Grey Mask

CHAPTER V

Miss Standing sighed, sniffed, dabbed her eyes with rather a tired-looking handkerchief, and plunged an experienced finger and thumb into the depths of a large box of Fuller’s chocolates. Having selected a luscious and melting chocolate cream, she sighed again and continued the letter which she had just begun. She wrote on a pad propped against her knee, and she addressed the bosom friend whom she left behind only two days before at Madame Mardon’s very select and expensive Swiss Academy. The words, “My darling angel Stephanie,” were scrawled across the pale blue page.

Miss Standing sucked at her chocolates and wrote on:

It’s all too perfectly horrid and beastly for words. All the way across M’amselle could only tell me that poor papa had died suddenly. She said there was only that in the telegram, and that I was to come home. And when I got here last night, there wasn’t any Mrs. Beauchamp like there always is in the holidays, and the servants looked odd. And M’amselle went off this morning, and I don’t really know what’s happened, except that Papa was at sea in his yacht somewhere in the Mediterranean. So there isn’t any funeral or anything, and of course I haven’t got any black-only just the things I came away with. And it’s all frightfully miserable. If you don’t write to me, I shall die. It’s frightful not to have anyone to talk to. The lawyer- Papa’s lawyer-is coming to talk to me this morning. He telephoned to say he was coming. I suppose I shall be simply frightfully rich. But it’s so depressing. It makes me wish I’d got some relations, even frightfully dull ones like Sophy Weir’s. Do you remember her aunt’s hat? I haven’t any relations at all except my cousin Egbert, and I’d rather have no relations than him-so would anyone. He’s the most appalling mug you ever saw.

Miss Standing frowned at the word appalling, which she had written with one p and two l’s. It didn’t look quite right. She took another chocolate, struck out one of the l’s, put in another p, and continued;

I shan’t come back to school of course. After all, I am eighteen, and they can’t make me. I do wonder if I shall have a guardian. In books the girl always marries her guardian, which I think is too frightfully dull for words. You’ll have to come and stay with me, and we’ll have a frightfully good time.

She stopped and heaved a sigh, because of course Stephanie wouldn’t be able to come till Christmas, and Christmas, to use Miss Standing’s own simple vocabulary, was a frightfully long way off-nearly three months.

She stared gloomily into the rich and solemn room. It was a very large room, running from front to back of the big London house, and it had the ordered richness of a shrine rather than any air of everyday comfort. There were priceless Persian rugs upon the floor, dim with the exquisite colouring of a bygone age. The curtains were of historic brocade, woven at Lyons before Lyons ran blood in the days of the Terror. The panelling on the walls had come from a house in the Netherlands, a house in which the great Duke of Alba had lived. On this panelling hung the Standing Collection; each picture a fortune and a collector’s prize- Gainsborough; Sir Joshua; Van Dyck; Lely; Franz Hals; Turner. No moderns.

Miss Standing frowned at the pictures; she thought them hideous and gloomy and depressing. She hated the whole room. But when she began to think of what she would do to it to make it look different, she got the sort of feeling that there would be something almost sacrilegious about doing anything with it at all. A pink carpet now, and a white wall-paper to cover up all that dark wood. It was silly to feel as if she had laughed in church; but it was the sort of feeling she got.

She consoled herself with a very succulent chocolate. It had a nougat centre. The very sofa on which she was sitting was like a sort of stage funeral pyre, all purple and gold and silver.

“I wonder what I shall look like in black. Some people look so frightful in it. But that silly man who came to the fete with the De Chauvignys said I ought to wear it-he said it would flatter me very much. And of course people always do say that fair women look nicer in black than in anything else. It’s a frightfully dull thing to look nice in.” Miss Standing opened a little leather vanity case which lay beside the box of chocolates. She took out a powder puff and a tiny mirror and began to powder her nose. The powder had a very strong scent of carnations. A glance in the mirror never failed to have a cheering effect. It is very difficult to go on being unhappy when you can see that you have a skin of milk and roses, golden brown hair with a natural wave, and eyes that are much larger and bluer than those of any other girl you know.

Margot Standing’s eyes really were rather remarkable. They were of a very pale blue, and if they had not been surrounded by ridiculously long black lashes, they might have spoilt her looks; as it was, the contrast of dark lashes and pale bright eyes gave her prettiness a touch of exotic beauty. She was of middle height, with a pretty, rather plump figure, and a trick of falling from one graceful pose into another. She wore a pleated skirt of blue serge and a white woolen jumper, both very plain; but the white wool was the softest Angora, and the serge skirt had come from a famous house in Paris.

