you for telling me just now, Andrew, when we are so by ourselves. Now get back to bed, dear, or you'll catch cold.”

Andrew laughed and put his arm round her shoulder; below them the clock struck the half-hour, leaving a deeper silence after the chime, a silence that held them there one moment longer; and in that moment, Betty screamed.

V

Immediately the scene was one of complex animation. Andrew, rushing towards Betty's door, collided with Mr. Belinski bolting out. (It was an awkward moment for the Professor; expecting darkness and a clear field, he emerged into bright light and company.) Andrew grasped him by the arm; Belinski, with great presence of mind, as promptly grasped Andrew. Betty Cream appeared in the open door, saw Andrew, saw his mother, and disappeared to get her dressing-gown. Cluny Brown appeared on the service-stairs, looking, with long white nightdress and dishevelled locks, rather like Lady Macbeth. In the darkness behind her a low but continuous squeaking indicated the presence of Hilda. Lady Carmel still agitated a spray of lilac. They all spoke at once.

“Has there been a murder?” called Cluny Brown.

“Good God! It is Andrew!” cried Mr. Belinski.

“Brown, go back to bed immediately,” said Lady Carmel.

“What's happened?” demanded Andrew.

Betty, now dressing-gowned and composed, very distinctly informed them.

“I'm so sorry, Lady Carmel: I heard my door open and thought it was a burglar, so I screamed.”

“What
happened?
” repeated Andrew stubbornly.

“I mistook the door,” explained Belinski. “Coming back from the bathroom, in the dark.”

Since every person present knew that his bathroom, like his bedroom, was situated in the other wing, this explained a good deal too much. Lady Carmel glanced hastily towards the service-stairs: the two girls were no longer in sight, but she suspected their presence on the upper landing. She said swiftly:—

“How very tiresome, but that does happen in a strange house. No wonder Betty was alarmed, they had a burglar at the Hall last year. Andrew, I don't want your father disturbed if he is still asleep. Dear me, what an exciting evening this has been! Good-night again, Professor; Andrew will turn off the lights.”

VI

Like a good hostess, Lady Carmel accompanied Betty into her room and saw her get into bed again. (She also placed the lilac in a vase of tulips, where it would do very well till morning.) Betty made no further reference to her burglar story, and Alice Carmel expected none; they were both aware that it had served its purpose and could now be forgotten. But the elder lady did not immediately leave, and Betty sat up against her pillows with an attentive air—not as though expecting a scolding, but as though the time and place were well suited to conversation. In her blue gown, neatly curled for the night, she looked like a very sensible child.

“You know, dear, you'd better get married,” said Lady Carmel.

“Yes, Lady Carmel,” said Betty meekly.

“Are you going to marry Andrew?”

“Yes, Lady Carmel.”

“Then I think you should tell him so. He's getting quite nervous.”

“I'll tell him to-morrow.”

“Thank you, dear.” Lady Carmel nodded in a satisfied manner and turned to go. But Betty stopped her.

“Lady Carmel, you—you haven't always been sure about me, have you?”

“No, dear. But my opinion has changed.”

“Will you tell me what changed it?”

“I think it was the way you screamed,” said Lady Carmel meditatively. “When I was young, I think girls screamed a great deal more—at mice, or ghost stories, or the sight of blood. And one could always tell—at least, another girl could—whether the scream were genuine or put on. You screamed as though you meant it. Now go to sleep, Elizabeth, and tomorrow we'll have a long talk. Especially about the gardens,” added Lady Carmel, “because they're all planned three years ahead.”

VII

The conversation between Andrew and Belinski (for Andrew too conducted a guest back to his room) was far less satisfactory. Andrew was in a pugnacious mood; he had acquiesced in his mother's handling of the situation, but it had left him still full of undischarged energy.

“Look here,” he said baldly, “all this tale about the wrong door—I don't believe it.”

“I am so sorry,” said Belinski, with a disarming smile. “And of course, it is not true. But I had not time to think of anything better.”

“If you admit that, you're admitting a good deal.”

“How can I help it? You were there,” said Belinski simply.

Andrew leant back against the bureau and stared. His attitude, his expression, were full of unconscious arrogance—the first defence put up by his kind against an unknown quantity.

“Did you go into Miss Cream's room deliberately?”

“Of course. And if you ask me why, I warn you that the answer will embarrass you very much. However, let us call it an overwhelming impulse. An overwhelming impulse is by definition irresistible.”

“Right,” said Andrew. “At the moment I've an overwhelming impulse to hit you.”

Mr. Belinski at once did the most sensible thing possible. He got into bed. Andrew continued to glare down at him, but he was baffled, and he knew it. Belinski (actually wearing a pair of Andrew's pyjamas) turned very comfortably on his side and closed his eyes—abandoning himself, defenceless, to his host's chivalry. And his trust was justified: even in a blind rage Andrew would hardly have hit a man when he was down; nothing on earth could have made him hit a man in bed. To exhort Belinski to get out and put his fists up was equally beyond him: even as he stood scowling, a nursery rhyme of his youth ridiculously crossed his mind.
“One fine day in the middle of the night, Two blind men went out to fight
.…”

“I'm too damn civilized,” thought Andrew furiously.

Belinski appeared to sleep. The charming room, filled with every luxury for a cosseted guest, was peaceful and still. It annoyed Andrew very much that he could not even slam the door, since the noise might have aroused his father.