4
After luncheon most of them played Snooker, to the accompaniment of the gramophone, Anna and Jasper taking turns in changing the records.
Eben had hurt his hand, so he sat and talked to Teresa on the sofa.
It was a fact that had always both puzzled and annoyed her that he evidently enjoyed talking to her.
“Have you read Compton Mackenzie’s last?” he asked.
Why would every one persist in talking to her about books? And why did he not say, “the last Compton Mackenzie?” She decided that his diction had been influenced by frequenting his mother’s Women’s Institute and hearing continually of “little Ernest, Mrs. Brown’s second,” or “Mrs. Kett’s last.”
“No, I’m afraid I haven’t.”
“I’ll lend it to you—I’m not sure if it’s as good as the others, though ... it’s funny, but I’m very fastidious about novels; the only thing I really care about is style—I’m a regular sensualist about fine English.”
“Are you? Perhaps you will like this, then—‘I remember Father Benson saying with his fascinating little stutter: He has such a g-g-gorgeously multitudinous mind’?”
Eben stared at her, quite at a loss as to what she was talking about.
“It sounds ... it sounds topping. What is it from?”
“I don’t quite remember.”
But it wasn’t fair, she decided. Because she happened to date from the feeling of flatness and disgust aroused in her by this sentence, read in a magazine years ago, the awakening in her of the power of distinguishing between literature and journalism, it did not follow that it was exceptionally frightful or that other people ought to react to it in the same way that she had. And yet, “gorgeous palaces,” “multitudinous, seas incarnadine”—the words themselves were beautiful enough in all conscience. Anyhow, it was not Eben’s fault; though “a regular sensualist for fine English....” Good God!
“Do you want Hee—hee—Heeweeine Melodies, or Way Down in Georgia, or Abide With Me? Arnold! Do you want Hee-wee-ween Melodies, or Way Down in Georgia, or Abide With Me? Do say!” yelled Anna from the gramophone.
“People are inclined to think that sailors don’t go in for reading, and that sort of thing, but as a matter of fact ... our Commander, for instance, has a topping library, and all really good books—history mostly.”
Rows upon rows of those volumes, the paper of which is so good, the margins so wide, but out of which, if opened, one of the illustrations is certain to fall—Lady Hamilton, or Ninon de l’Enclos, or Madame Récamier; now Teresa knew who read these books.
“Silly Billy! Silly Billy! Silly Billy!” yelled Anna and Jasper in chorus as Rory missed a straight pot on the blue; it was their way of expressing genuine friendliness to their playmate of the morning.
On and on went Eben’s voice; scratch, grate, scratch, grate, went the gramophone.
The light began to grow colder and thinner.
“Snookered for a pint!”
“Be a sportsman now....”
“I say!... he’s done it!”
“I say, you’re a devil of a fellow, Munroe!”
The game ended and they put up their cues.
“Now then, you two, what are you up to? Anna, you’re a hard-hearted little thing; why aren’t you crying that I didn’t win?”
At which sally of Rory’s the children doubled up with delighted laughter.
They all seemed to be feeling the tedium of the period between luncheon and tea, and lolled listlessly in chairs, or sat on the edge of the billiard-table, swinging their legs.
“Anna, darling, put on one of the Hawaiian melodies—it’s among those there, I’m sure,” said Concha.
After several false starts, and some scratchings of the needle (it was Jasper’s turn to put on the record), the hot-scented tune began to pervade the room.
“That’s the sort of tune that on hot nights must have been played to Oberon by his little Indian catamite,” said Guy, sitting down on the sofa beside Teresa.
She smiled a little absently; the Hawaiian melody was like a frame, binding the room and its inmates into a picture. Concha, her eyes fixed and dreamy; Rory, intent on a puzzle—shaking little rolling pellets into holes or something; Arnold sitting on the edge of the billiard-table while Anna lit his pipe for him; Jasper motionless, for once, his eyes fixed intently on the needle of the gramophone; David standing by the door gazing gravely at Concha, looking not unlike a Spanish Knight who carries in his own veins more than a drop of the Moorish blood that it is his holy mission to spill; Eben standing by the fireplace, a broad grin on his face, his hands on his hips, swaying slightly, in time with the music ... what was it he was like? Teresa suddenly remembered that it was the principal boy in a little local pantomime they had all gone to one Christmas—she evidently could not sing, because during the choruses she would stand silent, grinning and swaying as Eben was doing now.
