The Light Came In

by Cosmo Hamilton

 

The Light Came In

By Cosmo Hamilton
Author of “The Blue Room”

They were all-square at the seventeenth, and as Bill Churchill stumped along with Mrs. Douglas Adam, followed closely by Adam and Mrs. Churchill, there was a pleasant touch of excitement about them all which went to prove that to them the royal and ancient game of golf was still full of delightful uncertainties.

“It's your drive, Emmy,” said Churchill, turning his good-looking, sun-tanned, honest face to his partner. “Don't be too anxious. Send it nice and straight and I'll drop the ball on the green with a baffie. Gad! It'll be good fun to beat 'em! You remember how they bucked last week when they whacked us on the last green?”

Mrs. Adam shot out a little excited laugh.

“It's all very well for you to talk!” said she. “You're a hardened player. I can't help it, but at this stage of the game I can always feel my heart beating in my neck and I seem to see twenty balls instead of one. However, it's a lovely day and one's getting health and strength out here, and after all, that's the main thing, isn't it? Just look at the babies over there!”

Bill shot an affectionate glance over his shoulder. Among the sand dunes were his own children and those of his old and dear pal whose cheery voice could be heard a little way behind. The sturdy babes were scampering about like a family of rabbits, with shouts of joy. Two nurses sat near by, and one of them was working on a piece of bright-red material which made a particularly nice touch of color among the yellow of the sand. Away in the distance the sea sparkled in the afternoon sun. The air had in it the tang of early spring.

Bill Churchill, who looked as though he had been born in golf clothes, made a careful tee for the charming woman who stood ready to do him justice with her last drive. Her pretty face was all fresh and healthy with exercise. It was good to see the contentment and happiness which was stamped upon every soft line of her figure and which shone in her blue eyes.

Douglas Adam and Enid Churchill took up their positions on the other side of the sand box and waited, and when Douglas shot a friendly and encouraging wink at Enid she nodded back at him, and a little smile played round the corners of her lips.

No wonder the members of that golf club out there on the south coast of England were always glad to see the Adam-Churchill foursome and felt that something was entirely wrong with the world if they missed a week-end. Their keenness set an example, and their steady friendship, which covered as many years, made it possible even for misogynists and skeptics to believe in human nature.

With grim determination Mrs. Adam settled to business, swung her club, got the ball clean, and sent it well up the straight.

“Topping,” said Adam.

“A perfect corker!” said Bill. “Now, Enid, your smack.”

Enid Churchill took a long breath.

“If I go half as far,” she said, “I shall be pleased.” She went farther, and threw her driver into the air with a most infectious cry of joy. Her husband caught it and before putting it into her bag bent forward and gave her an unashamed kiss.

“My dear,” he said, “you really do play a dash good game!”

Her face flushed with pride and pleasure.

All talking at once, these four essentially English people, who had married for love and remained devoted, who did not shy at their responsibilities, and who faced the ups and downs of life with courage and sanity, marched off together. Like Bill Churchill, Adam was a well set-up, good-looking fellow who seemed to have been poured into his clothes. Like Mrs. Adam, Enid Churchill had taken pains, without any of the all-too-obvious aids of art, to retain all the girlishness which Anno Domini permitted. It would have been difficult to find anywhere two mothers of four strapping children apiece who looked so attractive in their short Irish homespun skirts and smart sweaters and businesslike shoes, patterned with nails.

Churchill got off his baffie, took his line, pressed for all he was worth, and got an absolute peach onto the left edge of the sloping green.

“Beat that, Duggie,” he said with an air of very natural triumph.

“I will,” said Adam, and he did. He was a man who could be relied upon in a crisis.

Then came the putting, that most solemn and religious portion of all golf matches. Mrs. Adam miscalculated the bias of the ground. Her ball left the hole half a foot to the right and continued merrily on its way down to the flat.

“Well, that's done it,” she said.

“Oh, bless yer, no,” said Bill. “I've seen Enid miss tons of times.”

“Yes, but you won't see her miss this,” said Adam.

With uncanny certainty Mrs. Churchill's ball made straight for the hole and dropped in with that satisfactory plop which is so dear to the hearts of all true golfers.

Mrs. Churchill bowed profoundly and looked almost as young as that eldest daughter of hers who had her eyes and nose.

Although he was beaten, Bill Churchill was delighted.

“Dear old thing,” he said, “that was really an epoch-making putt. Don't get too good at this game or I shall have you becoming a lady champion, and then God knows what'll become of me and the babes!”

“And now for tea,” said Mrs. Adam. “I'm just a wee bit tired.”

