Dance to Your Daddy

'Well, you will admit that this house is in a lonely situation and there are valuables. These pictures, for example'-he waved his hand towards those which Dame Beatrice had noticed upon her arrival at Galliard Hall-'I am told are probably worth several thousand pounds, and I have treasures of my own. Then there are some quite valuable trinkets which, from time to time, I have given Judith. They, like the pictures, are insured, of course, but I should be loth to lose them, and so would she.'

'I am not in the least afraid of dogs,' said Dame Beatrice, 'but as you will not wish me to run the risk of being attacked, you will not be averse to accompanying me as far as the gate.'

'Oh, nonsense! Give the letter to me. I could not dream of allowing you to run your own errands when I can so easily do them for you.'

Dame Beatrice had not the slightest intention of delivering her letter into his hands. She smiled her reptilian smile and said:

'My only object was to study the stars. It is a singularly clear and beautiful night, but, as late as this, there will be no collection of letters. It will do equally well in the morning. It is only a note to my secretary about some work I want her to do while I am away. Rosamund tells me that she has a birthday coming along. When would that be? I should wish to give her a present.'

'She didn't tell you when it was?'

'She merely mentioned that she would be twenty-five years old.'

'Oh? Well, it's on the twenty-ninth of May.'

'I must remember to wear an oak-apple in my hat,' said Dame Beatrice genially.

'I hope she has not been stuffing you up with any nonsense?'

'What kind of nonsense?'

'Well, she expects to come into this money of hers when she is twenty-five, and she seems to have some manifestly absurd idea that other people are after it, and will stick at very little in order to get hold of it. All part of her aberration, of course, but I just thought I'd warn you not to take her accusations seriously, particularly if they refer to Judith and myself.'

'Of course I shall not pay attention to her fears unless they are well-founded. The twenty-ninth of May? How interesting!' She gave him a little nod and went upstairs to her room, her letter still in her hand.

CHAPTER FOUR

PIEDS-EN-L'AIR-FAMILY GATHERING

'Oh, master, if you did but hear the pedlar at the door,

you would never dance again after a pipe and tabor.'

The Winter's Tale.

(1)

The first of the guests arrived on the following day. The morning was damp and misty. Dame Beatrice, returning from dropping her letter into the pillar-box, saw that the hills behind the house were shrouded in grey and that the clouds promised rain before noon.

She joined Romilly, as before, for breakfast, and remarked that it looked like becoming a wet day. She wondered, she added, whether he was going into Swanage for a morning paper.

'No,' he replied. 'I'm expecting Tancred and some others. No telling when they're likely to turn up, so I had better stay in, and there's nobody I can send, unless your man would like to go.'

'Tancred?'

'Yes. He's a ruddy poet. I can't stand him, but he had to be asked, you know. Can't leave anybody out. Matter of fact, I can't stand any of them. Hubert might be all right, but I don't know him as well as I know the others. In any case, I have very little use for clergymen.'

Tancred Provost turned up in a taxi which he had shared with his presumed cousins Humphrey and Binnie. Humphrey, as Judith had indicated, was a somewhat seedy schoolmaster and (Romilly explained to Dame Beatrice when the visitors had been shown to their rooms) must have married Binnie in a fit of scholarly absent-mindedness or in a state of mental aberration, for they were, in all respects, a notably ill-assorted couple, he thought.

Dame Beatrice herself thought it far more likely that the shabby, ineffectual, unprepossessing man had been tempted into marriage by his partner's flaxen head, characterless, innocent, half-open mouth and babyish blue eyes which she widened, as though in surprise, in response to every remark which was made to her.

Tancred was an attractive young man, and it was clear that he was prepared to champion Binnie against her husband's weak spitefulness, for Humphrey, like most of his kind, compensated for his own shortcomings by making a butt of his dim-witted spouse. What appeared to be a typical exchange between them occurred as soon as they appeared downstairs again.

'Well, Binnie, my dear,' said Romilly, 'I expect you are ready for your lunch.'

'I'm dieting, Uncle Romilly. What are we having?'

'Well, really!' exploded Humphrey. 'What a question to ask your host!'

'A perfectly proper question, if she's dieting,' said Tancred. 'What are we having for lunch, Uncle Romilly?'

Humphrey glared at him. Romilly replied, 'I've really no idea. It's Judith's pigeon.'

'I wish it could be pigeon,' said Binnie wistfully. 'Oh, boy! How I love pigeon pie!'

'I'm afraid it won't be that. How charming you look, my dear,' said Romilly. 'If that's the result of dieting, I must admit that the sacrifice is worth it.'