Читать книгу The Brandons - Angela Margaret Thirkell - Страница 5

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The darkness which had covered the universe was not apparent to anyone else. The Vicarage cook was sitting at the kitchen door in the sunshine, knitting a jacket for her married sister’s latest; Hettie, the friend of spiders, was in the pantry reading a very nice book in a twopenny edition called Pure as the Lily, with the sun glancing on her spectacles, while Mr. Miller, reclining in a deck chair under the beech on the lawn, was reading the Bishop of Barchester’s pastoral charge, bathed in the late afternoon light. Cook shouted to Hettie that she didn’t remember a summer like that, not since her aunt died; Hettie yelled back to Cook that she must hurry up with her voyle for the Feet, it was that hot, a statement which Cook rightly interpreted as a wise decision of Hettie’s to get her new cotton voile dress finished before the annual Church Fête, which took place, with Mr. Miller’s resigned permission, in the Vicarage grounds; while Mr. Miller thought that if there were a hotter place than his garden he wished the Bishop were in it. Seeing his pupil approach he dashed his Bishop’s letter to the ground and asked Mr. Grant how he had got on at Brandon Abbey.

Quite well, said Mr. Grant. His aunt was a peculiar old lady, but quite kind, only he did wish she wouldn’t make hints about leaving things to him, because the Abbey was a ghastly place and he would hate to have anything to do with it. Her companion, Miss Morris, was very nice too. And, he added, speaking with some difficulty, Mrs. Brandon was there.

“Mrs. Brandon. Ah, yes,” said Mr. Miller.

There was a silence.

“It’s a most extraordinary thing,” said Mr. Grant, “but she is a sort of cousin of mine. I never knew about it till to-day.”

Mr. Miller found himself indulging in the sin of envy. To be Mrs. Brandon’s cousin must be in itself a state of grace to be envied by anyone. Then he rebuked himself, and concentrated on thinking how glad he was that his pupil, whom he already liked, should have this great happiness.

Silence fell again, till Mr. Miller, hearing the church clock strike seven, said he supposed they must be thinking of dressing. So they thought about it very comfortably till half-past and then there was rather a scurry. Mr. Grant, getting into his white shirt, was for the sixth or seventh time suddenly struck hot with shame and remorse as he remembered the various bricks he had dropped that afternoon. His stud fell from his nerveless hands, rolled across the sloping oak floor and disappeared in the gap under the skirting board. Mr. Grant knew he had another stud somewhere, but where he couldn’t think. After untidying all his drawers he went down the passage and knocked at Mr. Miller’s door.

“I say, I’m awfully sorry, Mr. Miller,” he said, putting his head in, “but one of my studs has got down a hole in the wall and I can’t find my spare one. Could you possibly lend me one? It’s only an ordinary gold one.”

“The worst of my profession is that one doesn’t have much to do with studs,” said Mr. Miller, who was in his trousers and vest and preparing to put his collar on. “Wait a minute and I’ll see.”

He hunted in a box and found a stud which was just sufficiently unlike Mr. Grant’s to make that young gentleman conscious of it for the whole evening. He handed it to Mr. Grant, and seeing him look with furtive curiosity at his clerical collar, kindly offered to show him how it did up.

“Oh, thanks most awfully,” said Mr. Grant. “I’ve always wanted to know how that gadget worked. I say, that’s awfully interesting. Thanks most awfully.”

He dashed back to his bedroom, hated his own face, hair and tie, wondered if Mrs. Brandon would notice a small spot of grease on one of the lapels of his dinner jacket, wished his evening shoes were newer, and hurried downstairs and into Mr. Miller’s little open car, in which his tutor was already waiting.

“You will enjoy dining at Stories,” said Mr. Miller, as they drove along the lane. “The house is a delightful example of early Georgian; about 1720 I think.”

Mr. Grant said that would be awfully jolly and wished his throat were not so dry, nor his heart banging so absurdly against his ribs.

“And Mrs. Brandon is a most charming hostess,” Mr. Miller continued.

This understatement could only be met with silence, and nothing more was said till they drew up at the front door.

When Mrs. Brandon got home she went upstairs to rest a little before dinner. Not that she was in need of rest, but she vastly enjoyed the ritual of leisurely bath, lying on her sofa in a becoming wrap, and slowly dressing. Francis and Delia went off to play tennis before their skimpier toilets, and their fraternal yells came sweetly to her ears from beyond the walled garden. She took off her hat and rang.

