Beggars May Sing Page 3

  "When you disappear for the entire day another time, you might leave a message with the servants. It's more considerate," he said quite quietly, and sat down 'again with a book.

  They shuffled from one foot to the other waiting for Julie to speak, but as she still said nothing but went on with some embroidery she was doing, they left the room.

  "What fools we are," said Gina.

  "Oh, well, what do we care?" Sebastian retorted, and went out into the garden.

  But Gina hung about until bed-time, and when Julie had passed her at the foot of the stairs with a curt "Goodnight," she turned and watched Mark while he attended to the locking up, waiting until he had finished.

  "I'm sorry, Mark," she said softly. "We are stupid little beasts."

  "It's of no consequence at all," he said politely, and stood aside to allow her to precede him up the stairs.

  CHAPTER III

  I

  GINA stood behind her stall, and listened to Lady Napier declaring open the church fete. The Napiers had graciously lent Clevelands for the occasion, and the vast lawns were sprinkled with marquees and little tents and gaily decked booths. Yesterday the weather had unfortunately broken again, and, at the moment, everyone was dubiously grateful for a chill and watery sun which shone upon them, and was prepared to dash for shelter at any moment.

  The opening ceremony over, the usual twittering babel arose, and business began.

  Gina, shivering in her thin things, glanced at Nancy Pratt and hated her own clothes. Nancy was dressed as if for Ascot and a huge cartwheel hat framed her charming face. Golden curls, flashing dimples, exquisite skin were at their very best for anyone to see, and the stall soon had a small crowd round it.

  There was no doubt about it that Nancy knew her job. She was charming to everyone, but saw that everyone spent money. "We shan't have anything left at this rate," she said happily. "I adore bazaars, don't you, Gina?"

  Gina, hating every minute of it, said so ungraciously, and Nancy smiled in an irritating way and said nothing.

  Lady Napier was buying at Julie's stall next door, and Gina heard her say, "I'm afraid I've never called, Mrs. Gale. It's difficult to fit in all one wants to do these days, is it not? I must try and get over to the Barn House soon."

  Julie was gracious and conciliatory, and the Napiers moved on to Gina's stall. "You seem to be doing good trade here, Miss Pratt," Lady Napier said, and Nancy smiled and sparkled.

  "People are very generous," she replied charmingly. "This tea-cosy? I think it's marked ten shillings, Lady Napier. Oh, thank you, so very much." She saw Sir Ch'arles staring rather hard at Gina, and said on impulse, "This is Gina Gale who's helping me."

  Lady Napier turned to smile 'at Gina, then passed on, saying a little stiffly, "I think I've seen you about the place."

  But Sir Charles distinctly twitched an eyelid, and put a pound note into Gina's collecting-box.

  "Do you know them, then?" asked Nancy curiously. "She seemed rather sniffy. My dear, she spent five pounds here. I believe we shall make more than any of the other stalls."

  Sebastian turned up about four o'clock and found his sister in charge alone. She was still smarting from Evan Hunter's unintentional rebuff, when he had carried off Nancy to tea with scarcely a glance in her direction, saying: "You must come and take nourishment before you die of overwork, Nancy. Gina will look after the stall for you. Come on."

  Nancy, fluttering and a little embarrassed, said, "Oh, would Gina mind? I do want to hear Mumsie's first songs." And they had dashed away to the house, Evan laughing at something amusing which Nancy had said.

  "The Sprat left you the donkey work 'as usual," Sebastian remarked, knowing his sister's frown only too well. "Oh, she's done her share," said Gina crossly.

  Julie returned from tea, accompanied by Mark, and came over for a moment to ask how Gina was doing.

  "Splendid!" she exclaimed when Gina told her. "They will be pleased. Nancy is a wonderful little worker. She's looking so very pretty, don't you think, Mark?"

  "Rather overdressed, I thought," Mark said, and Gina could have hugged him.

  "I'm coming back later on to take you off for an ice, Gina," he said as he moved away with Julie.

