Final Curtain

Paul and Fenella dispensed the sherry, which was extremely good. Rather elaborate conversation was made, Sir Henry conducting it with the air of giving an audition. ‘But I thought,’ he said, ‘that Cedric was to join us. Didn’t you tell me, Millamant –’

‘I’m so sorry he’s late, Papa,’ said Millamant. ‘He had an important letter to write, I know. I think perhaps he didn’t hear the gong.’

‘Indeed? Where have you put him?’

‘In Garrick, Papa.’

‘Then he certainly must have heard the gong.’

Barker came in and announced dinner.

‘We shall not, I think, wait for Cedric,’ Sir Henry continued. He removed the cat, Carabbas, from his knees and rose. His family rose with him. ‘Mrs. Alleyn, may I have the pleasure of taking you in?’ he said.

‘It’s a pity,’ Troy thought as she took the arm he curved for her, ‘that there isn’t an orchestra.’ And as if she had recaptured the lines from some drawing-room comedy of her childhood, she made processional conversation as they moved towards the door. Before they reached it, however, there was a sound of running footsteps in the hall. Cedric, flushed with exertion and wearing a white flower in his dinner-jacket, darted into the room.

‘Dearest Grandpapa,’ he cried, waving his hands, ‘I creep, I grovel. So sorry, truly. Couldn’t be more contrite. Find me some sackcloth and ashes somebody, quickly.’

‘Good evening, Cedric,’ said Sir Henry icily. ‘You must make your apologies to Mrs. Alleyn, who will perhaps be very kind and forgive you.’

Troy smiled like a duchess at Cedric and inwardly grinned like a Cheshire cat at herself.

‘Too heavenly of you,’ said Cedric quickly. He slipped in behind them. The procession had splayed out a little on his entrance. He came face to face with Miss Orrincourt. Troy heard him give a curious, half-articulate exclamation. It sounded involuntary and unaffected. This was so unusual from Cedric that Troy turned to look at him. His small mouth was open. His pale eyes stared blankly at the diamond star on Miss Orrincourt’s bosom, and then turned incredulously from one member of his family to another.

‘But’ – he stammered – ‘but, I say – I say.’

‘Cedric,’ whispered his mother.

‘Cedric,’ said his grandfather imperatively.

But Cedric, still speaking in that strangely natural voice, pointed a white finger at the diamond star and said loudly: ‘But, my God, it’s Great-Great-Grandmama Ancred’s sunburst!’

‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Miss Orrincourt equally loudly. ‘I’m ever so thrilled.’

‘In these unhappy times, alas,’ said Sir Henry blandly, arming Troy through the door, ‘one may not make those gestures with which one would wish to honour a distinguished visitor! “A poor small banquet,” as old Capulet had it. Shall we go in?’

IV

The poor small banquet was, if nothing else, a tribute to the zeal of Sir Henry’s admirers in the Dominions and the United States of America. Troy had not seen its like for years. He himself, she noticed, ate a mess of something that had been put through a sieve. Conversation was general, innocuous, and sounded a little as if it had been carefully memorised beforehand. It was difficult not to look at Miss Orrincourt’s diamonds. They were a sort of visual faux pas which no amount of blameless small-talk could shout down. Troy observed that the Ancreds themselves constantly darted furtive glances at them. Sir Henry continued bland, urbane, and, to Troy, excessively gracious. She found his compliments, which were adroit, rather hard to counter. He spoke of her work and asked if she had done a self-portrait. ‘Only in my student days when I couldn’t afford a model,’ said Troy. ‘But that’s very naughty of you,’ he said. ‘It is now that you should give us the perfect painting of the perfect subject.’

‘Crikey!’ thought Troy.

They drank Rudesheimer. When Barker hovered beside him, Sir Henry, announcing that it was a special occasion, said he would take half a glass. Millamant and Pauline looked anxiously at him.

‘Papa, darling,’ said Pauline. ‘Do you think –?’ And Millamant murmured: ‘Yes, Papa. Do you think –?’

‘Do I think what?’ he replied, glaring at them.

‘Wine,’ they murmured disjointedly. ‘Dr. Withers … not really advisable … however.’

‘Fill it up, Barker,’ Sir Henry commanded loudly, ‘fill it up.’

Troy heard Pauline and Millamant sigh windily.