“Did you ring, madam?” said Rose, appearing with great celerity.

“My bath please, Rose, and I’ll wear that old pink thing,” said Mrs. Brandon, recognising with some trepidation that Rose had a grievance, and suddenly realising that she shouldn’t have been there at all, as it was her afternoon out.

“I thought you would prefer the black, or the mauve to-night, madam,” said Rose, so meaningly that her mistress had to ask her why.

“You wore the pink if you remember, madam, the last time Sir Edmund dined here.”

“Sir Edmund? But he isn’t coming here to-night.”

“I am sorry, I am sure, madam, but understanding from Nurse that Sir Edmund had rung up I thought I had better stay in and take My Afternoon on Friday. If I had taken the message, madam, I should have written it down on the pad, but of course with Nurse taking it I did not wish to interfere, not being any business of mine.”

Without giving her mistress time to answer she disappeared into the bathroom and drowned all attempts at conversation in a roaring of taps, so that she did not hear a knock on the bedroom door.

“Come in,” cried Mrs. Brandon, shutting the bathroom door to lessen the noise.

Nurse came in.

“It’s about Miss Delia’s tennis frock, madam,” she began. “I’m sure I am ready to work at it all night if need be, but I can’t finish it without a fitting, and Miss Delia is playing tennis.”

“Then you’d better tell her to come up to you before she dresses for dinner,” said Mrs. Brandon, knowing well that Delia always obeyed Nurse and that this complaint was but a preface to further wrongs.

“Just as you say, madam,” said Nurse, “and I am sure I am sorry if I have stepped out of my place, but when the telephone rings for quite three minutes, as I said to Cook, being downstairs at the moment, and the other girls upstairs tidying themselves after lunch, and it being Rose’s afternoon off and she happened to pass the remark quite distinctly before lunch that she was going to Southbridge on her bike as soon as she had set the dinner table, it is hardly to be surprised at that I went to the phone. Let me take your stockings off, madam, I’m sure you are tired.”

“What is all this about the telephone?” asked Mrs. Brandon, sinking into a chair.

“Sir Edmund, madam,” replied Nurse, suddenly becoming brisk and business-like. “He rang up to ask if he could come to dinner and I said you were out all day, madam, so he said he would come at eight and hoped it was all right.”

“Oh well, I suppose he must,” said Mrs. Brandon. “Thanks, Nurse.”

At this minute Rose emerged from the steaming bathroom and saw her rival in the act of putting the bedroom slippers on her mistress’s feet. She controlled herself very well, merely saying in an icy voice that she supposed there was nothing more.

“Yes, my old pink dress,” said Mrs. Brandon, goaded to defiance. “Thanks, Nurse. You’d better go and catch Miss Delia before dinner. Now Rose, what is this about Sir Edmund?”

“I understood, madam, from something Nurse let slip,” said Rose coldly, “that Sir Edmund was coming to dinner, so not being sure what you wished I changed My Afternoon back to Friday.”

In face of this revolting and quite unnecessary self-sacrifice Mrs. Brandon could say nothing. She escaped into the bathroom, but not before she had seen Rose pick up the stockings that Nurse had folded and carry them ostentatiously away to be washed. In the bath her spirits revived a good deal. The worst of the interview with Rose and Nurse was over, and she understood her staff well enough to know that they would mobilise and rise to a crisis, and that she could count upon a good dinner. So she finished dressing with a fairly light heart and came downstairs. For a moment she thought of asking Rose if she had remembered the special port for Sir Edmund, but feeling that she could better face her guest’s disappointment than her parlourmaid’s displeasure she refrained.

Sir Edmund Pridham was an old friend of the Brandons’, Mrs. Brandon’s trustee, and one of those useful middle-aged men who appear to have no particular business but do a hundred unpaid jobs with no thought of the sacrifice of their own time and strength. The Pridhams had lived at Pomfret Madrigal for at least two hundred years, always doing their duty to their tenants, to the church, being Justices of the Peace, sitting on and controlling local committees, once or twice sitting unwillingly but efficiently in Parliament because no one else would contest the seat. The present baronet, a childless widower, had commanded the Barsetshire Yeomanry for two years of the War and when he was invalided with a permanently crippled leg had run the whole county, even bullying the Matron of the Barchester War Hospital and the terrifying head of the Waacs. He knew the country and the people almost as well as old Lord Pomfret, and was entirely unmoved by their affection or dislike. His relations with Mrs. Brandon as trustee had always been very pleasant, as he managed her affairs with the same diligence that he applied to everything else and she always signed everything he told her to without asking why. Of late he had insisted that Francis should go thoroughly into his mother’s money matters and the two had got on well together.