The view was painted on the windows—a pietà as nobly coloured as that of Avignon; for, in spite of flowers and fruits and sunshine, on the knees of the earth the year lay dying.
Teresa was thinking, “The present frozen into the past—that is art. At this moment things are looking as if they were the past. That is why I am feeling as if I were having an adventure—because the present and the past have become one.”
Squeak! Burr! Gurr! went the gramophone.
“Stop it, Jasper! Stop it!”
“Beastly noise! It reminds me of the dentist.”
The record was removed.
“Très entraînant—as the deaf bourgeoise said after having listened to the Dead March in Saul,” said Guy; he had suddenly invented this Sam Wellerism in the middle of the tune, and had hardly been able to wait till the end to come out with it.
Then Anna put on a fox-trot, and Rory and Concha, Arnold and Guy, in the narrow space between the billiard-table and gramophone, hopped and wriggled and jumped—one could not call it dancing.
“Now then, Munroe,” cried Rory, when it was over, “You’re such hot stuff at billiards—let’s see what you can do on the light fantastic.”
“Yes, do, Mr. Munroe,” and Concha stood swaying before him, flushed and provocative.
“I’m afraid ... I don’t ... well, if you’ve got a tango here ... I used to try my hand at it in Africa.”
“Let’s see ... put on the Tango de Rêve, Anna. Got it?”
David hesitated a moment; then, as if coming to a sudden resolution, he clasped her, and stood waiting for the bar to end; then they began to dance, and their souls seemed to leave their bodies, leaving them empty to the tune, which gradually informed them till they and it were one; a few short steps, then a breathless halt, a few more steps, another halt ... then letting themselves go a little, then another halt; their faces tense and mask-like ... truly a strange dance, the Tango, speaking the broken, taciturn, language of passion:
Thanked be fortune: it hath been otherwise:
Twenty times better; but once especial
In thin array: after a pleasant guise,
When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,
And she me caught in her arms long and small....
Grrr ... went the gramophone—the spell was snapt.
“Bravo!” cried the audience, clapping; while ’Snice began to bark, and the children to jump up and down and squeal.
“You dance divinely!” cried Concha, flushed and laughing.
David blushed, frowned, muttered something inaudible, and left the room.
They exchanged looks of surprise.
“Hot stuff!” said Rory; and they settled down to desultory, frivolous, Anglo-Saxon chatter—not unlike fox-trots, thought Teresa.
She shut her eyes, half mesmerised by the din of all the voices talking together.
The talk, like a flight of birds, squeezed itself out into a long thin line, compressed itself into a compact phalanx, was now diagonal, now round, now square, now all three at once, according to the relative position of the talkers.
“Don’t you love Owen Nares? I love his English so—I love the way he says, ‘I’m so jolly glad to meet you.’” “I knew Middlesex would be first—it was only poetic justice to Plum Warner.” “I don’t care a damn what the Nation or what the New Statesman says—I happen to know....” “Of course, with Jimmy Wilde it’s all grit and science—he ought to do him in every time.” “Is it true that Leslie Henson wears spectacles off the stage?” “How much do you think I gave for it? Thirty bob. A jeweller I showed it to in town said it was the very finest Baltic amber—you see, I got it out there.” “I know! My cousin, Guy’s brother, when he was going out to Tin-Sin thought it would be nice to brighten up China, so he took out an assortment of the merriest socks you ever saw in your life, and when he was killed my aunt handed them over to me, and I had ’em dyed black....” “Very nayce, too!” “What are you saying about socks? I wish to God some one would mend mine!” “Well, I got a bit of amber in an old shop in Norwich....” “He’s a priceless little man ... he came out and amused us at the front.”
“Tea time!” said Arnold, looking at his watch and yawning.
“Tea time!” the others echoed; and they all got up.
“But look here, Miss Concha,” said Rory, “if you love Owen Nares so much, why not come up and see him? It’s quite a good show ... you’ll look at him and I’ll look at the lady—though you’ll probably have the best of it. What do you think, Arnold? We could dine first at the Berkeley or somewhere ... well, look here, that’s settled; we must fix up a night.”
Teresa felt a sudden and, to her, most unusual craving for the life that smells of lip-salve and powder, where in bright, noisy restaurants “every shepherd tells his tale ...” where “the beautiful Miss Brabazons” laugh and dance and triumph eternally.