A Swans - Eva Ibbotson

“But Bernard, that could mean a night in a hotel. The expense!” cried Louisa.

“Damn the expense!” said the Professor, and if anyone had doubted that he loved his daughter they could doubt no longer. “If this escapade should reach the ears of the Master, with the Senate elections coming up…”

“Or Edward,” said Louisa faintly. “If Edward came to hear of it…”

And an hour later the Mortons were on the train.

Stage-doorkeepers in general are not renowned for their loving kindness or the enthusiasm with which they greet unauthorized visitors, but even among that well-known band of misanthropes “old Bill” at the Century stood out for the particularly poor view he took of human nature. Even before he had lost an eye in the relief of Khartoum in ‘85, his nature had hardly been sanguine, and now—with the aid of a scruffy and paranoid mongrel called Griff, who bit first and asked questions afterward—he ensured that those who worked in his theater were seldom unnecessarily disturbed.

“What d’yer want?” was his greeting to the Mortons as he stuck out his grizzled head from the window of his cubby-hole.

“We have come to see Mr. Dubrov,” announced the Professor. “The matter is extremely urgent.”

“Well, he ain’t here. No one’s here at this time of night.”

It seemed unlikely that he was lying; as the Mortons had walked around it, the Century Theater had been silent and dark.

“We have come to make inquiries about a girl who may have joined the Company,” began Louisa, “as a dancer.”

“Shut up!”

Bill was addressing his dog, but without rancor, for in growling even more hideously than usual and baring his yellow teeth, Griff was only confirming Bill’s own view—that as far as people in general went, this toffee-nosed couple were bottom of the heap.

“She is an English girl,” persisted Louisa. “There cannot be many English girls in such a company.”

“Not any,” said Bill laconically. “All Russian. All got Russian names. Got to have. No one’ll stand for English names, not in ballet.”

“But there must have been a girl who spoke English? You must have heard the girls speak?”

“Me?” said Bill, “Why should I hear them speak? I haven’t got time to stand around chattering. Got me work to do, I have.”

Bowing to the inevitable, the Professor felt in his pocket and extracted a half-crown which he laid on the counter. “Wasn’t there just one girl who spoke to you? Said good morning, perhaps?”

Bill moved the coin slowly across the counter, but did not yet pocket it. Taking a tip could tie you…

“Aye,” he said. “Come to think of it, there was one—a real smasher. Great goo-goo eyes, blonde hair and curves.” He sketched the delectable Marie-Claude in the air with deliberate crudity.

Louisa shuddered. “That is not the girl we are looking for.”

“Now look here, my man; I am the girl’s father and this is her aunt. If you know anything about her and conceal the fact, we shall have not the slightest hesitation in reporting you to the police.”

Bill lifted his eye-patch to scratch his forehead. Then slowly he slipped the half-crown into his pocket. It was doubtful if the old gaffer could do much, but there was never any point in getting mixed up with the police.

“The girl we want is plain,” said Louisa firmly. “With straight brown hair and brown eyes. A plain girl.”

“Aye, there was a girl like that. Little thin thing. But she wasn’t plain.” Bill remembered her well—had done so from the start. She had Brought a large mutton bone for Griff all the way from the hostel where she was staying and talked proper sense to the dog. Griff had let her put the bone right into the bowl for him and that was rare enough. She was the one who stayed behind too, on the last night, helping the stage-hands get the stuff packed. “Nothing plain about her,” he said, inexplicably furious with the pair. “Had the sweetest smile you’ve ever seen.”

“Where is she, man? Hurry! Where is the company staying?”

Over Bill’s face there now spread a look of unalloyed pleasure. Even his eye-patch seemed to lighten.

“On the Atlantic Ocean, sir,” he said. “They’ve been gone the best part of a week,”… and shut the hatch.

“There must be something we can do,” said Louisa, “without making it public that she has gone.”

The Mortons had not slept well and now sat at breakfast in their dining room, removing with bony fingers the tops of their slightly sulphurous boiled eggs.

The Professor did not answer. While the possibility had existed that Harriet was in danger his rage had been modified by anxiety. Now sheer choler made it difficult for him to speak.

“You don’t think… I mean, if she is so desperately keen to be a dancer, should one… simply wash one’s hands of her?” asked Louisa.

The Professor put down his napkin. “Are you suggesting that I permit my daughter— my daughter—deliberately to flout my wishes? Do you want me to be the laughing-stock of the University? Harriet is under age; she will be brought back and she will be punished.”

“Yes, dear. Of course. You are perfectly right. Only how?”

There was a pause, then the Professor gave a bark of inspiration.

“Edward!” he pronounced. “Edward must show himself in his true colors.”

Identical furrows appeared on the long pale foreheads of the Mortons as they considered the true colors of Edward Finch-Dutton.

“You mean—”

“I mean,” said the Professor, “that he must go in pursuit of Harriet and bring her back. He is young. I myself,” he lied, “would have welcomed such an opportunity at his age.”

“But Bernard, surely that could not be considered respectable? If he were to return with Harriet, everyone would think… The gossip would be unendurable. She would be ruined.”

“She is ruined already,” said the Professor savagely. “In my eyes she has put herself beyond the pale. But it shouldn’t be impossible to think of something.”

“Mrs. Fairfield would be willing to say that Harriet has been with them all the time in London—I am sure of it; she hinted as much on the instrument. So that if we met the ship and brought her back to Cambridge, everyone would simply think we had been fetching her from her friend,” said Louisa, mercifully unaware of the rumors even now flying around the city.

“And Edward would only need to say he had been on an entomological expedition,” put in the Professor. “Those natural scientists think nothing of wasting months in pointless field trips. But there is not a moment to lose—she already has nearly a week’s start and who knows where that scoundrel might take her next—Rio de Janeiro, even New York… We have no evidence that he means to bring her back to England. Edward must leave at once.”

“Let us go to him,” said Louisa.

This was not a suggestion she would normally have made, and as they passed down long laboratory corridors and into rooms where Edward might have been—but wasn’t—she was continually affronted by sights which she would prefer to have been spared. Young men in running shorts pedalled on stationary bicycles while pointers inscribed the furious zig-zag of their heartbeats on smoked drums… An appallingly identifiable yellow liquid bubbled fiendishly through a system of flasks, filter funnels and rubber tubing… In a glass-fronted altitude chamber, a bearded research assistant was slowly turning blue.

Term was over, but Edward was in the teaching lab sorting out demonstration slides. However, one glimpse of the Mortons advancing with set faces caused the color to drain from his face.

“Harriet!” he said. “She is ill? She has had an accident?”