Of course the county had married him to Mrs. Brandon again and again in the last eighteen years or so, but nothing was further from their thoughts. Sir Edmund looked upon Mrs. Brandon as what a woman should be, good-looking, docile, not too intelligent, always charming. Her flashes of insight he completely ignored, but he saw through all her self-deceptions with a ruthless though admiring eye, and never missed an opportunity of pointing them out to her. Mrs. Brandon liked him very much, accepted his homage and his scorn with equal placidity, consulted him about everything, and except on money matters rarely took his advice.

Presently Rose, her voice divided between the deference due to a baronet and the resentment she was still feeling against Nurse and in a lesser degree against her innocent mistress, announced Sir Edmund. At the sight of his tall figure, which almost filled the drawing-room door, Mrs. Brandon felt very comfortable. For years his broad shoulders, straining to the uttermost stitch the well-cut coats that he would not take the trouble to renew, his red neck rigidly confined by a stiff collar and overlapping a little behind, his close-cropped sandy-grizzling hair and moustache, his angry but equitable blue eyes, had represented the safe background of her life. After outraging Rose by asking after her mother’s leg, Sir Edmund bore down upon his hostess, who rose to greet him.

“Out to kill, Lavinia,” said Sir Edmund, eyeing her dress with interest. “Who is it this time?”

“Mr. Miller is coming to dinner,” said Mrs. Brandon, ignoring her guest’s question, “and Mr. Grant who is a cousin of ours, at least he seems to be a cousin of Henry’s, and a cousin of Miss Brandon’s. We met him there to-day and he is delightful.”

“A cousin of Amelia Brandon’s?” said Sir Edmund, who prided himself on knowing the genealogies of the whole county. “Grant, eh? Now, let’s see. Old Mrs. Brandon’s sister—Mortons they were from Cheshire and a good family, Miss Morton was considered to have thrown herself away on Brandon, till he made all his money—married a man called Grant in the Barsetshire Regiment, met him at the Barsetshire Hunt Ball when she was down here staying with her sister at Brandon Abbey. Their son was born the year Lord Pomfret was made Lord Lieutenant, now what the devil was his name? Edward. That’s it. Called after someone—can’t think who at the moment. Edward married a damn silly woman and this must be their boy. Hope you’ve got a good dinner, Lavinia. I’m hungry. Been out all day about those drains.”

“Have some sherry then,” said Mrs. Brandon, going to the table where Rose had put the decanter. She certainly looked very agreeable in the old pink rag, what she herself called a soft elderly pink, and no wonder that Mr. Grant, looking from his considerable height over Mr. Miller’s shoulder as they came in, was again transfixed by arrows of very respectful desire.

“Well, Miller,” said Sir Edmund, who was Vicar’s Churchwarden, read the lessons on Sundays and while supporting all the Vicar’s doings in public, bullied him a good deal in private, “everything all right, eh?”

To this comprehensive question Mr. Miller could but answer weakly that it was. Mr. Grant bowed rather low over Mrs. Brandon’s hand, thus affording exquisite pleasure to Francis and Delia who followed hard upon him, and was introduced to Sir Edmund.

“So you are Edward’s son,” said Sir Edmund, shaking hands. “What’s your name? Robert?”

Mr. Grant, feeling that an apology was necessary said he was sorry but his name was Hilary.

“Hilary, eh? Oh, well, nothing wrong with that. There was a saint called Hilary, a bishop; more in Miller’s line than mine. But I should have thought your father would have called you Robert, after your grandfather,” said Sir Edmund, more in sorrow than in anger.

Luckily dinner was coldly announced by Rose and the party drifted into the dining-room. Sir Edmund, lingering behind with his hostess, remarked, in a voice of whose carrying powers he was quite unconscious, that he was sorry he had told young Grant that he thought he should have been called Robert, because he remembered now that there had been the deuce of a row between young Grant’s father and grandfather on the occasion of young Grant’s father’s marriage.

“Here, Grant,” he called, “what’s the name of that woman your father married? The dark one?”

Mr. Grant looked round, startled.

“My mother, do you mean, sir?” he asked.

“That’s right, your mother, you know what I mean. Never mind the name,” said Sir Edmund, who had evidently satisfied himself on the subject.

