It was not a question which seemed to need an answer, but in a low voice, as though to herself, Chloe answered it.

  ‘Once,’ said Chloe.

  4

  When the curtain went up for the tenth and last time, Wilson Kelly was taken completely by surprise. In fact, he had his back to the audience, and his violin was under his chin, some of the company having said (one supposes): ‘Do give us that lovely thing again, Mr Kelly, I was in my dressing-room and couldn’t hear it properly.’ So, the play over, the audience, presumably, on its way out, Mr Kelly picks up his violin from the top of the piano and says, ‘Oh, do you mean this?’—whereupon that damned fool Simmons rings up the curtain again. Luckily the company had made its request from the wings, so that Mr Kelly, the better able from his long experience to deal with these situations, was alone on the stage. He turned to the audience with a charming air of embarrassment; and since, to them as to all other audiences, the unexpected appearance of the theatre cat and a premature rising of the curtain were always the peak points of any play, they greeted him with affectionate laughter and a renewed outburst of applause. Once more there were loud cries of ‘Speech!’

  Wilson Kelly looked comically from his violin in one hand to the bow in the other, evidently wondering how they had come there and how he could get rid of them; and then decided, with a little shrug of resignation, to accept the informality of his position and do the best he could.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he began. ‘Or shall I say friends? No! Remembering my own associations, the associations of my forebears, with this beautiful and historic town, I shall take it upon myself to say—Fellow Citizens!’

  In the wings young Mr Higgs said to Claudia, ‘It’s wonderful. Wonderful, wonderful and after that out of all whooping. Do you realize that this is going to happen in every town we go to? I shall never desert you, Mrs Micawber. I shall follow you around everywhere. For both your sakes.’

  ‘Those were your flowers, weren’t they?’ whispered Claudia. ‘Signed “Bunny”?’

  ‘I wondered if you’d guess. You see, if I’d signed them “Mr Higgs”, which is my real name, or even Carol, I couldn’t have left out Ruby very well, or in fact any of the cast. Of course, if we get as far as London, I shall do the thing handsomely. Up here I thought that my two leading ladies would be enough—the stage one and the real one.’

  ‘Carol, you are sweet.’

  She was more happy than she had ever been. Carol’s flowers, that wonderful mass of telegrams, from young men and girls she had almost forgotten—(who was Charmian? Someone at the Academy, she supposed, but surely she would have remembered the name?)—the sudden surprising applause given to her song, the relief of getting through without faltering, the knowledge that she had looked her prettiest, the surety of provincial success anyhow, Carol now at her side—how could she not be happy?

  And how marvellous of Chloe to remember, and send her a telegram too! But perhaps Wilson Kelly had reminded her.

  ‘To one who has just returned from the outposts of Empire in the Far East,’ said Wilson Kelly, ‘it is with a real sense of home-coming——’

  Young Mr Higgs listened, rapt.

  Chapter Eleven

  1

  ‘You’d better call her Aunt Essie straight off,’ said Percy. ‘It’s no good waiting for her to ask you, because she won’t.

  ‘I see,’ said Maisie. ‘And I suppose I’d better call him Uncle Alfred, hadn’t I?’

  Percy swerved suddenly as one of those damned Bolshies who infest Romford cut across him.

  ‘Sorry, old girl, did that frighten you?’

  Maisie got her heart back in the right place and stammered, ‘Not with you, darling. I should have been terribly frightened with anybody else.’

  ‘Good girl,’ said Percy, and squeezed her leg lovingly.

  Once again Percy Walsh was going through the traditional ceremony of presenting the little woman to his people; but this time little was something more than a term of endearment. Maisie Good was blonde and tiny, with a corkscrew-curled head a thought too big for her body; and in that head were two large adoring eyes for Percy, and on the third finger of Miss Maisie Good’s left hand was Percy’s idea of an engagement-ring, a gold half-hoop of alternate pearls and diamonds which Miss Good also adored, but rather for what it represented than for what it was. For it seemed wonderful to her that her great big Percy should love such a silly little girl as she was . . . and it was wonderful to know, on the authority of her brother in the City, that this great big man was pushing over something in the neighbourhood of £4,000 a year, every year.