  "Come on, there's the Sprat. Now we'll have tea," said Sebastian, and seizing his sister by the hand, he marched her away without even waiting for Nancy to take over.

  When they got back to the stall, they found Nancy trying to fleece her father in the interests of the church, and he ostentatiously put a ten-pound note into the box. He was a big, snub-nosed man with a stomach and a cigar, known to his fellow members of the golf-club as Port Wine Pratt owing to his distressing habit of boasting about his cellar. At the same time Mrs. Pratt joined her family and broke into rapid speech. She was large and self-important like her husband, and wore a perpetual smile. She was smiling now, even though she was angry.

  "I will never," she said emphatically, "I will never sing again at an affair of this kind. People rattle their teacups and turn their backs on one. It's outrageous!"

  "You can scarcely blame the Sprat when you see them, can you?" whispered Gina.

  Sebastian departed, saying he couldn't stand it any longer, and Gina began selling again.

  Business was slack now. All the best things had gone, and Nancy had lost interest in her stall and was flirting prettily with Evan.

  Quite suddenly a storm of rain descended upon them, and people hurried for shelter and stall-holders frenziedly covered their stalls with tarpaulins.

  "My clothes will be ruined," wailed Nancy, struggling with her end of a ground-sheet. "I can't untie this. Oh, thanks, Evan. I must go in. Gina, could you collect the money and bring it 'after me?"

  "What do you think my clothes are made of? Oilskin?" Gina inquired sweetly.

  With Mark's help she covered up everything that mattered, and tucking the collection-boxes one under each arm, she ran for the nearest marquee.

  "You've earned your ice," he said as he followed her in. "Let's find a table."

  "We must have made an awful lot of money," she said, as she sat opposite him eating a strawberry ice, and he watched her eating with the frank enjoyment of a schoolgirl, and thought how different she looked when she was happy.

  "I like you, Gina," he said impulsively. "There's no pretence about you."

  She glanced up at him swiftly, her tilted eyes green and vivid, and coloured a little. "I hope that's not the same thing as being like a boy in lots of ways," she said with a funny little twist to her lips.

  "Who told you a thing like that?" he asked quickly.

  "Oh, it has been said," she replied with her sudden wide smile.

  He regarded her quizzically for a moment or two, then said seriously, "You're not like a boy in any way that detracts from your being 'a girl."

  She considered this, decided that she was suddenly a little out of her depth with him, and relapsed into silence, her principal defence in moments of doubt.

  Not very long after this, they heard the band playing "God Save the King" from a neighbouring marquee, and the fete came to an end.

  II

  Gina sat in front of her mirror, brushing her hair. She wore a green and yellow silk dressing-gown, with a large rent down the back, and Sebastian, coming in for a moment to borrow some tooth-paste, stood staring at her in amazement. She was brushing her hair with earnest deliberation, which sight was so unusual in itself that he stood watching her for some moments without speaking.

  "Hallo! What's the time?" she asked without turning round.

  "About eleven—later, I think. Can I pinch your toothpaste?" He went over to the wash-stand, pausing on his way to pick up the frock which she had worn at the fete that afternoon and which still lay in a heap on the carpet. "What's the idea, darling?"

  "Sebastian, do you think, if I did my hair differently, it would improve me?" she said intently, peering into the mirror and closely regarding her small face. In the glare of the electric light, her thick hair,
springing strongly from her high forehead, gleamed magnificently after its intensive brushing. She pressed it close to her head with her hands, trying it this way and that. "Do you think it would look better if I had it cut shorter?" she continued. "It's so wild and bushy."

  Sebastian came and stood behind her with his head on one side. "I dunno. Perhaps it would," he said critically, "I never thought about it really."

  "If I got them to cut it quite close to my head, it would curl into my neck and round my ears, and stay shiny on top instead of getting like tow," she decided. "Don't you think then, Sebastian, that would make a lot of difference to my face?"

  "Well, I dunno," he said again. "Yes, I suppose it would. You wouldn't look so witch-like."

  "Do I look witch-like?"

  "When you frown you do."

