Jumping Jenny (3 page)

“Osbert only had to put on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses,” volunteered Mrs. Williamson. “He’s just like Crippen, isn’t he, Mr. Sheringham?”

“How unsafe you must feel, Lilian,” said Celia Stratton.

“Can you wonder I want to leave the studio and get a place with a few more rooms? If the fit came on him there, I could never get away in time.”

“You know perfectly well, Lilian,” remonstrated her husband, “that you only wanted me to be Crippen so that you could be Miss Le Neve. Lilian never loses a chance of getting into trousers,” explained Mr. Williamson with candour to the group in general.

“Why shouldn’t I get into trousers if I want to?” demanded Mrs. Williamson, and sniffed.

“I hope you’ve got them fastened with a safety-pin at the back,” said Roger fatuously.

Everyone looked at him inquiringly, and he wished he had not spoken.

“Miss Le Neve’s trousers were too large for her,” he had to explain, “and she took a tuck in them at the back with a safety-pin. The captain of the liner noticed it, and thought it rather odd.”

“Lilian’s certainly aren’t too large for her,” said Mr. Williamson, with a rude, husbandly laugh, “though they may be quite as odd. Eh, Lilian? What?”

“I like my trousers tight,” said Mrs. Williamson, and sniffed again.

Roger, who was not so interested in these garments as the others appeared to be, turned the conversation with a jerk.

“I haven’t met your sister-in-law yet, Miss Stratton,” he said, in a blandly conversational tone. “I wonder if you’d introduce me?”

“David’s wife? Yes, of course. Where is she?”

“She was at the bar a minute ago.”

“She’s mad,” observed Mr. Williamson, with some interest.

“Really, Osbert!” expostulated his wife, with a glance at Celia Stratton.

“Oh, don’t mind me,” said Miss Stratton kindly.

Roger could not let this promising opening pass. “Mad? Is she? I like mad people. What particular form does your sister-in-law’s madness take, Miss Stratton?”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Celia Stratton said lightly. “She’s just generally mad, I expect, if Osbert says so.” Roger noticed that, in spite of the lightness of her tone, there was an undercurrent of caution in Miss Stratton’s voice. It was almost as if she had been glad to accept the idea of her sister-in-law’s madness, in order to hide something worse.

“She wants to talk about her soul,” explained Osbert Williamson with some gloom.

“Osbert isn’t interested in souls,” Mrs. Williamson explained. “Not having one of his own, he can’t very well be.”

“I’m not interested in her soul,” pronounced Mr. Williamson. “But I’d keep an eye on her, Celia, if I were you. When I was with her she was swigging down double whiskies nineteen to the dozen and saying she wanted to get tight because it was the only thing worth while, or some nonsense.”

“Oh, dear,” sighed Miss Stratton, “is she in that mood? Perhaps I’d better go and look after her then.”

“Why does she want to get tight?” Mr. Williamson asked her as she moved away.

“She thinks it clever. Mr. Sheringham, you’d better come with me if you want to meet her.”

Roger went, with alacrity.

NOT A NICE LADY

It was Ronald Stratton’s custom to enliven his parties with charades. As he candidly explained, this was solely because he happened to like charades, and as the party was his, he did not see why he should not play them. Unfortunately for Roger, Ronald had decided upon charades at just that moment, and before the introduction could be effected Celia Stratton had been called in to search the sitting-out places for unwilling players. Meanwhile sides were chosen out of those who were present; and since Mrs. David Stratton and Roger were on opposite sides, the acquaintanceship had again to be postponed. Roger was interested, however, to find that the lady’s husband was on his side.

Although he had known Ronald Stratton slightly for some years, Roger had never before met David. As with so many brothers, the two were utterly unlike. Ronald was not particularly tall, David was quite six feet; Ronald was broad, David was slight; Ronald was dark, David fair; Ronald had a snub nose, David an aquiline one; Ronald was enthusiastic and, sometimes, rather childish in his amusements, David had a wearily disillusioned air, and his wit (for he was witty) had a cynical trend; one would have said that Ronald was the younger and David the elder, instead of the other way about.

Celia Stratton, who had been appointed captain of the side, took her duties seriously. It was their turn to perform first, and shepherding her flock out of the ballroom, she called firmly upon Roger for an actable word of two syllables. Roger instantly found his mind an utter and complete blank, and could only eye the bar with distant longing. In the end it was David Stratton who produced the word, and a neat little three-act drama to fit it, which, as an impromptu, impressed Roger considerably.

“Your brother’s very much on the spot to-night,” he remarked casually to Celia as they looked out props suitable to the inhabitants of Nineveh prior to the engulfment of Jonah by the whale.

“Oh, David can usually be relied on for something like that,” said Miss Stratton.

“Can he? I wonder he doesn’t try his hand at writing.”

“David? He used to do a little before he married.
Punch,
you know, and some of the weeklies. We thought at one time that he might do something quite good. He began a book which promised very well.”

“Why didn’t he finish it?”

Celia Stratton bent a little lower over the drawer into which she was delving. “Oh, he got married,” she said; and once again Roger felt that she was hiding something under the apparent indifference of her tone.

He looked at her curiously, but did not pursue the topic. Of two things, however, he felt quite sure: that somehow David Stratton’s marriage had spoilt what might have been a successful career, and that Celia Stratton was not nearly so indifferent about it as she pretended.

More mystery, he thought.

Under cover of the general badinage he observed David Stratton more closely. At a first glance the latter looked animated enough, as he laughingly tried to persuade a pretty, plump woman whom everyone called Margot, to impersonate the whale; but it needed little more than a casual look to see that underneath the temporary excitement was an immense weariness. Indeed, the man looked tired to death, and not only tired, but positively ill; and yet Roger knew that his job of acting as his brother’s estate agent was not at all an exacting one. Why, then, did he look as if he had hardly slept for a month?

