The Children's Book by A.S. Byatt Page B

said Humphry.
    Basil said “You know your text very well.”
    “We all know the
Pilgrim’s Progress
, from childhood. And you must know it is apt.”
    “We do not all have it at our fingertips, to quote in libellous articles, to which we dare not put our name.”
    The accusation had been made. Humphry could neither bluster, nor deny.
    “You cannot deny the argument has weight? That the warnings in it need to be heard?”
    “A man should not do one kind of work by day, and stir up mud by night, to stick on his colleagues. And to harm his family,” Basil added.
    Humphry sneered. He did not feel like sneering—he felt he was himself on the brink of a pit. But the form of the quarrel required him to sneer.
    “You cannot have been so foolish as to implicate yourself—or your family—in any of Barnato’s gambles?”
    “You do not know what you are talking about. You purvey malicious chatter which can
do real harm—”
    “I do what my conscience leads me to do.”
    “Your conscience is a will o’ the wisp, leading into a bog,” said Basil, rather cleverly, twisting the metaphor his way.
    Violet said “Let us talk about something else. Let us make peace.”
    Basil said “I think I cannot stay in this gathering any longer. Come, Katharina. It is time to leave.”
    Katharina said “Very well.” She was conscious that it was hard to sweep out when your spare clothes were in your host’s bedroom. She said to Charles
    “Fetch Griselda.”
    “She’ll not be happy,” said Charles,
sotto voce
.
    Dorothy and Griselda were fetched back from the orchard. Katharina told Griselda they were going home. “Why?”
    “Never mind. We are going home. Put on your cloak, please.”
    Griselda stood in her party dress, white, like a pillar of salt. She had not a defiant nature. But she had not a compliant nature, either. Tears brimmed in her eyes. She swayed. Dorothy said
    “We have been looking forward to midsummer for ever. We have not had the fire, or the music, or the dancing. How can we have them without Griselda and Charles? How can we have the music without Charles? Their beds are made up…”
    Basil said to his wife “I really cannot stay.”
    “Perhaps we might leave the children with their cousins. It is a time that they have been looking forward…”
    “As you wish. I simply do not want to stay.”
    “Then we will go,” said Katharina, signalling to her maid, putting out her hands to Olive, who had come to see what was happening. She did not feel she could apologise for Basil, indeed, she felt he was justified, but she had no wish to ruin the party. Violet appeared at her side, murmuring sensible things about the later return of the children. The carriage came and was loaded. No one went to wave goodbye. Humphry went and refilled his glass, drained it, and refilled it again. He was full of an electric sense that everything was at risk. For the moment, there was the party. He called for music.
    Dorothy said to Griselda
    “The
first
thing is to find you a dressing-up dress, like ours.”
    Griselda was still white and stricken. Violet took her hand to lead her into the nursery. Violet instructed Philip and Phyllis to light the lanterns.
    Griselda stood in the nursery and undid the buttons on the pink dress. She stepped out of it, and it subsided, Miss Muffet reduced to a tuffet. She ought to put it on a hanger. She left it where it lay.
    Violet said that the Rhine-maiden dress was the thing. It would look pretty on Griselda.
    This was an old evening dress of Olive’s, cut down by Violet, and securely stitched into a girl-sized fancy dress. It was sea-green pleatedsilk over a grass-green underskirt, with a gilded girdle. Violet adjusted it. Griselda put up her hands and undid the tight coils of her hair. Violet brushed it out over her shoulders. Griselda had eyes which would normally be called grey, or hazel, which became, when she was dressed in green, suddenly emerald. Dorothy said “You look lovely.”