Tied Up in Tinsel Read Free Page B

fifteen paces into the north wind.
    It was as if a slide had clicked over in a projector and an entirely dissociated subject thrown on the screen. Troy now looked down into the Vale, as it was locally called, and her first thought was of the hopeless incongruity of this gentle word, for it stood not only for the valley but for the prison, whose dry moats, barriers, watchtowers, yards, barracks and chimney-stacks were set out down below like a scale model of themselves for her to shudder at. Her husband sometimes referred to the Vale as “Heartbreak House.”
    The wind was now fitfully laced with sleet and this steel-engraving of a view was shot across with slantwise drifts that were blown out as fast as they appeared.
    Facing Troy was a road sign.
     
    STEEP DESCENT
    DANGEROUS CORNERS
    ICE
    CHANGE DOWN
     
    As if to illustrate the warning a covered van laboured up the road from Halberds, stopped beside her, clanked into bottom gear, and ground its way down into the Vale. It disappeared round the first bend and was replaced by a man in a heavy mackintosh and tweed hat, climbing towards her. He looked up and she saw a reddened face, a white moustache and blue eyes.
    She had already decided to turn back, but an obscure notion that it would be awkward to do so at once, made her pause. The man came up with her, raised his hat, gave her a conventional “Good evening,” and then hesitated. “Coming up rough,” he said. He had a pleasant voice.
    “Yes,” Troy said. “I’ll beat a retreat, I think. I’ve come up from Halberds.”
    “Stiffish climb, isn’t it, but not as stiff as mine. Please forgive me but you must be Hilary Bill-Tasman’s celebrated guest, mustn’t you? My name’s Marchbanks.”
    “Oh, yes. He told me —”
    “I come as far as this most evenings for the good of my wind and legs. To get out of the valley, you know.”
    “I can imagine.”
    “Yes,” said Major Marchbanks, “it’s rather a grim proposition, isn’t it? But I shouldn’t keep you standing about in this beastly wind. We shall meet again, I hope, at the Christmas tree.”
    “I hope so, too,” said Troy.
    “Rather a rum setup at Halberds I expect you think, don’t you?”
    “Unusual, at least.”
    “Quite. Oh,” Major Marchbanks said as if answering an unspoken query, “I’m all for it, you know. All for it.”
    He lifted his wet hat again, flourished his stick, and made off by the way he had come. Somewhere down in the prison a bell clanged.
    Troy returned to Halberds. She and Hilary had tea very cosily before a cedar-wood fire in a little room which, he said, had been his five-times-great-grandmother’s boudoir. Her portrait hung above the fire: a mischievous-looking old lady with a discernible resemblance to Hilary himself. The room was hung in apple-green watered silk with rose-embroidered curtains. It contained an exquisite screen, a French ormolu desk, some elegant chairs and a certain lavishness of porcelain amoretti.
    “I daresay,” Hilary said through a mouthful of hot buttered muffin, “you think it an effeminate setting for a bachelor. It awaits its chatelaine.”
    “Really?”
    “Really. She is called Cressida Tottenham and she, too, arrives tomorrow. We think of announcing our engagement.”
    “What is she like?” Troy asked. She had found that Hilary relished the direct approach.
    “Well — let me see. If one could taste her she would be salty with a faint rumour of citron.”
    “You make her sound like a grilled sole.”
    “All I can say to that is: she doesn’t look like one.”
    “What
does
she look like?”
    “Like somebody whom I hope you will very much want to paint.”
    “Oh-ho,” said Troy. “Sits the wind in that quarter!”
    “Yes, it does and it’s blowing steady and strong. Wait until you see her and then tell me if you’ll accept another Bill-Tasman commission and a much more delectable one. Did you notice an empty panel in the north wall of the dining-room?”
    “Yes, I