The Chinese Shawl (7 page)

When all the events of that evening were raked over and sifted out, there was to be a curious changing of values. Some things that had appeared important at the time just slipped away and were lost. Some which had hardly been noticed came under a magnifying glass. A few things remained as they had seemed. It mattered to no one that Laura and Carey had kissed behind the curtains, because no one but themselves was ever to know of it. The fact that the door between Tanis’s sitting-room and the ground-floor room of the octagon tower had been carelessly closed by the maid who had been in to draw the curtains was to assume a terrible importance. The bit of gossip which Petra North brought hot-foot to Laura when she was dressing for dinner maintained its significance.

There had been some music. Tanis had sung. She had a lovely limpid voice worthy of better music than the dance tunes which she sighed or crooned to her own flashing accompaniment. It was all very clever, very finished, very modern.

Miss Fane looked across the room and said in her deep-toned voice, “That’s enough of that horrible stuff. Sing something civilized for a change.” Whereupon Tanis, smiling, struck a familiar chord and sang Who is Sylvia? with great sweetness and delicacy.

“Then to Sylvia let us sing.

For Sylvia is excelling.

She excels each mortal thing

Upon this dull earth dwelling.

To her let us garlands bring.”

As the words tripped out, Miss Fane’s eyes rested upon the singer, and not hers only. Alistair Maxwell, propping the wall, fixed her with a gaze of such intensity that it was plain enough that, for him at least, here was Sylvia with each excelling grace.

It was after this that the party dispersed. Miss Fane went to her room, and Laura thankfully to hers with the immemorial excuse of a letter to write. The dressing-gong had sounded, when there was a knock on the door immediately followed by the appearance of Petra North.

“Can I come in? Laura, guess who’s here! But you won’t— not ever—I’ll have to tell you!” Her grey eyes were round and dancing. “You know, we were talking about Jeff Hazelton, Tanis’s husband, only of course he isn’t now—well, he’s here!”

Laura looked up from the stocking she was changing, leaving it half on, half off a pretty bare foot.

“How do you mean here? They haven’t made it up, have they?”

Petra leaned on the rail of the bed.

“Of course they haven’t—they’re divorced. But I didn’t mean here in the house—I meant down in the village.”

Laura pulled up her stocking and fastened it.

“What is he doing there?”

“Staying at the Angel.”

“How do you know?”

Petra straightened up and did a couple of dance steps.

“Aha! Wouldn’t you like to know!” She gave quite a good high kick. “Did you know I once had a dancing part in a play with Tanis? Not professional of course, but I don’t dance badly. I did have leanings towards the stage, instead of which I put in umpteen hours a day sorting out the most revolting clothes for the bombed.”

Laura fastened the second stocking.

“Is that what you do?”

Petra nodded mournfully.

“Grim—isn’t it?”

“Are the clothes really revolting? What a shame!”

“Anything’s revolting when you’ve been sorting it for umpteen hours.” She took a flying jump on to the bed by Laura and caught her hand. “Don’t let’s talk about it—I’m having a holiday. Let’s talk about Jeff.”

Laura couldn’t help laughing.

“But it was you who changed the subject.”

“That was only to get you all worked up. You don’t know the rules. Now we go back to you asking me how I know about Jeff.”

“Well, how do you know?”

“Because Robin told me.”

“And how does Robin know?”

Petra let go of her hand and settled herself against the rail at the foot of the bed.

“Well, after you went upstairs Carey and Robin dragged Alistair off for a walk—and about time too, if you ask me. They said they wanted exercise, so they went the long round to the village and fetched up at the Angel. And there was Jeff, drinking himself blind—he does, you know.”

“I thought you said it was dope.”

Petra’s face sharpened.

“I told you Tanis said so. She did. I didn’t say anything. But everyone knows he drinks—there’s no light under a bushel about that. Well, there he was, all lit-up and talking big about why should he be out in the cold when there was a party up at the Priory, and he wasn’t an outcast, was he, and things like that. Robin says he wouldn’t put it past him to come along up and crash the gate. Don’t you hope he does?”

Laura looked appalled.

“Oh, no!”

Petra jumped up, laughing and mimicking her.

“Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes! Don’t be such a mimsy, Laura! Wouldn’t you like to see Tanis taken down a peg or two? Wouldn’t you like to see her up to her knees in mud? Wouldn’t you like to rub her face in it?”

“I’d simply hate it,” said Laura frankly, “and so would you. And we’re both going to be late if we don’t hurry up and dress.”

She got down in time to see Miss Fane make her entrance. The door to the octagon room stood wide. She could see a background of crimson curtain, and then out through the doorway, alone and unassisted, came Agnes Fane in her self-propelling chair. She wore a long robelike garment of black velvet with fur at the neck and wrists, and she had changed the pearls at her ears for long ruby and diamond drops which winked and caught the light. The rugs were so arranged as to leave an open lane of parquet. Just short of the hearth there was a left-hand turn. Miss Fane took it dexterously and came to rest in the place which she had occupied at tea-time. A tall, thin woman in grey stepped into the room for a moment and stepped back again, closing the door.

Laura approached a little timidly. It seemed to her that in this house for one right thing you might do or say there were a hundred wrong ones, and that any one of the hundred might do irreparable harm. It was a thoroughly unnerving thought.

But Miss Fane was pleased to be gracious.

“Tanis will show you the house tomorrow. It is better seen by daylight. I always think a room without the view from its windows is like a blind person, and to be more practical we have not completely blacked out some of the rooms which are not in use. There are only a few, now that we have evacuees in the north wing… Oh, didn’t Tanis tell you that? She’s not very pleased about their coming, but they are really no trouble at all. These things are just a matter of arrangement. There are a dozen of them—two families, really very nice people—and we have been able to fit them in very well. The servants’ quarters are in the north wing, you know, with the kitchen and offices on the ground floor and a separate staircase. I have fitted them up a kitchen of their own where they can cook on oil and not be in Mrs. Dean’s way. It works perfectly.”

Laura thought, “Anything she arranged would work perfectly.” There was so much poise, so much certainty about Agnes Fane. It was quite easy to believe that everything in her household would be ordered with unsparing efficiency.

The others came in—Tanis in a gold house-coat, her eyes very green; Lucy Adams in one of those black satin dresses which look as if they had been slept in for years; Miss Silver in brown velveteen; the three men; and, flying in as the sound of the gong was dying away, Petra in sealing-wax red with her lips and nails made up to match.

After dinner Miss Fane and Miss Adams played chess and Miss Silver knitted. The rest talked, played games and talked again, with the exception of Alistair Maxwell who sat silent and moody with his eyes on Tanis Lyle. Petra talked enough for half a dozen. Her colour rose, her eyes shone, and egged on by Robin and Carey, she gave them flashing imitations of the great lady who was the very nominal head of her Clothes for the Bombed; the anxious, nervous little secretary who did everyone’s work and got nobody’s thanks; the stout lady who explained in embarrassing detail just how she felt and what she looked like when the blast of a bomb blew her clothes “clean off of her—and me in my you-know-whats, and blimey if Jerry didn’t send another one along and strip me bare!”

She had got to the meek little man who wanted to know if they could help him with a rabbit-hutch because his was all broke-up, when the door opened and the butler was seen to be standing there. If the word could be used in connection with anyone so solid and respectable, Dean was flurried. Without coming into the room he fixed an entreating gaze on Tanis and said across the space which separated them,

“If I might speak to you for a moment, miss—”

She got up, and had almost reached the door, when there appeared beyond it a tall, shaking figure. Head slumped forward, long hair falling dishevelled across a brow glistening with sweat, Jeffrey Hazelton stared over Dean’s massive shoulders at the girl who had been his wife.

He made a forward lunge. Dean stood his ground, and in a moment Tanis had reached the door. She said,

“How do you do, Jeff?” And then, “That will do, Dean— you needn’t wait.”

The group she had left saw the butler step aside, saw her put a hand upon Hazelton’s shaking arm, and saw no more. The door closed.

The ladies in front of the fire continued their game of chess. Miss Silver knitted. The door being in line with the hearth, she was the only one of the three far enough out in the room to have seen Mr. Hazelton’s brief appearance. She knitted, but her eyes remained fixed upon the door, and she had afterwards to unravel a couple of rows.