As they were all going into the club-house a letter was handed to Bill Churchill by the steward. Although he was unaware of the fact at the moment, this harmless-looking envelope contained a microbe which was calculated to smash up the excellent friendship of these four admirable people and in a few hours so to undermine and alter the natural characteristics of them all as to make them strangers to each other and to themselves.

“Oh, by the way,” said Douglas Adam, when, the week-end over, the two families were returning to London on the train, “you never told us what was in that letter.”

“An immense amount of piffle!” said Bill. “You know that rich feller, Antrobus, who dabbles in art and is always getting up elaborate fancy-dress balls?”

Mrs. Adam's back stiffened a little.

“I should think I do!” she said. “He's the man who is responsible for all the laxness in society, for all this undressing, and this competition in Orientalism that has grown up in London during the last few years. What in the world is he writing to you for?”

“Well,” said Bill, “he's giving another of his precious fancy-dress affairs in the middle of the week, and two men and two women for whom he has designed what he calls 'exquisitely atmospheric' clothes have fallen out of his party. He is frightfully sick about this, and writes me to ask whether Enid and I and you two will take their places.”

“Good Lord!” said Douglas Adam. “What does he take us for? I'd see myself shot before I play-acted about in fool things of that sort. Think of me in anything but trousers!” he roared with laughter. In his mind's eye he cut a figure which was too foolish for words.

Mrs. Adam said: “Of course, it's quite out of the question,” and Mrs. Churchill settled the matter by adding the word “Quite!”

Bill Churchill pulled out the letter from a pocket which contained a huge tobacco pouch, several new black dots, and a lot of loose cigarettes, wholly unsmokable.

“Pretty calm cheek of that man Antrobus!” he said. “What do you think he's done? He's sent two costumes to my place and two to yours, Emmy. He takes it for granted that we shall go, and says he is perfectly certain that we shall all four of us make a sensation.”

The two women were amazed at the impertinence of this dilettante artist to whom they were both at home as infrequently as possible. They said so. Their words were not to be mistaken. And when Douglas Adam, knocking out his pipe on his heel, remarked that he should chuck. the two boxes that had been left at his house into the bin, they nodded in complete agreement. Whereafter the whole question was dismissed and eight babies, two nurses, and Heaven knows how many bags—to say nothing of their respective owners—were loaded into two motor cars which were waiting at the station,

The next evening after dinner, Bill Churchill, with a queer look of excitement in his eyes, walked round to see his friend, Douglas Adam. It was not a long stretch, because the two friends lived hardly a stone's throw apart. He found Adam reading the paper in his den, surrounded by the usual collection of undergraduate photographs, sporting prints and well-bound books which gave a note of color to the walls, Churchill's own chair was waiting for him on the other side of the fireplace, just as Adam's chair was waiting for him on the other side of Churchill's fireplace. They were institutions,

He said, obviously marking time: “Weather is getting good, old boy; we shall be thinking about summer holidays soon. I don't like the way our wretched politicians are conducting things. And how about that drop in Great Easterns?”

Adam looked over the top of his paper. It was very plain to him that Bill had something on his mind.

“Yes,” he said. “Yes to everything. I vote we cut England for a bit and take a villa on the French coast—Wimereux, for choice, because they've got some very excellent golf links there. It'll do the children good to get a change of scene, and you and I can air our French. Don't yer think so? Talking of Great Easterns, I am thankful to say I sold out of those last week.”

Curiously enough it seemed to Churchill that there was something on Adam's mind, also, but they both went on talking for about an hour in the desultory manner of two men whose friendship is as solid as the earth. It was not until Churchill got up to go that he came to the point.

“Oh, I say,” he said, “about that feller Antrobus. Do you know I am rather thinking it would be awfully hard luck to let him down. I think we'd better just swallow our prejudice for once and get into those clothes. What do you think?”

A curious expression of eagerness flashed over Adam's healthy, open face.

“That's what I've been thinking,” he said. “After all, Antrobus is a very decent chap, and one may as well do a kindness if one can. But how about Enid and Emmy?”

At that moment Emmy, who had just returned to the drawing-room from having kissed the babies good night, was speaking to Enid on the telephone. “About Mr. Antrobus, dear,” she was saying, “you see, he was at Oxford with Bill and Duggie, and although he isn't a very great friend of ours or yours, at the same time I do think we might all stretch a point and fall in with his earnest request—just for this once. We can go late and leave early, and we shan't feel that we are putting him into a hole—I do hate doing that. What do you say?”

A sudden smile broke out on Mrs. Adam's face when she heard the answer. It was “yes.”