Dinner proceeded with circumspection but uneasily. Paul and Fenella were silent. Cedric, on Troy’s right hand, conversed in feverish spasms with anybody who would listen to him. Sir Henry’s flow of compliments continued unabated through three courses, and to Troy’s dismay, Miss Orrincourt began to show signs of marked hostility. She was on Sir Henry’s left, with Paul on her other side. She began an extremely grand conversation with Paul, and though he responded with every sign of discomfort she lowered her voice, cast significant glances at him, and laughed immoderately at his monosyllabic replies. Troy, who was beginning to find her host very heavy weather indeed, seized an opportunity to speak to Cedric.

‘Noddy,’ said Miss Orrincourt at once, ‘what are we going to do tomorrow?’

‘Do?’ he repeated, and after a moment’s hesitation became playful. ‘What does a little girl want to do?’

Miss Orrincourt stretched her arms above her head. ‘She wants things to happen!’ she cried ecstatically. ‘Lovely things.’

‘Well, if she’s very, very good perhaps we’ll let her have a tiny peep at a great big picture.’

Troy heard this with dismay.

‘What else?’ Miss Orrincourt persisted babyishly but with an extremely unenthusiastic glance at Troy.

‘We’ll see,’ said Sir Henry uneasily.

‘But Noddy –’

‘Mrs. Alleyn,’ said Millamant from the foot of the table, ‘shall we –?’

And she marshalled her ladies out of the dining-room.

The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Sir Henry led Troy through the pages of three albums of theatrical photographs. This she rather enjoyed. It was strange, she thought, to see how the fashion in Elizabethan garments changed in the world of theatre. Here was a young Victorian Henry Ancred very much be-pointed, be-ruffed, encased and furbished, in a perfect welter of velvet, ribbon and leather; here a modern elderly Henry Ancred in a stylised and simplified costume that had apparently been made of painted scenic canvas. Yet both were the Duke of Buckingham.

Miss Orrincourt joined a little fretfully in this pastime. Perched on the arm of Sir Henry’s chair and disseminating an aura of black market scent, she giggled tactlessly over the earlier photographs and yawned over the later ones. ‘My dear,’ she ejaculated, ‘look at you! You’ve got everything on but the kitchen sink!’ This was in reference to a picture of Sir Henry as Richard II. Cedric tittered and immediately looked frightened. Pauline said: ‘I must say, Papa, I don’t think anyone else has ever approached your flair for exactly the right costume.’

‘My dear,’ her father rejoined, ‘it’s the way you wear ’em.’ He patted Miss Orrincourt’s hand. ‘You do very well, my child,’ he said, ‘in your easy modern dresses. How would you manage if, like Ellen Terry, you had two feet of heavy velvet in front of you on the stage and were asked to move like a queen down a flight of stairs? You’d fall on your nice little nose.’

He was obviously a vain man. It was extraordinary, Troy thought, that he remained unmoved by Miss Orrincourt’s lack of reverence, and remembering Thomas’s remark about David and Abishag the Shunammite, Troy was forced to the disagreeable conclusion that Sir Henry was in his dotage about Miss Orrincourt.

At ten o’clock a grog-tray was brought in. Sir Henry drank barley water, suffered the women of his family to kiss him goodnight, nodded to Paul and Cedric, and, to her intense embarrassment, kissed Troy’s hand. ‘A demain,’ he said in his deepest voice. ‘We meet at eleven. I am fortunate.’

He made a magnificent exit, and ten minutes later, Miss Orrincourt, yawning extensively, also retired.

Her disappearance was the signal for an outbreak among the Ancreds.

‘Honestly, Milly! Honestly, Aunt Pauline. Can we believe our eyes!’ cried Cedric. ‘The Sunburst! I mean actually!’

‘Well, Millamant,’ said Pauline, ‘I now see for myself how things stand at Ancreton.’

‘You wouldn’t believe me when I told you, Pauline,’ Millamant rejoined. ‘You’ve been here a month, but you wouldn’t –’

‘Has he given it to her, will somebody tell me?’ Cedric demanded.

‘He can’t,’ said Pauline. ‘He can’t. And what’s more, I don’t believe he would. Unless –’ She stopped short and turned to Paul. ‘If he’s given it to her,’ she said, ‘he’s going to marry her. That’s all.’

Poor Troy, who had been making completely ineffectual efforts to go, seized upon the silence that followed Pauline’s announcement to murmur: ‘If I may, I think I shall –’

‘Dear Mrs. Alleyn,’ said Cedric, ‘I implore you not to be tactful. Do stay and listen.’

‘I don’t see,’ Paul began, ‘why poor Mrs. Alleyn should be inflicted –’

‘She knows,’ said Fenella. ‘I’m afraid I’ve already told her, Paul.’

