Color Scheme

“He has his uses. When I start work again he’ll be kept very spry.”

“You’re going to write, aren’t you? Uncle James told me. Is it an autobiography? I do hope it is.”

Gaunt moved his hand above her elbow. “And why do you hope that?”

“Because I want to read it. You see, I’ve seen your Rochester, and once somebody who was staying here had an American magazine, I think it was called the Theatre Arts, and there was an article in it with photographs of you as different people. I liked the Hamlet one the best because — ”

“Well?” asked Gaunt when she paused.

Barbara stumbled over her next speech. “Because — well, I suppose because I know it best. No, that’s not really why. I didn’t know it at all well until then, but I read it again, lots of times, and tried to imagine how you sounded when you said the speech in the photograph. Of course after hearing Mr. Rochester it was easier.”

“Which photograph was that, Dikon?” asked Gaunt over his shoulder.

“It was with Rosencrantz…” Barbara began eagerly.

“Ah, I remember.”

Gaunt stood still and put her from him, holding her by the shoulder as he had held the gratified small-part actor who played Rosencrantz in New York. Dikon heard him draw in his breath as he always did when he collected himself to rehearse. In the silence of that warm evening amidst the reek of sulphur and against the nebulous thermal background, the beautiful voice spoke quietly: —

“ ‘O God, I could be bounded in a nutshell and count myself a king of infinite space, were it not that I have bad dreams.’ ”

Dikon was irritated and disturbed by Barbara’s rapturous silence, and infuriated by the whispered “Thank you” with which she finally ended it. “She’s making a perfect little ass of herself,” he thought, but he knew that Gaunt would not find her attitude excessive. He had an infinite capacity for absorbing adulation.

“Can you go on?” Gaunt was saying. “Which dreams — ”

“ ‘Which dreams indeed are ambition, for the very substance of the ambitious is merely the shadow of a dream.’ ”

“ ‘A dream itself is but a shadow!’ Do you hear this, Dikon?” cried Gaunt. “She knows the lines.” He moved forward again, Barbara at his side. “You’ve got a voice, my child,” he said. “How have you escaped the accent? Do you know what you’ve been talking about? You must hear the music, but you must also achieve the meaning. Say it again: thinking — ‘Which dreams indeed are ambition? ” But Barbara fumbled the second time, and they spoke the line backwards and forwards to each other as they crossed the pumice to the house. Gaunt was treating her to an almost indecent helping of charm, Dikon considered.

The lights were up in the house and Mrs. Claire was hurriedly doing the blackout. She had left the door open and a square of warmth reached across the verandah to the pumice. Before they came to its margin Gaunt checked Barbara again.

“We say good night here,” he said. “The dusk becomes you well. Good night, Miss Claire.”

He turned on his heel and walked towards his rooms.

“Good night,” said Dikon.

She had moved into the light. The look she turned upon him was radiant. “You’re terribly lucky, aren’t you?” said Barbara.

“Lucky?”

“Your job. To be with him.”

“Oh,” said Dikon, “that. Yes, of course.”

“Good night,” said Barbara, and ran indoors.

He looked after her, absently polishing his glasses with his handkerchief. v

Barbara lay in bed with her eyes wide-open to the dark. Until this moment she had denied the waves of bliss that lapped at the edge of her thoughts. Now she opened her heart to them.

She passed the sequence of those few minutes in the dusk through and through her mind, examining each moment, feeling again its lustre, wondering at her happiness. It is easy to smile at such fervours, but in her unreasoned ecstasy she reached a point of pure enchantment to which she would perhaps never again ascend. The experience may appear more touching but its reality is not impugned if it is recorded that Gaunt, at the same time, was preening himself a little.

“Do you know, Dikon,” he said, “that strange little devil quivered like a puppy out there in the dusk.” Dikon did not answer and after a moment Gaunt added: “After all it’s pleasant to know that one’s work can reach so far. The Bard and sulphuric phenomena! An amusing juxtaposition, isn’t it? One lights a little flame, you know. One carries the torch.”

Chapter V

Mr. Questing Goes down for the Second Time

The more blatant eccentricities of the first evening were not repeated during the following days, and the household at Wai-ata-tapu settled down to something like a normal routine. The Colonel fatigued himself to exhaustion with Home Guard exercises. His wife and daughter, overtaxed by the new standard they had set themselves, laboured incessantly in the house, Gaunt, following Dr. Ackrington’s instructions, sat at stated hours in the Springs, took short walks, and began to work steadily on his book. Dikon filed old letters and programmes which had to be wi

“It’s selfishness that’s at the bottom of it,” Simon shouted. “The actors ought to have smaller wages, see? What I reckon, the thing ought to be run for the good of everybody. Smaller wages all round.”

“Including the stage staff? The workmen?” asked Gaunt.

“They all ought to get the same.”

“Then I couldn’t afford to keep your friend Colly.”

“I reckon he’s wasting his time anyway,” said Simon, and Gaunt walked away in a rage.

Evidently Simon confided this conversation to Colly, who considered it necessary to apologize for his new friend.

“You don’t want to pay too much attention to him, sir,” Colly said, as he massaged his employer’s leg that evening. “He’s a nice young chap. Just a touch on the red side. He’s a bit fu

“He’s an idiotic cub,” said Gaunt. “What’s Questing got to do with the price of stalls?”

“He’s been talking big business, sir. Young Simon thinks he’s lent a good bit to the Colonel on this show. He thinks the Colonel can’t pay up and Mr. Questing’s going to shut down on them and run the place on his pat. Young Simon’s that disgusted he’s taken a scu

“Yes, but —”

“He’s fu