Crooked House, стр. 29

Fifteen

"Your room's ready," said Sophia.

She stood by my side looking out at the garden. It looked bleak and grey now with the half denuded trees swaying in the wind.

Sophia echoed my thought as she said:

"How desolate it looks…"

As we watched, a figure, and then presently another came through the yew hedge from the rock garden. They both looked grey and unsubstantial in the fading light.

Brenda Leonides was the first. She was wrapped in a grey chinchilla coat and there was something catlike and stealthy in the way she moved. She slipped through the twilight with a kind of eerie grace.

I saw her face as she passed the window.

There was a half smile on it, the curving crooked smile I had noticed upstairs. A few minutes later Laurence Brown, looking slender and shrunken, also slipped through the twilight. I can only put it that way. They did not seem like two people walking, two people who had been out for a stroll. There was something furtive and unsubstantial about them like two ghosts.

I wondered if it was under Brenda's or Laurence's foot that a twig had snapped.

By a natural association of ideas, I asked:

"Where's Josephine?"

"Probably with Eustace up in the schoolroom." She frowned. "I'm worried about Eustace, Charles."

"Why?"

"He's so moody and odd. He's been so different ever since that wretched paralysis.

I can't make out what's going on in his mind. Sometimes he seems to hate us all."

"He'll probably grow out of all that. It's just a phase."

"Yes, I suppose so. But I do get worried, Charles."

"Why, dear heart?"

"Really, I suppose, because mother and father never worry. They're not like a mother and father."

"That may be all for the best. More children suffer from interference than from noninterference.'' "That's true. You know, I never thought about it until I came back from abroad, but they really are a queer couple. Father living determinedly in a world of obscure historical bypaths and mother having a lovely time creating scenes. That tomfoolery this evening was all mother. There was no need for it. She just wanted to play a family conclave scene. She gets bored, you know, down here and has to try and work up a drama."

For the moment I had a fantastic vision of Sophia's mother poisoning her elderly father-in-law in a light-hearted manner in order to observe a murder drama at first hand with herself in the leading role.

An amusing thought! I dismissed it as such - but it left me a little uneasy.

"Mother," said Sophia, "has to be looked after the whole time. You never know what she's up to!"

"Forget your family, Sophia," I said firmly.

"I shall be only too delighted to, but it's a little difficult at the present moment. But I was happy out in Cairo when I had forgotten them all."

I remembered how Sophia had never nientioned her home or her people.

"Is that why you never talked about them?" I asked. "Because you wanted to forget them?" did not seem like two people walking, two people who had been out for a stroll. There was something furtive and unsubstantial about them like two ghosts.

I wondered if it was under Brenda's or Laurence's foot that a twig had snapped.

By a natural association of ideas, I asked:

"Where's Josephine?"

"Probably with Eustace up in the schoolroom." She frowned. "I'm worried about Eustace, Charles."

"Why?"

"He's so moody and odd. He's been so different ever since that wretched paralysis.

I can't make out what's going on in his mind. Sometimes he seems to hate us all."

"He'll probably grow out of all that. It's just a phase."

"Yes, I suppose so. But I do get worried, Charles."

"Why, dear heart?"

"Really, I suppose, because mother and father never worry. They're not like a mother and father."

An amusing thought! I dismissed it as such - but it left me a little uneasy.

"Mother," said Sophia, "has to be looked after the whole time. You never know what she's up to!"

"Forget your family, Sophia," I said firmly.

"I shall be only too delighted to, but it's a little difficult at the present moment. But I was happy out in Cairo when I had forgotten them all."

I remembered how Sophia had never mentioned her home or her people.

"Is that why you never talked about them?" I asked. "Because you wanted to | forget them?"

"I think so. We've always, all of us, lived too much in each other's pockets. We're -. we're all too fond of each other. We're not like some families where they all hate each other like poison. That must be pretty bad, but it's almost worse to live all tangled up in conflicting affections."

