Death and the Dancing Footman Read Online Free PDF Page A

tulips and in phrases, charming for their truth, of daisies.’ Unfortunately the glass-houses were not equal to Leigh Hunt in midwinter, but here, you see, is the great Doctor’s ensign of supreme command, the myrtle; and here, after all, is most of poor Ophelia’s rather dreary little collection. The sombre note predominates. But upstairs I have let myself go again. A riot of snowdrops for Chloris (you take the allusion to William Stone’s charming conceit?), tuberoses and even some orchids for Madame Lisse, and so on.”
    “And for Mrs. Compline?”
    “A delightful arrangement of immortelles.”
    “Aren’t you rather cruel?”
    “Dear me, I don’t think so,” said Jonathan, with a curious glance at his guest. “I hope you admire the really superb cactus on your window-sill, Aubrey. John Nash might pause before it, I believe, and begin to plan some wonderful arrangement of greys and elusive greens. And now I must telephone to Sandra Compline and after that to Dr. Hart. I am making the bold move of suggesting he drive Madame Lisse. Hersey has her own car. Will you excuse me?”
    “One moment. What flowers have you put in your own room?”
    “Honesty,” said Jonathan.
    Mrs. Compline, her son William, and his fiancée Chloris Wynne, arrived by car at four o’clock. Mandrake discovered himself to be in almost as high a state of excitement as his host. He was unable to decide whether Jonathan’s party would prove to be disastrous, amusing, or merely a bore, but the anticipation, at least, was enthralling. He had formed a very precise mental picture of each of the guests. William Compline, he decided, would present the most interesting subject-matter. The exaggerated filial devotion, hinted at by Jonathan, brought him into the sphere of Mandrake’s literary interest. And muttering “mother-fixation” to himself, he wondered if indeed he should find in William the starting point for a new dramatic poem. Poetically, Mrs. Compline’s disfigurement might best be conveyed by a terrible mask, seen in the background of William’s spoken thoughts. “Perhaps in the final scene,” thought Mandrake, “I should let them turn into the semblance of animals. Or would that be a little banal?” For not the least of a modern poetic dramatist’s problems lies in the distressing truth that where all is strange nothing escapes the imputation of banality. But in William Compline with his dullish appearance, his devotion to his mother, his dubious triumph over his brother, Mandrake hoped to find matter for his art. He was actually picturing an opening scene in which William, standing between his mother and his fiancée, appeared against a sky composed of cubes of greenish light, when the drawing-room door opened and Caper announced them.
    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 Wynne was about twenty-three, and very, very pretty. Her light gold hair was pulled back from her forehead and moulded into cusps, so rigidly placed that they might have been made of any material rather than hair. Her eyes were wide apart and