Overture to Death (4 page)

i

If Mrs. Ross had taken a ticking bomb from her handbag and placed it on the table, the effect could have been scarcely more devastating. What she did produce was a small green book. Seven pairs of eyes followed the movements of her thin, scarlet-tipped hands. Seven pairs of eyes fastened, as if mesmerised, on the black letters of the book cover. Mrs. Ross folded her hands over the book and addressed the meeting.

“I do hope you’ll all forgive me for making my suggestion,” she said, “but it’s the result of a rather odd coincidence. I’d no idea of your meeting until Dr. Templett called in this afternoon, but I happened to be reading this play and when he appeared the first thing I said was, ‘Some time or other we simply
must
do this thing.’ Didn’t I, Billy? I mean, it’s absolutely marvellous. All the time I was reading it I kept thinking how perfect it would be for some of you to do it in aid of one of the local charities. There are two parts in it that would be simply ideal for Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula. The Duchess and her sister. The scene they have with General Talbot is one of the best in the play. It simply couldn’t be funnier and you’d be magnificent as the General, Mr. Jernigham.”

She paused composedly and looked sideways at the squire. Nobody spoke, though Miss Campanula wetted her lips. Selia Ross waited for a moment, smiling frankly, and then she said:

“Of course I didn’t realise you had already chosen a play. Naturally I wouldn’t have dreamt of coming if I had known. It’s all this man’s fault.” She gave Dr. Templett a sort of comradely jog with her elbow. “He bullied me into it. I ought to have apologised and crept away at once, but I just couldn’t resist telling you about my discovery.” She opened her eyes a little wider and turned them on the rector. “Perhaps if I left it with you, Mr. Copeland, the committee might just like to glance at it before they quite decide.
Please
don’t think I want a part in it or anything frightful like that. It’s just that it
is
so good, and I’d be delighted to lend it.”

“That’s very kind of you,” said the rector.

“It’s not a bit kind. I’m being thoroughly selfish. I just long to see you all doing it and I’m secretly hoping you won’t be able to resist it. It’s so difficult to find modern plays that aren’t offensive,” continued Mrs. Ross, with an air of great frankness, “but this really is charming.”

“But what is the play?” asked Henry, who had been craning his neck in a useless attempt to read the title.

“
Shop Windows
, by Jacob Hunt.”

“Good Lord!” ejaculated Dinah. “Of course! I never thought of it. It’s the very thing.”

“Have you read it?” asked Mrs. Ross, with a friendly glance at her.

“I saw the London production,” said Dinah. “You’re quite right, it would be grand. But what about the royalties? Hunt charges the earth for amateur rights, and anyway he’d probably refuse them to us.”

“I was coming to that,” said Mrs. Ross. “If you should decide to do it I’d like to stand the royalties if you’d let me.”

There was another silence, broken by the rector.

“Now, that’s very generous indeed,” he said.

“No, honestly it’s not. I’ve told you I’m longing to see it done.”

“How many characters are there?” asked the squire suddenly.

“Let me see, I think there are six.” She opened the play and counted prettily on her fingers.

“Five, six — no, there seem to be seven! Stupid of me.”

“Ha!” said Miss Campanula.

“But I’m sure you could find a seventh. What about the Moorton people?”

“What about you?” asked Dr. Templett.

“No, no!” said Mrs. Ross quickly. “I don’t come into the picture. Don’t be silly.”

“It’s a damn’ good play,” said Henry. “I saw the London show too, Dinah. D’you think we could do it?”

“I don’t see why not. The situations would carry it through. The three character parts are really the stars.”

“Which are they?” demanded the squire.

“The General and the Duchess and her sister,” said Mrs. Ross.

“They don’t come on till the second act,” continued Dinah, “but from then on they carry the show.”

“May I have a look at it?” asked the squire.

Mrs. Ross opened the book and passed it across to him.

“Do read the opening of the act,” she said, “and then go on to page forty-eight.”

“May I speak?” demanded Miss Campanula loudly.