She added:

" I think that's what I meant when I said we all lived together in a little crooked house. I didn't mean that it was crooked in the dishonest sense. I think what I meant was that we hadn't been able to grow up independent, standing by ourselves, upright.

We're all a bit twisted and twining."

I saw Edith de Haviland's heel grinding a weed into the path as Sophia added:

"Like bindweed…"

And then suddenly Magda was with us - flinging open the door - crying out:

"Darlings, why don't you have the lights on? It's almost dark."

And she pressed the switches and the lights sprang up on the walls and on the tables, and she and Sophia and I pulled the heavy rose curtains, and there we were in the flower-scented interior, and Magda, flinging herself on the sofa, cried:

"What an incredible scene it was, wasn't it? How cross Eustace was! He told me he thought it was all positively indecent. How funny boys are!"

She sighed.

"Roger's rather a pet. I love him when he rumples his hair and starts knocking things over. Wasn't it sweet of Edith to offer her legacy to him? She really meant it, you know, it wasn't just a gesture. But it was terribly stupid - it might have made Philip think he ought to do it, too! Of course Edith would do anything for the family! There's something very pathetic in the love of a spinster for her sister's children.

Someday I shall play one of those devoted spinster aunts. Inquisitive, and obstinate and devoted."

"It must have been hard for her after her sister died," I said, refusing to be sidetracked into discussion of another of Magda's roles. "I mean if she disliked old Leonides so much."

Magda interrupted me.

"Disliked him? Who told you that?

Nonsense. She was in love with him."

"Mother!" said Sophia.

"Now don't try and contradict me,

Sophia. Naturally at your age, you think I love is all two good looking young people in the moonlight."

"She told me," I said, "that she had always disliked him."

"Probably she did when she first came.

She'd been angry with her sister for marrying him. I daresay there was always some antagonism - but she was in love with him all right! Darlings, I do know what I'm talking about! Of course, with deceased wife's sister and all that, he couldn't have married her, and I daresay he never thought of it - and quite probably she didn't either.

She was quite happy mothering the children, and having fights with him. But she didn't like it when he.married Brenda. She didn't like it a bit!"

"No more did you and father," said

Sophia.

"No, of course we hated it! Naturally!

But Edith hated it most. Darling, the way I've seen her look at Brenda!"

"Now, mother," said Sophia.

Magda threw her an affectionate and half guilty glance, the glance of a mischievous spoilt child.

She went on, with no apparent realization of any lack of continuity:

"I've decided Josephine really must go to school."

"Josephine? To school."

"Yes. To Switzerland. I'm going to see about it tomorrow. I really think we might get her off at once. It's so bad for her to be mixed up in a horrid business like this.

She's getting quite morbid about it. What she needs is other children of her own age.

School life. I've always thought so."

"Grandfather didn't want her to go to school," said Sophia slowly. "He was very much against it."

"Darling old Sweetie Pie liked us all here under his eye. Very old people are often selfish in that way. A child ought to be amongst other children. And Switzerland is so healthy - all the winter sports, and theair, and such much, much better food than we get here!"

"It will be difficult to arrange for

Switzerland now with all the currency regulations, won't it?" I asked.

"Nonsense, Charles. There's some kind of educational racket - or you exchange with a Swiss child - there are all sorts of ways. Rudolf Alstir's in Lausanne. I shall wire him tomorrow to arrange everything.

We can get her off by the end of the week!"

Magda punched a cushion, smiled at us, | Went to the door, stood a moment looking back at us in a quite enchanting fashion.

"It's only the young who count," she said. As she said it, it was a lovely line. "They must always come first. And, darlings - think of the flowers - the blue gentians, the narcissus…"

"In November?" asked Sophia, but

Magda had gone.

Sophia heaved an exasperated sigh.

"Really," she said, "Mother is too trying! She gets these sudden ideas, and she sends thousands of telegrams and everything has to be arranged at a moment's notice. Why should Josephine be hustled off to Switzerland all in a flurry?"