Chapter Four
Joseph managed to tell Mathilda during the course of tea that he had (as he expressed it) tipped the wink to Valerie. She thought his impulse kind but misguided, but he triumphantly called her attention to the better relationship already existing between Stephen and Nathaniel. Whether this arose from the exertion of Valerie's influence, or whether, faced by the prospect of having a play read aloud to them by its author, they had been drawn momentarily together by a bond of mutual misfortune, was a point Mathilda felt to be as yet undecided, but it was evident that Stephen was making an effort to please his uncle.
The thought of the approaching reading lay heavy on Mathilda's brain. At no time fond of being read to, she thought the present hour and milieu so ill-chosen that nothing short of a miracle could save this party from disruption. Glancing at Roydon, who was nervously crumbling a cake, she felt a stir of pity for him. He was so much in earnest, torn between his belief in himself and his natural dread of reading his play to what he could not but recognise as an unsympathetic audience. She moved across the room to a chair beside him, and said, undercover of an interchange of noisy badinage between Valerie and Joseph: "I wish you'd tell me something about your play."
"I don't suppose you'll any of you like it," he said, with a sulkiness born of his nervousness.
"Some of us may not," she replied coolly. "Have you had anything put on yet?"
"No. At least, I had a Sunday-night show once. Not this play. Linda Bury was interested in it, but it didn't come to anything. Of course, it was very immature in parts. I see that now. The trouble is that I haven't any backing." He pushed an unruly lock of hair off his brow, and added defiantly: "I work in a bank!"
"Not a bad way of marking time," she said, refusing to see in this belligerent confession anything either extraordinary or pathetic.
"If I could only get a start, I'd - I'd never set foot inside the place again!"
"You probably wouldn't have to. Has your play got popular appeal?"
"It's a serious play. I don't care about popular appeal, as you call it. I - I know I've got it in me to write plays - good plays! - but I'd sooner stick to banking all my life than - than -"