Lament for Leto (Mrs. Bradley) Read online

  “Incidentally,” said Edmund, who had come out on to the porch when he heard the cars drive up, “it was Zeus who threw down thunderbolts, Mary. Apollo’s weapon was the bow.”

  “Oh, get out of my way,” said Mary, pushing past him into the hotel. Edmund looked at Hero and raised his eyebrows.

  “What’s the matter with her?” he asked.

  “She’s not in the mood to put up with being corrected,” said Julian. “She’s already bitten Mrs. Cowie, so I should look out, if I were you.”

  “Girl bites lioness? Surely not!” Edmund looked incredulous.

  “I think she must be feeling the heat,” said Hero, “or perhaps she is tired. She told the good aunt not to make a fuss about mosquito bites.”

  “Somebody must have been feeding her meat.”

  The three young people went into the hotel. After dinner, at which Mary was almost feverishly gay, her aunt took her aside.

  “Stop making a fool of yourself over that young man,” she said fiercely. “He is not interested in you and you are embarrassing him.”

  “Oh, I am, am I?” said Mary. “I’ll thank you to mind your own business!” She turned sharply away, tripped over a rug, and fell flat. Henry Owen, who had followed Chloe out of the dining-room, picked the girl up off the floor.

  “Steady, the Buffs,” he said genially. Mary struck him in the face and tore to her room.

  “Well!” said Henry, with a hand to his smarting cheek.

  “I’ll go after her,” said Chloe, “and make her come down and apologise. I am quite at a loss to account for her behaviour today. If this is what foreign travel does for her, she had better have remained at home.” She stalked off in the direction her niece had taken.

  “I don’t want Mary to apologise, unless she does it of her own accord,” said Henry. “Dame Beatrice, you witnessed the incident. What did you make of it?” He turned to where she had seated herself in the lounge and dropped into a chair beside her.

  “I made nothing of it,” she returned composedly. “Girls become overwrought at times. It is wiser and very much kinder to leave them to themselves. Mary will soon realise that she has overstepped the bounds of civilised usage and will then approach you on her own account, I am sure. I rather hope that she has locked her door against Mrs. Cowie.”

  Dick, who had lingered in the dining-room for a word with the head-waiter to whom he had endeared himself because of his fluency in modern Greek, now joined them. Edmund had gone off with his brother, Julian with Hero. Simonides, who had picked up a very pretty Swedish girl who was staying in the hotel, had also left the lounge.

  “Did I see Mary fall over?” asked Dick. “I hope she did not hurt herself.”

  “She hurt me,” said Henry, touching a still-reddened cheek.

  “Really? I thought I heard the sound of a smack. What an extraordinary thing for her to have done! Did you offend her in any way?”

  “I only picked her up off the floor.”

  “Perhaps,” said Dick, eyeing the botanist’s Viking frame, “she resented your masculine strength.”

  “Perhaps she wished I had been young Suffolk,” said Henry. “She certainly was in a rare taking, and has been, all the evening.”

  “Oh, Hero gets these moods, too,” said Dick. “I always lie low until they pass over. It’s really the only thing to do.”

  “That’s all very well,” said Henry, “but you can’t compare the two girls. Hero is Greek . . .”

  “Half Greek.”

  “Well, I would say it’s the better half, then. When she throws a temperament I don’t suppose it matters a hoot. Just all gas and gaiters. Mary seems to me a different kind of girl entirely. Hero might stick a knife in you if her feelings ran away with her, but I can imagine Mary quite enjoying watching you die of slow poison. I wouldn’t have her as a member of my household for anything you could offer me. If I marry Chloe, Mary will have to go.”

  “Oh, she is gentle and harmless enough, I’m sure.”

  “So is a rattle-snake until it’s roused, and something has roused that girl. I’m certain of it. She’s usually as meek as a sheep. I’ve never known her turn on Chloe like that.”

  Chloe, who had been attempting vainly to persuade, or, rather, to order Mary to open her bedroom door, now returned to the lounge.

  “I can do nothing with her,” she said shortly. “I believe the wretched child has gone mad.”

  “Well, I insist you leave her alone to get over it,” said Henry. “I’m not fond of the girl, but I will not have her bullied.”