  "Oh, forget it, I can't be bothered! What's it matter anyway?" she exclaimed, and suddenly ran her fingers upwards through her hair, making it stand wildly on end.

  "It doesn't!" Sebastian agreed, and sat down on Gina's bed. "The Swann is coming for the week-end."

  "Oh, lord!" said Gina, wheeling round on her stool to face him. "Is that why Julie's been going about looking a Saint of God all the evening? Would she really marry the man, do you think?"

  "Would he marry Julie?" countered Sebastian.

  "Yes, I think so. He's the sort of man who would like a good-looking wife of sensible age and better social position than himself to mind his millions while he has a good time," Gina said shrewdly. "And our young step-mamma is just the sort of fool to do it too."

  "Still, the man has money," said Sebastian with unconscious respect.

  "And he needs it," retorted Gina.

  "Those Pratts are pretty grim," Sebastian said, chuckling. "Give themselves such airs too."

  "Julie says they're climbers hoping to get into heaven by way of the new church hall."

  "Oh well, T don't suppose it will ever be built," said Sebastian cheerfully. "These things never are. Nancy seems well away with Evan Hunter."

  "Yes." Gina paused, then continued with a frown, "She always makes me feel perfectly sexless, Sebastian."

  "Sexless? What on earth do you mean?"

  "What I say. She's so terribly feminine she seems to take it all out of me. I feel perfectly hopeless beside her."

  "I know. Do you want to feel feminine with Evan then?"

  "Well, one likes to be desired by handsome young men," said Gina frankly.

  Her brother looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then said with unexpected shrewdness, "You'll never attract very young men, Ginny. They like something far more obvious. You must aim your deadly shafts at men over thirty."

  III

  The week-end was unfortunately wet, so that they all, with the possible exception of Julie, had far too much of Victor Swann.

  He was a virile, very dark man of thirty-eight or so, with the flamboyant, slightly overripe good looks of his type. He was the sort of man who is at his best playing "sardines," a game at which he excelled. Gina had a most intense dislike of him, mixed with contempt for Julie who could not see through him. What she didn't appreciate was the fact that Julie saw through him perfectly and didn't care.

  Mark endured him for Julie's sake. In term-time he always avoided the week-ends which brought the dashing Victor, and remained in town.

  By the time tea was over on Sunday, Mark was feeling so much on edge that he shut himself up in his study, and tried to concentrate on writing some over-due letters. Victor and Julie were dancing in the hall, and the gramophone blared ceaselessly for nearly an hour. At last, when silence reigned and they went into the drawing-room to indulge in mild flirtation, the peace was rent by Sebastian working very loudly on his latest composition. Mark bore it as long as he could, then he pushed back his chair with an exclamation and went into the hall.

  "Can't we ever have any peace in this house?" he demanded irritably. "It's impossible to concentrate on anything with such an infernal din going on. Can't you amuse yourself somewhere else?"

  Sebastian looked surprised. Mark was not as a rule impatient. "What is there in the world to do?" he complained, "it's poured all day, and we can't go in the drawing-room for fear of disturbing the lovers."

  He saw from Mark's expression that he had gone a little too far, and turned back to the piano and began strumming with one finger.

  "Why on earth can't you go away and do some work instead of loafing about all day?" Mark said. "You're lazy enough as it is, and you did practically nothing last week."

  "It's the Sabbath, Mark," said Gina piously from the stairs, where she had been sitting all the time.

  "Oh, I can't work today, Mark," Sebastian said.

  "Well, you'll only have a double dose tomorow," Mark replied indifferently. "You'll have to work with me in the afternoon 'as well as the morning. We've got to get through it."

  "Sebastian can't possibly work tomorrow," cried Gina high-handedly. "We've arranged a picnic with the Neills and a whole crowd of their friends. It was fixed weeks ago."

  Mark turned to regard her a little curiously, then he said:

  "I quite thought you understood how important it was for Sebastian to get his scholarship this time."

  "Oh, he'll get it, easy as spitting in a duckpond," she declared.

  "That's a very foolish thing to say," Mark said quietly. "He didn't find it so easy last time."

