My Little Sister Part 36

The Tartar said "Nonsense!"--quite as though the matter were for him to decide. The servant filled Bettina's tall, vaselike gla.s.s. Bettina looked alarmed. Already she had displeased this dreadful Tartar once.

"Ought I?" she telegraphed across to me. I shook my head.

"There is one woman in London"--The Tartar made a motion towards the head of the table--"one woman who's got a decent cellar." The Tartar was almost genial. He raised his gla.s.s to my aunt. "I approve of the new coiffure, too. Rippin'!"

The Colonel was not to be diverted from the subject of the wine. "Take an old man's advice," he said to me. "It's a chancy sort of world. Make sure of a little certain bliss." He lifted his own gla.s.s and drained it.

The Tartar said something to Bettina which I could not hear. She looked up at him with a kind of wonder in her eyes, and with that "fiery rose"

quite suddenly overspreading her face again. She put out her hand to the tall gla.s.s, hesitated, and then looked at the head of the table. Perhaps Bettina saw what all of a sudden was clear to me. Aunt Josephine was like a huge grey hawk. The head craning out; the narrow forehead, all grey crest; the face falling away from the beak. How she had changed from the days when she had a double chin! The tilt of the outstretched head was exactly like a bird's. Watching sideways--watching ... for what?

The eye made me shrink. It made Bettina set her lips, obedient, to the gla.s.s. She looked apologetic over the rim at me.

Mine stood untouched.

"I see you have a will of your own," the voice on my right said in my ear.

The London way seemed to be that ladies did not leave the table while men smoked. The talk was about wines, but it flagged. The Tartar kept looking at Bettina. The fitful colour in her cheeks had paled again. The scent of flowers, and that other all-pervading perfume, mixed with the tobacco, was making Bettina faint.

My man noticed it. "You aren't accustomed to smoke," he said to Bettina, and he twisted his cigar round on his fruit-plate till he crushed out the burning. But the others took no notice.

I was sure Bettina was trying hard to throw off her oppression. I thought of our mother; and the thought of her sent sharp aching through me. Bettina and I looked at each other. I knew by her lip she had great trouble not to cry.

"Do you think," I whispered to my man, "you could ask to have a window opened?"

He said we would be going into the drawing-room soon. "Drink that black coffee," he recommended.

He seemed not unkind, so I tried to think why he would not do so small a thing for us as ask to have a window opened. "Are the downstairs windows barred with iron, too?"

He looked sharply at me.

"I believe so," he said.

I thought it must be because of all the silver and valuables in the house. But he glanced at me again, as if he thought I was still wondering and might ask someone else. Then he said he had heard "it used to be a private madhouse."

"_This house?_"

He nodded.

"You needn't say I told you."

That, then, was what I had been feeling. The poor mad people who used to be shut up here--they had left this uncanny influence behind. A strangeness and a strain.

The Colonel was speaking irritably to one of the footmen. Something had gone wrong with an electric-light bulb over the sideboard.

"Send for Waterson to-morrow to attend to that!"

No one but me seemed at all surprised to hear the Colonel giving orders in my aunt's house.

As I sat there in the midst of all the contending scents, with the soft clash of silver, gla.s.s, and voices in my ears, a train of ideas raced through my brain as crazy as any that could have been harboured here in the days when....

The letters that had come out of this house Eric had called "demented."

All the windows were still barred.

What if it were a private madhouse still! Before my eyes the watchful big footmen turned into keepers to the Grey Hawk and to the lady upstairs. The doctor--he was for those too dangerous to trust downstairs. That was why they had laughed at my inquiry--such callousness had familiarity bred. The Colonel might be the proprietor of the house. My aunt was well off. No doubt they humoured her. With a keeper dressed like a footman, they allowed her certain liberties--to write crazy letters in her harmless intervals ... friends to dine ...

nieces to divert her. They would do almost anything to keep that red look out of her eyes.

"There is one thing I don't understand," I began to say to the man at my side.

But he was nervous too, and jumped down my throat: "Don't ask me questions! I never pa.s.sed an examination in my life," he pulled out his watch. "And I've got an engagement to keep in exactly three minutes'

time."

No wonder I stared. One man comes when dinner is half done, and one wants to go before the hostess had risen. For my part I wanted him _not_ to go ... I told him so.

"Why?" he turned suddenly and faced me.

I said it was perhaps because I felt I knew him best. "Anyway," I persisted, "don't go!" He hesitated. "_Please_ don't go," I said. I was relieved when he said, very well, he would "see it out." For I knew, had he gone, my aunt would think I had driven him away.

There was a rustle, and I saw Aunt Josephine rising. My man left me instantly. He went and opened the door. As we filed out he turned towards my aunt. I heard him whisper, "_Je vous fais mes compliments, madame_." He looked at Betty.

Aunt Josephine nodded. "But...." her face changed.

What was wrong? For whom was that "but"? I turned quickly and caught the yellow eyes leaving my back. I was "but." But why? What had I done? The Colonel talked to Betty and The Tartar, as he led the way back to the drawing-room. The other man still was behind with my aunt. He seemed to be rea.s.suring her. His curious low voice kept going off the register. At a break I heard the words: "Doucement" enunciated with an emphasis that carried.

I kept thinking how all the softly-draped windows had iron bars behind the silk.

In the drawing-room, my aunt was saying to The Tartar, "Oh, yes, Bettina sings and dances."

"She sings," I said.

"Don't you skirt-dance?" The Tartar asked.

Bettina looked sorry. "I can dance ordinary dances," she said. "But what sort is a skirt-dance?"

The men made a semicircle round her to explain.

Betty said she hadn't done any skirt-dances since she was a little girl.

"Oh, and what are you now?" the Colonel said, grinning horribly.

They made Bettina tell about the action-songs our mother had taught us in the nursery. They asked her to do one.

Of course Bettina refused. "They're only for children," she said with that little air borrowed from our mother.

The Tartar threw back his bullet head and roared. The Colonel said they were sick, in London, of sophisticated dancing. What they wanted was Bettina's sort. Bettina shook her head.

The Grey Hawk said it was too soon after dinner. But they went across the room towards the piano.