The Dark Room

Bay of Plenty Times, Volume LXV, Issue 12257, 22 February 1937, Page 4

The Dark Room

(by L. C. DOUTHWAITE)

INSTALMENT NO 5. The drawing-room, of soft tints and mellow Hepplewhite, and that, opening by French - windows to a small Dutch garden at the back, ran to the full depth of the house, was larger than Evadne had expected. At the moment of their entry it held about a dozen people, some half of whom—-the tea-drinkers —were either on the verge of, or already reached middle age, and who mostly were grouped about their hostess; the remainder, younger and more ornate, were clustered round the cocktail table that occupied one angle of the room. There was a momentary lull as the two girls appeared; to Evadne the whole room seemed filled with eyes. After, in vague general fashion, Mrs Maulden had introduced her, Evadne discovered herself, a tea-cup balanced precariously in her hand, on a settee next to Clare Maulden, of whom Beth had spoken so bitterly in- the car. Yet at first glance, she conveyed no definite impression of sorrow. A friendly soul, rather, this slim and very blue-eyed woman with the beautiful colourless skin and long sensitive hands. It was only at rare moments when her face was in repose, with the dark eyes brooding and retrospective, that the underlying superimposed itself, and then it was startling. “If we really get down to it,” she said when Evadne was settled, “we’re sort of related, aren’t we? Cousins-in-law, if there is such a thing. And as apart from my small son” —though there w r as no pause before it, at that last word a note came into her voice that was as if an obscuring curtain had been withdrawn from some secret lovely shrine in her heart—“who three-quarters of the year i- away at his prep-school; my brother—he’s the lad playing tunes on the cock-tail-shaker behind the bar there—and my’mother-in-law and sister-in-law, I haven’t a relative in the world, you're a welcome addition to the circle.” “I’m not exactly rich in relatives myself,” Evadne said, and at the thought of that so very near and dear one she had lost a catch came to her voice. She was grateful that, if the other noticed It, she passed it without ony direct expression of sympathy. “I don’t suppose,” Clare Maulden said at last, with a quick glance about the room, "that you’ve attempted to take in who all these people are?” Evadne laughed. “Only one or two,” she said. “Your brother, for instance. Who’s the man with Beth?” Clare’s reply was accompanied by the slighte shrug ;of the shoulders. “You mean Sir Adrian Chater, Bart—with the accent on the Bart?” she said. And, at Evadne’s nod. “One of those perfect little gentlemen who ninety-nine women in a hundred adore—and the odd one per cent, simply have no use for. And I,” she added, following the briefest pause, “am one of Old Hundred.” For some reason Evadne felt rather glad about that; so far as concerned gjr Adrian Chater, she had pretty much the sianie feeling herself. At a sijperfjcigl glance he struck her as being rather too good to be true, and too true to type to be good. Even in her native North there are more wolves than those who hunt in packsp “Personally, and particularly since I’ve been alope,” glare broke ip upon her thoughts to remark, “I’ve found it a good working rule to give a whole lot of air to men whom other men keep clear of. And for the Bart no man I know who matters has any kind of use at all.” “What’s the matter with him?” Evadne questioned, though' already her own instinct had given her a pretty shrewd idea of the answer. Clare shrugged her shoulders. “The matter is that, among Us girls, he’s known as The Lyons Male,” she said. ‘And that’s telling you a whole lot. . . What do you think of my brother?” She paused; then added, amusedly. ‘That lad certainly does shake a wicked cocktail!” He was installed in the angle formed by a white-covered table drawn across the corner of the room, and upon which were the ingredients for cocktails. A handkerchief tucked into his waistbelt as apron, and his sleeves rolled up, he was swinging the shaker to the accompaniment of an unremitting stream of patter. “Curiously, he’s not spell a.nit-wit as it pleases him to appear," Clare murmured explanatorily, “i’ll have him over here so you can judge for yourself.” “Pink gin, Ager-ues?" Toby was saying reprovingly to a thin girl whose scarlet lips were in rather ghastly contrast to a face of flour whiteness, “My dear, if you don’t put on the brake, your passion for pink gin’ll develop into an awful vision of alligators of the same shade ■ —complete with fringe-whiskers and Inverness capes.” The girl’s voice, clear and penetrating, carried across the room. “Toby, you liar! This is only my second, and well you know it!” He turned fo a tall and languid girl, pink-faced and hennaed, but rather pretty, who, glass in hand, approached the table, “Why, if it isn’t little Gertrude—, with the accent so much on the sec-, ond syllable. And what for you moddom?” The girl cast an indifferent glance at the array of bottles. “What exactly have you, Toby? Anything really new? Or haven’t you?” “Anything new?” His astonishment was prodigious. "Anything new?” Head back, he broke into a chorus unearthed from the score of a musical comedy of the ’nineties. I’ve cham-pagne co-* ; Saratoga co<”~

COMPLETE BOOK-LENGTH NOVEL

(To be continued.)

