it,’ said Allegra. ‘I mean it—honour bright. But just supposing, for the sake of argument, that he shouldn’t. Fall in love, I mean. Suppose his affection was to become sincere, but platonic. What then?’
‘I may not like him at all when I know him better.’
‘Quite so. On the other hand you may like him very much indeed. And in that latter case—’
Maisie shrugged her shoulders.
‘I should hope I’ve too much pride—’
Allegra interrupted.
‘Pride comes in handy for masking one’s feelings—it doesn’t stop you from feeling them.’
‘Well,’ said Maisie, flushed. ‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t say it. I am a very good match. I mean—from his point of view, father’s daughter and everything.’
‘Partnership in the offing, et cetera,’ said Allegra. ‘Yes, Maisie. You’re father’s daughter, all right. I’m awfully pleased. I do like my friends to run true to type.’
The faint mockery of her tone made the other uneasy.
‘You are hateful, Allegra.’
‘But stimulating, darling. That’s why you have me here. I’m a student of history, you know, and it always intrigued me why the court jester was permitted and encouraged. Now that I’m one myself, I see the point. It’s rather a good rôle, you see, I had to do something. There was I, proud and penniless like the heroine of a novelette, well born and badly educated. “What to do, girl? God wot,” saith she. The poor relation type of girl, all willingness to do without a fire in her room and content to do odd jobs and “help dear Cousin So-and-So”, I observed to be at a premium. Nobody really wants her—except those people who can’t keep their servants, and they treat her like a galley slave.
‘So I became the court fool. Insolence, plain speaking, a dash of wit now and again (not too much lest I should have to live up to it), and behind it all, a very shrewd observation of human nature. People rather like being told how horrible they really are. That’s why they flock to popular preachers. It’s been a great success. I’m always overwhelmed with invitations. I can live on my friends with the greatest ease, and I’m careful to make no pretence of gratitude.’
‘There’s no one quite like you, Allegra. You don’t mind in the least what you say.’
‘That’s where you’re wrong. I mind very much—I take care and thought about the matter. My seeming outspokenness is always calculated. I’ve got to be careful. This job has got to carry me on to old age.’
‘Why not marry? I know heaps of people have asked you.’
Allegra’s face grew suddenly hard.
‘I can never marry.’
‘Because—’ Maisie left the sentence unfinished, looking at her friend. The latter gave a short nod of assent.
Footsteps were heard on the stairs. The butler threw open the door and announced:
‘Mr Segrave.’
John came in without any particular enthusiasm. He couldn’t imagine why the old boy had asked him. If he could have got out of it he would have done so. The house depressed him, with its solid magnificence and the soft pile of its carpet.
A girl came forward and shook hands with him. He remembered vaguely having seen her one day in her father’s office.
‘How do you do, Mr Segrave? Mr Segrave—Miss Kerr.’
Then he woke. Who was she? Where did she come from? From the flame-coloured draperies that floated round her, to the tiny Mercury wings on her small Greek head, she was a being transitory and fugitive, standing out against the dull background with an effect of unreality.
Rudolf Wetterman came in, his broad expanse of gleaming shirt-front creaking as he walked. They went down informally to dinner.
Allegra Kerr talked to her host. John Segrave had to devote himself to Maisie. But his whole mind was on the girl on the other side of him. She was marvellously effective. Her effectiveness was, he thought, more studied than natural. But behind all that, there lay something else. Flickering fire, fitful, capricious, like the will-o’-the-wisps that of old lured men into the marshes.
At last he got a chance to speak to her. Maisie was giving her father a message from some friend she had met that day. Now that the moment had come, he was tongue-tied. His glance pleaded with her dumbly.
‘Dinner-table topics,’ she said lightly. ‘Shall we start with the theatres, or with one of those innumerable openings beginning, “Do you like—?”’
John laughed.
‘And if we find we both like dogs and dislike sandy cats, it will form what is called a “bond” between us?’
‘Assuredly,’ said Allegra gravely.
‘It is, I think, a pity to begin with a catechism.’
‘Yet it puts conversation within the reach of all.’
‘True, but with disastrous results.’
‘It is useful to know the rules—if only to break them.’
John smiled at her.
‘I take it, then, that you and I will indulge our personal vagaries. Even though we display thereby the genius that is akin to madness.’
With a sharp unguarded movement, the girl’s hand swept a wineglass off the table. There was the tinkle of broken glass. Maisie and her father stopped speaking.
‘I’m so sorry, Mr Wetterman. I’m throwing glasses on the floor.’
‘My dear Allegra, it doesn’t matter at all, not at all.’
Beneath his breath John Segrave said quickly:
‘Broken glass. That’s bad luck. I wish—it hadn’t happened.’
‘Don’t worry. How does it go? “Ill luck thou canst not bring where ill luck has its home.”’
She turned once more to Wetterman. John, resuming conversation with Maisie, tried to place the quotation. He got it at last. They were the words used by Sieglinde in the Walküre when Sigmund offers to leave the house.
He thought: ‘Did she mean—?’
But Maisie was asking his opinion of the latest Revue. Soon he had admitted that he was fond of music.
‘After dinner,’ said Maisie, ‘we’ll make Allegra play for us.’
They all went up to the drawing-room together. Secretly, Wetterman considered it a barbarous custom. He liked the ponderous gravity of the wine passing round, the handed cigars. But perhaps it was as well tonight. He didn’t know what on earth he could find to say to young Segrave. Maisie was too bad with her whims. It wasn’t as though the fellow were good looking—really good looking—and