Conversation at dinner was led by Delia, who had been reading the local weekly and had come across a delightful report of the coroner’s inquest on the bodies of the people who were burned in the motor bus.

“It must have been simply ghastly, Sir Edmund,” she said with relish. “The doors and windows got jammed and the ones that got out simply trampled on the others and got all cut to bits on the broken glass, and it took two days to sort the others out, and there was one of them that there was so little of him left that they didn’t know who he was, and even with the false teeth they couldn’t tell because there was another man that died afterwards in the Barchester Infirmary and all he would say was “My teeth, my teeth,” only they couldn’t understand for ages because he hadn’t got any teeth, and you know the way having no teeth makes people so difficult to understand, but anyway one of the nurses who had false teeth herself had a brain wave and said she expected he wanted to know where his false teeth were, because when she was in a car accident once that was the first thing she thought of when she came to, and so they fetched the teeth from the refrigerator or wherever the coroner keeps the bodies, but he was dead then and couldn’t identify them. I think they ought to have buried them with him, like Ur and Vikings and all that sort of thing, but they kept them in case anyone could identify them. I’d have put them in the Barchester Museum.”

“In which department?” asked Mr. Grant, interested in Delia’s maiden fancies.

“Oh, anywhere. Fossils or War Souvenirs or something. I mean then if anyone wanted them they’d always be there.”

“And what happened to the one they couldn’t identify?” said Francis.

“Oh, he got buried. It’s a pity we couldn’t have had him buried here. It would have been ghastly. I mean seeing a coffin and knowing there was really nothing to speak of inside. Is it all right to bury people in the churchyard, Mr. Miller, when there really isn’t any of them to bury except the burnt bits? I mean would the Bishop mind?”

“I have luckily never been faced with such a contingency,” said Mr. Miller, who was very fond of Delia, but had not her strength of mind. “It is all rather horrible to think of.”

Sir Edmund, who owing to the excellent soup and fish had only been a listener to the foregoing conversation, now spoke as the representative of law and order.

“We all know you’d do your duty, Miller,” he said, wiping his moustache with his table napkin crumpled into a ball. “But better to marry than to be burnt, eh?”

He then applied himself to the next course. Mr. Grant and Francis, catching one another’s eye, fell into wild suppressed giggles, and Mrs. Brandon applied herself to soothing Mr. Miller, which she did so well that the whole dinner was held up while he hung upon her lips and Rose, preferring not to demean herself by making her presence known, stood silently at his elbow with the sweet, till Delia jogged him.

“I say, Mr. Miller, it’s an ice,” she said earnestly. “It’s an ice, so do hurry up or my bit will go all to squelch. I say, mother, let’s have coffee under the chestnut.”

“We might,” said Mrs. Brandon doubtfully. “Rose, do you think we could have the little table out there? Mr. Francis would help you with it.”

But Rose had as yet neither forgotten nor forgiven and said, with a manner that froze the blood, that she could manage the table quite well by herself.

“Very well,” said Mrs. Brandon, again driven by persecution and injustice to rebel, “we’ll have dessert and coffee and the liqueurs outside, and the port if no one minds.”

Rose, who had a secret passion for anything that savoured of theatre, gave her outwardly grudging consent to this plan, and with the help of one of the housemaids arranged the fruit and wine under the tree and brought her mistress a black lace scarf. Sir Edmund, Mr. Miller and Mr. Grant took out chairs, while Francis and Delia triumphantly bore silver candlesticks with shaded candles through the dusk. There was not a breath of air and the candles burnt steadily under the great Spanish chestnut. Rose, contemplating the scene from the front door, said to the housemaid that madam really looked quite the thing to-night in her pink, and it was just like the scene in Moonlight Passion, the one she saw at the Barchester Odeon last week, where the Italian count gives the feet for Princess Alix. Princess Alix, she added, was taken by Glamora Tudor, the one that they called in Hollywood “The Woman who Cannot Love,” but madam reely looked every inch as good-looking, and if people who answered the telephone would only write down the messages it would save a lot of trouble to other people she could mention and standing there wouldn’t get the dining-room table cleared nor the washing up done. So she vanished, and the yellow path of light from the front door was suddenly obscured, and in the gathering gloom the radiance of the rising moon could now be seen through the branches.

“The full moon is rising,” Mrs. Brandon breathed.

At the sound of her low voice uttering these words Mr. Grant nearly fainted.

