her
nicely,” said Lady
Cuckoo, displacing whirls of dust with a feather mop. “The young
gentleman,” she explained to a gardener’s wife, “had better be in the
one with those nice carved stags.”
“You can’t mean
Momo
, Mama?” protested one of her younger
daughters. “Actually, he’s a beastly little musician.”
“Amelia darling, this
is
Christmas. Cousin Anastasia’s kind to him;
so should you be.”
“She’s horrible to Americans,” said the child, stalwart in support
of the U. S. A., where she’d been fêted during the war. “Nothing,
now, will be fun for the sweet Blomfields – oh Mama, really, why
must
she come!”
Lady Cuckoo gave an evasive sigh. Poor Anastasia, how she did
not
endear herself – and seldom, frankly, had she been known to try.
She adhered grimly to Lady Cuckoo; other supporters had long
since faded away. How hard it is to be loyal and fair to all! Anastasia
was interested exclusively in the arts, and showed it. She leaned,
moreover, to the arts in their most advanced and forbidding forms:
nothing did she so much despise as anything anybody had ever
heard of. Seldom had Anastasia not in tow a still-to-be-recognised
young genius; quite often Central European and too often furiously
rude. Of these Momo had been the latest and, one was forced to
agree, the worst – one could indeed hardly imagine anything less
Christmassy than Momo. Anastasia herself had at one time been on
the highbrow stage; though, as the Sprangsby children pointed out,
soon off even that again. She had once played Mélisande.
1
Lady Cuckoo reproached herself for these hard thoughts. And,
oh, dear, what a reek of ancient damp arose from the Wing’s
cavernous fourposters! Giving orders that her own upper mattress
should be moved in to be slept on by Anastasia, and Amelia’s only
mattress (to teach her charity) for Momo, the hostess pensively left
the scene. In the corridor, she was at pains to skirt the somewhat
dangerous head of the spiral staircase, connecting this floor of the
Wing with the one below. For under the bedroom suite was a vaultlike ballroom – vast, and in décor not unlike the surroundings for a
Black Mass. Not in living memory had it been gaily danced in – you
only had to glance at it to see why. The Sprangsby children had at
one time used it for roller-skating, till vibrations all but brought the
ceiling down.
2
Since then it, like the suite above, had been locked
off. And all for the best, too . . .
Lady Cuckoo was glad to find herself back in the cheerful,
blameless, Christmassy main block of her home, the Hall.
Next day, Christmas Eve, the expected party began arriving, from
teatime on. Car after car drew up, with a scrunch on the snow; each
time the hall door, flung joyously open, emitted glowing lights and
the Sprangsbys peltering out, in a troop, in welcome. Not less was
the enthusiasm of the darling Blomfields, who emerged from the
comparative warmth of a hired Daimler into the beautiful draughti
ness of the teatime hall without anything so dim as a sneeze or
blink. If Mrs. Blomfield tightened her furs around her, it was with a
gesture which well became her. The Blomfields’ delighted and noble
faces shone.
“And for Harry,” declared Carrie (or Mrs.) Blomfield, “there’s been
just the final touch of perfection! We observed your antique Wing
as we drove past it; and Harry’s ever so interested in the occult.”
“Our nice old faithful ghost,” said Phyllida, “is usually sitting
in the kitchen – I don’t think he’s ever missed a Christmas. The
kitchen, you see,
is
Tudor. The Wing is simply a fake.”
“Still, it’s got
something
,” said Mr. Blomfield, happily glittering with
his pince-nez. “I unfailingly sensed that as we drove by. Tell me this
– is it now inhabited?”
“Not normally,” said the girl, passing crumpets to Mr. and Mrs.
Blomfield. Mrs. Blomfield said: “All the same, Harry’ll never rest
since he’s had this strange intimation. He’s taken some remarkable
spirit photographs.”
3
“I’d
advise
the kitchen,” said Lady Cuckoo, for a moment looking
distraught. “Our dear ghost in there wears such a nice ruff; and
altogether it’s far more cosy.”
Round the candlelit tea-table, all was high spirits and good cheer
– firelight dancing on the Georgian silver; family portraits beaming
a welcome down at the newcomers out of their dim-gold, hollywreathed frames. The youthful British reserve of Arthur’s sister and
Harold’s school-friends, who entered next, all but immediately
melted – how could it not? And distinction was added by Uncle
Theodore, who took his place with a courteous though melancholy
smile.
