Timothy blushed and was pleased, but looked a bit startled.
“I used to do them for Margaret sometimes, and she liked them. Lately, I’ve been doing them again for the Boy Scouts who come here; they all like them.”
“Well, you come up to lunch, and we’ll discuss the future. These things are the real thing, and put your nature studies behind the wainscot.”
“About this Russian cousin,” Timothy asked; “you said it was a she. Does she speak English?”
“Yes. She’s like Margaret.”
“All right. I suppose I’d better shave.”
Frampton stayed talking with Timothy for a while, then turned back to the house.
“This cousin of yours is a ballet dancer,” he said, as he left. “She has four friends with her, so you’d certainly better shave; and put on a tie, if that isn’t asking too much.”
“I’ve got a fine tie somewhere,” Timothy said.
Frampton went back to the house wondering what had happened, while he had been at Spirr. He supposed that the Sorya would have looked at the photographs and then, perhaps, been moved to look at the portraits, and then, having realised how like she was to Margaret, and her effect upon himself, might have come to some decision about it. Anyhow, she would know now that he could not look upon her without being deeply moved, and moved in a way which most women would resent, not for any quality in herself, but for her resemblance to someone dead. He had pointed this out to her as delicately as he could; if she had fled, while he was away, he would understand.
But she had not fled. She was on the terrace, beside the long pond, when he came in. He had the feeling that she was waiting for him. She was looking at him with interest and some pity.
“Zeila Aranowski was saying that you have a theatre here,” she said. “Is that true, or was it something that she didn’t quite understand?”
“No, it’s true. There it is, yonder. Would you care to see it? You’d better get a wrap, while I get the keys; you know how chill an unused theatre can be.”
“I do know that,” she said.
He led the way to the theatre.
“Are any of your sisters down?” he asked.
She thought not. They were having a long lie; later in the day they would have a practice, but for the moment they were enjoying life. He opened the door and let her into the green room and thence to the stage.
“This is the stage,” he said. “It is rather long and narrow, and steeply raked. Will you wait a moment, while I go to my seat? I want to see you make your debut.”
He vaulted down into the house and took his seat. With inimitable grace, she danced down to the footlights, and made the dancer’s adorable reverence to the imaginary audience.
“I’m afraid the stage is too much raked for a ballet,” he said.
“Not at all; it’s only the back that’s raked,” she said. “This space here, the acting area, is barely raked at all. The backs of these old stages were used for display and what the old writers call perspectives, which gave illusions of distance. You could give adorable small ballets, with a few dancers and music by Gluck and Mozart. It is a wonderful place, and so beautiful.”
“It’s luck to have escaped the Gothic revivalist,” he said. “He would have pulled it down and put up black and white rafters and pierced a few loop-holes for bows. But just when the Gothic chap was in charge, in matters of taste, it was in use as a kennel for hounds, and later as a fowl-house. It is pretty much as it was at first now, I think.”
“But who built it?”
“One of these mad English,” he said.
“And have you given many performances here?” she asked.
“I? No,” he said. “There are no performers, and worse still, no audience here.”
“I should have thought you would spend all your time here, giving performances.”
“Not I. I spend my time inventing things that’ll blast people dead without danger to the blaster. I make death swift for the receiver and comfortable to the giver. Anything that shortens war and limits the rule of generals in human affairs, that’s the kind of thing I study. You said, a moment ago, that you will all have to do a practice or exercises some time to-day.”
“We shall have to go in to Stubbington for that,” she said, “to be with the others.”
“Why not have them all out here and exercise in the theatre or in the court outside?” he suggested. “I can telephone and arrange it. You have a transport ’bus, and I could manage to bring some here; and I can give the party some tea later. Why not?”
Sorya could see no reason why not. It would be a pleasure to them all. As they walked back to the house, she said:
“I went to look at my cousin’s portraits. I left your photographs of her on your table there.”
“Thank you,” he said. “For the moment we won’t speak of that. You will understand that I had to show you.”
He arranged for the company to come that afternoon to practise in the theatre. It chanced that the weather improved steadily as the day progressed. At two o’clock, the wind had died, and a hot autumn sun was shining, so that many people from Stubbington drove out to Stubbington Hill, behind Mullples, parked their cars, and came to the edge to see the view. It was at its best on a sunny autumn afternoon, when some trees were bare, and the others in different colours, when the autumn ploughing had turned up red, brown and yellow fields, and the green crops of roots had not been taken. In parts of this expanse flood water was gleaming. The view from Mullples edge stretched away and away. Many who loved the view loved to come a little forward, so as to see Mullples Lake and the line of the severe roof ridge.
Among those who came forward, as it chanced, on this Sunday afternoon, were Mrs. Method-Methodde and her friends, the Morral-Galles. They had focussed their glasses on the blue smears in the distance, to see whether they could distinguish Burnt Top from Bildon, when they became aware of a bus near the court of Mullples, a yellow, rather battered bus, which had an air of knowing a thing or two. In the court-yard, a company of men and women appeared.
“Who can these be?” Mrs. Method-Methodde asked.
To the company came others, to wit the gun-man and his man, bearing what they could not identify upon a wheelbarrow. The thing was taken from the barrow. It was a gramophone. Distant as it was, a faint strain or two came to them from it, and the company began to dance.
“I’ve seen that thing,” Mr. Morral-Galle said. “It’s the Circasses; quite a well-known ballet.”
“Circasses?” Mrs. Method-Methodde cried. “But those must be the Circassians who were at the Pitte Rooms. I wouldn’t let my maids go. They looked a dreadful set. I saw two of them in the street. And Mr. Mansell has them out to dance on a Sunday.”
Shocking as the sight was, she watched it. There they were, in the open air, dancing themselves to damnation, while preaching red revolution and doubtless practising free love. And on a Sunday, too. And the worst of it was that the earth didn’t open to swallow them. They danced for a long time, and then all trooped away to the house.
“So,” she concluded, “he is giving them tea; those people. Really, to bring those people to Mullples, which was once a monastery, is a little too much. They had a dreadful poster in Stubbington which gave a lot of offence.”
However, it was a new sin of the gunman’s, and as such a good topic for talk.
As he watched the dancers, on his stage, Frampton thought:
“Why should they not dance a ballet here next Spring? Cobb longs to design for the ballet; the young poet whom I met longs to invent for it, and the musician Harold spoke of, whose work I so much liked, has all sorts of schemes. Why should they not get busy and make something for the Sorya and the others to dance here? It is true, there is no audience; but I shall have some people on the Waste then, and I’ll get my main audience down from London. I’ll make it a big thing. It is true, I know nothing of dance-writing, and know no one who does. But I’ll get the best chap there is, when I’ve the fable and the music. And by Christmas, I myself will have learned all that a layman can learn of the art. These swine tried to stamp on Margaret, when they drew Spirr. They tried to stamp on Sorya, not coming to her dance yesterday. My Golly, they shall long to come to her dance here and not be asked. That’ll make ’em squirm. These people will be touring England till after Christmas, and then go to the South of France for a short season. After that, I’ll get them for my thing, or the best of them. I’ll make this Sorya famous here, and this place famous, too, as the home of a new ballet.”