What sudden, astounding thing had happened to these four people to bring about this complete revulsion of feeling? In what way had the microbe, the bug, of Fancy Dress eaten its insidious way into composition so sane and so responsible? The Churchills and the Adams, of all people in the world, in any clothes but their own—it was unthinkable, unbelievable!

But this is the truth: Those four boxes, containing the costumes which had been designed by the artist, Antrobus, and made for his friends by a costumier in Bond Street, had been delivered, duly labeled, at the houses of the Churchills and the Adams while they were on their way to London. They had been carried up to the dressing rooms of the men and the bedrooms of the women.

Mrs. Churchill glanced contemptuously at the box addressed to her, made a mental note of the fact that she must have it sent away in the morning, changed, and left her room. Mrs. Adam looked at her box with annoyance and irritation, dressed quickly, as she was going out to dinner, and forgot the thing. Churchill scoffed at the sight of his box and pushed it into a corner, and Adam, reluctantly obliged to shave again in a limited amount of time, did no more than merely notice the unnecessary existence of the strange box and fall to work.

But, curiosity being one of the strongest ingredients in the nature of human beings, the boxes were opened before those four delightful people went to bed that night, and the costumes contained therein were not only examined—which could have wrought no harm—but they were tried on. That settled it.

“My heavens!” gasped Bill. “What couldn't one do in things like these?”

“Gad!” said Douglas Adam. “I could put in a great evening in these clothes!”

Mrs. Churchill gazed at her reflection in the mirror almost open-mouthed.

“How deliciously daring!” she murmured.

Locking her bedroom door for the first time in her married life, Mrs. Adam returned for the tenth time to her pier glass.

“I wonder—I wonder if I dare!” she said.

The microbes had begun to do their deadly work.

On the night of the ball Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Adam dined with the Churchills.

Was it any wonder that Bill's admirable and conventional ancestors gazed down from the gold frames with raised eyebrows and horrified eyes?

Douglas Adam was utterly unrecognizable as an Aubrey Beardsley Pierrot. His clothes were elaborately degenerate and full of strange, suggestive colors, with lace ruffs and anklets. His well-groomed head was hidden beneath a mauve silk skullcap, tied in a tremendous bow at the back. His sun-tanned, healthy face was entirely hidden beneath a layer of thick, white substance, and his good, honest mouth was covered with bright-red lip rouge. His brows had been whitened over and his eyes made up to represent those of a man who had devoted all his life to orgies of unthinkable things. It was amazing.

Enid Churchill, at the end of the table, notorious for her rigid views on women's bathing clothes and the sort of costumes which are now worn by stage favorites, was actually undressed as a Columbine. Her charming and discreet limbs were encased in white silk tights. From her small waist outward there emerged a stiff frill of white tulle. Her neck and arms and shoulders were bare, and the rest of her was just—and only just—covered with white satin. The servants turned away their heads when they saw her,

Even his mother would not have known Bill Churchill. He was consistently and wonderfully Indian, and his chocolate face shone beneath a glistening turban. His forty-two-inch chest was covered with a tight-fitting coat, a very mosaic of Byzantine upholstery. His legs were thrust into a pair of amazingly loose blue-satin trousers and his feet into jeweled slippers which turned up at the toes. He wore rings on every finger, while a big, yellow stone made a sort of bilious eye on his forehead.

As for Emmy Adam, the daughter of a bishop and the niece of a minor canon, the butler blushed to see her. She was not merely Oriental, but Oriental according to Dulac. She wore shimmering, diaphanous clothes which acted as a very Baedecker to the imagination. Her fair hair was all loose beneath a silver veil. Jewels gleamed upon her forehead and hung from her ears and neck. Her long fingers were all beringed, and round her slim right ankle a golden snake with two green eyes was twisted. Her charming young, motherly face was thickly painted, and her long eyelashes stood out stiffly, each one as black as jet.

The conversation of these four once-deserving people, whose friendship had been so fine and clean and healthy, was not as usual, of golf, weather, the rise and fall of stock, or politics. Never once were the wonderful sayings of the children reported with bursts of affectionate and sympathetic laughter, or the reduction in the price of women's clothes in the Oxford Street shops referred to.

The microbes were working busily.

Douglas turned his blasé eyes on Mrs. Churchill and said with the ineffable air of the master of affectation:

“How strangely you recall to my tired mind that spring night after a silver shower when, in all the beauty of my luscious youth, I discovered the secret of wickedness.”

“Oh, la!” simpered Enid, with an early Victorian gesture. “You naughty man!”