He
, however, was unable to look for long at anybody other
than Lady Cuckoo. And, to crown all, there was a stir on the snow
outside – after preliminary coughing and shuffling, the village carol
singers burst into song. Noel, Noel . . .
They were interrupted. Hollow hammering beat upon the Hall
door – Lady Cuckoo blinked and put down her cup. She was too
right: it
was
Anastasia and Momo. And Sims, who (truly a little dog)
yapped, squirming, under his mistress’s arm. They had had, it
appeared, to walk from the station – not a taxi, owing to dreadful
Christmas. “I am feeling terrible, thank you,” said Anastasia, rolling
round her haunted eyes in their sockets. “But, how could I not?
What a dreary farce this all is.” She pushed her way to a chair beside
Lady Cuckoo’s, darkly ignoring all others there. As for Momo, his
contempt for the whole occasion was, as he indicated, unspeakable.
Phyllida Sprangsby, having withdrawn with Arthur to put the
finishing touches to tomorrow’s Christmas tree, said: “That wicked
Mama never broke it to Uncle Theodore.”
“What, that Anastasia & Co. were coming?”
“Yes. She hadn’t got the nerve, I suppose. So
did
you see his poor
darling face?”
“He wasn’t in tearing form from the start, I thought.”
“You see, Mama refuses to marry him.” (Lady Cuckoo had been a
widow for ten years.)
“But how could she, angel, if he’s your uncle?”
“Oh, we just call him ‘uncle’ to cheer him up.
Wasn’t
Anastasia vile
to the Blomfields? Ha-ha, though: she’s got to go in the Wing!”
“Honestly, Phyllida,” asked Arthur, “what is all this about the
Wing?”
“
Aha
!” said the girl with an awful look. “Perhaps if I ever told you,
you’d never marry me. Or your poor hair might go bright white
overnight! . . . Idiot, you’ve put that top star on crooked. No, don’t
dare kiss me again till you’ve got it straight.”
Anastasia, dressed like a snake, was as usual last to come down to
dinner. “The fire in that room of mine doesn’t burn,” she announced
at once. “Are there jackdaws’ nests in the chimney? And what am I
to do about a bath? I could share yours,” she added, turning to Uncle
Theodore.
Uncle Theodore all but dropped his glass – the highball fixed for
him by kind Mr. Blomfield. Outrage rendered him speechless for
some time. “You would not know where to find it,” he said defiantly.
“
Oh
yes I would,” said Anastasia smugly. “I’ve made inquiries. It’s the
green one – a becoming colour to me.”
“That has always been MY bath,” said Uncle Theodore in his
most ominous tone. The rest of the party stood round, helpless –
Anastasia tossed her head of hair, which, but for being a tarnished
red, might itself have been one of the jackdaws’ nests. “You’re far too
set,” she declared, “in bachelor ways! Anyone would imagine that
you lived here . . .” Fortunately, dinner was announced.
After dinner they played idiotic games. Amelia disguised herself
in a bear-skin and chased Momo – who, it turned out, rather en
joyed himself: he leaped up on the back of a sofa and let off an
imaginary gun, shouting: “Bang, bang, bang!” He then seized Mrs.
Blomfield around the waist and whirled her away with him to dance
a polka – “My!” she happily panted. Arthur, of a more serious turn
of mind, suggested now was the moment for playing Murder – to
which Anastasia replied that
she
, for one, disapproved of blood
sports.
“I revere your principles, my dear lady; I revere your principles,”
murmured Mr. Blomfield, plying her with a highball, for she looked
lonely. “Yet, as the poet says, Christmas comes but once a year. And
to me that’s a heartening, beautiful thought.”
“You’re easily pleased, Mr. What’s-your-name,” sneered Anastasia,
and in a tone which detestably echoed around the drawing-room.
“This is, I suppose, your first view of civilised life? One can hardly
wonder your head is turned. Do
all
American ladies,” she went on to
ask, eyeing Mrs. Blomfield, who was once again wrapping herself in
furs as she cooled off after the polka-dancing, “dress like Esquimaux
the whole time?”