  They had been fellow-guests in Wales, and had been attracted to each other at once. A wet day, the first of many, found them, and left them, in the billiard-room together. She questioned him the story of his life, and, like Othello, he ran it through even from his boyish days to the very moment that she bade him tell it. He told her, if not of anthropophagi and men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders (for he had never come across any of these), yet of George Chater and the feller who made potato-crisps. He also spoke of most disastrous chances at Newmarket; of moving accidents by flood and field, when it was all Regent Street to a raspberry ice that his putt would have gone down if the dam feller hadn’t shifted just as he was playing; of hair-breadth ’scapes in the imminent deadly breach, and of being (at last) taken by the insolent foe and fined forty shillings. She thanked him and bade him, if he had a friend that loved her, but teach him how to tell his story, and that would win her. Upon this hint (if that is not too strong a word for it) he spake. All was well. She loved him for the Six Hearts he had passed, and he loved her that she’d have doubled them.

  ‘Well, that’s how it was. They’d run it up to six hearts, and there was I sitting pretty, right on top of the hearts with the King, Knave and three tiddlers, not to mention an ace of clubs. Well, Miss Good, what would you have done?’

  ‘Doubled,’ said Maisie, hoping that this was the answer.

  Percy beamed at her.

  ‘Just what old George would have done. He said, “Why the devil didn’t you double, old man?” So I said to Bill Endacott—there’s a good story about Bill and one of those tin-openers, things you open tins with, remind me to tell you that some time—I said to Bill, “What would you have done, Bill, if I’d doubled?” He said, “Switched to spades”; and there you are, we’d have been absolutely spun. Game, rubber and a fiver down apiece. As it was, we ran out next hand and came out a couple of quid up. All because I passed.’

  Maisie nodded.

  ‘I always say,’ said Maisie, ‘that it’s just that sort of thing which makes the really good player—you know what I mean, the first-class player—so different from the ordinary player like me. Wasn’t George—Mr Chater—awfully pleased?’

  ‘Well, of course, I will say this for George, he never minds owning up when he’s wrong. I remember once, we were at Deauville, I think it was Deauville, may have been Le Touquet, but that isn’t the point, anyway we were sitting out on the terrace having a rouser——’

  This only was the witchcraft Percy used.

  2

  It was, thought Miss Walsh, a little awkward that he should have chosen the week-end of Harvest Festival for Miss Good’s visit. No, perhaps it was not fair to say that he had chosen it. Percy didn’t choose awkwardnesses, they had a way of choosing him. It was natural that, as soon as he was engaged to Miss Good, he should wish to bring her to Bridglands; and it was inevitable that the week-end so fixed should be the one when Chloe was coming down. But would it not be a little embarrassing?

  Mr Alfred Winghampton thought not.

  ‘One of the charms of Percy, if that is the word I mean,’ said the Vicar, ‘is that the major portion of any embarrassment to be discerned in his neighbourhood is exhibited by his neighbours rather than by himself. I don’t think our Percy will appreciate the need for embarrassment.’

  ‘I was not thinking of Percy,’ said Miss Walsh.

  ‘Nor can I imagine Chloe either showing or causing embarrassment. What a word! Even to say it makes me feel embarrassed, and I keep on saying it.’

  ‘I was not thinking of Chloe.’

  ‘You feel that Miss Good—— Need she know that her lover was once so foolish as to suppose that Chloe loved him?’

  ‘Alfred, you are very stupid.’

  ‘I am deeply conscious of it, my dear. It has been my constant endeavour—occasionally, I trust, rewarded—to hide it from my parishioners. Fortunately I have never been so stupid as to suppose I could hide it from you.’

  ‘Stupid, but very dear.’

  ‘I am as impervious to flattery as to insult,’ said the Vicar grandly. ‘Nothing shakes me from my indomitable purpose of knowing what is in your trivial, feminine mind. Out with it, Essie.’

  ‘I have given Miss Good the Blue Room. Naturally. It is her first visit, and she is to be Percy’s wife. Chloe will understand. But——’

  ‘I also understand. My intelligence has been underrated. Will Miss Good, metaphorically speaking, find herself in the Blue Room all the time? With Chloe here, can Miss Good maintain herself as the centre of attraction which is her rightful place on this occasion? The answer is——’ He pulled at his chin, and ended rather weakly, ‘Well, it depends on—on a lot of things.’

