Ngaio Marsh - Color Scheme

The song was very short and simple, a minor thread of melody that wavered about through a few plain phrases, but the hymn-like over-sweetness of some of the other songs was absent in this one. Dikon wondered how much its icy undercurrent of horror depended upon a knowledge of its theme. In the penultimate line a single girl’s voice rang out in a piercing scream, the cry of the maiden as she went to her death in the seething mud cauldron. It left an uncomfortable and abiding impression, which was not dispelled by the subsequent activities of the Savage Club quartette, the ventriloquist, the infant prodigy, or the determined soprano.

Gaunt had said that he would appear last on the programme. With what Dikon considered ridiculous solicitude, he had told Barbara to choose for him and she had at once asked for the Crispian Day speech: “The one we had this morning.”

“Then he was spouting the Bard by the sad sea waves,” thought Dikon vindictively. “Good God, it’s nauseating.”

Gaunt said afterwards that he changed his mind about the opening speech because he realized that his audience would demand an encore, and he thought it better to finish up with the Henry V . But Dikon always believed that he had been influenced in his choice by the echo of the little song about death. For after opening rather obviously with the Bastard’s speech on England, he turned sombrely to Macbeth.

“ I have almost forgot the taste of fears …”

and continued to the end

“… it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing.”

It is a terrible speech and Gaunt’s treatment of it, a deadly calm monotone, struck very cold indeed. When he had ended there was a second’s silence, “and then,” Dikon said afterwards to Barbara, “they clapped because they wanted to get some warmth back into their hands.” Gaunt watched them with a faint smile, collected himself, and then gave them Henry V with everything he’d got, bringing the Maori members of his audience to their feet, cheering. In the end he had to do the speech before Agincourt as well.

He came down glowing. He was, to use a phrase that has been done to death by actors, a great artist, but an audience meant only one thing to him: it was a single entity that must fall in love with him, and, as a corollary, with Shakespeare. Nobody knew better than Gaunt that to rouse an audience whose acquaintance with the plays was probably confined to the first line of Antony’s oration was very nice work indeed. Rua, pacing to and fro in the traditional manner, thanked him first in Maori and then in English. The concert drew to an uproarious conclusion. “And now,” said Rua, “the King.”

But before the audience could get to its feet Mr. Questing was on his and had walked up on the platform.

It is unnecessary to give Mr. Questing’s speech in detail. Indeed, it is almost enough to say that it was a tour de force of bad taste, and that its author, though by no means drunk, was, as Colly afterwards put it, ticking-over very sweetly. He called Gaunt up to the platform and forced him to stand first on one foot and then on the other for a quarter of an hour. Mr. Questing was, he said, returning thanks for a real intellectual treat but it very soon transpired that he was also using Gaunt as a kind of bait for possible visitors to the Springs. What was good enough for the famous GeofTrey Gaunt, he intimated, was good enough for anybody. Upon this one clear harp he played in divers keys while the party from Wai-ata-tapu grew clammy with shame. Dikon, filled with the liveliest apprehension, watched the glow of complacency die in his employer’s face to be succeeded by all the signs of extreme fury. “My God,” Dikon thought, “he’s going to throw a temperament.” Simultaneously, Barbara, with rising terror, observed the same phenomena in her uncle.

Mr. Questing, with a beaming face, at last drew to his insufferably fulsome conclusion, and the Mayor, who had obviously intended to make a speech himself, rose to his feet, faced the audience, and let out a stentorian bellow.

“ For-or. . ” sang the Mayor encouragingly.

And the audience, freed from the bondage of Mr. Questing’s oratory, thankfully proclaimed Gaunt as a jolly good fellow.

But the party was not yet at an end. Steaming trays of tea were brought in from outside, and formidable quantities of food.

Dikon hurried to his employer and discovered him to be in the third degree of temperament, breathing noisily through his nostrils and conversing with unnatural politeness. The last time Dikon had seen him in this condition had been at a rehearsal of the fight in “Macbeth.” The Macduff, a timid man whose skill with the claymore had not equalled that of his adversary, continually backed away from Gaunt’s onslaught and so incensed him that in the end, quite beside himself with fury, he dealt the fellow a swingeing blow and chipped the point off his collarbone.

Gaunt completely ignored his secretary, accepted a cup of strong and milky tea, and stationed himself beside Barbara. There he was joined by Dr. Ackrington, who, in a voice that trembled with fury, began to apologize, none too quietly, for Questing’s infamies. Dikon could not hear everything that Dr. Ackrington said, but the word “horsewhipping” came through very clearly several times. It struck him that he and Barbara, hovering anxiously behind these two angry men, were for all the world like a couple of seconds at a prize-fight.

Upon this ludicrous but alarming pantomime came the cause of it, Mr. Questing himself. With his thumbs in the arm-holes of his white waistcoat he balanced quizzically from his toes to his heels and looked at Barbara through half-closed eyes.

“Well, well, well,” Mr. Questing purred in a noticeably thick voice. “So we’ve got ’em all on, eh? And very nice too. So she didn’t know who sent them to her? Fancy that, now. Not an idea, eh? Must have been Auntie in India, huh? Well, well, well!”

If he wished to cause a sensation, he met with unqualified success. They gaped at him. Barbara said in a small desperate voice: “But it wasn’t…? It couldn’t have been…?”

“I’m not saying a thing,” cried Mr. Questing in high glee. “Not a thing.” He leered possessively upon Barbara, dug Dr. Ackrington in the waistcoat and clapped Gaunt on the back. “Great work, Mr. Gaunt,” he said. “Bit highbrow for me, y’know, but they seemed to take it. Mind, I was interested. I used to do a bit of reciting myself at one time. Humorous monologues. Hope you liked the little pat on the back I gave you. It all helps, doesn’t it? Even at a one-eyed little show like this,” he added in a spirituous whisper, and, laughing easily, turned to find Rua at his elbow. “Why, hullo, Rua,” Mr. Questing continued without batting an eyelid. “Great little show. See you some more.” And, humming the refrain of the song about death, he moved forward to shake hands heartily with the Mayor. He made a sort of royal progress to the door and finally strolled out.

Later, when it was of enormous importance that he should remember every detail of the next few minutes, Dikon was to find that he retained only a few disconnected impressions. Barbara’s look of desolation; Mr. Septimus Falls in pedantic conversation with Mrs. Claire and the Colonel, both of whom seemed to be wildly inattentive; the startling blasphemies that Gaunt whispered as he looked after Questing — these details only was he able to focus in a field of hazy recollections.

It was Rua, he decided afterwards, who saved the situation. With the adroitness of a diplomat at a difficult conference, he talked through Dr. Ackrington’s furious expostulations and, without appearing to hurry, somehow succeeded in presenting the Mayoral party to Gaunt. They got through the next few minutes without an actual flare-up.