Free Sea of Glass (Valancourt 20th Century Classics) by Dennis Parry

subtlety.
    By this time we had reached the hall and Cedric was collecting his hat and his gold-topped malacca cane. I looked round, hearing a noise from the staircase, and saw Nurse Fillis coming down the treads two at a time.
    ‘Oh, Mr. Ellison,’ she said, ‘I’m so glad to have caught you! You left your spectacle-case upstairs.’
    ‘Thank you, Sister,’ said Cedric. ‘Most kind! It’s so seldom you youngsters realize how much we old fogeys depend on our props and crutches.’
    He squared up his body, which for a man in his fifties was a pretty good one. I caught an enlightening glimpse of sickly adoration on Nurse Fillis’s face.
    ‘What nonsense!’ she said in slightly breathless accents. ‘Everybody says how young you look.’
    Cedric coughed sharply, a displeased bark, and you could see her shrinking back to the station to which St. Thomas’s or Bart’s had called her. Then—feeling, I suppose, that the scene must otherwise end a little bleakly—he inquired:
    ‘Is my mother resting now?’
    ‘I’ve just given her a sedative,’ said Nurse Fillis, ‘to stop her—’
    But though it passed me by she obviously received another warning of displeasure, for she broke off abruptly.
    ‘You stimulate her so much, Mr. Ellison,’ she finished sycophantically.
    I next saw Varvara whilst we both waited in the morning-room for dinner to be announced.
    ‘Now,’ she said with biting scorn, ‘you have found a new friend and master. You shall be his lice!’
    I was feeling distinctly ill again, and my patience was short.
    ‘Please don’t talk drivel,’ I said. ‘If you want to know, I think your uncle is one of the most god-awful skunks I’ve ever seen.’ I squinted at her maliciously, for migraine was setting in. ‘And that,’ I added, ‘is in face of a good deal of local competition.’
    At this stage in her career Varvara never used the emotional staircase: she dived straight down (or up) the lift-shaft. The disgust in my tone must have carried instant conviction.
    ‘My dear ally,’ she said, coming forward with her gesture of the outstretched hands, ‘I knew you must hate him. . . . You do hate him?’
    ‘I don’t know him well enough. But he makes a very nasty impression on me.’
    This apparently satisfied her.
    ‘We shall plot together,’ she announced.
    ‘Not me.’
    Varvara and Cedric Ellison cannot have met very often before my arrival on the scene. She had not been in England long enough. And yet her hatred of him was already full-fledged and she seemed to have a singularly complete appreciation of his character. This, I think, can only have been due to a course of preparation beginning in childhood. Fulk had had good reason to distrust his brother and he was not one to minimize his wrongs.
    Presently the gong sounded and we went downstairs. For the next forty minutes I had to make a show of eating rich food and simultaneously carrying on polite conversation without being sick. It was Turpin who keyed up my resistance. He must have noticed my greenish appearance, for when he bent over me with a dish he said in a commiserating mutter:
    ‘These bloody little afternoon boozers—clubs in mewses—they’re no good for a young chap!’
    With that interpretation hanging over me, there was no longer any possibility of quitting the table. But by the time I was left alone with the port (which did not appeal to me even as an emetic) my head was spinning.
    I was sitting with my back to the door, and when I heard it open I assumed that Turpin had come in.
    ‘I don’t think I’ll join you downstairs tonight,’ I said without looking round.
    To my surprise I was answered by Varvara.
    ‘You must go to your bed. I have watched you and you have a fever.’
    She put her hand on my forehead. It was slightly rough, but cool, and her touch seemed in itself to have a special quality. I am not producing the usual mystic gibber about healing hands and electric ’fluences. Varvara had ‘touch’ in