Pauline suddenly made a gracious dive at Troy. ‘Isn’t it disturbing?’ she said with an air of drawing Troy into her confidence. ‘You see how things are? Really, it’s too naughty of Papa. We’re all so dreadfully worried. It’s not what’s happening so much as what might happen that terrifies one. And now the Sunburst. A little too much. In its way it’s a historic jewel.’

‘It was a little cadeau d’estime from the Regent to Great-Great-Grandmama Honoria Ancred,’ Cedric cut in. ‘Not only historical, but history repeating itself. And may I point out, Aunt Pauline, that I personally am rocked to the foundations. I’ve always understood that the Sunburst was to come to me.’

‘To your daughter,’ said Paul. ‘The point is academic.’

‘I’m sure I don’t know why you think so,’ said Cedric, bridling. ‘Anything might happen.’

Paul raised his eyebrows.

‘Really, Pauline,’ said Millamant. ‘Really, Paul!’

‘Paul, darling,’ said Pauline offensively, ‘don’t tease poor Cedric.’

‘Anyway,’ said Fenella, ‘I think Aunt Pauline’s right. I think he means to marry, and if he does, I’m never coming to Ancreton again. Never!’

‘What shall you call her, Aunt Pauline?’ Cedric asked impertinently. ‘Mummy, or a pet name?’

‘There’s only one thing to be done,’ said Pauline. ‘We must tackle him. I’ve told Jenetta and I’ve told Dessy. They’re both coming. Thomas will have to come too. In Claude’s absence he should take the lead. It’s his duty.’

‘Do you mean, dearest Aunt Pauline, that we are to lie in ambush for the Old Person and make an altogether-boys bounce at him?’

‘I propose, Cedric, that we ask him to meet us all and that we simply – we simply –’

‘And a fat lot of good, if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Pauline, that is likely to do,’ said Millamant, with a chuckle.

‘Not being an Ancred, Millamant, you can’t be expected to feel this terrible thing as painfully as we do. How Papa, with his deep sense of pride in an old name – we go back to the Conquest, Mrs. Alleyn – how Papa can have allowed himself to be entangled! It’s too humiliating.’

‘Not being an Ancred, as you point out, Pauline, I realise Papa, as well as being blue-blooded, is extremely hot-blooded. Moreover, he’s as obstinate and vain as a peacock. He likes the idea of himself with a dashing young wife.’

‘Comparatively young,’ said Cedric.

Pauline clasped her hands, and turning from one member of her family to another, said, ‘I’ve thought of something! Now listen all of you. I’m going to be perfectly frank and impersonal about this. I know I’m the child’s mother, but that needn’t prevent me. Panty!’

‘What about Panty, Mother?’ asked Paul nervously.

‘Your grandfather adores the child. Now, suppose Panty were just to drop a childish hint.’

‘If you suggest,’ said Cedric, ‘that Panty should wind her little arms round his neck and whisper: “Grandpapa, when will the howwid lady wun away?” I can only say I don’t think she’d get into the skin of the part.’

‘He adores her,’ Pauline repeated angrily. ‘He’s like a great big boy with her. It brings the tears into my eyes to see them together. You can’t deny it, Millamant.’

‘I dare say it does, Pauline.’

‘Well, but Mother, Panty plays up to Grandpapa,’ said Paul bluntly.

‘And in any case,’ Cedric pointed out, ‘isn’t Panty as thick as thieves with Sonia?’

‘I happen to know,’ said Millamant, ‘that Miss Orrincourt encouraged Panty to play a very silly trick on me last Sunday.’

‘What did she do?’ asked Cedric.

Fenella giggled.

‘She pinned a very silly notice on the back of my coat when I was going to church,’ said Millamant stuffily.

‘What did it say, Milly, darling?’ Cedric asked greedily.

‘Roll out the Barrel,’ said Fenella.

‘This is getting us nowhere,’ said Millamant.

‘And now,’ said Troy hurriedly, ‘I really think if you’ll excuse me –’

This time she was able to get away. The Ancreds distractedly bade her goodnight. She refused an escort to her room, and left them barely waiting, she felt, for her to shut the door before they fell to again.

Only a solitary lamp burned in the hall, which was completely silent, and since the fire had died out, very cold. While Troy climbed the stairs she felt as she had not felt before in this enormous house, that it had its own individuality. It stretched out on all sides of her, an undiscovered territory. It housed, as well as the eccentricities of the Ancreds, their deeper thoughts and the thoughts of their predecessors. When she reached the gallery, which was also dim, she felt that the drawing-room was now profoundly distant, a subterranean island. The rows of mediocre portraits and murky landscapes that she now passed had a life of their own in this half-light and seemed to be indifferently aware of her progress. Here, at last, was her own passage with the tower steps at the end. She halted for a moment before climbing them. Was it imagination, or had the door, out of sight on the half-landing above her, been softly closed? ‘Perhaps,’ she thought, ‘somebody lives in the room below me,’ and for some reason the notion affected her unpleasantly. ‘Ridiculous!’ thought Troy, and turned on a switch at the foot of the stairs. A lamp, out of sight beyond the first spiral, brought the curved wall rather stealthily to life.