“I pray you be serious,” pleaded Douglas, lifting a daffodil from a bowl and placing its innocent stem into his champagne. “I am too frail for harsh outbursts of ridicule. That was the night when I discovered that my soul had come down to me through the vista of dead years from the body of a Greek satyr. All the blossoms of the earth stirred in their beauty sleep, and the waters of the lake heaved a sigh. It is the coolness of your round arms, the white petals of your ballet skirt, the almost dazzling alertness of your clear, moon eyes that take me back to that crashing moment.”

And then his vice-stained mind lost its way and his eyes fell upon the startled daffodil.

“Look!” he added. “See how this virgin flower, fresh from the company of earth's angels, has satiated itself with wine. She is foolishly drunk. Were I to take her back and lay her down among her family, the sky would be rent with an outburst of tribulation and all daffodils would put on mourning for their lost daughter.”

The Columbine threw back her head.

“You dear, sweet fool!” she said.

The butler nearly spilled the soup.

Bill also showed the effects of this new malady. His eyes were hot and passionate. Utterly neglecting his dinner, he gazed at Emmy and murmured strange Sumurunian things to her.

“Princess,” he said, “temptation of my heart, surely I am come to save thee, but if the Sultan learns who I am, we are dead, thou and I, because his jealousy is great!”

And Emmy, upon whom the spell had laid its hand, replied saying:

“Oh, thou who bring'st me life, tell me what I shall do!”

And Bill replied:

“When I depart hence let it appear that thou are unrestored to the possession of thy faculties. Howbeit, the full cure is to come after. Therefore when the Sultan comes to thee, be sad and meek and continue to repulse him as thou hast done aforetime, yet having no fear but that I will keep thee safe from him to the last. Later I will return to Codabad and fall upon him with my sword.”

The eyes of the Princess gleamed through her veil.

“But, brave Prince,” she said, “out of pity we must get rid of him, for I would not afflict him needlessly with the sight of my happiness. Nevertheless, let his death be lingering and terrible so that the name of the Sultan of Codabad shall live in story.”

No wonder the butler turned as white as a sheet.

And so it went on until it was time to go. Douglas Adam toyed with his food and continued to utter Wildeisms; Mrs. Churchill, who, according to a flippant servant, must have found her chair very cold, went on giggling in the early Victorian manner and saying pert and foolish things; Bill plunged headlong into the language of the Arabian Nights, which all came back to him, and Mrs. Adam, completely under the spell, looked languorously at him through her veil.

Williams, the butler, who had been with the family almost as long as the family had been at all, waited for their return until four o'clock the following morning, yawning his head off. It was the first time he had ever been kept up later than midnight. He sat for hours eying a silver tray on which he had arranged a decanter of whisky, a siphon of lithia water, four tumblers, and a plate of chicken sandwiches, asking himself what in the name of all that was horrible and tragic had got into his master and mistress and their two good friends,

And when at last, just after the little ormolu clock in the drawing room had struck four, he heard a motor car draw up outside the house, he didn't know whether to be relieved or not, because there came to him on the still air of the morning a burst of wild laughter. With a strange hesitancy he went down to open the door. What might not yet happen to these four well-bred, well-born, deserving people who were obviously still suffering from the strange and insidious effects of fancy dress!

The last thing that Williams saw before he went to bed almost undermined the whole of his respect for his master and Mrs. Douglas Adam. “The Prince of Harran,” as Emmy called Bill, bent down with an Oriental murmur, lifted the “Princess of Deryabar” into his arms, and carried her upstairs. This was the name he had given to his friend's wife.

Was there a look on Mrs. Churchill's face, however slight, of annoyance or surprise or jealousy? Not one. She had thrown off her cloak and was standing against the arch in the hall with her long, bare arms artificially arranged behind her head, her tulle skirt stiffly out all around her, with an expression of early Victorianism so simpering and so silly that she might have been one of the many unnecessary pictures of that period come to life. She actually took no notice of Bill's behavior with the wife of his friend; nor, for the matter of that, did Adams himself. Looking more blasé and degenerate than ever, with his red lips standing out against his dead-white face like a bloodstain on the snow, he remained in front of the Columbine like a man reluctantly fascinated with something for which he had a complete contempt. In a voice which was not his own—high-pitched and finicky—he gave forth an Oscar Wildeism as though to the manner born. It is absolutely true to say that Williams ran downstairs.

Arriving at the drawing-room, the Prince of Harran carried the Princess of Deryabar to a sofa, laid her down upon it, and bent over her. The odd part about it was that dear old, commonplace Bill did not look in any way ridiculous in that absurd attitude. He had, in a strange way, become the man he was representing. The insidious influence of fancy dress had done its work.

