i

It was on that same night that there was an open flaring row between Paul and Fenella on the one hand and Sir Henry Ancred on the other. It occurred at the climax of a game of backgammon between Troy and Sir Henry. He had insisted upon teaching her this complicated and maddening game. She would have enjoyed it more if she hadn’t discovered very early in the contest that her opponent disliked losing so intensely that her own run of beginner’s luck had plunged him into the profoundest melancholy. He had attempted to explain to her the chances of the possible combinations of a pair of dice, adding, with some complacency, that he himself had completely mastered this problem. Troy had found his explanation utterly incomprehensible, and began by happily moving her pieces with more regard for the pattern they made on the board than for her chances of winning the game. She met with uncanny success. Sir Henry, who had entered the game with an air of gallantry, finding pretty frequent occasions to pat Troy’s fingers, became thoughtful, then pained, and at last gloomy. The members of his family, aware of his mortification, watched in nervous silence. Troy moved with reckless abandon. Sir Henry savagely rattled his dice. Greatly to her relief the tide turned. She gave herself a “blot” and looked up, to find Fenella and Paul watching her with an extraordinary expression of anxiety. Sir Henry prospered and soon began to “bear”, Paul and Fenella exchanged a glance. Fenella nodded and turned pale.

“Aha!” cried Sir Henry in triumph. “The winning throw, I think! The winning throw!”

He cast himself back in his chair, gazed about him and laughed delightedly. It was at this juncture that Paul, who was standing on the hearthrug with Fenella, put his arm round her and kissed her with extreme heartiness and unmistakable intention. “Fenella and I,” he said loudly, “are going to be married.”

There followed an electrified silence, lasting perhaps for ten seconds.

Sir Henry then picked up the backgammon board and threw it a surprising distance across the drawing-room.

“And temper,” Paul added, turning rather pale, “never got anybody anywhere.”

Miss Orrincourt gave a long whistle. Millamant dropped on her knees and began to pick up backgammon pieces.

Pauline Kentish, gazing with something like terror at her son, gabbled incoherently: “No, darling! No, please! No, Paul, don’t be naughty. No! Fenella!”

Cedric, his mouth open, his eyes glistening, rubbed his hands and made his crowing noise. But he, too, looked frightened.

And all the Ancreds, out of the corners of their eyes, watched Sir Henry.

He was the first man Troy had ever seen completely given over to rage. She found the exhibition formidable. If he had not been an old man his passion would have been less disquieting because less pitiable. Old lips, shaking with rage; old eyes, whose fierceness was glazed by rheum; old hands, that jerked in uncoordinated fury; these were intolerable manifestations of emotion.

Troy got up and attempted an inconspicuous retreat to the door.

“Come back,” said her host violently. Troy returned. “Hear how these people conspire to humiliate me. Come back, I say.” Troy sat on the nearest chair.

“Papa!” whispered Pauline, weaving her hands together, and “Papa!” Millamant echoed, fumbling with the dice. “Please! So bad for you. Upsetting yourself! Please!”

He silenced them with a gesture and struggled to his feet. Paul, holding Fenella by the arm, waited until his grandfather stood before him and then said rapidly: “We’re sorry to make a scene. I persuaded Fen that this was the only way to handle the business. We’ve discussed it with you in private, Grandfather, and you’ve told us what you feel about it. We don’t agree. It’s our show, after all, and we’ve made up our minds. We could have gone off and got married without saying anything about it, but neither of us wanted to do that. So we thought—”

“We thought,” said Fenella rather breathlessly, “we’d just make a general announcement.”

“Because,” Paul added, “I’ve sent one already to the papers and we wanted to tell you before you read it.”

“But, Paul darling—” his mother faintly began.

“You damned young puppy,” Sir Henry roared out, “what do you mean by standing up with that god-damned conceited look on your face and talking poppycock to ME?”

“Aunt Pauline,” said Fenella, “I’m sorry if you’re not pleased, but—”

“Ssh!” said Pauline.

“Mother is pleased,” said Paul. “Aren’t you, Mother?”

“Ssh!” Pauline repeated distractedly.

“Be silent!” Sir Henry shouted. He was now in the centre of the hearth-rug. It seemed to Troy that his first violence was being rapidly transmuted into something more histrionic and much less disturbing. He rested an elbow on the mantelpiece. He pressed two fingers and a thumb against his eyelids, removed his hand slowly, kept his eyes closed, frowned as if in pain, and finally sighed deeply and opened his eyes very wide indeed.

“I’m an old fellow,” he said in a broken voice. “An old fellow. It’s easy to hurt me. Very easy. You have dealt me a shrewd blow. Never mind. Let me suffer. Why not? It won’t be for long. Not for long, now.”

“Papa, dearest,” cried Pauline, sweeping up to him and clasping her hands. “You make us utterly miserable. Don’t speak like that, don’t. Not for the world would my boy cause you a moment’s unhappiness. Let me talk quietly to these children. Papa, I implore you.”

“This,” a voice whispered in Troy’s ear, “is perfect Pinero.” She jumped violently. Cedric had slipped round behind his agitated relations and now leant over the back of her chair, “She played the name part, you know, in a revival of The Second Mrs. Tanqueray.”

“It’s no use, Pauline. Let them go. They knew my wishes. They have chosen the cruellest way. Let them,” said Sir Henry with relish, “dree their weird.”

“Thank you, Grandfather,” said Fenella brightly, but with a shake in her voice. “It’s our weird and we shall be delighted to dree it.”

Sir Henry’s face turned an uneven crimson. “This is insufferable,” he shouted, and his teeth, unable to cope with the violence of his diction, leapt precariously from their anchorage and were clamped angrily home. Fenella giggled nervously. “You are under age,” Sir Henry pronounced suddenly. “Under age, both of you. Pauline, if you have the smallest regard for your old father’s wishes, you will forbid this lunacy. I shall speak to your mother, miss. I shall cable to your father.”

“Mother won’t mind,” said Fenella.

“You know well, you know perfectly well, why I cannot countenance this nonsense.”

“You think, don’t you, Grandfather,” said Fenella, “that because we’re cousins we’ll have loopy young. Well, we’ve asked about that and it’s most unlikely. Modern medical opinion—”

“Be silent! At least let some semblance of decency—”

“I won’t be silent,” said Fenella, performing with dexterity the feat known by actors as topping the other man’s lines. “And if we’re to talk about decency, Grandfather, I should have thought it was a damn sight more decent for two people who are young and in love to say they’re going to marry each other than for an old man to make an exhibition of himself—”

“Fenella!” shouted Pauline and Millamant in unison.

“—doting on a peroxide blonde fifty years younger than himself, and a brazen gold-digger into the bargain.”

Fenella then burst into tears and ran out of the room, followed rigidly by Paul.

Troy, who had once more determined to make her escape, heard Fenella weeping stormily outside the door and stayed where she was. The remaining Ancreds were all talking at once. Sir Henry beat his fist on the mantelpiece until the ornaments danced again, and roared out: “My God, I’ll not have her under my roof another hour! My God—!” Millamant and Pauline, on either side of him like a distracted chorus, wrung their hands and uttered plaintive cries. Cedric chattered noisily behind the sofa, where Miss Orrincourt still lay. It was she who put a stop to this ensemble by rising and confronting them with her hands on her hips.