Final Curtain. Ngaio Marsh
honour a distinguished visitor! “A poor small banquet,” as old Capulet had it. Shall we go in?’
IV
The poor small banquet was, if nothing else, a tribute to the zeal of Sir Henry’s admirers in the Dominions and the United States of America. Troy had not seen its like for years. He himself, she noticed, ate a mess of something that had been put through a sieve. Conversation was general, innocuous, and sounded a little as if it had been carefully memorised beforehand. It was difficult not to look at Miss Orrincourt’s diamonds. They were a sort of visual faux pas which no amount of blameless small-talk could shout down. Troy observed that the Ancreds themselves constantly darted furtive glances at them. Sir Henry continued bland, urbane, and, to Troy, excessively gracious. She found his compliments, which were adroit, rather hard to counter. He spoke of her work and asked if she had done a self-portrait. ‘Only in my student days when I couldn’t afford a model,’ said Troy. ‘But that’s very naughty of you,’ he said. ‘It is now that you should give us the perfect painting of the perfect subject.’
‘Crikey!’ thought Troy.
They drank Rudesheimer. When Barker hovered beside him, Sir Henry, announcing that it was a special occasion, said he would take half a glass. Millamant and Pauline looked anxiously at him.
‘Papa, darling,’ said Pauline. ‘Do you think –?’ And Millamant murmured: ‘Yes, Papa. Do you think –?’
‘Do I think what?’ he replied, glaring at them.
‘Wine,’ they murmured disjointedly. ‘Dr. Withers … not really advisable … however.’
‘Fill it up, Barker,’ Sir Henry commanded loudly, ‘fill it up.’
Troy heard Pauline and Millamant sigh windily.
Dinner proceeded with circumspection but uneasily. Paul and Fenella were silent. Cedric, on Troy’s right hand, conversed in feverish spasms with anybody who would listen to him. Sir Henry’s flow of compliments continued unabated through three courses, and to Troy’s dismay, Miss Orrincourt began to show signs of marked hostility. She was on Sir Henry’s left, with Paul on her other side. She began an extremely grand conversation with Paul, and though he responded with every sign of discomfort she lowered her voice, cast significant glances at him, and laughed immoderately at his monosyllabic replies. Troy, who was beginning to find her host very heavy weather indeed, seized an opportunity to speak to Cedric.
‘Noddy,’ said Miss Orrincourt at once, ‘what are we going to do tomorrow?’
‘Do?’ he repeated, and after a moment’s hesitation became playful. ‘What does a little girl want to do?’
Miss Orrincourt stretched her arms above her head. ‘She wants things to happen!’ she cried ecstatically. ‘Lovely things.’
‘Well, if she’s very, very good perhaps we’ll let her have a tiny peep at a great big picture.’
Troy heard this with dismay.
‘What else?’ Miss Orrincourt persisted babyishly but with an extremely unenthusiastic glance at Troy.
‘We’ll see,’ said Sir Henry uneasily.
‘But Noddy –’
‘Mrs. Alleyn,’ said Millamant from the foot of the table, ‘shall we –?’
And she marshalled her ladies out of the dining-room.
The rest of the evening passed uneventfully. Sir Henry led Troy through the pages of three albums of theatrical photographs. This she rather enjoyed. It was strange, she thought, to see how the fashion in Elizabethan garments changed in the world of theatre. Here was a young Victorian Henry Ancred very much be-pointed, be-ruffed, encased and furbished, in a perfect welter of velvet, ribbon and leather; here a modern elderly Henry Ancred in a stylised and simplified costume that had apparently been made of painted scenic canvas. Yet both were the Duke of Buckingham.
Miss Orrincourt joined a little fretfully in this pastime. Perched on the arm of Sir Henry’s chair and disseminating an aura of black market scent, she giggled tactlessly over the earlier photographs and yawned over the later ones. ‘My dear,’ she ejaculated, ‘look at you! You’ve got everything on but the kitchen sink!’ This was in reference to a picture of Sir Henry as Richard II. Cedric tittered and immediately looked frightened. Pauline said: ‘I must say, Papa, I don’t think anyone else has ever approached your flair for exactly the right costume.’
‘My dear,’ her father rejoined, ‘it’s the way you wear ’em.’ He patted Miss Orrincourt’s hand. ‘You do very well, my child,’ he said, ‘in your easy modern dresses. How would you manage if, like Ellen Terry, you had two feet of heavy velvet in front of you on the stage and were asked to move like a queen down a flight of stairs? You’d fall on your nice little nose.’
He was obviously a vain man. It was extraordinary, Troy thought, that he remained unmoved by Miss Orrincourt’s lack of reverence, and remembering Thomas’s remark about David and Abishag the Shunammite, Troy was forced to the disagreeable conclusion that Sir Henry was in his dotage about Miss Orrincourt.
At ten o’clock a grog-tray was brought in. Sir Henry drank barley water, suffered the women of his family to kiss him goodnight, nodded to Paul and Cedric, and, to her intense embarrassment, kissed Troy’s hand. ‘A demain,’ he said in his deepest voice. ‘We meet at eleven. I am fortunate.’
He made a magnificent exit, and ten minutes later, Miss Orrincourt, yawning extensively, also retired.
Her disappearance was the signal for an outbreak among the Ancreds.
‘Honestly, Milly! Honestly, Aunt Pauline. Can we believe our eyes!’ cried Cedric. ‘The Sunburst! I mean actually!’
‘Well, Millamant,’ said Pauline, ‘I now see for myself how things stand at Ancreton.’
‘You wouldn’t believe me when I told you, Pauline,’ Millamant rejoined. ‘You’ve been here a month, but you wouldn’t –’
‘Has he given it to her, will somebody tell me?’ Cedric demanded.
‘He can’t,’ said Pauline. ‘He can’t. And what’s more, I don’t believe he would. Unless –’ She stopped short and turned to Paul. ‘If he’s given it to her,’ she said, ‘he’s going to marry her. That’s all.’
Poor Troy, who had been making completely ineffectual efforts to go, seized upon the silence that followed Pauline’s announcement to murmur: ‘If I may, I think I shall –’
‘Dear Mrs. Alleyn,’ said Cedric, ‘I implore you not to be tactful. Do stay and listen.’
‘I don’t see,’ Paul began, ‘why poor Mrs. Alleyn should be inflicted –’
‘She knows,’ said Fenella. ‘I’m afraid I’ve already told her, Paul.’
Pauline suddenly made a gracious dive at Troy. ‘Isn’t it disturbing?’ she said with an air of drawing Troy into her confidence. ‘You see how things are? Really, it’s too naughty of Papa. We’re all so dreadfully worried. It’s not what’s happening so much as what might happen that terrifies one. And now the Sunburst. A little too much. In its way it’s a historic jewel.’
‘It was a little cadeau d’estime from the Regent to Great-Great-Grandmama Honoria Ancred,’ Cedric cut in. ‘Not only historical, but history repeating itself. And may I point out, Aunt Pauline, that I personally am rocked to the foundations. I’ve always understood that the Sunburst was to come to me.’
‘To your daughter,’ said Paul. ‘The point is academic.’
‘I’m sure I don’t know why you think so,’ said Cedric, bridling. ‘Anything might happen.’
Paul raised his eyebrows.
‘Really, Pauline,’