Troy mounted briskly, hoping there would still be a fire in her white room. As she turned the spiral, she gathered up her long dress with her right hand and with her left reached out for the narrow rail.

The rail was sticky.

She snatched her hand away with some violence and looked at it. The palm and the under-surface were dark. Troy stood in the shadow of the inner wall, but she now moved up into light. By the single lamps she saw that the stain on her hand was red.

Five seconds must have gone by before she realised that the stuff on her hand was paint.

5

The Bloody Child

I

At half past ten the following morning Troy, hung with paint boxes and carrying a roll of canvas and stretchers, made her way to the little theatre. Guided by Paul and Cedric, who carried her studio easel between them, she went down a long passage that led out of the hall, turned right at a green baize door, ‘beyond which,’ Cedric panted, ‘the Difficult Children ravage at will,’ and continued towards the rear of that tortuous house. Their journey was not without incident, for as they passed the door of what, as Troy later discovered, was a small sitting-room, it was flung open and a short plumpish man appeared, his back towards them, shouting angrily: ‘If you’ve no faith in my treatment, Sir Henry, you have an obvious remedy. I shall be glad to be relieved of the thankless task of prescribing for a damned obstinate patient and his granddaughter.’ Troy made a valiant effort to forge ahead, but was blocked by Cedric, who stopped short, holding the easel diagonally across the passage and listening with an air of the liveliest interest. ‘Now, now, keep your temper,’ rumbled the invisible Sir Henry. ‘I wash my hands of you,’ the other proclaimed. ‘No, you don’t. You keep a civil tongue in your head, Withers. You’d much better look after me and take a bit of honest criticism in the way it’s intended.’ ‘This is outrageous,’ the visitor said, but with a note of something like despair in his voice. ‘I formally relinquish the case. You will take this as final.’ There was a pause, during which Paul attempted, without success, to drag Cedric away. ‘I won’t accept it,’ Sir Henry said at last. ‘Come, now, Withers, keep your temper. You ought to understand. I’ve a great deal to try me. A great deal. Bear with an old fellow’s tantrums, won’t you? You shan’t regret it. See here, now. Shut that door and listen to me.’ Without turning, the visitor slowly shut the door.

‘And now,’ Cedric whispered, ‘he’ll tell poor Dr. Withers he’s going to be remembered in the Will.’

‘Come on, for God’s sake,’ said Paul, and they made their way to the little theatre.

Half an hour later Troy had set up her easel, stretched her canvas, and prepared paper and boards for preliminary studies. The theatre was a complete little affair with a deepish stage. The Macbeth backcloth was simple and brilliantly conceived. The scenic painter had carried out Troy’s original sketch very well indeed. Before it stood three-dimensional monolithic forms that composed well and broke across the cloth in the right places. She saw where she would place her figure. There would be no attempt to present the background in terms of actuality. It would be frankly a stage set. ‘A dangling rope would come rather nicely,’ she thought, ‘but I suppose they wouldn’t like that. If only he’ll stand!’

Cedric and Paul now began to show her what could be done with the lights. Troy was enjoying herself. She liked the smell of canvas and glue and the feeling that this was a place where people worked. In the little theatre even Cedric improved. He was knowledgeable and quickly responsive to her suggestions, checking Paul’s desire to flood the set with a startling display of lighting and getting him to stand in position while he himself focussed a single spot. ‘We must find the backcloth discreetly,’ he cried. ‘Try the ground row.’ And presently a luminous glow appeared, delighting Troy.

‘But how are you going to see?’ cried Cedric distractedly. ‘Oh, lawks! How are you going to see?’

‘I can bring down a standard spot on an extension,’ Paul offered. ‘Or we could uncover a window.’

Cedric gazed in an agony of inquiry at Troy. ‘But the window light would infiltrate,’ he said. ‘Or wouldn’t it?’

‘We could try.’

At last by an ingenious arrangement of screens Troy was able to get daylight on her canvas and a fair view of the stage.

The clock – it was, of course, known as the Great Clock – in the central tower struck eleven. A door somewhere backstage opened and shut, and dead on his cue Sir Henry, in the character of Macbeth, walked onto the lighted set.

