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By Root 1242 0

objects, and if anyone after dinner had uncovered the keys and facetiously picked out a phrase the noise that came forth, from under the heaped-up folios and potted plants and the arena of framed photographs, was so jangled by time and neglect as to discourage any further idea of music. Now, however, Corinna was playing the start of the piece, the misleadingly peaceful prologue … “Not tonight, old girl,” called Dudley from across the room, still humorously, but emphatically, and expecting to be understood—he gave Mark a matey grin. Wilfrid had cleared a little space in front of the piano, asking people in the preoccupied way of some official or commissionaire to stand back. There was a moment of silence, in which it seemed their father’s order had been understood, but which Corinna, with a touch of self-righteousness, took as proper expectancy for their performance, and pitched vigorously into “The Happy Wallaby.” After three bars, Wilfrid, with a look of selfless submission to order and fate, took the first few steps of his dance, which of course involved crouching and then jumping as far forward as he could. The guests shifted back, shielding their drinks, with little cries of friendly alarm, some clearly thinking this shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Stinker carried on talking loudly as if he hadn’t noticed—“One awfully clever thing he said was …”—but Dudley had put down his drink and stomped across the room, his face already square and staring with ungovernable emotion. He stood by the piano and said, in fact quietly, “I said not tonight.”

“But, Daddy, you did say tonight,” said Corinna pertly, playing on.

“And tonight I said not! Change of orders!”—and a bark of a laugh at the Colonel to suggest he was more in control than he was. Daphne strode forward—it was what she knew they said about Corley, how it had changed in Dudley’s time, the rum mix of folk, the painters and writers, it was bedlam. She felt defiant and apologetic all at once. Wilfrid had stopped jumping, his trust in his sister’s plan abandoned, but Corinna played on.

“Perhaps not now, darling,” Freda said, stretching out a lace-cuffed hand to her granddaughter’s shoulder, just as Dudley, bending over them both, his horrible grimace the sudden focus of the crisis, pounded his fists repeatedly on the keys at the high plinky end of the keyboard and maddened by the silly effect elbowed Corinna off the stool and pounded repeatedly at the more resonant and furious octaves at the bottom. Then he slammed the lid shut.

“Come along,” said Daphne quietly, and led the two children out of the room, clinging to her hands. Nanny, the one time you wanted her, was nowhere to be seen. Then she found her mother was following her too, which was welcome in a way, except that an awful strain of unexpressed pity and reproach for her, being married to Dudley Valance, a mad brute, would be in the air. Corinna’s lip was trembling, but Wilfrid was already sobbing steadily as he marched along.

When Daphne came back into the drawing-room three minutes later a collective effort at repair had been made. She murmured that the children were fine—she felt an undertow of support hedged with a certain timorous reluctance to go against Dudley. “Little devils, eh?” said the Colonel, and patted her on the arm. Mark and Flo and the S-Ps had seen the like before, and were having an ideally boring conversation about shooting to show that things were under control. Dudley himself, with the touchy geniality of a man who is never in the wrong, was talking to Sebby Stokes, whose natural diplomacy just about carried him through. It was understood that no Valance would ever apologize for anything. Louisa said nothing, though Daphne as usual read her unspoken thoughts very clearly; then she heard her say with necessary clarity to the Colonel, “We never saw our boys after six o’clock.” Daphne knew the person who would be most upset was her own mother, who didn’t come back in before dinner. The best thing to do was to have a stiff drink. And she found within a minute or two that a wary hilarity of recovery