“Nonsense, Lavinia,” said Sir Edmund, lighting a cigar. “Full moon doesn’t rise till much later. Two or three days off the full. Any child knows that.”

“But I’m not a child,” murmured Mrs. Brandon.

At these words Mr. Grant’s soul took flight and assuming the form of a bird, perched in the chestnut tree, tuning its notes to the music of the spheres which sang “Mrs. Brandon, Mrs. Brandon,” leaning its breast against a thorn regardless of botany, embracing in its vision the whole universe, for what worlds could exist outside the pool of candlelight below the leaves? It saw Mrs. Brandon, a shadowy goddess, draped in the rose light of evening, veiled in the black lace of tattered clouds, a diamond flashing like a star on her finger. It saw the rest of the party, privileged beyond their knowledge, beyond their worth, laughing and talking in that sacred presence; Sir Edmund pulling at his cigar, Francis and Delia eating more peaches than it would have thought anyone could eat who had already had so many at lunch, Mr. Miller, to him alone was vouchsafed a glimpse of the true light, gazing from the shadow at the foundress of the feast. It saw the diamond sparkle and flash again with a thousand fires, growing in size till all earths, all seas, all heavens were included in its bounds, a burning rose at the core. Spreading its wings it flew through an infinity of time and space towards that fiery centre, burning to immolate itself on such a pyre and rise again transfigured to the skies.

“Of course you aren’t a child, Lavinia,” said Sir Edmund. “Can’t call a woman of your age a child. What I said was, A child would have more sense.”

Mr. Grant’s soul returned suddenly to his body, but as no one had noticed its absence in the interval between Mrs. Brandon’s words and Sir Edmund’s reply, its return passed unobserved. Its owner, a little dizzy, helped himself to port. There was a silence in which Mrs. Brandon drew her mantilla round her with one hand and gazed meditatively upon the other with its gleaming ring.

“What’s that you’re wearing, Lavinia?” said Sir Edmund suddenly.

“Only my old pink,” said Mrs. Brandon, “and the Spanish lace shawl that Henry brought from Toledo.”

“No, no, don’t be dense. I can see perfectly well what you have on. The ring I mean. Haven’t seen that before.”

“It is a diamond. Miss Brandon gave it to me to-day. Isn’t it lovely?”

She held out her hand to Sir Edmund.

“A good one,” said he, looking at the ring, but not troubling to raise or support her hand, for which Mr. Grant could have killed him. “Worth a round two hundred, I should say. I’d better have it insured with your other things. Remind me to take it into Barchester next time I go. Queer thing if Amelia Brandon is giving anything away. She must be breaking up. Never knew her give anything to anyone—except charities, of course. Always go to her if we want anything for the hospital. By the way, Lavinia, does she ever mention her will?”

At this appalling frankness everyone was struck dumb.

“I don’t think one ought to talk about things like that,” said Mrs. Brandon, “do you, Mr. Miller?”

“Now never mind Miller, Lavinia,” said Sir Edmund. “He knows what’s what. Render unto Caesar, eh, Miller?”

“Yes, yes, indeed, Sir Edmund,” said Mr. Miller hastily, not wishing to offend his churchwarden, but doubtful as to the applicability or relevance of his statement.

Francis came to the rescue and said Aunt Sissie was always trying to frighten someone by saying she’d leave something to someone else, but no one wanted that awful Abbey and if he or Hilary got it they were going to give it to each other or turn it into a lunatic asylum. Mr. Grant corroborated this statement by saying, Rather. On hearing these subversive remarks Sir Edmund nearly burst. To treat the sacred rights of property as a joke was something almost beyond his comprehension, almost worse than robbing the poor box or shooting foxes. If Amelia Brandon left the Abbey, as he had always understood she might, to Lavinia’s boy, it would be a big responsibility, but Francis would have to take it on and do the best he could for the place and the tenants, and he would give help and advice if Francis needed it and would take it. If the old lady was going to leave it to this new nephew, who seemed a harmless enough young man for one whose mother was a damn silly woman, that was entirely her affair and no one would grudge it to him. But to talk of a stake in the country, and more especially in Barsetshire, as if it were a shuttlecock to be thrown to and fro or dropped, was worse than Bolshevism, worse than Communism, or Germany, or Italy, or Spain, or Russia, or the United States, or the Labour Party, or any of numerous nations, sects or parties which Sir Edmund found unworthy of his approval.