  The others, Chloe most of all, looked at him in surprise.

  “Oh, very well, dear man of mine,” she said. “I confess to being somewhat in awe of you when you look and speak like that. I daresay the child is simply over-excited by all that she is experiencing. It shall be exactly as you wish, although I must protest just a little at your choice of words. I have never bullied anybody in my life.”

  “All right,” said Henry, laughing. “We’ll all do our best to believe you.”

  On the following morning, immediately after breakfast (which the company had fallen into the habit of making a communal meal although it was a light one) Dick called a meeting, saying that he had something to discuss which would affect every member of the party.

  “So,” he said, “I want to canvass the views of everybody before coming to a final decision. The point is that we have been singularly fortunate in our travelling, so much so that our schedule is now not nearly as tight as I feared it would have to be. This means that we can fit in a little more than I would have dared to hope. Well, now, Delphi and then Athens are on my list, but we seem to have at least a couple or even three days to spare, so I wondered whether any of you might care to make a suggestion as to where you would like to spend them.”

  “Would these days be fitted in between Delphi and Athens?” asked Mary. “I mean, must we go to Delphi first?” Her mood had changed. She was the church mouse once more.

  “Not necessarily. It would depend upon where you would all like to go,” Dick replied. “Have you any preference?”

  “Mycenae, Eleusis, Tiryns, and we really saw nothing of Argos as we came through,” said Julian, not waiting for Mary’s reply.

  “I would like that,” said Hero. “Yes, that is what we must do.”

  “Should we have time to get back to the yacht and go to Rhodes?” asked Roger. “I’m browned off with all these ruins. I want to see the fortifications and the Street of the Knights and all that.”

  “Rhodes for me, too,” said Edmund.

  “Yes, indeed,” agreed their father. “There are some excellent specimens of plants on Rhodes, but it would take longer than the time we have to spare. I think we will put it off until this party breaks up, and then the three of us and Julian will go there. We’ll charter a boat, if necessary, although I expect the local steamers will be adequate. Rhodes is a first-class place for what I want to collect. The fennels, for example, particularly chiliantha . . .”

  “Do you mean you’ll be staying on in Greece after the others have gone back home, then, sir?” asked Julian, obviously so aghast at this arrangement that he dared to interrupt his employer in the middle of a sentence. Henry Owen looked surprised.

  “Isn’t that what I’ve just been saying?” he asked. “My only fear is that we may be too late to see it in bloom. Ferula chiliantha is in full flower—delightful orange-gold inflorescences—in April on Rhodes, and it grows to giant height. According to A. J. Huxley, it may be monocarpic and die off after flowering. Perhaps I can find that out. Then, on Rhodes, I also expect to find . . .”

  “But look here, sir,” said Julian, desperately risking another interruption, “we—those of us who came by sea—Roger and myself, for example—have our return passage booked on the cruise ship.”

  “Oh, yes, so you have,” said Henry. “Oh, well, you’d better take up your reservations.” As Roger began a bitter protest he added, “I expect the ship calls at Malta. That�
��s just as good as Rhodes for what Roger wants. Crusaders!” he concluded. “Knights of St. John! A lot of immoral hooligans, I call them, but I suppose a boy has romantic feelings of admiration towards them. Anyway, Edmund and I will stay on and go to Rhodes. Oh, and Chloe, I suppose.”

  “Not Rhodes, Henry dear,” said Chloe Cowie, twisting her engagement ring. “I shall have far too much to do when we get back, preparing for our wedding, to have any time to spare to go to Rhodes.”

  “Nobody really thought you would go to Rhodes, my dear girl,” said Henry, obviously relieved. “For one thing, you know you hate scrambling about. Besides, there’s plenty of time to get married, but it would be a sin and a shame for me to be so near such a wonderful place for specimens and not to spend a week or two collecting them. I may never have such an excellent chance again.”

  “Why not, dear man? Why should you not?” Chloe spoke gently, but there was a steely look in her expressive eye.

  “Shan’t be able to afford it, with a wife to keep and Julian’s salary to pay, and these two enormous chaps of mine eating their heads off and growing out of their clothes and shoes as fast as they put them on.”