“Give me thy hand,” he said, “oh, lady of my dreams! Let me speak frankly to one whose beauty hath conquered my heart!”

If only the matrons of that London square could have heard Emmy's reply.

“Nay,” she answered; “let my lord go hence and break this spell, else will my husband put him to death.”

It was appalling.

Even when his wife and his best friend came in with the preliminary announcement of a titter, the Prince made no attempt to change his attitude or cut short his Sumurunian outburst. On the contrary, he went, down on his knees at the side of the sofa and placed one of Mrs. Adam's hands against his lips.

This seemed to give Douglas his cue, He mixed a strong whisky and soda, sipped it, shuddered, and handed it to Mrs. Churchill. Now, Mrs. Churchill had been brought up to believe that whisky was, in great moderation, a man's drink, and that, once tasted by a woman, her feet must necessarily be on the downward path. Nevertheless, she emptied the glass. The microbe had completed its work.

The very room, though filled with solid English furniture of unashamed modernity, with the usual English pictures of cornfields and rosy-cheeked children swinging on gates, had become as artificial as the occupants. The blinds were drawn, although the day was well awake and milkboys were going their rounds and cats were returning home after midnight operatic performances, and the electric light was all going.

For at least an hour these four well-born, blameless, happy, and responsible people who were a credit to their country and to their cast, continued to behave in a manner diametrically opposite to their characters and upbringing.

Outside in the street life had begun again. Errand boys were whistling, maidservants were cleaning steps, taxi-cabs bowled by, and the distant rumble of traffic could be heard. A faint gleam of sun glorified the roofs of the houses and made the sparrows twitter; but in this charming drawing-room, where nothing more exciting had hitherto taken place than bridge parties for moderate stakes, the blinds were still drawn, the electric light was still ablaze, and a thin cloud of Egyptian cigarette smoke hung in the air.

Suddenly Adam let out a cry of anger, broke through his too-well-assumed veneer of Beardleyism, and sprang at his friend like a prize fighter.

“What the devil do you mean by kissing my wife?” he cried. “Are you off your head?”

Bill rose from his knees and turned hotly.

“Your wife? Dost thou not know, dog, that the 'Princess of Deryabar' loves me?”

“You infernal fool!” shouted Adam.

He let out his left, caught his foot in a rug, stumbled against the window, and, in trying to save himself, clutched at the curtain and brought it down, rod and all.

The light came in, and in the white, fresh flood of it there stood both women on their feet, scared, ashamed, and horrified.

“But, my dear old chap,” said Bill, stammering. “I—I—I'm most frightfully sorry. What on earth have we all been playing at?” He put up his hand, pushed off his turban, and stood there, short-haired, a comic and rather idiotic figure.

Rather sheepishly Adam let go the curtain to which he was still clinging. “Good heavens!” he said, as though waking from a dream. “Good heavens!”

Mrs. Churchill, with one swift motion, plucked at a lace tablecloth and wrapped it round her charming limbs. As for Mrs. Adam, in her diaphanous clothes which left so little to the imagination, she stood up timid and scared and shamefaced, like a schoolgirl discovered bathing by a hilarious party of holiday makers.

Bill went round the room quietly and turned off the electric lights. He then went to the window and opened it. A rush of cool air came in, stirring the cloud of cigarette smoke. Then he stood looking from one face to the other.

“Do you know that it's nearly six o'clock? What the deuce will Williams think of us all?” And he laughed shortly and without merriment. “Darling,” he added to his wife, “for Heaven's sake, go and get something on!”

Adam had removed his mauve silk skullcap. Above his white face his reddish, kinky hair seemed to be very properly out of place. He looked at himself in a mirror that hung on the wall and gave a gasp of dismay.

“Have I been playing the idiot in this get-up?” he asked. He turned to his friend's wife. “Oh, look here! Do forgive me for what I have said. I—I've made a perfect ass of myself.”

Mrs. Churchill gave a little cry.

“Listen!” and over her face a little smile stole, and something that was exquisitely maternal came into her made-up eyes. “It's baby crying,” she said, and ran away.

“Well, so long, old man,” said Adam, laying his hand on Bill's square shoulder. “Er—I think we'd better go together and tell Antrobus what we think of him. In any case, we catch the usual train on Friday afternoon, eh? The links will be in fine condition this week-end. Come along, Emmy, get into your cloak, dear. You must be awfully cold. I'm spoiling for eggs and bacon and a cup of hot coffee.”

Bill went upstairs two steps at a time.

“Wash all this beastly stuff off,” he said to himself. “Get clean. That's the thing—clean!”

And when his wife heard him singing through the noise of both taps, she smiled and was grateful.