Ngaio Marsh - Overture to Death

“Every second of it.”

“She’d found out about that. There was no reason why the whole world shouldn’t know, but I hadn’t told Daddy about it. It had been such a glowing, marvellous day that I didn’t want to talk about it.”

“Me, too.”

“Well, now, you see, it looks all fishy and dubious, and Daddy feels I have been behaving in an underhand manner. When Miss Prentice had gone he took me into his study. He was wearing his beretta, a sure sign that he’s feeling his responsibilities. He spoke more in sorrow than in anger, which is always rather toxic, and the worst of it is, he really was upset. He got more and more feudal and said we’d always been — I forget what — almost fiefs or vassals of this-man’s-man of the Jernighams, and had never done anything disloyal, and here was I behaving like a housemaid having clandestine assignations with you. On and on and on; and Henry, my dear darling, ridiculous though it sounds, I began to feel shabby and common.”

“He didn’t believe — ”

“No, of course he didn’t believe that. But, all the same, you know he’s frightfully muddled about sex.”

“They all are,” said Henry, with youthful gloom.

“And with Eleanor and Idris hurling their inhibitions in his teeth — ”

“I know. Well, anyway, the upshot was, he forbade me to see you alone. I said I wouldn’t promise. It was the first really deadly row we’ve ever had. I fancy he prayed about it for hours after I’d gone to bed. It’s very vexing to lie in bed knowing somebody in the room below is praying away like mad about you. And, you see, I adore the man. At one moment I thought I would say my own prayers, but the only thing I could think of was the old Commination Service. You know: ‘Cursed is he that smiteth his neighbour secretly. Amen.’ ”

“One for Eleanor,” said Henry appreciatively.

“That’s what I thought, but I didn’t say it. But what I’ve been trying to come to is this: I can’t bear to upset Daddy permanently, and I’m afraid that’s just what would happen. No, please wait, Henry. You see, I’m only nineteen, and he can forbid the bans — and, what’s more, he’d do it.”

“But why?” said Henry. “Why? Why? Why?”

“Because he thinks that we shouldn’t oppose your father and because, secretly, he’s got a social inferiority complex. He’s a snob, poor sweet. He thinks if he smiled on us it would look as if he was all agog to make a grand match for me, and was going behind the squire’s back to do it.”

“Absolutely drivelling bilge!”

“I know, but that’s how it goes. It’s just one of those things. And it’s all due to Miss Prentice. Honestly, Henry, I think she’s positively evil. Why should she mind about us?”

“Jealousy,” said Henry. “She’s starved and twisted and a bit dotty. I dare say it’s physiological as well as psychological. I imagine she thinks you’ll sort of dethrone her when you’re my wife. And, as likely, as not, she’s jealous of your father’s affection for you.”

They shook their heads wisely.

“Daddy’s terrified of her,” said Dinah, “ and of Miss Campanula. They will ask him to hear their confessions, and when they go away he’s a perfect wreck.”

“I’m not surprised, if they tell the truth. I expect what they really do is to try to inform against the rest of the district. Listen to me, Dinah. I refuse to have our love for each other messed up by Eleanor. You’re mine. I’ll tell your father I’ve asked you to marry me, and I’ll tell mine. I’ll make them see reason; and if Eleanor comes creeping in — my God, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll — ”

“Henry,” said Dinah, “how magnificent!”

Henry grinned.

“It’d be more magnificent,” he said, “if she wasn’t just an unhappy, warped, middle-aged spinster.”

“It must be awful to be like that,” agreed Dinah. “I hope it never happens to me.”

“You!”

There was another halt.

“Henry,” said Dinah suddenly. “Let’s ask them to call an armistice until after the play.”

“But we must see each other like this. Alone.”

“I shall die if we can’t; but all the same I feel, somehow, if we said we’d wait until then, that Daddy might sort of begin to understand. We’ll meet at rehearsals, and we won’t pretend we’re not in love, but I’ll promise him I won’t meet you alone. It’ll be — it’ll be kind of dignified. Henry, do you see?”

“I suppose so,” said Henry unwillingly.

“It’d stop those hateful old women talking.”

“My dear, nothing would stop them talking.”

“Please, darling Henry.”

“Oh, Dinah.”

“Please.”

“All right. It’s insufferable, though, that Eleanor should be able to spoil a really miraculous thing like Us.”

“Insufferable.”

“She’s so completely insignificant.”

Dinah shook her head.

“All the same,” she said, “she’s a bad enemy. She creeps and creeps, and she’s simply brimful of poison. She’ll drop some of it into our cup of happiness if she can.”

“Not if I know it,” said Henry.

i

The rehearsals were not going any too well. For all Dinah’s efforts, she hadn’t been able to get very much concerted work out of her company. For one thing, with the exception of Selia Ross and Henry, they would not learn their lines. Dr. Templett even took a sort of pride in it. He was forever talking about his experiences in amateur productions when he was a medical student.

“I never knew what I was going to say,” he said cheerfully. “I’m capable of saying almost anything. It was always all right on the night. A bit of cheek goes a long way. One can bluff it out with a gag or two. The great thing is not to be nervous.”

He himself was not at all nervous. He uttered such lines of the French Ambassador’s as he remembered, in a high-pitched voice, made a great many grimaces, waved his hands in a foreign manner, and was never still for an instant.

“I leave it to the spur of the moment,” he told them. “It’s wonderful what a difference it makes when you’re all made-up, wtth funny clothes on. I never know where I ought to be. You can’t do it in cold blood.”

“But, Dr. Templett, you’ve got to,” Dinah lamented. “How can we get the timing right or the positions, if at one rehearsal you’re on the prompt and at the next on the o.p.?”

“Don’t you worry,” said Dr. Templett. “We’ll be all right. Eet vill be—’ow you say? — so, so charmante.”

Off-stage he continually spoke his lamentable broken English, and when he dried up, as he did incessantly, he interpolated his: “ ’ow you say?”

“If I forget,” he said to the rector, who was prompting, “I’ll just walk over your side and say, ‘ ’ow you say?’ like that, and then you’ll know.”

Selia Ross and he had an irritating trick of turning up late for rehearsals. Apparently the, youngest Cain’s big toe still needed Dr. Templett’s attention, and he explained that he picked up Mrs. Ross and brought her to rehearsal on his way back from Cloudyfold. They would walk in with singularly complacent smiles, half an hour late, while Dinah was reading both their parts and trying to play her own. Sometimes she got her father to read their bits, but the rector intoned them so carefully and slowly that everybody else was thrown into a state of deadly confusion.

Miss Campanula, in a different way, was equally troublesome. She refused to give up her typewritten part. She carried it about with her and read each of her speeches in an undertone during the preceding dialogue, so that whenever she was on the stage the others spoke through a distressing mutter. When her cue came she seldom failed to say, “Oh. Now it’s me,” before she began. She would often rattle off her lines without any inflexion, and apparently without the slightest regard for their meaning. She was forever telling Dinah that she was open to correction, but she received all suggestions in huffy grandeur, and they made not the smallest difference to her performance. Worse than all these peculiarities were Miss Campanula’s attempts at characterization. She made all sorts of clumsy and ineffective movements over which she herself seemed to have little control. She continually shifted her weight from one large foot to the other, rather in the manner of a penguin. She wandered about the stage and she made embarrassing grimaces. In addition to all this, she had developed a frightful cold in her nose, and rehearsals were made hideous by her catarrhal difficulties.