A door at the far end of the room was opened, William, the stupidest of the footmen, murmured something inarticulate, and Mr. James Hale came slowly across the Persian carpet. Margot had never seen him before. He was her father’s lawyer and that sounded dull enough; but she thought he looked even duller than that-so very stiff, so very tall, so narrow in the shoulder, and so hairless about the brow. She said “Ouf!” to herself as she got up rather languidly to meet him.

Mr. Hale had a limp, cold hand. He said “How do you do, Miss Standing?” and cleared his throat. Then Margot sat down, and he sat down, and there was a silence, during which Mr. Hale laid the dispatch-case he had been carrying upon a chair at his side and proceeded to open it.

He looked up to find a box of chocolates under his nose.

“Do have one. The long ones are hard, but the round ones are a dream.”

“No thank you,” said Mr. Hale.

Margot took one of the round ones herself. She had eaten so many chocolates already that it was necessary to crunch it quickly in order to get the flavour. She crunched it, and Mr. Hale waited disapprovingly until she had finished. He wished to offer her his condolences upon her father’s death, and it appeared to him in the highest degree unseemly that he should do so whilst she was eating chocolates.

As she immediately replaced the chocolate by another, he abandoned the condolences altogether and plunged into business.

“I have come, Miss Standing, to ask you if you have any knowledge of the whereabouts of Mr. Standing’s will.”

Margot shook her head.

“Why, how on earth should I?”

“I don’t know. Your father might have spoken to you on the subject.”

“But I haven’t seen him for three years.”

“So long as that?”

Miss Standing nodded.

“He was very seldom here for the holidays, anyhow, and the last three years he was always in America, or Germany, or Italy, or some of those places.”

“Not Switzerland? You were at school in Switzerland, I believe.”

“Never Switzerland,” declared Miss Standing taking another chocolate.

“Did he ever write to you about his will?”

Margot’s eyes opened to their fullest extent.

“Good gracious no! Why, he practically never wrote to me at all.”

“That,” said Mr. Hale, “is unfortunate. You see, Miss Standing, we are in a difficulty. Your father’s affairs have been in our hands for the last fifteen years. But it was my father who had full knowledge of them. I know that he and the late Mr. Standing were upon terms of considerable intimacy; and if my father was still with us, the whole matter would probably be cleared up in a few minutes.”

“Isn’t your father with you?”

Mr. Hale cleared his throat and fingered a black tie.

“My father died a month ago.”

“Oh,” said Miss Standing. Then she paused, leaned forward with a sudden graceful change of attitude, and said, “Nobody’s told me anything about Papa. M’amselle said she didn’t know-only what was in the telegram, you know. You sent it, didn’t you? And so I don’t really know anything at all.”

“Mr. Standing died very suddenly,” said Mr. Hale. “He was in his yacht off Majorca.”

Margot repeated the name.

“Where is Majorca?”

Mr. Hale informed her. He also put her in possession of what he termed “the sad particulars” of her father’s death. It appeared that the yacht had been caught in a heavy gale, and that Mr. Standing, who refused to leave the deck, had been washed overboard.

Mr. Hale at this point offered his belated condolences, after which he cleared his throat and added:

“Unfortunately we are quite unable to trace any will, or to obtain any evidence that would lead us to suppose that he had ever made one.”

“Does it matter?” asked Margot indifferently.

Mr. Hale frowned. “It matters a good deal to you, Miss Standing.”

“Does it?”

“I am afraid that it does.”

“But I am his daughter anyway. Why should it matter about a will? There’s only me, isn’t there?” Her tone was still indifferent. Mr. Hale was an old fuss-pot. He wasn’t a man at all; he was just a suit of black clothes and a disapproving frown. She said with sudden irrelevance: “Please, I want some money. I haven’t got any. I bought the chocolates with my last bean. I made M’amselle stop the taxi whilst I rushed in and got them. Everything was so frightfully dismal I felt I should expire if I didn’t have chocs-it takes me that way, you know.”

Mr. Hale took no notice of this. Instead, he asked, with a gravity that was almost severe.

“Do you remember your mother at all?”

“No-of course not. I was only two.”

“When she died?”

“I suppose so.”

“Miss Standing, can you tell me your mother’s maiden name?”

She shook her head.

“Come! Surely you must know it!”

“I don’t.” She hesitated and then added, “I think I was called after her.”

“Yes? What are your names?”

“I’ve only got one. I think I was christened Margaret, and I think perhaps it was my mother’s name. I’ve always been called Margot.”

“Miss Standing, did your father never speak about your mother?”

“No, he didn’t. I keep telling you he practically never spoke to me at all. He was always frightfully busy. He never talked to me.”

“Then what makes you think you were called after your mother?”

A slight blush made Miss Standing prettier than before.