  "That's because he didn't trouble to work."

  "It doesn't seem to me that he's troubling very much now."

  Gina experienced one of her sudden little spasms of rage against him, and a wave of unreasonable dislike swept over her momentarily.

  "Good lord, Mark! You're not our blooming keeper!" she cried like a boy, then became scarlet as she realized that she had repudiated that which was actually the truth. Didn't Mark virtually keep them both, when it came to hard facts?

  She had jumped up on her last words, and now stood irresolute, staring at him and biting her lips.

  He looked at her with an odd expression for a moment, and saw her green eyes suddenly fill with tears.

  "Think it over, Gina," he said gently, and went back to his room and shut the door.

  IV

  Victor Swann departed the next day after breakfast and went back to his vague business in London. No one had yet discovered what he did, or even if he did anything. He had managed to make a great deal of money just after the war, and on that he subsisted very comfortably as a bachelor.

  It was a lovely day after the wet week-end, and Sebastian spoke cheerfully of the assured success of their picnic.

  "But you aren't going, Sebastian," Gina protested, pausing in her grooming of Dogsbody in the stable yard.

  "Why ever not? We fixed it weeks ago."

  "Yes, but after what Mark said yesterday—"

  "Oh, Mark ! He didn't mean it."

  Gina pushed her untidy hair off her forehead with the back of the dandy brush. "Sebastian, of course he meant it. He'll stick in today waiting for you just as he did that day we went to Eastcliff. He'll expect you to work."

  "Oh, well—" Sebastian kicked at a loose brick. "He shouldn't, that's all. Blessed is he, etcetera. You know."

  "You've got to work today, Sebastian," said Gina, resuming her brushing. "What's a picnic, anyway?—Roll over, boy."

  "It isn't that, it's the principle of the thing. We can't be for ever yoked to authority. Besides, you'll be enjoying yourself. Why should I sweat away indoors?"

  "I'm not going," said Gina.

  "Oh, well, perhaps—I think you're an 'awful fool, Ginny.

  See you later, then—" Sebastian left the yard and went back to the house.

  Gina went to lunch with the Hunters, and afterwards Evan walked home with her. Their path lay pleasantly through woods and fields, and they idled along, enjoying the rich earthy smells given up by the soaked land. They climbed a stile into a corn field and walked, arm in arm, between the tall golden-green blades.

  "Let's sit down
," said Evan.

  "It'll be rather wet."

  "You can have my coat." He took it off and spread it on the ground for her, and she s'at down with a little laugh.

  "How do you manage to look so cool on a day like this?" he asked her.

  "Cool? With hair like mine!" she laughed.

  " 'Red hair, trouble near,'" he teased her. "But you have a queer remote little face, Gina, and generally so pale."

  He was not old enough yet to read what was already written plainly in her mouth, in her sensitive nostrils, in the quick colour which even now was rising to her cheeks. For perhaps the first time, he noticed how easily she blushed. This intrigued him. He began saying all the most personal things he could think of, for the pleasure of watching her change colour. But once it was plain to her that he was only shamming, she became immune, and he finally gave it up.

  "Nancy's a lovely creature for those parents of hers to have produced," he said suddenly.

  "She's terribly pretty," Gina agreed with an effort.

  He looked at her half lying against the cool background of wheat. Her face was turned from him, and there was a momentary unexpected beauty in the long line from chin to breast, the young sharp curve of her shoulders as she supported her weight on her outspread hands. He leant over her impulsively and said:

  "You're rather attractive yourself, Gina—I'd never thought about it before." She turned a startled face towards him, and he said simply, "I'm glad we're friends," and kissed her gently on the lips.

  She sat quite still for a moment, then jumped up quickly.

  "I ought to be back by now in case Sebastian finishes early," she said unhurriedly. "Don't come any farther with me, Evan. I want to run."

  "All right, if you'd rather I didn't." He scrambled to his feet and stood looking at her with a puzzled expression. "You didn't mind my kissing you, Gina?" he stammered awkwardly.