‘Golly!’ Troy whispered. ‘Oh, Golly!’

‘Devastatingly fancy dress,’ said Cedric in her ear, ‘but in its ridiculous way rather exciting. Or not? Too fancy?’

‘It’s not too fancy for me,’ Troy said roundly, and walked down the aisle to greet her sitter.

II

At midday Troy drove her fingers through her hair, propped a large charcoal drawing against the front of the stage and backed away from it down the aisle. Sir Henry took off his helmet, groaned a little, and moved cautiously to a chair in the wings.

‘I suppose you want to stop,’ said Troy absently, biting her thumb and peering at her drawing.

‘One grows a trifle stiff,’ he replied. She then noticed that he was looking more than a trifle tired. He had made up for her sitting, painting heavy shadows round his eyes and staining his moustache and the tuft on his chin with water-dye. To this he had added long strands of crêpe hair. But beneath the grease-paint and hair his face sagged a little and his head drooped.

‘I must let you go,’ said Troy. ‘I hope I haven’t been too exacting. One forgets.’

‘One also remembers,’ said Sir Henry. ‘I have been remembering my lines. I played the part first in 1904.’

Troy looked up quickly, suddenly liking him.

‘It’s a wonderful rôle,’ he said. ‘Wonderful.’

‘I was very much moved by it when I saw you five years ago.’

‘I’ve played it six times and always to enormous business. It hasn’t been an unlucky piece for me.’

‘I’ve heard about the Macbeth superstition. One mustn’t quote from the play, must one?’ Troy made a sudden pounce at her drawing and wiped her thumb down a too dominant line. ‘Do you believe it’s unlucky?’ she asked vaguely.

‘It has been for other actors,’ he said, quite seriously. ‘There’s always a heavy feeling offstage during performance. People are nervy.’

‘Isn’t that perhaps because they remember the superstition?’

‘It’s there,’ he said. ‘You can’t escape the feeling. But the piece has never been unlucky for me.’ His voice, which had sounded tired, lifted again. ‘If it were otherwise, should I have chosen this rôle for my portrait? Assuredly not. And now,’ he said with a return of his arch and over-gallant manner, ‘am I to be allowed a peep before I go?’

Troy was not very keen for him to have his peep, but she took the drawing a little way down the aisle and turned it towards him. ‘I’m afraid it won’t explain itself,’ she said. ‘It’s merely a sort of plot of what I hope to do.’

‘Ah, yes!’ He put his hand in his tunic and drew out a pair of gold-rimmed pince-nez and there, in a moment, was Macbeth, with glasses perched on his nose, staring solemnly at his own portrait. ‘Such a clever lady,’ he said. ‘Very clever!’ Troy put the drawing away and he got up slowly. ‘Off, ye lendings!’ he said. ‘I must change.’ He adjusted his cloak with a practised hand, drew himself up, and, moving into the spot-light, pointed his dirk at the great naked canvas. His voice, as though husbanded for this one flourish, boomed through the empty theatre.

‘“Well, may you see things well done there: adieu!

Lest our old robes sit easier than our new!”’

‘“God’s benison go with you!”’ said Troy, luckily remembering the line. He crossed himself, chuckled and strode off between the monoliths to the door behind the stage. It slammed and Troy was alone.

She had made up her mind to start at once with the laying out of her subject on the big canvas. There would be no more preliminary studies. Time pressed and she knew now what she wanted. There is no other moment, she thought, to compare with this, when you face the tautly stretched surface and raise your hand to make the first touch upon it. And, drawing in her breath, she swept her charcoal across the canvas. It gave a faint drumlike note of response. ‘We’re off,’ thought Troy.

Fifty minutes went by and a rhythm of line and mass grew under her hand. Back and forward she walked, making sharp accents with the end of her charcoal or sweeping it flat across the grain of the canvas. All that was Troy was now poured into her thin blackened hand. At last she stood motionless, ten paces back from her work, and, after an interval, lit a cigarette, took up her duster and began to flick her drawing. Showers of charcoal fell down the surface.

‘Don’t you like it?’ asked a sharp voice.

Troy jumped galvanically and turned. The little girl she had seen fighting on the terrace stood in the aisle, her hands jammed in the pockets of her pinafore and her feet planted apart.

‘Where did you come from?’ Troy demanded.

‘Through the end door. I came quietly because I’m not allowed. Why are you rubbing it out? Don’t you like it?’

‘I’m not rubbing it out. It’s still there.’ And indeed the ghost of her drawing remained. ‘You take the surplus charcoal off,’ she said curtly. ‘Otherwise it messes the paints.’