The Expensive Halo by Josephine Tey — Read

Ursula Deane's sitting-room, on the third floor of her father's town house, looked out on the tree-tops of a square and a far vista of higgledy-piggledy chimney pots; a typical London view which not even the rapid advance of concrete and steel skyscrapers had been able to penetrate. These casual, friendly chimney pots were the last rampart of the old London, and the Deane family was firmly entrenched behind them. Not that the Deanes had been entrenched long, as time is understood in a London square. Ursula's grandfather, the first Lord Wilmington, had begun life as a bottle-washer in a brewery, and it had always been a secret source of amazement, as well as of satisfaction, to the old gentleman that he, Bob Deane, should find himself in the home of the Delaunays. The Delaunays, being in the beginning an acquisitive and aspiring race, had come over before the Conqueror, and when William ultimately did arrive, proved themselves so useful to him that he found it politic to forgive their almost unforgivable impertinence in being ahead of him, and to shut his eyes to the various snafflings which had taken place before his arrival. So the Delaunays dug themselves in still further, and stayed there. But eight hundred years of fighting, gaming, alliances, and litigation had thinned their blood and dissipated their substance, and the inevitable had come to pass when the Deanes, only two generations from the soil, had stepped into their shoes. Sentiment had been satisfied (and the Delaunays otherwise compensated) when Robert Deane's son had married a Delaunay cousin. Not, perhaps, a Delaunay of the first water, but anyhow a perfectly reputable and authentic Delaunay. And now Robert Deane's son and the Delaunay cousin reigned in his stead. And Ursula daily deplored her mother's Delaunay stupidity and her father's Deane stubbornness. She stood now in the window, looking out at the well of shimmering light which the square had become this frosty morning. Even the ragged brown trees had lost their dolefulness, and floated, vague jewelled patterns, in the shining haze. A glorious morning; radiant as a bride and invigorating as a cocktail. But Ursula was wondering what on earth she was going to do with it. She had ridden, alone, before breakfast, because when she came in at four o'clock that morning she had been too wide awake to go to bed. She had spent nearly two hours dawdling over her bath, where she had composed five potted biographies à la Bentley, all of which had seemed very funny indeed. The best was about Bonjie, and as she had made up her mind to break off her engagement to Bonjie sometime within the next three days, she had reminded herself to present Bonjie's biography to her set at the earliest opportunity. The biography was too good to waste, but it was also too barbed to be disseminated when she would no longer have a proprietor's right of criticism. Philip Sidney, when urged to prosecute, said: "If he was my friend I would have done it." And Ursula subscribed to that code. She couldn't be rude about Bonjie the rejected, therefore the squib should be fired while yet he was an appropriate victim.

At six o'clock she had walked in the growing light to the stables, where watering and grooming had been not long in progress. She had helped the lad finish the grooming of her horse, since the morning was chilly and her blood needed stimulation, and had discussed with him meanwhile the chances of Blue Marine in the three o'clock at Derby, and the rival merits of the pictures at the Regal and the Marble Arch to which he was going to take his young lady that evening. She had ridden until eight, and had enjoyed the ride. The world at that hour had been a Whistlerian symphony in black and silver, a world deserted by all but policemen and scavengers, the one motionless and the other moribund; she had felt herself gloriously alive and potent among those half-tints. Now the world was sparkling and the hum of traffic made a gentle but exciting monotone on the bright air; and she was wondering, in a disgruntled reaction, how she was going to fill the hours until luncheon. There were a few things which she should do, and quite a number of things which she might do, but none of them seemed attractive in her present frame of mind. She decided that she might compose a letter of renunciation to Bonjie. She felt just in the mood for it, and she needn't post it until to-morrow. She turned away from the window towards her writing-table, debating within herself whether she should tell Bonjie that she knew about his week-end with Adela, or whether she should just say that she had changed her mind. She began a letter on the blue notepaper, but decided that it looked too mournful, and she wasn't in the least mournful over Bonjie. She tore it up and began again on a piece of orange paper so intense that one's eyes blurred as they rested on it. She would write a note that was full and running over with pin-pricks, at which Bonjie could neither squirm nor protest without giving himself away. Her face became animated and amused at the prospect. Bonjie had earned one of her very best notes.