  ‘It depends chiefly on you, young Alfred,’ said Miss Walsh, sternly.

  ‘I shall have eyes for nobody but Miss Good,’ said the Vicar of Much Hadingham.

  Dear Alfred, thought Miss Walsh, with a very little smile for herself. How far he was from knowing, and now would never know, that it was neither Chloe nor Maisie who was to have been the star-turn of this week-end, but Esmeralda. The Esmeralda whom he had never really seen; whom, seeing now, he still would not see. Well, it was a joke which she would have to share with Chloe; a joke against them both really. I hope, she thought, Chloe gets here before they do, and then we can talk it over. Looks to me as though Esmeralda had better go back into her boxes. And stay there.

  But Chloe wouldn’t hear of any such nonsense.

  She was the Bolshie who had cut across Percy at Romford, giving him a derisive hoot as she went past. When the first car drove up to the Manor House, and brought Essie and Alfred to the door, it was Chloe who delighted them by slipping out of it. She put her arms round Essie, disengaged herself, and held up a cheek to Alfred, saying, ‘Come on, nobody’s looking.’ He kissed her in what he hoped was a fatherly way.

  ‘They’ll be another half-hour,’ she said. ‘Just time for you to tell me all about Miss Goody-Good. Are you excited? I am.’ She gave Esmeralda her intimate smile, and added: ‘For lots of reasons.’

  Oh, it made you young to see her again, thought Essie. She had the magic of the first spring day; an alive beauty which put no questions and gave no answers; which was nothing but what it was—beauty. I think it’s her voice as much as anything, her quick, lovely voice, her quickness.

  When the dressing-cases were taken in and the car put away, Chloe said, ‘I’ll tidy up later if I may. I want to hear all about it from both of you before they come.’

  ‘Then Chloe shall give us her opinion of the cocktail now, Alfred.’ They went into the comfortable little square hall which Miss Walsh called her morning-room. ‘I thought we wouldn’t light the fire until this evening. It has kept so warm.’

  ‘What they call an Indian summer,’ said Alfred, ‘though why, I do not know.’ He filled a glass from the tray and presented it to Chloe. ‘There you are.’

  ‘Mrs Gosling got it from a book. She says it’s a Blue Car. Is there such a thing?’ ‘There is now,’ smiled Chloe.

  ‘I thought that Miss Good—Maisie—would perhaps prefer a cocktail to sherry. These very young girls——’

  ‘My dear, Percy has not even mentioned her age.’

  Essie’s eyes met Chloe’s in a smiling exchange of certainties—and of gentle pity for Alfred. Of course she was very young.

  ‘You must both drink too,’ said Chloe. ‘We stand or fall together.’

  ‘The expert first.’

  Chloe gave the comprehensive toast of Mrs Gosling, the Happy Pair, Essie and Alfred, Absent Friends, and Confusion to the King’s Enemies. Then she drank, and closed her eyes in ecstasy.

  ‘Heaven. Maisie will be under the table before she’s got her gloves off.’

  ‘It isn’t too strong, dear?’

  ‘Perfect, darling. Now tell me all about Maisie.’

  The way she kept saying Maisie! and yet how else could she say it? Maisie! Was she a little—not jealous exactly, but offended that Percy could have shaken himself free so easily? Miss Walsh wondered, and hoped that she was not going to be naughty.

  ‘You saw it in The Times, of course?’

  Chloe nodded. ‘But he wrote as well.’

  ‘Oh!’

  They said it together, Essie and Alfred. You could see them both trying to put that letter into words—Percy’s words to the girl he had brought down to them three months before.

  Chloe laughed at their outspoken faces.

  ‘A nice letter. He didn’t know what he was trying to say, but he did try to say it.’

  ‘Apologetic?’ suggested the Vicar.

  ‘Very.’

  ‘What had he got to apologize for?’ demanded Miss Walsh, not quite sure whether she was defending Percy or Chloe.

  ‘Nothing,’ said Chloe. ‘That is what made it so difficult for him.’