Roger wondered if he were making mountains out of molehills.

The charades pursued their usual and hilarious course, and Roger found himself enjoying them absurdly. The Williamsons were on his side, and so was Dr. Mitchell and his pretty young bride, to whom her groom was as patently and as unselfconsciously devoted as any wife could have hoped. Roger found himself becoming quite sentimental in contemplation of the two of them. Jean Mitchell was dressed as Madeleine Smith, in crinoline and poke-bonnet, and looked quite charming enough to deserve all the attentions that were being poured out on her.

It was not until their own turn of activity was ended and they were sitting on a row of chairs at one end of the ballroom, waiting to deride the efforts of the other side, that a hint of drama underneath the froth began to show itself.

Roger found himself rather marooned.

On his left sat Celia Stratton, with Dr. Mitchell and his wife beyond her; on his right the plump lady called Margot, whom Roger had now discovered to be Ronald Stratton’s late wife, with David Stratton separating her from her fiancé, a large and somewhat silent young man, whose name Roger had gathered to be Mike Armstrong. And almost immediately Celia Stratton had begun to engage in a low-toned and extremely earnest conversation with Dr. Mitchell, while ex-Mrs. Margot Stratton at the same time embarked on an exactly similar one with David Stratton. Roger hid his yawns, and wished that the other side would be a little quicker.

Then, willy-nilly, scraps of the two conversations began to reach him.

“But are you sure it was Ena who was responsible for it?” he heard Celia Stratton ask, in a worried voice.

“Positive,” Dr. Mitchell replied grimly. “I went straight round to Mrs. Farebrother as soon as Jean told me, and she said that Ena had told her. In the strictest confidence, of course. Confidence! I told Mrs. Farebrother it was an infernal lie, of course, and I think I’ve stopped it going any farther in that direction, but how many other …” Dr. Mitchell lowered his voice.

Ena, observed Roger pensively to himself, is Mrs. David Stratton.

He became aware of David Stratton’s voice, unguardedly loud, on his other side.

“I tell you, Margot, I can’t stand it much longer. I’m about at the end of my tether.”

“It’s a damned shame, David,” his late sister-in-law replied warmly. “You know what I thought about her. Ronald used to say I made things very awkward for him, but I couldn’t help that. After that Eaves business I swore I’d never have her in any house of mine again, and I never did.”

“I know,” David Stratton rejoined gloomily. “It was a bit awkward, for me as well as Ronald, but I couldn’t blame you. After all, as I pointed out to her, you might have done a good deal more than refuse to receive her here if you’d been really vindictive.”

“That’s what I told Ronald.”

Roger shifted in his chair.

“I wouldn’t mind if there was an atom of truth in any of it,” said Dr. Mitchell, with sudden violence. “But these damnable lies …”

“I know. It’s the way it takes her.”

“Personally,” broke in Jean Mitchell’s small, clear voice, “I don’t see that it matters. Everyone must know they’re lies. “What I can’t understand is why she wants to do it.”

“Oh, she’s a pathological case, darling. There’s no doubt about that. But really, Celia, something ought to be done about her. She’s a danger to the community.”

“Yes. But what? That’s the trouble.”

“I don’t know, yet.” Dr. Mitchell folded his arms and looked, for a pleasant man, quite formidable. “But I can promise you, she’s going to be sorry she started monkeying with Jean. That’s a little bit too much.”

Roger took a notebook out of his pocket and began jotting down names. Among so many strangers, with so many different relationships, he found it difficult to keep his head clear.

Still the other side did not appear. Only suppressed gigglings, and an occasional hoot of laughter outside the door, testified to their continued existence.

“But why don’t you
leave
her, David?”

“Money, of course. If only I could afford to keep her apart from me, I’d do it like a shot.”

“Can’t Ronald help at all?”

“No.” David Stratton was firm enough about that.

“It’s damnable.” Margot Stratton stared ahead as if racking her brains for something that would help.

Celia Stratton turned to Roger.

“I quite forgot to ask you, Mr. Sheringham. Did you find everything in your room that you wanted?”

“Everything, thank you,” said Roger politely.

Roger’s list of his fellow-guests and hosts ran as follows:

These, Roger considered, comprised all Ronald Stratton’s intimates, and seemed to fall into a group of their own. There were a dozen or so more people present, all from the neighbourhood, but they kept more or less to themselves, and Stratton did not try to mingle the two groups. The doctors, of course, were local men, and they formed something in the nature of a connecting link between the two lots. Roger had been told by Stratton that the local group would probably leave early, and the house-party would then keep it up.

There were about half a dozen of the latter. The Williamsons, who lived in London, were staying the night, and so was Colin Nicolson, who was the assistant editor of a weekly paper for which Stratton did a good deal of work, and whom Roger had known and liked for some years. Mrs. Lefroy was staying, too, and Celia Stratton had come down to act as hostess for her brother. Roger himself had also been asked for the night.

When the charades were over at last, Roger once more tried to effect contact between himself and Ena Stratton, and once again he was foiled. Ronald himself had swung his sister-in-law on to the floor, to set the dancing in train again. Glancing round in a baffled way, Roger saw that Agatha Lefroy was sitting alone on a couch at one end of the room, and joined her.

“Do you mind if we don’t dance?” he said. “I used to be considered rather good before the war, but somehow the old zest seems to have gone.”

“Of course not,” Mrs. Lefroy smiled. “Let’s stop here. Anyhow, I’d much rather talk than dance. What shall we talk about?”