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They were, of course, less striking than the images that had grown so rapidly in Mandrake’s imagination. He had seen Mrs. Compline as a figure in a sombre robe, and here she was in Harris tweeds. He had envisaged a black cowl, and he saw a countrified hat with a trout-fly in the band. But her face, less fantastic than his image, was perhaps more distressing. It looked as if its maker had given it two or three vicious tweaks. Her eyes, large and lack-lustre, retained something of their original beauty, her nose was short and straight, but the left corner of her mouth dropped and her left cheek fell into a sort of pocket, so that she looked as though she had hurriedly stowed a large mouthful into one side of her face. She had the exaggeratedly dolorous expression of a clown. As Jonathan had told him, there was a cruelly comic look. When Jonathan introduced them, Mandrake was illogically surprised at her composure. She had a cold, dry voice.
Miss Chloris Wy
In William, Mandrake saw what he had hoped to see — the commonplace faintly touched by a hint of something that was disturbing. He was in uniform and looked perfectly tidy but not quite smart. He was fair and should have been good-looking, but the lines of his features were blunted and missed distinction, He was like an unsuccessful drawing of a fine subject. There was an air of uneasiness about him and he had not been long in the room before Mandrake saw that whenever he turned to look at his fiancée, which was very often, he first darted a glance at his mother, who never returned it. Mrs. Compline talked easily and with the air of an old friend to Jonathan, who continually drew the others into their conversation. Jonathan was in grand form. “A nice start,” thought Mandrake, “with plenty in reserve.” And he turned to Miss Wy
“… I didn’t in the least understand it, of course,” Miss Wy
“Ah,” thought Mandrake, “one of my plays.”
“Of course,” Miss Wy
“The Lord Chamberlain,” said Mandrake, “is afraid of me and for a similar reason. He doesn’t know whether it’s my dirty mind or his, so he says nothing.”
“Ah,” cried Jonathan, “is Miss Wy
“A devotee of what?” asked Mrs. Compline in her exhausted voice.
“Of Aubrey’s plays. The Unicorn is to reopen with Aubrey’s new play in March, Sandra, if all goes well. You must come to the first night. It’s called ‘Bad Black-out’ and is enormously exciting.”
“A war play?” asked Mrs. Compline. It was a question that for some reason infuriated Mandrake, but he answered with alarming politeness that it was not a war play but an experiment in two-dimensional formulism. Mrs. Compline looked at him blankly and turned to Jonathan.
“What does that mean?” asked William. He stared at Mandrake with an expression of offended incredulity. “Two-dimensional? That means flat, doesn’t it?”
Mandrake heard Miss Wy
“Does it mean that the characters will be sort of unphotographic?” she asked.
“Exactly.”
“Yes,” said William heavily, “but two-dimensional. I don’t quite see—”
Mandrake felt a terrible apprehension of boredom but Jonathan cut in neatly with an amusing account of his own apprenticeship as an audience to modern drama, and William listened with his mouth not quite closed and an anxious expression in his eyes. When the others laughed at Jonathan’s facetiæ, William looked baffled. Mandrake could see him forming with his lips the offending syllables “two-dimensional.”
“I suppose,” he said suddenly, “it’s not what you say but the way you say it that you think matters. Do your plays have plots?”
“They have themes.”
“What’s the difference?”
“My darling old Bill,” said Miss Wy
William turned to her and his smile made him almost handsome. “Mustn’t you?” he said. “But if you do a thing, you like talking about it. I like talking about the things I do. I mean the things I did before there was a war.”
It suddenly occurred to Mandrake that he did not know what William’s occupation was. “What do you do?” he asked.
“Well,” said William, astonishingly, “I paint pictures.”
Mrs. Compline marched firmly into the conversation. “William,” she said, “has Penfelton to look after in peacetime. At present, of course, we have our old bailiff, who manages very well. My younger son, Nicholas, is a soldier. Have you heard, Jonathan, that he did not pass his medical for active service? It was a very bitter blow to him. At the moment he is stationed at Great Chipping but he longs so much to be with his regiment in France. Of course,” she added. And Mandrake saw her glance at the built-up shoe on his club-foot.
“But you’re on leave from the front, aren’t you?” he asked William.
“Oh, yes,” said William.
“My son Nicholas—” Mrs. Compline became quite animated as she spoke of Nicholas. She talked about him at great length, and Mandrake wondered if he only imagined there was a sort of defiance in her insistence on this awkward theme. He saw that Miss Wy
“Rather menacing,” said Mandrake, “isn’t it?”
“Menacing?” William repeated. “It’s very beautiful. All black and white and grey. I don’t believe in seeing colour into things. One should paint them the first colour they seem when one looks at them. Yes, I suppose it is what you’d call menacing. Black and grey and white.”
“What is your medium?” Mandrake asked, and wondered why everybody looked uncomfortable when William spoke of his painting.
“Very thick oil paint,” said William gravely.
“Do you know Agatha Troy?”
“I know her pictures, of course.”
“She and her husband are staying with the Copelands at Winton St. Giles near Little Chipping. I came on from there. She’s painting the Rector.”
“Do you mean Roderick Alleyn?” asked Miss Wy
“Oh,” said Mandrake, “quite agreeable.”
They had turned away from the windows but a sound from outside drew them back again. Only the last turn of the drive as it came out of the Highfold woods could be seen from the drawing-room windows.
“That’s a car,” said William. “It sounds like—” he stopped short.
“Is anyone else coming?” asked Miss Wy
She and William stared through the windows. A long and powerful-looking open car, painted white, was streaking up the last rise in the drive.
“But,” stammered William, very red in the face, “that’s— that’s—”
“Ah!” said Jonathan from behind them. “Didn’t you know? A pleasant surprise for you. Nicholas is to be one of our party.”