Джорджетт Хейер - Envious Casca

"If you really want my opinion, Joe, I think they look equally lousy."

"Naughty girl! Such language!" Joseph said. "You young people don't appreciate Christmas as my generation did. Doesn't it mean anything to you?"

"It will, by the time we're through," replied Mathilda, once more ascending the steps.

Paula Herriard did not arrive at the Manor until after seven, when everyone else was changing for dinner. Her appearance on the scene was advertised, even to those in remote bedrooms, by the unusual amount of commotion heard downstairs. Paula's entrances always commanded attention. It was not that she deliberately staged them: merely, her personality was rather overpowering, her movements as impetuous as her vivid little face. In fact, Mathilda said with gentle malice, she seemed to have been born with the hallmarks of a great emotional actress.

She was several years younger than her brother Stephen, and resembled him scarcely at all. She was pretty, in the style made popular by Burne Jones, with thick, springy hair, a short, full upper lip, and dark eyes set widely under discontented brows. There was an air of urgency about her; you could see it in her restless movements, in the sudden glow in her changeable eyes, and in the hungry line of her mouth. She had a beautiful voice, like a stringed instrument. It was mellow, and flexible, which made her the ideal choice for a Shakespearean role. It cast into shocking relief the light, metallic tones of her contemporaries, with their clipped vowels, and the oddly common inflexions they so carefully cultivated. She knew how to throw it, too: no doubt about that, thought Mathilda, hearing it float upstairs from the hall.

She heard her own name. "In the Blue Room? Oh! I'll go up!"

Mathilda sat back on her dressing-stool to await Paula's entrance. In a minute or two there was a perfunctory knock on the door, and before she could call Come in! Paula had entered, bringing with her that uncomfortable feeling of impatience, of scarcely curbed energy.

"Mathilda! Darling!"

"Ware my make-up!" Mathilda exclaimed, dodging the embrace.

Paula chuckled, deep in her throat. "Idiot! I'm so glad to see you! Who's here? Stephen? Valerie? Oh, that girl! My dear, if you knew the feeling I have here about her!" She struck her chest as she spoke; her eyes quite blazed for a moment, but then she blinked her thick lashes, and laughed, and said: "Oh, never mind that! Brothers -! I've brought Willoughby."

"Who is Willoughby?" demanded Mathilda.

There was again that disconcerting flash. "One day no one will ask that question!"

"Pending that day," said Mathilda, intent on her own eyebrows, "who is Willoughby?"

"Willoughby Roydon. He has written a play…'

It was strange how much that throbbing voice and those fluttering hands could express. Mathilda said: "Oh?

Unknown, dramatist?"

"So far! But this play - ! Producers are such fools! We must have backing. Is Uncle Nat in a good mood? Has Stephen upset him? Tell me everything, Mathilda, quick!"

Mathilda laid down the eyebrow-pencil. "You haven't brought your playwright here in the hope of winning Nat's heart, Paula? My poor girl!"

"He must do it for me!" Paula said, impatiently pushing back the hair from her brow. "It's art, Mathilda! Oh! When you have read it - !"

"Art plus a part for Paula?" murmured Mathilda.

The shaft glanced off Paula's armour. "Yes. A part. Such a part! It was written for me. He says I inspired it."

"Sunday performance, and an audience composed of intellectuals. I know!"

"Uncle has got to listen to me! I must play it. I must, Mathilda, do you hear me?"

"Yes, my sweet, you must play it. Meanwhile, dinner will be ready in twenty minutes' time."

"Oh, it doesn't take me ten minutes to change! Paula said impatiently.

Mathilda reflected that this was true. Paula never bothered about her clothes. She was neither dowdy nor smart; she flung raiment on, and somehow one never knew what she was wearing: it didn't count, it was nothing but a covering for Paula's thin body: you were aware only of Paula herself. "I hate you, Paula; my God, how I hate you!" Mathilda said, knowing that people remembered her by the exquisite creations she wore. "Go away! I'm less fortunate."

Paula's gaze focused upon her. "Darling, your clothes are perfect."

"I don't know. Such an absurd fuss! As though the house weren't big enough - ! Sturry said he'd see to it."

"Well, as long as your playwright doesn't wear soft shirts and a plume of hair - !"

"What do these things matter?"

"They'll matter fast enough to your Uncle Nat," prophesied Mathilda.

They did. Nathaniel, introduced without warning to Willoughby Roydon, glared at him, and at Paula, and could not even bring himself to utter conventional words of welcome. It was left to Joseph to fill the breach, and he did so, aware of Nat's fury, and covering it up with his own overflowing goodwill.

The situation was saved by Sturry, announcing dinner. They went into the dining-room. Willoughby Roydon sat between Mathilda and Maud. He despised Maud, but Mathilda he liked. He talked to her about the tendency of modern drama, and she bore it very meekly, realising that it was her duty to draw his fire.

He was a sallow young man, with rather indeterminate features, and an over-emphatic manner. Listening, a little inattentively, to his conversation, Mathilda pictured him against a middle-class background of indifference. She felt sure that his parents were worthy people, perhaps afraid of their clever son, perhaps scornful of a talent they could not understand. He was unsure of himself, aggressive from very lack of poise. Mathilda felt sorry for him, and schooled her features to an expression of interest in what he was saying.

Paula, seated beside Nathaniel, was talking to him about Roydon's play, forgetting to eat her dinner in her earnestness, annoying him by gesticulating with her thin, nervous hands, insisting on his attending to her, even though he didn't want to, wasn't interested. Valerie, on his right, was bored, and taking no pains to hide it. She had pretended at first to be deeply interested, saying: "My dear, how marvellous! Do tell me about your part! I shall adore coming to see you in it!" But Paula didn't want to capture Valerie's interest; she brushed her aside with that careless contempt which made her look suddenly like Stephen. So Valerie sighed, patted her sleek curls into position, and despised Paula for wearing a dress which didn't suit her, and for combing her hair so casually off her face.

It was being a bad evening for Valerie. She had wanted to come to Lexham (in fact, she had insisted on Stephen's bringing her) because she knew that Nathaniel did not like her. She hadn't doubted her ability to captivate him, but even the Chanel model she was wearing had failed to bring that admiring look into his eyes which she was accustomed to see in men's eyes. Joseph had twinkled appreciation, but that was no use (though pleasant) because Joseph had no money to leave.

The arrival of an unexpected male guest had been exciting, but he seemed to be absorbed in conversation with Mathilda. Valerie wondered what men saw in Mathilda, and glanced resentfully across at her. It happened that Roydon looked up at that moment, and their eyes met. He seemed to see her for the first time, and to be shaken. He stopped in the middle of what he was saying, flushed, and picked up the thread again in a hurry, Valerie began to feel more cheerful. Playwrights! One never knew about them; they became famous overnight, and made pots and pots of money, and were seen about everywhere with the best people.

Joseph, whom Nathaniel suspected of having connived from the start at Willoughby's arrival, said that he could smell the sawdust again, a figure of speech which apparently left Roydon with the impression that he had been a circus-artist. Joseph speedily disillusioned him. "I remember once in Durban, when I was playing Hamlet…' said Joseph.