The furious Sprangsbys did not know where to look. “Let’s
play
Murder,” implored Lady Cuckoo, earnestly. So they did; it was
followed by Sardines, then hide-and-seek. Momo was the life and
soul of the party: all were in form, however – shrieks of rapture rang
through the Hall; pursued and pursuers tore up and down stairs, and
someone (perhaps Arthur’s sister) in search of further terrain, un
locked the door of the Gothic ballroom and hilariously was followed
into its darkness by several others. Subdued, some time later, they
all filed out again – in order to regain breath, they played racing
demon.
Uncle Theodore subtracted Lady Cuckoo from the merriment
and led her to a sofa in a corner. He felt it devolved upon him to
point out that what she needed was a protector. “Terrible people
prey on you,” he said, frowning at Anastasia across the room. Lady
Cuckoo, serene in a pink brocade not less lovely for being ancient,
replied that her children all did their best. “And now,” she fondly
said, “there’ll be Arthur, too.”
“When are he and Phyllida to be married?”
“Quite soon. Won’t that be lovely!”
Uncle Theodore manfully cleared his throat. “And when, my
dear,” he inquired, “are we to be?”
“Oh please don’t, Theodore –
not
at Christmas!” Lady Cuckoo
glanced at the clock and rose. “Time for bed, I think!” she called to
them all. “Poor Santa Claus will be waiting to do the stockings.”
A count of heads, preparatory to the move upstairs, found one or
two of the party to be missing – Mr. Blomfield, for instance, was not
on hand. It could be taken that he, Arthur and Uncle Theodore were
either assisting Santa Claus or taking a nightcap in the library. “Or
maybe,” said the comfortable Carrie Blomfield, “they even went for
an outdoor stroll – I’d say this Hall should look wonderful in the
moonlight.” Up, therefore, trooped the women and children.
The night
was
lovely; ancestral elms cast shadows over the moonblue landscape; here and there a late light gleamed on the snow –
away in the distance, a clock struck twelve. Lady Cuckoo, leaning
for a moment out of her window, felt at Christmas peace with the
world; and she thought with love of all those gathered under her
roof.
Did
the Gothic Wing count as her roof also? – by leaning out,
she could just see its silhouette projecting blackly into some laurels
. . . “Oh dear,” she thought. “Anastasia did succeed in mortifying the
Blomfields! . . . Well, I wonder how she will sleep tonight. I
almost
hope . . . Oh dear, what a wicked thought!”
In the Wing itself, Anastasia sat tensely up in her fourposter,
nursing her knees with her bony arms. Candles, which provided the
only light (the Wing had not been wired for electricity), rendered
Gothic shadows the more intense – somewhere away in them
crouched Sims, petrified by extreme nervousness: from time to time
he let out a whimper. “Sims, don’t be neurotic!” raged Anastasia – she
had made a nest for her pet on the quilt beside her, but in vain. She
felt deserted by all – and, indeed, was not Momo the worst? Never
had she had such a disillusionment: his behaviour tonight had been
almost
ordinary
– she had come on him, paper cap on his head,
sliding down the banisters with Arthur’s sister! And to think that,
only a week hence, he was to make his début (sponsored by her) as
a totally incomprehensible solo flautist at the Utopian Hall.
Momo, scuttling ahead of Anastasia into the Wing, had no doubt
sensed her disapproval – for now, two doors away from her, he had
penitently returned to Art. Note by note, in a minor key, he was
picking out upon his flute the perhaps most incomprehensible of his
melodies up to date – and never had any artistic sound struck less
pleasingly upon his patron’s ear. “Stop it, Momo!” she shrieked, but
without result. She leaped from bed, wound herself into a pallid and
flowing robe, and set off to tell Momo what she thought of him.
A charnel draught, danker than mere cold, met her as she opened
her bedroom door. Only vaguely now did she recollect that she
had
heard some sort of nonsense about this Wing. Sims, who rather than
stay alone had come jittering after her, uttered a canine shriek and
again fled – as well he might. For the vaulted corridor was not, as it
should have been, in darkness – up the shaft of the staircase there
wavered a blue and, it seemed, phosphorescent glow. “
Momo
,”
moaned Anastasia, “come out! Where are you?” The flute stopped
dead – but Momo did not appear. Anastasia (who, give her her due,
had nerve) drew a deep breath, approached the head of the staircase
and peered down.
Someone, or still worse, Something, was at the bottom.
That blood-freezing pause – would it ever terminate?
Then – “Peace, troubled spirit!” said Mr. Blomfield, tremblingly
waving upward his blue torch. Faint was the glimmer of his pincenez as he peered up the spiral at Anastasia.