Wicked Uncle

Chapter XV

Dorinda followed the Oakleys into the big old hall with its great beams, its deep roomy hearth, and jutting chimney-breast. A log fire burned between iron dogs. The old flagstones under foot were softened by rugs, the sconces on the panelled walls now held electric candles. Otherwise she was seeing what any winter guest might have seen any time in the last three hundred years. The thought came to her as she slipped out of the fur coat which Mrs. Oakley had lent her. She would have liked to go up the staircase and follow the gallery which ran round three sides of the hall, but Mrs. Oakley was saying, “Oh, no-we have come such a little way.”

The stair ran up on the left-hand side with bare polished treads as black as the old beams. She dropped her coat on a big carved chair and turned reluctantly to follow Mrs. Oakley’s rose-and-silver to the drawing-room. It was a pretty dress, and it had probably cost the earth. She wondered whether Mrs. Oakley ever wore anything but pink. You’d think she’d get tired of it- just one pink thing after another. Why not blue for a change, or green-

She had got as far as that, when she saw Gregory Porlock coming to meet them. There was a scatter of people round the fire, but she really only saw him. Coming to meet them with an outstretched hand and a charming smile. It would have been plain to anyone that he was their host, and that he was Gregory Porlock. It was perfectly plain to Dorinda that he was Glen Porteous, Aunt Mary’s husband-the Wicked Uncle. She mightn’t have been so sure if it hadn’t been for the Rowbecker photograph. Seven years is a long gap, as Gregory himself had concluded. If it hadn’t been for the photograph, she might not have taken so confident a leap, or landed with so much certainty upon the other side. As it was, she had no doubts at all. But Aunt Mary’s training held. She heard Mrs. Oakley murmur her name, met Gregory’s smiling eyes, and put her hand in his.

If she had remembered nothing else, she would have remembered that warm, strong clasp. She had always remembered it. It was one of the things she had loved, and afterwards hated. Her colour deepened, her eyes sent him a steady look, and he knew just as well as if she had spoken his name that she had recognized him. Well, it would be more amusing that way. He said,

“But we have met before-on the telephone. And do you know, I think I could have described you. You are just like your voice. Now tell me-am I at all like mine?”

“I think so.”

There was something of the gravity of the child he remembered, something of her simplicity and directness. If she wouldn’t make a scene, neither would she play a game with him. Really quite an entertaining situation.

And then she looked past him and saw Justin Leigh. Gregory Porlock did not doubt that the surprise was as complete as it was delightful. It was so delightful that she forgot everything else. She went to meet him with a bloom and radiance which couldn’t possibly escape the experienced observer. He had to turn from their meeting to introduce the Oakleys to the Totes and Mastermans. How they were going to mix, he had no idea, and whilst his social sense, functioning quite automatically, would do its best with six people of whom at least two were hating him furiously and two more were badly frightened, the sense of humour which very seldom left him drew its own detached amusement from the scene.

When Leonard Carroll added himself and his crooked smile to the already ill-assorted group he contributed a touch of the bizarre. Watching him cross the floor, Gregory wondered, by, no means for the first time, whether the impression of some slight physical deformity arose from fact or fancy. Was one shoulder really a little higher than the other, or did it only appear to be so because the left eyebrow tilted whilst that on the right was straight? Did the left foot halt in the least perceptible limp, or was it a mere affectation akin to a drawling speech? Carroll could drawl when he liked, just as he could find a pungent phrase for point-blank rudeness. For the rest, he had very fine brown hair and not too much of it, a face rather oddly lined for what appeared to be his years, and a physique at once slight and full of nervous energy. His bright sardonic eyes passed over the five elderly people to whom he was being introduced in a manner which made it perfectly clear that as far as he was concerned they were so much furniture, dwelt for a moment upon Linnet Oakley, and was done with her. Gregory, prompt in hospitality, hastened to alleviate the situation with cocktails.

Justin Leigh had been surprised at the feelings with which he watched Dorinda come into the room. To one part of them he was by now no stranger, but this strong proprietary sense rather took him aback. It was, of course, increased by the fact that she was wearing the dress which they had chosen together. It was a good dress, and she looked well in it. The small bright circlet of his mother’s brooch caught the light. But it wasn’t only that. He had to admit that even in garments which his taste deplored there always had been something about Dorinda. You couldn’t help noticing it when you saw her in a crowd. It was partly the way she held her head, and partly the curious, unusual way in which nature had taken the trouble to match her eyes and hair. Unusual colouring, a good carriage, the look of a wise child-these were contributory. But there was something more-the something which would have given him the feeling that they belonged if he had met her a stranger in a bus, a shipwreck, a bazaar in Bombay, or the desert of Gobi. It was one of those things. You couldn’t explain it, you couldn’t get rid of it, and, most significant of all, you didn’t want to.

Her “How did you get here, Justin?” made no attempt to conceal her pleasure. He had, for once, no desire to hide his own. He laughed and said,

“ Moira Lane was coming down for the week-end. She rang up and asked if she could bring me.”

Dorinda had been too well brought up to allow her smile to fade. She hoped it didn’t look as stiff as it felt.

And then, unbelievably, Justin was saying,

“Don’t be silly. I came down to see you-at least not you, the Oakleys-in my capacity as chaperon.”

She said, “Oh!” That is the only way it can be written, but it was a sound in which a little spring of laughter bubbled up.

And on that Gregory Porlock intervened.

“Now he’s going to be next to you at dinner, so you must come and meet everyone else. And you must have a cocktail.”

The introductions which followed gave her a lot of impressions, as it were in layers. Mr. Tote red and stout, with eyes like an angry pig. Mr. Masterman, who reminded her of an undertaker though she couldn’t have said why. Mrs. Tote, small and wispy behind a lot of grey satin and diamonds, with her hair screwed up as if she was going to have a bath, and a general resemblance to a kind but anxious mouse. Dorinda wondered why anyone should put on so many diamonds when all they did was to glare and glitter on a skinny neck and make the face above it look about a hundred and fifty.

Miss Masterman hadn’t any diamonds. She wore an old-fashioned black lace dress, quite long in the sleeves and almost high in the neck, where it was fastened by a small pearl brooch. Meeting the dark eyes, Dorinda felt the word “mourning” come into her mind- “She’s in mourning.” But it hadn’t anything to do with the black lace dress. It was the look in the eyes-as if something had been lost and could never be found again.

She had only had time to decide that she disliked Mr. Carroll, when the door opened upon the latest guest. Moira Lane came in with a definite air of having just bought the earth. She wore a velvet picture dress of the colour of a damask rose, and her cheeks matched it. Her extremely beautiful arms were bare to the shoulder, and upon her left wrist she wore Josephine’s diamond and ruby bracelet. After pausing for a moment on the threshold she passed swiftly and lightly to the group by the fire and held out that arched left wrist to Gregory Porlock.

“There, Greg darling! Doesn’t it look nice?”

She turned from him to sweep the whole company with a brilliant glance and said in her lightest, clearest tones,

“It’s a joyous reunion. I lost my lovely bracelet, and Greg has just got it back for me. Quite too marvellous of him! I must never, never lose it again, must I?”

On the last words her eyes came back to Gregory’s face. If it expressed admiration, it was no more than he felt to be her due. In the most public manner possible she was challenging him to claim the bracelet. What he didn’t do now he could certainly never do again. It was a most definite “Speak now, or forever hold your peace!”

As the door opened and the butler appeared to announce that dinner was served, Gregory smiled back at her and said,

“More careful another time, my dear-that’s the motto.”