“Please!” said the rector hurriedly. “Please do. Ah — order!”

ii

Miss Campanula gripped the edge of the table with her large hands and spoke at some length. She said that she didn’t know how everybody else was feeling but that she herself was somewhat bewildered. She was surprised to learn that such eminent authorities as Dinah and Henry and Mrs. Ross considered poor Pen Cuckoo capable of producing a modern play that met with their approval. She thought that perhaps this clever play might be a little too clever for poor Pen Cuckoo and the Young People’s Friendly Circle. She asked the meeting if it did not think it would make a great mistake if it was over-ambitious. “I must confess,” she said, with an angry laugh, “that I had a much simpler plan in mind. I did not propose to fly as high as West End successes and I don’t mind saying I think we would be in a fair way to making fools of ourselves. And that’s that.”

“But, Miss Campanula,” objected Dinah, “it’s such a mistake to think that because the cast is not very experienced it will be better in a bad play than in a good one.”

“I’m sorry you think
Simple Susan
a bad play, Dinah,” said Miss Prentice sweetly.

“Well, I think it’s very dated and I’m afraid I think it’s rather silly,” said Dinah doggedly.

Miss Prentice gave a silvery laugh in which Miss Campanula joined.

“I agree with Dinah,” said Henry quickly.

“Suppose we all read both plays,” suggested the rector.

“I have read
Shop Windows
,” said Dr. Templett. “I must say I don’t see how we could do better.”

“We seem to be at a disadvantage, Eleanor,” said Miss Campanula unpleasantly, and Miss Prentice laughed again. So, astonishingly, did the squire. He broke out in a loud choking snort. They all turned to look at him. Tears coursed each other down his cheeks and he dabbed at them absent-mindedly with the back of his hand. His shoulders quivered, his brows were raised in an ecstasy of merriment, and his cheeks were purple. He was lost in the second act of Mrs. Ross’s play.

“Oh! Lord!” he said, “this is funny.”

“Jocelyn!” cried Miss Prentice.

“Eh?” said the squire, and he turned a page, read half-a-dozen lines, laid the book on the table and gave himself up to paroxysms of unbridled laughter.

“Jocelyn!” repeated Miss Prentice. “Really!”

“What?” gasped the squire. “Eh? All right, I’m quite willing. Damn’ good! When do we begin?”

“Hi!” said Henry. “Steady, Father! The meeting hasn’t decided on the play.”

“Well, we’d better decide on this,” said the squire, and he leant towards Selia Ross. “When he starts telling her he’s got the garter,” he said, “and she thinks he’s talking about the other affair! And then when she says she won’t take no for an answer. Oh, Lord!”

“It’s heavenly, isn’t it?” agreed Mrs. Ross, and she and Henry and Dinah suddenly burst out laughing at the recollection of this scene, and for a minute or two they all reminded each other of the exquisite facetiae in the second act of
Shop Windows
. The rector listened with a nervous smile; Miss Prentice and Miss Campanula with tightly-set lips. At last the squire looked round the table with brimming eyes and asked what they were all waiting for.

“I’ll move we do
Shop Windows
,” he said. “That in order?”

“I’ll second it,” said Dr. Templett.

“No doubt I am in error,” said Miss Campanula, “but I was under the impression that my poor suggestion was before the meeting, seconded by Miss Prentice.”

The rector was obliged to put this motion to the meeting.

“It is moved by Miss Campanula,” he said unhappily, “and seconded by Miss Prentice, that
Simple Susan
be the play chosen for production. Those in favour — ”

“Aye,” said Miss Campanula and Miss Prentice.

“And the contrary?”

“No,” said the rest of the meeting with perfect good humour.

“Thank you,” said Miss Campanula. “
Thank you
. Now we know where we are.”

“You wait till you start learning your parts in this thing,” said Jocelyn cheerfully, “and you won’t know whether you’re on your heads or your heels. There’s an awful lot of us three, isn’t there?” he continued, turning the pages. “I suppose Eleanor will do the Duchess and Miss Campanula will be the other one — Mrs. Thing or whoever she is! Gertrude! That the idea?”

“That was my idea,” said Mrs. Ross.

“If I may be allowed to speak,” said Miss Campanula, “I should like to say that it is just within the bounds of possibility that it may not be ours.”

“Perhaps, Jernigham,” said the rector, “you had better put your motion.”

