with him. ‘Mrs. Alleyn, may I have the pleasure of taking you in?’ he said.
‘It’s a pity,’ Troy thought as she took the arm he curved for her, ‘that there isn’t an orchestra.’ And as if she had recaptured the lines from some drawing-room comedy of her childhood, she made processional conversation as they moved towards the door. Before they reached it, however, there was a sound of running footsteps in the hall. Cedric, flushed with exertion and wearing a white flower in his dinner-jacket, darted into the room.
‘Dearest Grandpapa,’ he cried, waving his hands, ‘I creep, I grovel. So sorry, truly. Couldn’t be more contrite. Find me some sackcloth and ashes somebody, quickly.’
‘Good evening, Cedric,’ said Sir Henry icily. ‘You must make your apologies to Mrs. Alleyn, who will perhaps be very kind and forgive you.’
Troy smiled like a duchess at Cedric and inwardly grinned like a Cheshire cat at herself.
‘Too heavenly of you,’ said Cedric quickly. He slipped in behind them. The procession had splayed out a little on his entrance. He came face to face with Miss Orrincourt. Troy heard him give a curious, half-articulate exclamation. It sounded involuntary and unaffected. This was so unusual from Cedric that Troy turned to look at him. His small mouth was open. His pale eyes stared blankly at the diamond star on Miss Orrincourt’s bosom, and then turned incredulously from one member of his family to another.
‘But’ – he stammered – ‘but, I say – I say.’
‘Cedric,’ whispered his mother.
‘Cedric,’ said his grandfather imperatively.
But Cedric, still speaking in that strangely natural voice, pointed a white finger at the diamond star and said loudly: ‘But, my God, it’s Great-Great-Grandmama Ancred’s sunburst!’
‘Nice, isn’t it?’ said Miss Orrincourt equally loudly. ‘I’m ever so thrilled.’
‘In these unhappy times, alas,’ said Sir Henry blandly, arming Troy through the door, ‘one may not make those gestures with which one would wish to 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