“There was a picture that he kept locked. You know-the sort with doors and a keyhole, and a miniature inside. I always wanted to know what was in it.”

“Well?”

Miss Standing shut her lips tightly.

“I don’t know that I ought to tell you,” she said with an air of virtue.

“I think you must tell me,” said Mr. Hale.

Something in his voice frightened her. She drew back, looked at him out of startled eyes, and began to tell him in a hurrying, uncertain voice.

“I wasn’t supposed to go into the study. But one evening I went because I thought he was out. And he wasn’t. And when I heard him coming I had only just time to get behind the curtains. It was frightful, because I thought he was never going to go away, and I thought I should be there all night.”

“Yes? Go on.”

“He wrote letters, and he walked up and down. And then he gave a sort of groan, and I was so frightened I looked out. And he was opening the picture. He opened it with a little key off his watch-chain. And when he’d opened it he went on looking at it for simply ages. And once he gave another groan, and he said ‘Margaret’ twice in a sort of whisper.”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Hale.

The colour rushed to Margot’s cheeks.

“Why do you say that, just as if I was telling you about the weather, instead of a frightfully secret, romantic sort of thing like I was telling you about?”

“My dear Miss Standing!”

“It was frightfully thrilling.”

“Did you see the picture?”

“N-no. Well, I just got a peep at it-when he turned round you know.”

“Yes?”

“It was a miniature, and it had little diamonds all round it. They sparkled like anything, and I could just see that she was fair like me. And that’s all. I just saw her for a moment. She was awfully pretty.”

Mr. Hale cleared his throat.

“There is, of course, no evidence to show that the miniature was a portrait of your mother.”

“Why, of course it was!”

“It may have been. May I ask if the picture is in the house?”

“He always took it away with him. Perhaps it’s on the yacht.”

“I’m afraid it went overboard with him. The steward spoke of a portrait such as you describe; he said Mr. Standing carried it about with him. Now, Miss Standing, you are quite sure that you have no knowledge of your mother’s maiden name?”

“I told you I hadn’t.”

“Or where your father met her?”

Margot shook her head.

“You don’t know where they were married?”

“No. I don’t know anything at all-I told you I didn’t.”

“Do you know where you were born?”

“N-no. At least-No, I don’t know.”

“What were you going to say? You were going to say something.”

“Only-no, I don’t know anything-only I don’t think I was born in England.”

“Ah! Can you tell me why?”

“He said-it was long ago when I was a little girl-he said, talking about himself, that he was born in Africa. And I said ‘Where was I born?’ and he said ‘A long way from here.’ So I thought perhaps I wasn’t born in England.”

Mr. Hale made the clicking noise with his tongue which is generally written “Tut-tut!” It expressed contempt for this reminiscence. As evidence it simply didn’t exist. He cleared his throat more portentously than before.

“Miss Standing, if no will is found, and no certificate of your mother’s marriage or of your own birth is forthcoming, your position becomes extremely serious.”

Margot paused with a chocolate on its way to her mouth.

“Why does it become serious? I’m Papa’s daughter.”

“There is no proof even of that,” said Mr. Hale.

Margot burst out laughing.

“Oh!” she said. “How frightfully funny that sounds! Why everyone knows I’m his daughter! How frightfully funny you are! Who do you think I am, if I’m not Margot Standing? Why, it’s too silly!”

Mr. Hale frowned.

“Miss Standing, this is a very serious matter, and I beg that you will treat it seriously. I do not believe that Mr. Standing made a will. I know that he had not made one six weeks ago, for he paid my father a visit on the twentieth of August, and after he had gone my father told me that he had been urging upon Mr. Standing the necessity of making his will. My father then used these words: ‘It is a very strange thing,’ he said, ‘that a man in Mr. Standing’s circumstances should have deferred such a simple and necessary action as the making of a will. And in his daughter’s peculiar circumstances he certainly owes it to her to make sure of her provision.’ Now, Miss Standing, those are the exact words my father used, and I take them to mean that he was cognizant of some irregularity in your position.”

Margot opened her eyes very wide indeed.

“What on earth do you mean?”

“In the absence of any information about your mother, and in the light of what my father said-”

“Good gracious! What do you mean?”

“I mean,” said Mr. Hale, “that it is possible that there was no marriage.”

“But good gracious, there’s me!” said Miss Standing.

“It’s possible that you are illegitimate.”

Miss Standing gazed at him in silence. After a moment she repeated the word illegitimate in a tentative way; it seemed to touch a chord. She brightened visibly and said in a tone full of interest,

“Like William the Conqueror-and all those sons of Charles II?”

“Quite so,” said Mr. Hale.

“How frightfully thrilling!” exclaimed Miss Standing.