  “But, Henry, the royalties on my books . . .”

  “Surely you’re not going on with your writing after we’re married, my dear girl?” asked Henry, in blank astonishment.

  “I wondered whether any of you would care to go to Olympia,” said Dick, who had begun to look distressed. “Beatrice, you haven’t spoken yet. Haven’t you some preference, perhaps?”

  It seemed to Dame Beatrice that it might be just as well if she expressed one, before the argument between Chloe and Henry became acrimonious.

  “Olympia would be delightful,” she said. “I would plump for Mycenae, Tiryns, and Argos, also Eleusis, except that I know them well, so for me Olympia would be something new.”

  “I feel the same,” said Simon. “Will any of you vote for Olympia?”

  “My own choice,” said Chloe, abandoning any attempt to argue further with her fiancé in public, “would be the island of Leukas. I should like to see Sappho’s Leap. It sounds so thrilling and romantic. She was killed there, you know. Whether she intended a spectacular suicide, or whether she was attempting to emulate—”

  “Devil of a way from here,” said Edmund, who had a map open on his knee, “and nothing much to see when you get there. If we’re putting off Rhodes until after Athens, I vote we go straight to Delphi, which is a ‘must,’ I suppose, for Mr. Dick, because of all this Apollo stuff, and then I should like to spend the extra days in Athens itself. There’s some life there. I tried their lagers—Fix Hellas and Alfa—and they’re really quite good. Then there’s Hymettos honey for breakfast—oh, boy! Besides, we ought to make time for some shopping . . .” he glanced at his father and winked—“wedding presents and so forth, eh? Where’s the point of visiting any more ruins?”

  “We shall be spending three full days in Athens as it is,” said Dick. “Shouldn’t that be sufficient, don’t you think? Perhaps . . .” he looked round the circle with timid hopefulness . . . “we could put it to the vote.”

  “I’ll tell you what, Chloe,” said Henry Owen, brushing aside this suggestion, “I’ll make a bargain with you. I’ll go along with this Leukas thing of yours if you’ll reciprocate by giving up any unreasonable objections to Edmund and myself staying on and going to Rhodes. You can’t go to Leukas on your own, and nobody else is opting for such a tomfool excursion, so there it is, take it or leave it. What do you say. Is it a deal?”

  “I am not going back to England without you, Henry.” Having announced this, she closed her lips and looked straight in front of her.

  “But, damn it, you came out from England without me! You sailed and I flew. Remember?” said Henry, unimpressed by her attitude.

  “But at that time, Henry, we were not engaged to be married,” said Chloe, weakening.

  “Take it or leave it, my dear.”

  “Anyone else for Leukas?” demanded Edmund.

  “I don’t mind,” said his brother, “if it means I can go to Rhodes with you and Dad.”

  “You can’t,” said his father. “I’d forgotten I’d paid your fare and Suffolk’s. No, you two will pick up the ship. Our air passage isn’t booked, but your cruise is, and I’m not wasting all that money.”

  “Papa Ronald,” said Hero, “if Julian should be required to go to Rhodes . . .”

  “But Henry has just said he is not, my dear.”

  “Tell you what,” said Edmund, “how would it be if Hero and Suffolk went with you, father, and I took Roger home on the ship? The ticket would do for me just as well as for Suffolk, wouldn’t it? And Hero would be no end useful in Rhodes, speaking the language and that kind of thing, you know.”

  “Who said I would be willing to go to Rhodes? I do not like aeroplanes. I shall go back on the ship, with Julian,” said Hero, stretching her nostrils and addressing Edmund with her eyes flashing dangerously. “How dare you order my life for me, you rude, silly, little boy!”

  “I thought you’d like to go to Rhodes,” said Edmund. “Who are you calling a little boy?” He stepped across to her, put his large hands at her waist and lifted her bodily into the air. Hero’s mood changed at once. She squealed delightedly.

  “Oh! Oh! You are a giant! You are a centaur! You are a big, strong man! Oh, that you were older! I think I would be in love with you!” She drummed with her fists on the top of his head. Julian, with a brow of thunder, rose from his chair. Dame Beatrice watched interestedly. Chloe said sharply,

  “Really! This vulgar horseplay! Put her down at once, Edmund! Have you no sense of decency?”