But of course the squire’s motion was carried. Miss Campanula and Miss Prentice did not open their lips. Their thoughts were alike in confusion and intensity. Both seethed under the insult done to
Simple Susan
, each longed to rise and, with a few well-chosen words, withdraw from the meeting. Each was checked by a sensible reluctance to cut off her nose to spite her face. It was obvious that
Shop Windows
would be performed whether they stayed in or flounced out. Unless all the others were barefaced liars, it seemed that there were two outstandingly good parts ready for them to snap up. They hung off and on, ruffled their plumage, and secretly examined each other’s face.

iii

Meanwhile with the enthusiasm that all Jernighams brought to a new project Jocelyn and his son began to cast the play. Almost a century ago there had been what Eleanor, when cornered, called an “incident” in the family history. The Mrs. Jernigham of that time was a plain silly woman and barren into the bargain. Her Jocelyn, the fourth of that name, had lived openly with a very beautiful and accomplished actress and had succeeded in getting the world to pretend that his son by her was his lawful scion, and had jockeyed his wife into bringing the boy up as her own. By this piece of effrontery he brought to Pen Cuckoo a dram of mummery, and ever since those days most of the Jernighams had had a passion for theatricals. It was as if the lovely actress had touched up the family portraits with a stick of rouge. Jocelyn and Henry had both played in the O.U.D.S. They both had the trick of moving about a stage as if they grew out of the boards, and they both instinctively bridged that colossal gap between the stage and the front row of the stalls. Jocelyn thought himself a better actor than he was, but Henry did not realise how good he might be. Even Miss Prentice, a Jernigham, as the squire had pointed out, on her mother’s side, had not escaped that dram of player’s blood. Although she knew nothing about theatre, mistrusted and disliked the very notion of the stage as a career for gentle people, and had no sort of judgment for the merit of a play, yet in amateur theatricals she was surprisingly composed and perfectly audible, and she loved acting. She knew now that Idris Campanula expected her to refuse to take part in
Shop Windows
, and more than half her inclination was so to refuse. “What,” she thought. “To have my own play put aside for something chosen by that woman! To have to look on while they parcel out the parts!” But even as she pondered on the words with which she would offer her resignation, she pictured Lady Appleby of Moorton Grange accepting the part that Jocelyn said was so good. And what was more, the rector would think Eleanor herself uncharitable. That decided her. She waited for a pause in the chatter round Jocelyn, and then she turned to the rector.

“May I say just one little word?” she asked.

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mr. Copeland. “Please, everybody. Order!”

“It’s only this,” said Miss Prentice, avoiding the eye of Miss Campanula. “I do hope nobody will think I am going to be disappointed or hurt about my little play. I expect it
is
rather out-of-date, and I am only too pleased to think that you have found one that is more suitable. If there is anything that I can do to help, I shall be only too glad. Of course.”

She received, and revelled in, the rector’s beaming smile, and met Idris Campanula’s glare with a smile of her own. Then she saw Selia Ross watching her out of the corners of her eyes and suddenly she knew that Selia Ross understood her.

“That’s perfectly splendid,” exclaimed Mr. Copeland. “I think it is no more than we expected of Miss Prentice’s generosity, but we are none the less grateful.” And he added confusedly, “A very graceful gesture.”

Miss Prentice preened and Miss Campanula glowered. The others, vaguely aware that something was expected of them, made small appreciative noises.

“Now, how about casting the play?” said Dr. Templett.

iv

There was no doubt that the play had been well chosen. With the exception of one character, it practically cast itself. The squire was to play the General; Miss Prentice, the Duchess; Miss Campanula, of whom everybody felt extremely frightened, was cast for Mrs. Arbuthnot, a good character part. Miss Campanula, when offered this part, replied ambiguously:

“Who knows?” she asked darkly. “Obviously, it is not for me to say.”

“But you will do it, Idris?” murmured Miss Prentice.

“I have but one comment,” rejoined Miss Campanula. “Wait and see.” She laughed shortly, and the rector, in a hurry, wrote her name down opposite the part. Dinah and Henry were given the two young lovers, and Dr. Templett said he would undertake the French Ambassador. He began to read some of the lines in violently broken English. There remained the part of Hélène, a mysterious lady who had lost her memory, and who turned up in the middle of the first act at a country house-party.

“Obviously, Selia,” said Dr. Templett, “you must be Hélène.”