Filling his glass again, he addressed the two young men on the subject of the rights of property, fixing them with a choleric blue eye that they could not and dared not avoid. Delia melted away and was presently heard playing the gramophone to herself in the drawing-room. A moth fluttered round the candles. Mrs. Brandon exclaimed, Mr. Miller blew them out, but Sir Edmund’s voice rumbled on in the leaf-chequered moonlight. Presently Rose’s white apron was seen coming from the house, to the young men a welcome diversion, to Mrs. Brandon a vague source of uneasiness. Kindly reluctant to interrupt the gentry in their talk, Rose stood on the outskirts of the group emanating an atmosphere of such condescending tolerance that even Sir Edmund became conscious that something was wrong, and was checked in his flow of speech.

“Yes, Rose?” said Mrs. Brandon.

“Curwen would wish to speak to you, madam, if it is convenient,” said Rose.

“It isn’t really,” said Mrs. Brandon helplessly, “but I suppose he’ll have to. Where is he?”

Rose stepped dramatically aside, revealing the hitherto unsuspected form of Curwen.

“I’m sure I didn’t wish to trouble you, madam,” Curwen began, an ill-concealed triumph in his voice.

“Can’t hear a word you say. Come up here. Bad enough not seeing anything, without not hearing anything,” barked Sir Edmund in his orderly-room voice. Curwen, an old soldier, automatically moved forward and stood to attention.

“It was going over the downs done it, madam,” he announced with gloomy relish.

“Did what?” asked Sir Edmund. “Why the devil can’t your man speak plainly, Lavinia?”

“Done it in, Sir Edmund,” said Curwen.

Delia, tired of her gramophone, had drifted back again and wanted to know who was done in and if Curwen had seen the body, and if so if she could see it too.

“That’s enough, Delia,” said Sir Edmund in a state of exasperation. “Let the man get on with whatever he is trying to say. Carry on, Curwen.”

Curwen, looking straight in front of him, embarked on a long unpunctuated statement from which it appeared that owing to his employer’s complete disregard for and want of sympathy with the sensitive works of the car, he had been forced to drive her, by which he meant the car and not his employer, over roads which the County Council had deliberately made to afford employment to garages, the proprietors and employees of which places would, in his opinion, be all the better for six months in the trenches, that he had said at the time what would happen and was therefore guiltless, but that at the same time he would always hold it against himself what had happened. He had taken her, he continued, straight down to Wheeler’s the minute he found it and Wheeler, who was an honest sort of chap himself, though that young Bert and Harry couldn’t be trusted even to oil her, couldn’t possibly get it done before Friday.

“Well, come clean, Curwen; what is it?” said Francis. “Springs gone? I thought I felt an awful bump when we went over the level crossing.”

“It might have been the springs, Mr. Francis,” said Curwen regretfully, “but it happened to be the shock absorber.”

“That’s a bit of an anti-climax,” said Francis cheerfully, “but it dishes the picnic, doesn’t it? Can’t Wheeler get it done by to-morrow night?”

“Not with the Thursday half-holiday, sir,” said Curwen cheered by the thought. “That young Bert and Harry are going to Barchester to the cricket.”

“Good thing, cricket,” said Sir Edmund, who was tired of the conversation. “Not what it was though. Well, Lavinia, I must be getting along. Glad to have met you, Grant. Where are you staying? With Miller? That’s right. Mensa, eh? They pronounce it all wrong now. Latin’s not what it was in my time.”

With which unfounded aspersion on the classics Sir Edmund heaved himself up to go.

“I suppose you wouldn’t care to come to our picnic on Friday?” said Mrs. Brandon, taking his hand in farewell.

“No, Lavinia. And what’s more you can’t have my car. My chauffeur is having his holiday and I’m driving myself over to Rushwater about a bull. You know I never go to picnics. Wasps and jam sandwiches. Good night, Miller.”

He kissed Delia. The whole party moved to the front door. Sir Edmund, assisted by Francis, got into his little car and drove away.

While Francis was dispensing farewell drinks in the drawing-room a complicated discussion took place about the picnic on Friday. Mrs. Brandon was in favour of putting it off till her car was back, but her children protested so loudly that she had to give in, though to drive in Francis’s little runabout was not any pleasure to her. Mr. Miller then offered his car which was gratefully accepted, but as it was very small and uncomfortable and everyone insisted on his coming too, matters were not much more forward till Delia remembered Miss Brandon’s offer.