  ‘Well, we must all give Miss Good a warm welcome, and show Percy that we approve his choice.’

  ‘I’m sure we shall. What did he tell you about her?’

  Wheels on the gravel. All on their feet. Miss Walsh, the assured hostess, advancing to the door, Chloe and the Vicar a little behind, Chloe catching his eye and giving him a mock-solemn look, and the Vicar shaking his head at her and trying not to smile; Chloe one of the family, one of the hostesses.

  ‘Hallo-ullo-ullo,’ called Percy. ‘Tumble out, old girl, and introduce yourself.’ He forced himself out on the other side, and went round the bonnet. ‘Good God!’

  ‘Hallo, Percy,’ smiled Chloe.

  He stared at her.

  ‘Well, I’m damned.’

  Aunt Essie was shaking hands with Maisie, and saying, ‘We are so glad to see you, dear. Did you have a nice drive? This is Mr Winghampton, Percy’s guardian when he was a small boy. And Miss Marr.’

  Maisie said ‘How do you do’ three times; and Percy kissed his aunt, said, ‘Hallo, Wing, old man’ to the Vicar, ‘Fancy seeing you, old girl,’ to Chloe, and in a general way ‘Well, what about a drink?’ They went inside.

  ‘You’ll have a cocktail, dear, or would you like to go upstairs first?’

  ‘If you’re wise, you’ll have it now, old girl. While it’s there.’

  ‘It’s got some ridiculous name, but Miss Marr says it’s as it should be. Alfred!’

  ‘On its way, my dear. There, Miss Good.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ said Maisie. ‘Thank you. I’m sure it’s lovely. But you will call me Maisie, won’t you?’

  ‘If I may,’ bowed the Vicar. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘You recommend it, old girl?’ said Percy to Chloe, and Maisie, unaware that there were two old girls, sipped and said, ‘Oh, yes! It’s lovely. Do try it, darling.’

  ‘Never known Aunt Essie to go in for rousers before,’ said Percy. He swallowed and gave an approving nod to Chloe. ‘Your work, old girl?’

  It was now clear to Maisie that there was another old girl in the room. She looked up and down Chloe, and decided to ask Percy all about her as soon as they were alone. One of those big women. Funny how she used to envy them. An old friend of the family, no doubt. Funny that Percy hadn’t mentioned her.

  ‘Mrs Gosling found it in a book,’ explained Aunt Essie, ‘and Chloe was our taster’—she turned to Maisie— ‘because, you see, Mr Winghampton and I haven’t much experience of cocktails, being rather old-fashioned people, I daresay.’

  ‘Not you, Aunt Essie,’ said Percy, putting an arm round her shoulders. ‘She’s the gayest of the gay, darling. You’ll see.’ He held out his glass. ‘I’ll have another of those, Wing, old man.’

  When Maisie was quite, quite sure that she wouldn’t, she was taken up to the Blue Room, and Percy went out to put his car away. Chloe went with him, in case her own car wanted moving.

  ‘Congratulations, darling,’ she said as soon as they were alone. ‘She’s perfectly sweet.’

  ‘She’s a good kid,’ said Percy coldly. ‘When did you come down?’

  ‘Half an hour ago. I’m quite an old friend of the family now.’

  ‘Have you been down since we—since——’

  ‘No, but I’ve seen them in London once or twice.’

  ‘Yes, but dammit, old girl—I mean ask anybody. Ask a man of the world like old George—well, I mean you needn’t ask him——’

  ‘I wasn’t going to, darling.’

  ‘Well, what’s the idea, coming down like this?’

  ‘Naturally I wanted to see what your future wife was like. I think she’s perfectly sweet. Just how I’d imagined her.’

  Percy looked suspiciously at her. He wasn’t quite sure whether this was a compliment to his beloved or not. On the whole he thought not.

  ‘I don’t care a damn how you imagined her,’ he said sulkily. ‘You can’t get away from the central fact that when a feller brings an innocent young girl down to his family, a girl, mark you, that he proposes to marry, he doesn’t expect to find—well, I mean naturally he’s knocked about a bit, and he doesn’t expect to find—well, anyhow, I think he ought to be consulted first.’