Petra said in a breathless whisper, “That was Jeff Hazelton!” and all of a sudden there was a loud crash from the hall—the sound of a shot and the ring of breaking glass. Lucy Adams, the white queen in her hand, looked up, drew a sharp breath, and screamed at the top of her voice. Miss Silver dropped her knitting and reached the door only a shade after the three men, Laura and Petra behind.

The hall was brightly lighted. It smelled of smoke. A barely discernible hint of blue hung on the upper air. One of the ring of lighted sconces was missing. There was a glitter of shivered crystal on the parquet floor, thin slivers that looked like ice, and scattered grains like sugar. Tanis was standing in the middle of the open space, and, holding to the left-hand newel-post of the stair, Jeffrey Hazelton swayed and shook with a pistol hanging limply from his hand.

“Told you I’d do it—and I’ve—done it—haven’t I? Who says—I can’t shoot straight?” He raised the pistol and described a wavering half circle, finishing up with a straight enough aim at Tanis. “Shoot you—before I—let anyone else—have you. What’s divorce? I say you’re my wife! Anyone says you’re not—I’ll shoot him—greatest of pleasure.”

Alistair Maxwell made a thrust forward, but Carey and his brother Robin pulled him back.

Tanis said sweetly, “Don’t be a damned fool, Alistair!” She began to walk towards the stairs. “And don’t you be a fool either, Jeff! We all know you’re a crack shot without your breaking Aunt Agnes’s glass. I thought you said you wanted to talk to me. Well, I’m not talking to anyone who’s flourishing around with a gun—I don’t like them.”

She was within arm’s length of him, when he let go of the newel, reached out, and caught her by the shoulder. Leaning there, shaking, he brought the pistol up and pressed the muzzle hard against her breast. Six people watched him do it. Three of them were young, active men, and they might just as well not have been there at all. Worse. It needed only a movement, an outcry, even a caught breath, to bring catastrophe. The shaking finger halted on the trigger, but jangle those driven nerves and it would fall. Even Alistair, blind with passion, knew that.

Tanis lifted her eyes in a steady look.

“Well, Jeff? Don’t you want to talk to me?” She smiled a little and put up her hand to the one which held the pistol. Her fingers moved on it caressingly, her voice dropped and changed. She said, “Jeff darling—how silly!” and all at once he broke. His hand wavered and went limp. The pistol fell. He put his head down on her shoulder and began to sob in a lost, bewildered way.

“Tanis—Tanis—Tanis!”

And then they were on him. He made no resistance at all. There was no need for any force. A broken creature, saying Tanis’s name over and over between heartbroken sobs.

Carey bent to pick up the pistol. As he straightened himself he came face to face with Tanis standing on the bottom step, the tall newel behind her, a look of triumph on her face. Her gold dress shone. Her green eyes glinted. She had never been so nearly beautiful. The poor sobbing wretch whom Robin was shepherding back to the Angel was nothing more to her than the occasion for this triumph. She had had her big scene with him, and she had played him right off the stage. Nunc plaudite, as they used to say in the old comedies—and now for the applause.

They went back into the drawing-room, and she got it in full measure. Lucy Adams was hysterical in endearment, and Alistair suddenly full of words with which to praise and exalt her. If Agnes Fane was pale and stern, there was a high pride in her bearing as she turned to Carey with the brief comment,

“Tanis does not know what fear means.” Then, in a lowered tone, “What has been done with him? There must not be any scandal.”

“There won’t be any. Robin will see him to bed. He’s going to get old Jones to come over and give him something to put him to sleep. Then we’ll go down in the morning and pack him back to town. I take it Dean won’t talk.”

Agnes Fane said, “No,” and then, “Thank you, Carey.”

She turned to Tanis, who had taken the pistol from Carey and was balancing it on the palm of her hand as she talked.

“Tanis, put that thing down! There has been quite enough playing with firearms. I suppose it is Mr. Hazelton’s property, but he is certainly not fit to be trusted with it. It had better be locked away.”

Tanis said, “It’s mine.”

“How is it yours?”

“He had a pair. This one is mine. He gave it to me.”

Miss Fane looked down her nose.

“What a singular present! Do you mean to tell me that Mr. Hazelton has probably got the other one?”

Tanis laughed.

“I should say certainly.”