“Look here, mother,” she said. “Let’s telephone to Aunt Sissie and ask if Miss Morris can come and pick you up and you can go comfortably, and then Francis and I can go in the runabout and we’ll go round by Starveacres and see where they’re dragging for the gipsy that was drowned below the hatches on Monday night, at least Turpin says they think he was, and then Mr. Miller and Hilary can come in Mr. Miller’s car. You’re coming, Hilary, aren’t you?”

“Of course Hilary is coming,” said Mrs. Brandon. So the matter was left, pending a telephone call to Brandon Abbey on the following morning, and good nights were said. Mrs. Brandon, not unconscious of the becoming frame that her black mantilla made for her head, came out to see the Vicarage party into their car.

“Come up for tennis some time to-morrow, Hilary,” she said, laying her hands on the door of the car. For all answer Mr. Grant, pot-valiant with the moon, the candles, the port, the hot still night, raised it to his lips.

“I was thinking, Mr. Miller,” said the goddess, when Mr. Grant had finished with her hand, “that if Hettie would let us have some of her parsnip wine on Friday it would be so nice. Of course we shall bring everything else.”

Mr. Miller said Indeed, indeed, yes, and urged his little car homewards. Mrs. Brandon went upstairs, thinking not of moonlight, candlelight or the hot scented night air, but of how nice it was to go to bed, however nice a party had been. Rose had left everything exactly as she liked it and just as she was settling to sleep a light tap came at the door. Nurse put her face round it with a caution that would have woken the heaviest sleeper.

“Excuse me, I’m sure, madam,” said Nurse, “but I saw the light under your door, so I thought it would be all right.”

“Yes?”

“I’d thought you’d just like to know, madam, that Rose and I have had quite an explanation. It is always so unpleasant when there is an unpleasantness of any sort, and much more pleasant when things are explained, as they could easily have been in the first place.”

“Yes, it is,” said Mrs. Brandon sleepily. “That’s all right then. Good night, Nurse.”

Outside their bedroom doors Francis and Delia exchanged a few words on life, with special reference to Mr. Grant’s too visible passion for their mother, which Delia characterised as a bit slooshy if Francis knew what she meant.

“Perhaps it is a bit slooshy,” said Francis, “but it doesn’t look bad, this hand-kissing business. Rather like the Prisoner of Zenda and that sort of thing. I wish mamma had brought up her tall handsome son to kiss her hand. I think I’ll take to it.”

His sister murmured the word potty, adding that she dared him to. Francis at once accepted the dare, they rubbed the tips of their noses together, relic of a nursery superstition connected with the binding powers of a dare, and separated for the night.

In the Vicarage Mr. Miller and his pupil found it difficult to go to bed. There was a very sacred subject on which both would have liked to speak, while both felt a very creditable diffidence in embarking upon it. Although there were more than twenty years between them, they were both at that ingenuous stage of a first love which makes it necessary for the sufferer to celebrate aloud the beauties and virtues of the adored. Later may come doubts, torments, secrecies, jealousies; but in the first golden days the young lover, whether young in years or in experience, far from wishing to conceal the beloved in some unsuspected isle in far-off seas, is more inclined to stand at the cross roads and challenge anyone to mortal combat who denies her charms, or to sing those charms with all comers in the alternate verses beloved of the Muses.

So it was with Mr. Miller and Mr. Grant, but being English gentlemen they found the approach to these mysteries singularly difficult.

“Well, we really must be turning in,” said Mr. Miller, when he and Mr. Grant had consumed respectively a glass of orange juice and a lemon squash and said nothing for three quarters of an hour.

“Yes, I suppose we must,” said Mr. Grant. “It was an awfully nice evening.”

“Yes, it was delightful to sit out after dinner. There are so few evenings in an English summer when one can comfortably sit out,” said Mr. Miller.

Mr. Grant agreed, adding that it was often too cool to sit out comfortably. Also, he said, the light often attracted moths.

Both men thought how a moth had fluttered into the candle under the chestnut, and how Mrs. Brandon had exclaimed against it. Both would willingly have celebrated her enchanting childlike terrors, the sweetness of her voice, but neither found himself capable of beginning.

“Well,” said Mr. Grant, “I suppose we ought to be turning in.”

By dint of repeating this comfortable phrase often enough they managed to get themselves upstairs. On the landing they paused.

“Well, we really ought to be in bed,” said Mr. Miller. “Good night, Hilary.”

“Good night,” said Mr. Grant. “And thanks awfully for a splendid evening.”