Gill sling; negus, sherry sangaree. All the drinks are Yankee ones. Most are hanky-panky ones. Name your sym-toms—leave the rest to me!” Bowing . prodigiously, he turned once more to the girl. “And after that —what?” “S’pose it had better be a sidecar,” she decided without apparent interest. “Toby!" his sister called after he had mixed the drink, and he grinned across at her. “Come and be formally presented to your new in-law.” “My dear,” he called hack, “that’s what I’ve been promising myself for the last quarter of an hour, only I’ve been hemmed in here by this herd of toss-pot?.’’ He halted in front of them. Clare said: “My brother, Toby Conquest— Beth’s cousin, Miss Ransome.” "What about a spot of introduction for me, too?” a voice said. Evadne turned. Unnoticed, Sir Adrian Chater had crossed the room, and now was at her side. As Toby turned on him, Evadne found the look on his usually goodhumoured face rather surprising. All the lightness had gone from it, leaving his expression cold. “Mr Buttinski—Miss Ransome,” he said. It has to be raid for Sir Adrian that he was not disconcerted; to Evadne he conveyed the impression that his self-satisfaction was practically snubproof. “You didn’t think, my dear fella,” he said, turning to Toby, and, u;H she withdrew it, retaining Evadne’s hand, “that I had any intention of, foregoing the honour of Miss Ransomc's acquaintance? Besides, at an informal afternoon like this, surely we’re all friends together!’’ “But not to the extent,” Toby pointed out, taking his place to the loft of Evadne, so that now she occupied the middle position, “of sitting four on a settee that’s designed only for three. Be ides, I want to talk to my new-found cousin, and your face distracts me. .And why are you lookat her like that?” “Like what?” Sir Adrian’s voice was sharp. “A shop-soiled sheik,” Toby said promptly. Evadne wa; grateful for this -last. From the moment when she had turned to face him, Sir Adrian’s eyes had not left her face, and she found the concentration disconcerting. He turned from her now, however, to Toby. Apparently the epithet had penetrated the armour of his selfcomplacency. “The fact that we have known each other for so long, Toby,” he said with dignity, “does not confer on you the privilege of behaving like an ill-conditioned schoolboy.” It was Clare who relieved the situation by getting up from her seat. She regarded her brother severely, but Evadne saw that her eyes were twinkling. “Toby, you know perfectly well you shouldn’t say things like that!” she exclaimed. Momentarily the humour in her eyes accentuated. “Particularly to one so much your senior,” she added. “And now, to show his displeasure, Sir Adrian is going to deprive you of his company.” She turned directly to the baronet. “I think I'd like’ a cocktail.'’ Then to Evadne, “Pin going to tell Beth to bring you to see me just as soon as it can be arranged. I think probably we shall get on quite well together.” Again, as with a not quite successfully camouflaged unwillingness, Sir Adrian bent over Evadne's hand, his glance was too direct. “And I hope, also, to give myself the honour of welcoming you to London,” he said. Toby clicked his tongue. “Oh, go away! he cried, and with a cold glance at him the baronet fell in at Clare’s side. Following them with his eyes, Toby said, apologetically: “I’m sorry, but that particular type stirs my spleen, raises my ire, gets my goat, and gives me a pain in the neck generally. But to talk about something pleasant. Welcome ft) our village. And. may I call you Evadne?” T don’t in the leatl see why you should,” she said. ‘By virtue of our close family relationship,” he pointed out. “Beth's brother, who was your cousin—and incidentally my own closest friend r married my sister. Surely that brings me into the fold of consanguinity. Or should it be primogeniture? Both are very nice words.” “There's no consanguinity about it,” she said with decision. “And as at present I don’t know you from a hole in the ground, I think we'lj leave it at ‘Miss Ransome.' Fop the time being, anyway.” “Just as you say.” His voice was light, his eyes glinting with all the old irresponsibility. "And what,” he went on to ask, “are your first impressions of the gay metropolis? and, incidentally, its inhabitants— such ap you've seen of ’em?” There was the same note of disillusion here that, in their conversation on the Journey to London, had been so apparent in Beth; that, too, she had sensed as dormant behind the reticence of Clare Maulden. To Evad-' ne, accustomed always to those who livei earnestly and' with exuberance, these people seemed to exist in a kind of spiritual coma. As if through the extinguishing some vital Inward spark, so Jong as one day merged with no actual discomfort into the next, nothing appeared either to count or matter. Some day, perhaps, when she knew Toby Conquest better, she’d put this up to him.