"I would love to, but for an engagement at Buckingham Palace," he assured her gravely. "Are they often down at Beechcroft?"
"Yes, she's taken a fancy to the twins. They love her. I'm passing on to her all my ideas about how to treat children."
"Well, don't introduce me, if I should run across them with you," he warned her.
"I shan't. Though Mr. Pusey likes them, so why shouldn't you?"
"Pusey? Is that the name of the chap who seems to haunt Beechcroft lately?"
She nodded with a glint in her eye.
He followed her out after she had said good-bye to Santley, and came in again a few minutes later looking distinctly glum.
"Pusey, indeed!" he said under his breath. "Silly young bounder without an idea in his head! Ann's always talking about him lately. I can't think what she sees in him!"
Santley smiled, unnoticed by the other.
"The trouble with Ann is that she's too fond of improving people," Goodenough went on, feeling for the matches. He knew the studio quite well.
Santley murmured that there weren't too many girls nowadays with that complaint.
"Oh, quite! But it's apt to spread. I mean, a girl begins by wanting to improve the young. Well, that's all right. We had to suffer as kids, so why not the present generation? But she's liable to carry it a step further, and want to improve her friends, and—well—you never know where that sort of thing will stop."
He so obviously wanted it to stop short of himself, that Santley chaffed him, but Goodenough refused to let his gloom be lightened.
"I had counted a lot on Cromer," he said finally, "a lot! I should have had Ann all to myself—"
"—except for the Mishes—charming name that!" Santley reminded him.
Goodenough gave a sort of contemptuous grunt that said that he would have made short work of them. "Whereas down at Beechcroft lately...who is this booby Pusey? D'ye know?"
"Ann spoke of some connection with the Major's business affairs."
Goodenough snorted, and took his leave on that, looking thoroughly disgruntled. The next minute the artist forgot him and his woes, for he had a French buyer coming to look over his pictures, a buyer whose approval conferred a cachet even on Oliver Santley.
Mrs. Phillimore came back just as he had finished his selection. There was still half an hour before the expert would arrive, and Santley solicitously drew a chair forward for her. The air did not seem to have done her any good. She looked very ill.
"Oliver, I must have a word with you! I couldn't bear to hear the laughter of those children. It quite upset me. For what I want to talk to you about is so terrible."
"Yes?" he asked in genuine concern. Mrs. Phillimore had dandled him on her knee as a baby, and he was very much attached to her.
"It's about my son-in-law, about Major Moncrieff," she said and her face paled still more.
Now, though not clever, Mrs. Phillimore was a very shrewd, sensible woman. For her to turn white when she spoke Moncrieff's name meant a great deal.
"It's in strict confidence," she began, and actually waited for his assurance.
He wondered, as he gave it, what was coming. But he was not prepared for her next words.
"Harry Moncrieff is going mad—raving mad. Or else he takes drugs and is not always responsible for his actions." She spoke almost in a whisper, her eyes dilated. "My poor Lavinia! No wonder she has changed into something so white and frightened. And the twins! No one at Beechcroft can be safe with that man. I thought he was going to murder me this morning. I think he would have, had we been alone in the house. As it was, though he chased me round the breakfast table, I managed to get out of the room and away from the house. I couldn't find Lavinia...Ann Bladeshaw had left with the twins and Nannie...The chauffeur refused to drive me to the station..." She stopped and seemed unable to go on.
Santley felt as though he were in a dream. She gratefully took the glass of water that he held out to her. He was too dumbfounded to ask any questions. Mrs. Phillimore looked her usual truthful self, though very upset. He eyed her almost fearfully. She read his glance.
"Oh no, I'm not romancing. I wish I were! I've been as fond of Harry as though he were in truth my son. But—" she hesitated, took another sip of water, and then the words came out in a flood. This was the second time that she had stayed with the Moncrieffs since their marriage now nearly five years old. The first time, some three years ago, had deepened still more the ties between them all. They had asked her to make her permanent home with them, but Mrs. Phillimore lived in Switzerland with an invalid niece, who took so much of her time and care that she could only rarely get free. She had, however, intended to stay at Beechcroft for six weeks in the autumn, but as her niece had to have a sudden operation and a long convalescence in a medical home, she had written to say that she would come now, and had arrived at the same time as her letter, taking her daughter and the Major by surprise.
She had had a feeling from the first that she was not welcome, that her son-in-law did not want her, and that even her daughter wished that she had kept to the time on which they had originally settled. But Mrs. Phillimore was badly off. Her niece's operation had left her momentarily high and dry, and she had made all her arrangements. She had let her little chalet at Montreux. She could not afford hotels in England, and boarding-houses were out of the question. There was nothing for it but not to notice trifles, she thought.
"Not that Lavinia loves me any the less, Oliver, but she's so completely under his thumb these days. Completely. My laughing, pretty, gay Lavinia is changed almost out of knowledge. Why didn't you tell me? Where were your eyes this last year?"
Now Santley had noticed that Lavinia Moncrieff was a great deal thinner and paler and more silent of late than she used to be. But he had attributed it all to the craze for slimming. He had seen so many laughing girls changed into morose cigarette-fiends for the sake of a figure, that he had not given the alteration in Lavinia a thought. Nor had he seen as much of her as her mother assumed to have been the case.
"She's changed out of all knowledge," Mrs. Phillimore went on passionately. "She looks as though she cries a great deal more than she laughs nowadays. She's grown pale and haggard. She jumps, too, at any sound, and goes quite white when she hears a bang outside, if it's only a tyre bursting."
"But this morning...the reason for your leaving Beechcroft so hurriedly—" prompted Santley. He thought that he must have misunderstood her before.
"I'm coming to that, but I want to explain that, in the three days of my visit, things have steadily got worse and worse. Or rather Harry has. At first he tried simply to show me that I wasn't particularly welcome." She flushed. "Next day, he was frightfully rude to me when we were alone. When Lavinia or any one else is present, he simply ignores me, or even—at times—pretends to his old affection for me. Or no!" She put a hand to her head. "Poor, unhappy man! I don't think it's pretence. He is himself at those times, and not himself at the other times. I think he knows that. And I think Lavinia suspects the truth. Else why is it they see so little of their old friends, and never seem to have any one to stay with them nowadays?"
Santley, with a slight start, realised that the Moncrieffs had rather withdrawn from things this last year. He hardly ever saw either of them. Or heard of them. And it was true that, until these tableaux came up, he hadn't been asked to Beechcroft. They had only had the house a little over a year. And, thinking quickly, he did not remember having heard of any one else staying down there.
"Perhaps they're hard up," he suggested. "If you're hard up, as Goodenough says, you've dashed few friends."
"On the contrary," Mrs. Phillimore said. And added, to his great surprise, "They're much better off than they've any right to be. I mean the kind of table they set in such a forlornly furnished house, staffed by a couple of untidy maids. It might be Claridges