“Oh, that’s all right,” said Mr. Miller. “We really ought to thank Mrs. Brandon,” he added in a voice singularly unlike his own.

“Oh yes, Mrs. Brandon,” croaked Mr. Grant. And having let loose this word of power both were overcome with confusion and separated abruptly. Mr. Grant took off his dinner jacket and waistcoat and gazed into the night. Unfortunately his window looked in exactly the opposite direction from Stories, but this presented no obstacle to his mind’s eye, which ran lightly up the side of the house like Dracula, scaled the beautiful stone roof, perched on the chimney and thence with extensive view surveyed the landscape. It was during this trance that Mr. Grant was suddenly smitten with an idea for a poem, totally new in conception and treatment, containing in itself the finest elements of all previous poetry, yet of an epoch-making originality. Pushing aside the books upon which he had been working earlier in the day, or rather on the preceding day, for it was now well after twelve, he sat down, twisted his legs round the front legs of his chair, tilted the chair forwards, and plunged into literary composition.

An hour or so later he heard a light tap at his door. His tutor, also without coat or clerical waistcoat, entered the room. Mr. Grant, drunk with his own written words, gazed at him stupidly.

“I couldn’t go to sleep,” said Mr. Miller, though his dress afforded no indication of his having tried to do so, “and I wondered if you had that stud of mine.”

It seemed to Mr. Grant in his present demented state of mind eminently reasonable that Mr. Miller should want an assurance of the safety of his stud at one in the morning. Wrenching it from his shirt front he handed it to its owner in silence.

“Thanks,” said Mr. Miller, apparently much relieved. “I just wanted to be quite sure, that was all. Are you working?”

“Yes,” said Mr. Grant, “I mean no. At least yes, but not exactly working. Just writing. An idea I had.”

“Oh,” said Mr. Miller, interested, but not liking to ask.

“Just an idea,” Mr. Grant repeated, longing for a sympathetic audience, but not liking to ask.

“Well,” said Mr. Miller, “I suppose I ought to be turning in. Thanks for the stud. I hope I didn’t disturb you.”

“Oh, rather not,” said Mr. Grant. “It was just an idea I had—a sort of idea,” he explained.

Mr. Miller, hearing the appeal in Mr. Grant’s voice, said he didn’t suppose he would care to let him look at it. Mr. Grant, who wanted nothing more, said he didn’t suppose there was anything in it, but if Mr. Miller really cared— He then pushed a sheet of paper towards his host, saying that it was only an idea.

“Poetry,” said Mr. Miller. “If you don’t mind, Hilary, I’ll read it aloud to myself. I can’t ever quite get the feeling of poetry unless I read it aloud. Let me see,” he added, looking at the various rough drafts and erasures, “where exactly does it began? Oh, yes, I see.

Methinks most like a god is he

Who in Lavinia’s company

Amazed can sit, and gaze the while

On the enchantment of her smile.

But when I, wretched, see my saint,

My tongue is held, my senses faint,

My eyes are darkened with desire

And all my veins consumed with fire.

An imitation of Catullus, I see,” said Mr. Miller, suddenly becoming professional, “but free, very free. In a way I think you are right to compress your rendering. It is a more general fault to expand from the original. But you will have to work at it a good deal, Hilary.”

“I never thought of Catullus,” said Mr. Grant miserably, his golden vision of a totally original poem dashed to the dust.

“My dear boy, you only have to look at that first line,” said Mr. Miller. “By the way, why Lavinia? Surely Lesbia is good enough?”

Mr. Grant said it didn’t seem to fit in.

“Lavinia,” said Mr. Miller, speaking aloud to himself, “is Mrs. Brandon’s name.”

“I know,” said Mr. Grant defiantly. “That’s why.”

Mr. Miller looked at his pupil, who returned his gaze.

“I think,” said Mr. Miller, very kindly, “that you had better finish undressing and go to bed.”

“I suppose I had. I only once went to bed in my trousers, after a bump supper it was: no, it can’t have been that time because they took all my trousers away. Anyway it was jolly uncomfortable,” said Mr. Grant yawning. “Good night, sir, and thanks awfully.”

He tore the paper into fragments, put them in an ash tray, struck a match and watched them burn.

“Good night,” said Mr. Miller and went away.

Mr. Grant was in bed in two minutes and such is human frailty and such is youth that he was asleep in two minutes more, and slept soundly till long after breakfast time.