She glanced roguishly over her shoulder at her step-sister, repeating: “They do, don’t they?”
“Yes,” said Beatrice, “I’m afraid we’re as old-fashioned as that.”
Lady Dobie laughed again; it was a trick she had, a way of filling up gaps in conversation. If a silence fell she laughed and said “Well?” Thus had she earned for herself a reputation for high spirits.
They took their seats at a round table and Sir Samuel said:
“Is it quite impossible for Elaine to be in time? We put back dinner for her, for she couldn’t be ready by eight, but if there’s to be no improvement we’ll have it at seven-thirty. That’s when I like my dinner.” He turned to Beatrice, explaining that he very often dined at the House, but he had arranged to be at home this evening in honour of her arrival.
“That was very kind,” said Beatrice, with conviction, and her step-sister added, “Yes, isn’t he a sweet thing?”
Lady Dobie was responsible for most of the conversation.
“And had you a pleasant journey, Beatrice? But I think I asked you that before, and, anyway, what does it matter when it’s over? I hate railway travelling myself. Flying is what I love. So bird-like! No more Channel streams for me. Of course the air’s quite as sick-making, more so, if anything, but not quite so humiliating, somehow. . . . Ah, here’s Elaine! Come and kiss your step-aunt, dear thing, and tell her you’re sorry not to have been on the platform at Euston! In Glasgow they still meet their guests at the station.”
Beatrice saw a very tall, very slim girl, with a small tired face under a mop of dense black hair, and a vivid mouth. She seemed to advance reluctantly, and Beatrice, rising to meet her, wondered at the absorbed frown she wore, when, suddenly, a most charming smile broke over her face, and she bent and kissed her new relative.
“Well, Elaine,” said her father, as she took her place.
“Well, Papa,” said Elaine.
“You’re a quarter of an hour late. Did you know that?”
“I gathered it from the fact that you had reached the fish. But as you didn’t wait for me, does it matter?”
“Of course it matters. I like things done decently and in order, and to have to go into dinner raggedly, with one missing—well, I don’t like it.”
“I’m sorry, Papa.”
“Well, don’t let it happen again. I have so few evenings with my family.”
“I know. Busy public man. Don’t get pathetic, Papa.”
“And don’t you be pert, my girl.”
Lady Dobie laughed and cried: “Stop sparring, you two, or you’ll give Beatrice a bad impression of our happy home.” She turned to the new-comer, adding, “It’s worse when Stewart’s home from Oxford; Samuel’s down on him all the time. It comes of being well brought up. Nothing makes one feel so superior all through life. Take warning, you girls, and never marry a man who has been well brought up—it’s too wearing.” She kissed her hand to her husband, saying, “That’s too bad, Big Boy, isn’t it?”
Sir Samuel went on eating as if he hadn’t heard her. Beatrice stole a glance at Elaine’s unsmiling face, but it was inscrutable.
The meal proceeded; the servants walked softly round the table; Beatrice and her brother conversed a little about the Park Place house; Lady Dobie threw remarks about like shuttle-cocks.
Afterwards, in the drawing-room, which Beatrice thought interesting but unpleasing, they passed what seemed a very long evening.
Elaine settled herself beside a lamp with a workbox beside her and a gramophone playing at her ear; and worked feverishly at something, hardly raising her head. Lady Dobie fiddled with the wireless, turning knobs till she had almost five stations at once, then wearied of it, and went into the adjoining room to do some telephoning. Her voice could be heard laughing and ejaculating, and Beatrice reflected that there can be few sillier sounds than a person giggling into a telephone. Sir Samuel was peacefully asleep, with the evening paper on his knee.
Some books lay on a table, and Beatrice went to look at them. They were new novels from The Times Book Club by authors unknown to her. Picking out the most likely-looking she took it to a chair near a light, remembering a remark of Mrs. Lithgow’s—“You can always bury Beatrice in a book.”
What would they be doing now, the Lithgows? Peggy, she remembered, was going out with her Harry. The couple at home would be peacefully reading, talking a little, listening to the news, perhaps—such an evening as she and her mother had delighted to spend. How quickly the hours had gone! To-night time seemed to stand still, but that was the result of being in new surroundings. But anyway the worst was over, the first plunge taken.
She found that she liked her step-brother better in his own home than in Glasgow, and found him rather pathetic. Lady Dobie, though odd, doubtless meant to be kind. Elaine interested her; she seemed so withdrawn. What a curiously sad little face it was—but what a charming smile! How did she come to be the daughter of Samuel and Betha Dobie? Elaine, the lily-maid. The name on most girls would have been ridiculous, but it suited her. What was she making so diligently, surrounded with odds and ends of old finery, tinsel and sham emeralds, ermine and rose velvet?
Elaine, looking up for a second, caught her guest’s eyes fixed on her, and turned off the gramophone.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I should have asked if you minded this noise. I rather like it myself. . . . I’m making things for some tableaux—that’s the picture,” she pitched it across to Beatrice who caught and studied it.
“You see,” said Elaine, “the striped muslin and the scarf? That’s the one I’ve to be, but I’m helping with the others as well. People are so lazy.”
“You like to make things?” Beatrice asked.
“If I didn’t I wouldn’t do it.”
“I wonder,” said Beatrice diffidently, “if I could help. I’m not much good, I’m afraid, but——”
“Oh, don’t trouble, Higgins does all the long seams. I like to do the fiddling bits that take time.” She glanced round the room, at her sleeping father, at the open door through which issued sounds of her mother on the telephone, and remarked:
“This is pretty deadly for you. As a family we make wretched home-keepers. My father always sleeps if he’s in for an evening—bored with our society. My mother doesn’t know what to do with herself and flies to the telephone for distraction. I don’t know how other families manage, but we don’t seem able to stand each other undiluted.”
Beatrice laughed. “Then it’s a good thing you live in the midst of distractions. I don’t suppose you are ever much alone?”
“Not if mother can help it. Father issued orders—he doesn’t often do it, but when he does it’s as well to obey—that we were to be in to-night, and alone, in order to welcome you. I pointed out that it was a poor sort of welcome, that we were at our worst en familie, that one or two well-chosen acquaintances would make things easier for you as well as for us, but father knew best—and this is the result.”
“I see nothing wrong with it,” said Beatrice. “Your father’s having a rest; you are getting some work done; your mother’s amusing herself; I am sitting in a comfortable chair with a book that is—quite fairly interesting.”
“What is it? Oh, that. It’s like a plum-pudding, so full of rich ingredients you get a surfeit after a little. I’ve one upstairs you might like. At least—d’you care for history?”
Lady Dobie’s voice came shrilly