  “Well, she shouldn’t wear frocks that ruckle up,” said Edmund, restoring Hero by putting her into Julian’s arms. “Here you are, Suffolk. She’s all yours.”

  “It’s more than time a little discipline was instilled into you, young man,” said Chloe.

  “Well, you’ve almost qualified yourself for the job,” said Edmund, “haven’t you?” He settled himself in his chair and returned to a study of his map, totally ignoring Chloe’s furious eyes.

  “Well, we don’t appear to have decided anything,” said Dick. “Will somebody make a proposal?”

  “Hero has almost made one—and to me,” said Edmund, looking up. “Really these ‘almosts’ are becoming rather commonplace. Let somebody commit himself, for goodness’ sake. Mrs. Cowie is almost my stepmother and Hero is almost my wife. I dislike this sitting on the fence.” Julian strode over to him and aimed a furious punch at his face. Edmund, accustomed to beery bouts of rough-housing at public houses after Rugby football matches, easily avoided the blow and, as it passed by the side of his head, he gave Julian a friendly but heavy thump in the ribs. “And now,” he said, grinning, as Julian lost his equilibrium, “Suffolk has almost struck his employer’s son.”

  Julian, recovering his balance, turned and walked out of the room.

  “You will apologise to Suffolk,” said Henry.

  “Certainly you will,” said Chloe, sharply.

  “Julian does not take a joke, for which I am very sorry,” said Hero. “What would you have done, Simon, in Julian’s place?”

  “Stuck a knife in Edmund, and then I should have wept for him, because of his untimely death,” said Simonides.

  “Well there’s still nothing settled, thanks to Edmund’s idiotic and unmannerly behaviour,” said Chloe, in the same sharp tone. “Some want this, others want that, and a third set wants something else. Surely, as reasonable beings, we can stop wasting all this time and come to a conclusion.”

  “I have come to one,” said Simon. “Nobody is a child. We can all take ourselves here and there without difficulty. I think all should do as they wish. Mycenae for Julian and Hero, Olympia for Dame Beatrice and my father, Leukas for Mrs. Cowie and Mr. Owen . . .”

  “Also for Mary,” said Chloe, without altering her former tone.

  “Ah, yes, Mary,” said Simonides. “She must
go to chaperone the happy couple, of course.”

  “I’m going to Olympia with—with Dame Beatrice,” said Mary, with almost hysterical emphasis.

  “And I suppose Edmund and Roger will have to come with us, too,” said Chloe, completely ignoring Mary’s outburst. She smiled at the brothers, but without goodwill. “I suppose I had better accustom myself to having them under my feet.”

  Their father laughed. The brothers exchanged glances, then both rose and bowed to Chloe.

  “Charmed, madame,” said Edmund.

  “I have spread my dreams under your feet,” said Roger.

  “Well, I hope they won’t trip her up,” said Mary balefully, hoping for the reverse.

  “Edmund,” said Roger, “we have an ally. The United States Marines are at hand.”

  “You’re three very silly, ill-natured little children,” said Chloe, her colour rising.

  “Yes, you’d all much better be quiet,” said Henry.

  “Father denies us the right of free speech,” said Edmund, “and I thought it was one of the fundamentals. Ah, well, we must make the most of what we have.”

  “And what is that, pray?” enquired Chloe.

  “The right to go with him to Rhodes,” said Roger.

  “That has been settled, so you can be quiet,” said his father.

  “You know, with all respect, Mr. Owen,” said Simon, suddenly breaking in before Roger could protest again about Rhodes, “my soul is prompting me to make a small suggestion. The excursion to Rhodes is controversial, I think.”

  “No, it is not. A bargain has been struck, has it not, Henry?” Chloe twisted her engagement ring as though the action would act as a signal to her betrothed.

  “Ah, but hear me out, dear Mrs. Cowie.” Simon gave her his most disarming smile. “The only reason Mr. Owen wishes to visit Rhodes is to enlarge his collection of wild flowers. Am I right, Mr. Owen?”