Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"I did. I knew those steps of yours would be the death of someone."

Joseph picked them up. "Well, my dear, I don't want to tell tales out of school, but Nat's a naughty old man. He deliberately knocked them over! All that fuss!"

"I could wish that you hadn't left them there." Mathilda said. "Lumbago, I feel, will be our only topic of conversation this evening."

He smiled, but shook his head. "No, no, that isn't quite fair! He has got lumbago, you know, and it is very painful. We must put our heads together, you and I, Tilda."

"Not me," said Mathilda vulgarly.

"My dear, I'm relying on you. Nat likes you, and we must smooth him down! Now, I'll just put these steps out of harm's way, and then we'll think what can be done."

"I," said Mathilda firmly, "am going upstairs to change."

While Joseph bore the step-ladder away to safety in the billiard-room, Mathilda went back into the library to pick up her handbag. She had reached the top of the stairs before he overtook her, but he did overtake her, and, tucking a hand in her arm, said that he did not know what they would any of them do without her.

"No soft soap, thanks, Joe," replied Mathilda. "I'm not going to be the sacrifice."

"Sacrifice indeed! What an idea!" He lowered his voice, for they had reached the door of Nathaniel's room. "My dear, help me to save my poor party!"

"No one can save your party. You might do a bit towards it by removing all paper festoons and mistletoe from his outraged sight."

"Sh!" Joseph said, with an absurdly nervous glance towards Nathaniel's shut door. "You know Nat! That was only just his way. He doesn't really mind my decorations. I'm afraid the trouble is more difficult to deal with than that. To tell you the truth, Tilda, I wish Paula hadn't brought that young man here."

"We all wish that," said Mathilda, coming to a halt outside her own bedroom. "But don't you worry, Joe! He may have added to Nat's annoyance, but he isn't the cause of it."

He sighed. "I did so hope that Nat would have taken to Valerie!"

"You're an incurable optimist."

"I know, I know, but one had to try to ease things for poor old Stephen! I must confess I am a little bit disappointed in Valerie. I've tried to make her realise just how things are, but - well, she doesn't co-operate, does she?"

"That, Joe, is meiosis," said Mathilda dryly.

"And now there's this bother with Mottisfont," he went on, a worried frown creasing his brow.

"What's he been up to?"

"Oh, my dear, don't ask me! You know what an impractical old fool I am about business! He seems to have done something that Nat very much disapproves of, but I don't know all the ins and outs of it. I only know what Mottisfont told me, which was really nothing but hints, and very mysterious. But there! Nat's bark is always worse than his bite, and I daresay it will all blow over. What we've got to do is to think of some way of keeping Nat in a good humour. I don't think this is quite the moment for me to approach him about Mottisfont's affairs."

Joe," said Mathilda earnestly, "you can count me out in your benevolent schemes, but I'll give you a piece of advice! Don't approach Nat about anyone's affairs!"

"They all look to me, you see," he said, with one of his whimsical smiles.

She supposed that he really did see himself as a general mediator, but she was feeling tired, and this resumption of his peacemaking role exasperated her. "I haven't noticed it!" she said.

He looked hurt, but nothing could seriously impair his vision of himself. A couple of minutes later, Mathilda, turning on the taps in the bathroom they both shared, could hear him humming to himself in his dressingroom. He hummed the first few phrases of an old ballad inaccurately and incessantly, and Mathilda, who had an ear for music, thumped on the door leading from the bathroom to his dressing-room, and begged him either to learn the ditty or to gag himself. Then she was sorry, because, finding that by raising his voice a trifle he could easily converse with her, he became very chatty, and favoured her with some sentimental reminiscences of his careless youth. Occasionally he would interrupt himself to ask her if she was listening, but he did not seem to need the stimulus of intelligent comment, and, indeed, went on talking happily for quite some time after she had left the bathroom. However, he was not at all offended by the discovery that for quite ten minutes his conversation had reached her only as an indistinguishable burble of sound, but laughed good-humouredly, and said, Alas, he found himself living very much in the past nowadays, and feared he must be turning into a dreadful old bore. After that he returned to his Victorian ballad, alternately humming and singing it until Mathilda began to nourish thoughts of homicide.

She called out to him: "Are you sure you never appeared in Grand Opera, Joe? What a Siegfried you'd have made! Figure and all!"

"Naughty, naughty!" he replied, with an archness which made her understand Stephen's brutality to him. "Tilda dear, are you dressed yet?"

"Nearly. Why?"

"Don't go down without me! I've got an idea!"

"You're not laying your head together with mine, Joe: don't think it!"

He only laughed at this, but he must have kept an ear cocked, for when she opened her door a few minutes later, he instantly emerged from his room, rubbing his hands together, and saying gleefully: "Ah, you can't fox your old uncle, you bad girl!"

"Let me point out to you, Joe, that you're not my uncle, and that even my best friends don't call me a girl."

He linked arms with her. "Wasn't it the Immortal Bard who wrote, To me, dearfriend,you never can be old?"

Mathilda closed her eyes for an anguished moment. "If we are going to quote at one another, I warn you, you'll come off the worst!" she said. "I know a song which runs, Your parents missed a golden opportunity: They should of course have drowned you in a bucket as a child."

He squeezed her arm, chuckling. "Oh, that tongue of yours, Tilda! Never mind! I don't care a bit! not a little bit! Now, just you listen to the plan I've made! You're going to play Piquet with Nat after dinner."

"Not on your life."

"Yes, yes, you are! I had thought of Bridge again, but that would mean Mottisfont, and he doesn't seem to be a very strong player, and you know how seriously Nat takes his game! And then I suddenly remembered those grand battles you and he had the last time you stayed here, and how much he enjoyed them. I suggest that after dinner you should challenge Nat to a rubber, while I keep the others amused in the billiard-room. Charades or Clumps, or one of those other good, old-fashioned round games."

"If the choice lies between Piquet and a good, old fashioned round game, you've sold your idea, Joe. I'll co-operate."

He beamed with gratitude, and might, she felt, have patted her on the back had they not by this time reached the drawing-room.

Neither Stephen nor Mottisfont had as yet come downstairs, but the other three guests had assembled, and were standing about, drinking cocktails, while Maud, who said that she never touched spirits, was hunting ineffectively for the Life of the Empress, which she remembered having laid down somewhere, though she wasn't sure where. She rather unwisely asked Paula if she had seen it, and Paula, who was wrapped in gloomy reflection, came to earth with a start, and a gesture of insupportable irritation.

"I?" she said. "What, in God's name, should I want with your book?"

"I only wondered, dear," said Maud mildly. "I remember having it here after lunch. Or did I take it up with me when I went for my rest?"

Paula threw her an exasperated glance, and began to pace about the room, once more wrapped in her dark thoughts.