‘Who’s that?’
‘Eva, Alice, Eva.’
‘Eva Alice Eva: I don’t know the name. Alice is my name: would you kindly spell yours?’
Mrs. Stornway spelt it.
‘My darling Eva, how good of you to telephone, though of course you know I hardly ever use it, it makes me feel so deaf. Can’t bear to feel deaf at my age. Had you anything to say, dearest?’
‘Oh, Alice, I’ve got such heaps to tell you. May I come round tomorrow?’
‘I’m afraid I’m engaged to-morrow.’
‘Wednesday then?’
‘Wednesday is no good.’
‘What about Thursday?’
‘Dearest Eva, you mustn’t let me take up your whole week! Couldn’t you tell me now?’
‘It’s about Mr. Blandfoot’s picture.’
‘His brick shirt?’
‘No, his picture.’
‘Oh,’ in disappointed tones. ‘Have you seen it?’
‘No.’
‘I thought not. Then what have you got to say about it?
‘He wants you to see it, he wants to show it to you.’
‘To me? Oh no. That wouldn’t do. Oh no. Not at my age. I’m too old to look at pictures: I make them myself now.’
‘Well, that’s what he said.’
‘Darling, how frivolous you are. Come and see me on Friday. Yes, Mr. Hesketh will still be here. There’s no sign of his going away.’
It was two days later. Dinner was over, and Mrs. Marling and Mr. Hesketh were sitting over their port: over his port, that is. It had ceased to circulate. As Mr. Hesketh raised his glass, his rich booming voice caused tiny tremors to appear on the surface of the wine.
‘You ought to drink more port,’ said Mrs. Marling. ‘It’s well known to be good for the throat.’ Her pose was upright and her slender body never moved; but there was a hint of weariness in the lines round her eyes.
‘Very kind of you, my dear Alice, I’m sure,’ replied Mr. Hesketh, refilling his glass and staring into it. ‘I shall take your advice to heart. How long has this very excellent port wine lain in your cellar?’
‘You must ask Dodge,’ said Mrs. Marling. ‘He has the key. But I believe my husband put some down the same year that The Logic of the Grape came out—twenty-five years ago?’
‘Thirty.’
‘To look at you,’ said Mrs. Marling, with one of her rare smiles, ‘who would have thought it? Of the two vintages, if I may say so, I prefer your novel.’ She sipped her wine.
‘It has often occurred to me to wonder, Alice,’ remarked Mr. Hesketh, pleased by the compliment—as everyone was pleased when Mrs. Marling said something nice to them, so clearly did she go out of her way to do it—‘why, when Richard died, you stayed on here, a triton among minnows?’ He put his hands on the table-edge and looked hard at her, as though he really wanted an answer.
‘But does that matter when whales like yourself, great, gambolling, famous, good-natured whales, come to stay with me?’
‘Unfortunately, I can’t be here all the time,’ said Mr. Hesketh a trifle heavily.
‘But you’re here a good time—at least I mean when you’re here I have a good time,’ said Mrs. Marling.
‘You are quite right,’ the novelist agreed. Like many people slightly under the influence of alcohol, he was appealing to the Past to give up a decaying friendship, and he thought the best way of recovering it was by a series of intimate references to their common memories. ‘With your talents, if you had lived in London, you might have done almost anything—you might have gone far, very far.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ replied Mrs. Marling. ‘But don’t you think it’s better that I should be somebody in Settlemarsh than almost nobody in London?’
‘Oh, my dear Alice,’ Mr. Hesketh exclaimed, ‘don’t mistake my meaning. I was talking to Dick Gresham the other day, and Richard Gresham is not a man to use words lightly, and he said, “Of all the women I ever knew” (and he’s known a great many) “the most brilliant by far was Alice Ingilby” (that’s you, of course). “Most provincial towns are deadly,” he said, “and Settlemarsh not least; but when you had met her, say just coming away from church, the very bricks and slates sparkled, and the streets were alive with joy!” Once, he said, when he had met you he counted all the palings between his house and Chittlegate, it was so impossible, after one had talked to you, not to find the world interesting! And now I come and I see you surrounded by wretched second-rate people swarming in jerry-built bungalows, with no feeling for the art of life, only an idle curiosity in what the day brings forth and a pitiful competitive snobbishness that has its goal, as it always had, in you.’
Mrs. Marling was silent for a moment after this tribute. To what emotion the slight movement of the muscles about her mouth testified, who could say? Then her eyes hardened, she leaned back as though taking control of the conversation and said:
‘At least I haven’t troubled you with these second-rate people. I kept them from you. It is true they can only take in one word at a time, and your longer speeches might be above their heads. I have always tried to do my best for everybody, Arthur! Even when that means not seeing them for months together! I have my duty to these unhappy creatures, you forget that. You’re so mobile, you’re such a gadabout and welcome in so many houses, you don’t remember what it is to stay at home and hear about the gardener’s baby. You have a large public which looks after you—I a small district which I look after—don’t I seem,’ she went on, her mood lightening, ‘to have the cares of the community on my shoulders? And if you think I should like to live always among brilliant people like yourself you mistake me utterly, Arthur! You are a treat to me, a sugar-plum, a prize for a good, clever girl. But I’m not often good and hardly ever clever, and I couldn’t have you here very much, I shouldn’t dare. Oh no! Oh no!’ she went on, wagging her finger at him. ‘You and your standards would kill me. I must have my stupid friends, that you haven’t been allowed to see, to come in and say one word at a time—one word at a time. “Does—Mrs.—Peets—dye—her hair?” That’s the sort of thing I really enjoy. But now, tell me, where have you seen my second-rate friends, swarming in their bungalows? You can’t have seen them. They live in fashionable Little Settlemarsh, far from this slum. You can’t have heard their wireless sets, much less them.’
Mrs. Marling had put her question like an inquisitor, and the novelist, the wheels of whose conversational machinery had run down while she talked, did not answer immediately. Moreover, it was never easy to tell Mrs. Marling of an acquaintance of whom she might not approve.
‘I ran into Catcomb yesterday,’ he said as casually as he could.
‘What, that man? I thought he was dead years ago!’
‘No,’ said Mr. Hesketh, his confidence returning now that the worst was over. ‘He’s very much alive and bubbling over with excitement.’
‘He always was,’ Mrs. Marling murmured with distaste.
‘Excitement because a man has come to live in Settlemarsh who owns a picture of fabulous value. It’s so valuable, it seems, that he won’t let it out of his sight.’
‘Or into anyone else’s,’ Mrs. Marling put in.
‘I’m coming to that. In places like this people exaggerate. What they mean is he keeps it under lock and key. From the description, size, subject, etc., and the fact that it was found in Java, always a Dutch colony, I should judge it to be a Vermeer. In fact I’m practically sure it’s a Vermeer: so few of them are known, there must be more somewhere.’
‘Do you mean to say that this Mr. Blandfoot conceals about his person a picture by Vermeer?’
‘No, no, but if he is a prudent man, and the picture is as yet unauthenticated, no doubt he keeps it in a safe place. But the point I was coming to is this.’
‘Well?’
‘You know how reluctant he has been—naturally, considering its value—to let anyone see the picture?’